Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

Knowing that hers was the only earnest smile among them, Shiroyama felt a new wave of anguish as he called Ms. Nozaki over to him.

“I am so glad you are safe,” Nozaki said in her usual calm manner, bowing once, before asking briskly, “What can I do for you?”

“I’m so sorry to have caused you concern. It will take me about forty minutes from now to go around each floor to greet everyone. Then, I’ll see to urgent matters in my office, and there will be a board meeting at 6:30 p.m. Please make arrangements accordingly. Also, if you could have a light meal ready for me in my office by 6:10 p.m.—something simple will do.”

“Of course.”

Several voices urged him to rest, to delay greeting employees until tomorrow, but Shiroyama feigned a smile and responded, “No need to worry. I’m fine, as you can see,” and went on ahead into the waiting elevator. With him were four men: Takeo Sugihara, whom Shiroyama had signaled to join him with the merest of glances; Keizo Suzuki, the chairman of the board; Hiroshi Sakakibara, the corporate secretary and executive director of general affairs who came into the elevator saying that he needed to speak to Shiroyama briefly about the board meeting; and finally Hajime Ide, manager of general affairs. As soon as the doors closed, Suzuki began talking first, as if he had too many things to say.

“I must apologize to you and your family. Until I received the call this morning that you were safe, I felt like I could hardly breathe. Everyone here regrets having been a little too lax about the company’s security. The police seemed to find our risk management procedures cumbersome, but if you ask me they’re not nearly sufficient.”

Sakakibara’s issue, on the other hand, had to do with the proceedings of the board meeting. “I’m sorry to bother you when you must be exhausted, but before the meeting the consultants would like to take ten minutes to report on the current situation and explain the risk management countermeasures. Then Ide will brief you on his communication with law enforcement officials. Would that be all right with you? Perhaps we should delay the meeting with the consultants until tomorrow morning?”

As he spoke, Sakakibara cautiously glanced at Shiroyama’s face. I see, Shiroyama thought. They were bracing for him to start disclosing more sensitive matters at the board meeting tonight, rendering any discussions with the outside risk management company useless. Having grasped this, Shiroyama prepared himself anew to face the thicket of anxieties and speculations of the executives. “No, I’ll talk to them today.”

Ide then reported, “While you were gone, the police questioned us about various matters. I will send you a memo summarizing all their inquiries.”

Sakakibara and Ide got off on the twelfth floor. “Every man shows his true colors in a time of emergency,” Suzuki offered casually after the elevator doors closed again. “We installed the risk management system last year after the board reached a consensus on it, but some have started to voice their frustrations now that a crisis has hit. They say it’s useless and causes more trouble than it’s worth. They complain about who in this company would be held responsible for a manual that was generated by an outside source—”

“Who can blame them, now that the person who suggested the idea in the first place was the one to be kidnapped?” Shiroyama shrugged it off with a bitter laugh, though his eyes conveyed an appreciation for Suzuki’s considerate words.

What Suzuki, in his position as chairman, was hinting at with his carefully chosen remarks was clear to Shiroyama: during the two and a half days of his absence, there had been some outward signs of discord on the board. And yet, the consensus of the board was in essence no more than an aggregate of the individual members’ compromise and restraint and preservation of self; it would have been strange had no disagreement arisen when the members were compelled to assess the delicate situation. Shiroyama still held the title at the helm of management, and steering the company’s dissension had become second nature. He did not feel particularly shocked as he listened to Suzuki’s advice.

“By the way, Shiroyama-kun. It’s fine for you to make the rounds of the floors but you can’t possibly do it alone—”

Before Suzuki had finished speaking, Takeo Sugihara volunteered, “I’ll accompany him.”

Shiroyama got off the elevator with Sugihara on the twenty-ninth floor, where the beer division was based. After bowing to the chairman, who was headed up to the thirtieth floor, Shiroyama made sure the elevator doors had closed before turning to Sugihara.

As if he had been waiting for the opportunity this entire time, Sugihara bent his body in half deferentially and lamented in a low voice, “I am so sorry for what happened. There are no words to express my regret . . .” What Sugihara said made it clear to Shiroyama that he too had been called in and grilled by the police about the particulars surrounding the letter of complaint from 1990.

“Stand up! What if someone sees you?”

Shiroyama was overcome by a futile irritation. There was no need to guess the position that Sugihara must be in, with his daughter’s scandal made into fodder for corporate extortion. Now that the police had seized upon it, it was only a matter of time before the media would expose it.

Yet Shiroyama wondered if this man really understood the situation—that if corporate profits were given the highest priority, Sugihara’s moral responsibility as a company executive was too large a topic to address now, and that they could not afford to question it—for the safety of Sugihara’s family. If Sugihara did understand, there were other ways to show his deference. Certain things needed to be done before he could give vent to his personal anguish. Conceding his failure might have been inevitable, but this was not the way for him to do so.

But