"Henderson, who do you think I was talking to up at Sotheby's the other night?"
"You check your wallet afterward? We're talking heavy guns, my friend." He snubbed out what must have been his tenth Dunhill in the last hour. "You didn't tell me he was the honcho behind all this."
"You didn't ask. Know anything about him?"
"Not till last week. I started to do a little checking and first thing I know I'm stumbling across his name everywhere I look." He studied the glass in his hand. "Tell you something about this Noda. The man drops a quarter, you let him pick it up himself. He'll nail you where the sun don't shine. Definitely a bad news mother."
"You mean that business with the sword?"
"Nah, what in hell do I know about swords? That's your toy box. I'm talking about the real world, friend. Turns out Matsuo Noda was the prime mover in one of the biggest takeover plays of the century."
"What takeover? They don't screw around with corporate takeovers in Japan."
"They don't take each other over. They take other businesses over. Washington may think that war back in the forties is over, but somebody neglected to pass the word to MITI. Seems they've got the idea it was just the opening skirmish—the only folks who surrendered were the army and navy." Henderson grew ominously serious for a change. "Question is, where's this thing headed? Is the idea of turning our industrial base into a packaging operation for imports some kind of conspiracy, or is it just nature takin' its course?"
Conspiracy? That wasn't a word Henderson threw around lightly. In fact, he tended to scoff at conspiracy theories, claiming they were a substitute for hardheaded analysis. I agreed. So what was he driving at? I pressed him.
He paused to light a cigarette. "I bring up this unsavory possibility because I'm beginning to detect a little operation code-named 'eat an industry.'"