Escape (5)
I flew to Japan.
After landing at Narita Airport, I took a taxi to JR Blackwood Hotel in Roppongi and dropped off my luggage.
It had been a long time since I’d been to Japan.
Was the last time back in my first life, when I came here with my girlfriend while I was still working?
For some reason, I couldn’t quite remember her face.
I spent a while trying to summon the memory, then gave up.
Come to think of it, it was kind of funny.
I could remember, more or less, all the events that had nothing to do with me, but I’d forgotten the face of a woman I’d dated for years.
Well, it didn’t matter.
There was no chance we’d meet again in this life anyway.
* * *
The next day, after sleeping soundly and even enjoying the free breakfast, I called down to the lobby through the intercom.
“Please prepare a car.”
[Understood.]
Having the JR Blackwood card really did make life convenient. Not only did it cover my accommodations, it also let me use a VIP vehicle as though it were my personal car.
It felt as if I had a base of operations scattered across the world.
The place I arrived at was a three-story mansion with a garden.
In the center of Tokyo, land that size couldn’t have been cheap. It had apparently been booked as company housing at first, with the expense charged accordingly, but I knew the current resident was paying the rent himself.
Police officers were standing guard in front of the residence.
“Where are you from?”
He asked in Japanese, but I answered in English.
“I’m from Continue Capital.”
I handed over my passport.
I had filed for the meeting in advance before coming here.
I was here for asset management.
Only after my identity had been verified was I allowed inside. I could see surveillance cameras installed at the gate entrance.
When I stepped in, a man was sitting on the sofa in the living room.
He rose to his feet when he saw me.
“Welcome.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Chairman. My name is Han Miru of Continue Capital.”
His name was Thierry Samara.
He was in his early sixties.
He looked remarkably fit for his age. About 170 centimeters tall, with dark skin and white hair.
He was a Frenchman of Jordanian descent, though he had been born and raised in Jordan.
“I’ve heard quite a bit about Continue Capital. What brings you here?”
“I came to introduce a good investment opportunity.”
As I said that, I was reminded of my days as a securities broker. Come to think of it, that hadn’t been so long ago.
“I understand Continue Capital doesn’t take outside investment.”
“There are always exceptions.”
“I’d like to hear what kind of product it is.”
“It’s such an important one that I think I should speak quietly.”
He didn’t live here alone; there were staff members staying on the property as well.
At my words, Chairman Samara nodded.
“I see. Then let’s go to the study.”
* * *
The study didn’t have many books in it.
This was only a residence he used when he was in Japan, so there was no need to haul a lot of things in here.
I casually looked around the room. As expected, there were no surveillance cameras inside. There probably weren’t any bugs either.
If they’d been caught doing something like that, it would have been an international scandal.
We sat across from each other.
“I thought your name sounded familiar, so I looked into you a bit. You weren’t just some ordinary employee. I heard you personally resolved the Blackwood incident. And apparently you’ve been involved in plenty of other extraordinary things as well.”
As expected of a seasoned executive, he was still behind closed doors and yet his information was fast.
“Rumors always get exaggerated.”
Chairman Samara gave a faint laugh.
“I’m sure. We’ll see once we speak directly. By the way, what kind of investment opportunity is this that you came all the way here in person? It could have been sent in documents.”
Expectation flickered in his expression.
Since he had agreed to see me the moment I asked, he must have had quite the appetite for money. Then again, someone who lacked greed probably wouldn’t have reached a position like this in the first place.
“Before I explain the product, there’s something I’d like to say to you first, Chairman.”
“What is it?”
I went straight to the point.
“You need to escape Japan as soon as possible.”
Chairman Samara looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
“Escape? What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“Are you telling me to flee overseas?”
One reaction was enough to confirm it.
He really hadn’t been thinking about escape at all at this point.
I nodded.
“That’s right.”
He let out a dry chuckle.
“Hoho. I haven’t done anything wrong, so why would I run? In any case, I’ll be released in a few months.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Are you saying I’m guilty?”
“No. I’m saying that whether you’re guilty or not, Japan will never let you go.”
“And why is that?”
“Because they’re afraid you’ll take revenge.”
Chairman Samara snorted.
“Revenge? What power do I have to take revenge?”
“Knowledge is power.”
He had been chairman of Kionos for more than five years, and he had spearheaded the merger between SPME and Kionos.
And the current chairman, Saito Masaki, was essentially a product of his own making. That meant no one understood Kionos’s inner workings and the new chairman better than he did.
“Wasn’t the press conference you tried to hold before meant to expose everything?”
After he was released on bail, he had immediately called a press conference.
It was such a huge incident that reporters from home and abroad had flooded in until there was barely room to stand.
But just before the conference could begin, the Japanese prosecutors announced they had discovered additional embezzlement charges and arrested him again.
They had re-arrested a suspect who had already been released on bail, only three days later!
In the end, the press conference was scrapped, and he was held in detention for about half a month.
Then, once public attention quieted down, he paid another one billion yen in bail and was released. Since then, he had kept to himself inside the house and not held any more press conferences.
“The arrest was probably a kind of warning. They were telling you they’d lock you up again if you said anything reckless. Wouldn’t that mean the prosecutors judged the information you’re holding to be dangerous?”
