Want the truth? At that moment all my negative vibes about Matsuo Noda crystallized. He wasn't threatening me exactly. Or maybe he was. The large viewing room was all but empty now. Maybe he'd deliberately waited before getting down to his real agenda.
"My other 'obligations' happen to be very important to me just now."
"Besides, my fees can be substantial." They weren't all that substantial, but I was looking to slow him down.
"Your fees do not present a problem." He continued, "This afternoon a retainer of one hundred thousand dollars was deposited in your personal account at Chase."
"Money is of no consequence in this matter, Mr. Walton. Time is."
"We expect your involvement to begin immediately. I cannot stress too strongly the urgency of what you will undertake." He smiled thinly. "I also feel confident a man who enjoys a challenge as much as you do will find our undertaking . . . intellectually rewarding."
Seems I was hired and I hadn't even said yes.
This guy had another think coming. Besides, he could get anybody to do what he wanted. He didn't need me. As I stood
there, I started trying to guess the dimensions of Matsuo Noda's financial hedge. Taken all together, Japan probably had roughly a hundred billion and change tied up in U.S. government paper. No way could he be thinking of covering more than a fraction of that. I knew plenty of law clerks who could do it, for godsake. A few phone calls to a couple of floor traders in Chicago . . .
"Look, the most I can do for you is recommend some very competent brokers I know to help you out. There shouldn't be too much to it. You'll just have to go easy. You can't hit the market makers in Chicago with too much action all at once. Prices get out of kilter. Then, too, there are exchange limits. . . ."
"That is why we will be trading worldwide." Noda withdrew a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket. "Perhaps you'd like to glance over our program. These are cumulative totals, which include our activity to date, but we will begin moving much more rapidly as soon as I've completed all the financial arrangements with our institutional managers at home. Perhaps you will see why we need a monetary professional."
I was still chewing on the "financial arrangements" part as I took the paper, opened it, and scanned the schedule of contracts. While I stood there, the room around us sort of blurred out. I had to sit down again. All his talk about samurai and nerves of steel was for real.