“Those bastards overreacted. Why would I know anything that important?”
As if.
I knew very well what he had exposed after he escaped.
“Besides, if they let you go, the merger plan between SPME and Kionos could resurface again.”
After Samara’s emergency arrest, the push for the merger had come to a halt.
But everyone knew that wasn’t the end of it. If the opportunity arose, SPME would definitely try to force the merger through again.
“Even so, how long do you think they can hold a man without trial? The French government won’t just sit still.”
“The French government won’t move at all.”
“And why not?”
One of the difficult parts of doing this kind of thing was that I had to talk about future events as if I had simply deduced them myself.
I offered him a plausible reason.
“For one thing, you and President Deschamps don’t exactly get along.”
Would a man who had managed his company with restraint while in France suddenly turn into a devil and start firing people the moment he came to Japan, as if the climate had changed him?
He was already famous for layoffs and factory closures back when he was at SPME. In France, they called him the guillotine; when he was in the American branch, he was known as the bulldozer.
Whenever he ran a business, he started by cutting people’s necks and crushing factories underfoot. It was an oddly fitting set of nicknames.
People like to assume Korean labor unions are militant while unions in advanced countries are moderate, but if you actually watch French unions protest, they’re practically indistinguishable from rioters.
He had caused enormous social unrest, and yet he had pushed ahead without the slightest compromise.
The one left to clean up the mess was Jean-Pierre Deschamps, then Minister of the Economy, Industry, and Digital Affairs.
Back then, he had met with Samara, shouted at him, and expressed his fury, only for Samara to scoff. At that point, no one could have guessed the minister would one day become president.
“You think the French government won’t rescue me because of personal feelings?”
“Not only because of personal feelings. But right now your existence is practically a bomb between SPME and Kionos—and, by extension, between the French and Japanese governments. SPME is in serious financial trouble, and a large portion of its profits depends on dividends from Kionos. If Kionos runs into trouble and profits shrink, or worse, slips into the red, SPME’s situation will deteriorate even further, and that would burden the French government as the largest shareholder.”
Besides, France and Japan were currently working closely together on security matters. Japan was even considering purchasing French weapons.
“No one wants the bomb to go off right now. And if it must go off, they’d prefer to delay it as long as possible.”
Everyone knew Samara had been arrested to stop the merger between SPME and Kionos.
But there was a world of difference between everyone knowing and the matter being made official.
What if it became clear that the Japanese government had illegally arrested a French executive in order to protect Kionos?
At that point it would become an official diplomatic issue, and the French government would have no choice but to get involved.
One wrong move, and it could escalate into a dispute between nations.
That was why the French government had only expressed regret so far and had not taken any real action.
“I’ve exposed a lot of things before, so I know this better than anyone: the most important thing in an exposé is timing. You have to strike at the most vulnerable point, when the other side is weakest. Miss the timing, and even the strongest revelation loses its force.”
“So?”
“I don’t know what information you have, Chairman, but if a year passes, its power will be cut in half. By three years from now, it’ll be useless. By then, Chairman Saito will have locked down Kionos and the investment will already have been made. Japan only has to keep you here until then. Isn’t that right?”
Being smart, he would know I was right.
The reason he had stayed quiet until now was because he still held out hope that he’d be released within a few months.
But what if that hope disappeared?
Then there would be only one answer: escape.
Still, Chairman Samara couldn’t bring himself to make the decision so easily.
“You’re not regretting the bail money, are you?”
“Ahem.”
Between the two rounds of bail, the money he had already paid came to two billion yen. If he fled, that money would be forfeited.
“And there’s the severance and stock options I never received.”
He had been famous for having the highest salary among all Japanese executives.
He’d taken every salaryman under him—those cheap employees he’d fired in the name of cutting costs—and then turned around and collected tens of billions of yen for himself, which earned him plenty of hatred.
Not that he had cared.
“That adds up to about six billion yen?”
“Around that.”
“It’s money you’ll never see anyway, so let it go.”
After his escape, he would file a lawsuit against Kionos demanding the severance pay and stock options. But there was no chance the Japanese government would side with him.
They would dismiss it outright and give him not a single yen.
“If you make up your mind, I’ll help you get out of Japan.”
Chairman Samara seemed to weigh it for a long while before speaking.
“If I escape Japan, where am I supposed to go? Don’t tell me you’re suggesting I return to France?”
If a criminal fled during trial, the country in question could demand extradition under an extradition treaty.
But for that to work, the criminal law systems of the two countries had to be compatible to some degree.
You couldn’t extradite someone for pocketing a wallet only to have his wrist chopped off upon return, could you?
Still, Japan was one of the few countries in the world that retained the death penalty. It had extradition treaties with only two nations: the United States and South Korea.
So even if he went back to France, he wouldn’t be forcibly sent back to Japan—but...
“France is out. As I said before, the French government is not on your side. You may not be extradited, but you could still end up under house arrest there.”
“Then where?”
“I recommend Jordan. You have a lot of relatives there, don’t you?”
“Hmm.”
He had probably been thinking about Jordan from the moment I first mentioned escape.