His home office was all rich leather and oiled woods, forest green carpet and polished brass. Other than the bar it was the only truly finished room in the brownstone. He knew that the decor was somewhat cliché, but he liked it just the same. The numerous prints on the walls were of heavy mining equipment: walking drag-lines, huge dump trucks, and skeletal drilling derricks that towered eight stories. Each print was signed with a thanks from the president or owner of some company that Mercer had helped. On the credenza, discreetly lighted from below, was a large chunk of opaque blue stone. Mercer’s hand caressed it as he walked to his desk.
He had phoned his secretary at the USGS from Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg and had asked her to fax all of his memos and messages to his house, knowing that insomnia always followed an international flight. There were at least fifty sheets of paper in the tray of the fax machine.
The majority could be ignored for at least a few days; only a couple had any urgency at all. Working through the pile quickly, he almost missed the significance of one sheet, from the deputy director of operations at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. It was an invitation, dated six days earlier, to work aboard the NOAA research vessel Ocean Seeker in an investigation of an unknown geologic phenomenon off the coast of Hawaii. The deputy director had requested Mercer’s presence because of the paper he had written two years earlier on the use of geothermic vents as possible energy sources and rich mining areas.
Mercer had heard of the tragic loss of the ship with all hands. It had made the newspapers even in South Africa.
The invitation itself was not the cause of his racing heart or shallow breathing. At the bottom of the invitation was a list of the specialists already assigned to the survey. The first name was Dr. Tish Talbot, marine biologist.
Mercer had never met Tish, but her father was a good friend, a man to whom Mercer owed his life following a plane crash in the Alaska Range. Mercer had been returning from his first private consulting job when his plane had suddenly lost power. The pilot had been killed landing in a rock-strewn field and Mercer had broken a leg, a wrist, and a bunch of ribs. Jack Talbot, a grizzled tool pusher on the North Slope fields at Prudhoe Bay, had been camping near the crash site on a one-week leave. Talbot had reached Mercer within ten minutes of the crash and tended him overnight until he could signal a rescue copter with a flare salvaged from the wrecked plane.
The two men had seen each other infrequently in the years since then, but their friendship lasted. And now, Jack’s only daughter was dead, a victim of a terrible accident. Mercer empathized with his friend, feeling hollow inside when he imagined the pain that Jack must now be facing. Mercer had known such pain, losing his parents when he was only a boy, but no parent ever thinks that they will outlast their child. Many say that that is the worst kind of agony.
Mercer turned off his desk lamp. He left Harry on the couch in the rec room, not wanting to kick his friend out at two in the morning. Mercer’s huge bed didn’t really look inviting, but he made the effort anyway. His sleep was fitful.
Hawaii
Jill Tzu eased on the brake of her Honda Prelude and slipped the transmission into neutral. Her car slowed to a stop about twenty yards away from the main gates of Takahiro Ohnishi’s estate. She tilted the rearview mirror downward until her mouth was in sight and deftly applied another slick layer of lipstick. She pursed her lips, flashed a professional smile to herself, then opened her mouth wide. Satisfied that the makeup was perfect, she canted the mirror back.
As a female reporter, she knew the necessity of a glamorous appearance on camera. Despite her abhorrence of such sexism, she was pragmatic enough to know that she alone wasn’t about to change the custom.
Yet it wasn’t her stunning beauty or her dancer’s legs that got her this interview today, it was her heritage.
Takahiro Ohnishi was easily the wealthiest man in Hawaii. In fact, he was the twelfth richest man in the world, with interests as diverse as real estate, medical research, shipping, and mining. He had offices on six continents, seven palatial homes, and nearly thirty thousand employees. Despite the global aspects of his holdings, he remained rooted in one tradition, that of Japan.
He had built his empire on an ethnic pyramid with himself, a native born Japanese on top and his key managers at least pure Japanese regardless of their country of birth. The next level down had to be three-quarters’ Japanese or more, and so on until only the lowliest of workers had no Japanese blood at all. Ohnishi employed two entire law firms to battle the hundreds of cases of discrimination filed against his companies. To date they had not lost a single case.
His obsession with his Japanese heritage consumed his personal life as well. Ohnishi had never married, but the numerous mistresses who had come and gone during his seventy years were all Japanese. If he found even the slightest trace of any other heritage the affair would end on the spot. All the servants in all his homes were Japanese, and even his rare press interviews had to be conducted by reporters who were at least half Japanese.
And that brings us to me, thought Jill Tzu, the daughter of a Hong Kong Chinese banker and a Japanese interpreter.
She eased her car into gear and approached the wrought iron gates of Ohnishi’s principal American residence. The house, twenty miles northwest of Honolulu, was isolated by acres of sugarcane fields and pineapple plantations.
Once, asked why he remained so secluded, Ohnishi responded honestly, “Everyone I need is brought to me; why should I scurry around?”
A lean guard approached her car. Jill lowered the window, getting a delightful mixture of cool auto air-conditioning and hot lush air.
The first thing she noticed was the automatic pistol slung from the guard’s hip and the quality and cut of his uniform. This was no simple rent-a-cop.
“Yes?” he said courteously.
“Jill Tzu from KHNA; I’m here to interview Mr. Ohnishi.”
“Of course,” the guard replied. He pressed a button on one of the pillars supporting the gates and they slid open silently.
Jill accelerated, surprised that she hadn’t been asked for identification.
The crushed limestone drive leading to the house was a pristine white trail through a vast emerald lawn. The drive curved around stands of trees and shrubs, artfully placed so the house was hidden until she rounded the last bend. When she saw the building, she was stunned.
Jill had expected traditional Japanese architecture on a grand scale, yet what was before her was unlike anything she had ever seen before. Takahiro Ohnishi lived in a glass house, modeled somewhat like the entrance to the Louvre designed by I. M. Pei, but much, much larger. Tubular steel struts supported small panels of glass in a framework that could only be described as obtuse. Spheres, cones, and slab-sided rectangles melded together in a multisided building that was not displeasing to view. Jill could see completely through the home to the shallow valley which stretched beyond.
Still not over her initial shock, Jill drove up to the porte-cochere and slid out. Her heels clicked against the white inlaid marble as she walked toward the glass front doors. Just as she reached them, they were opened by a servant.
“Miss Tzu, Mr. Ohnishi is waiting for you in the breakfast garden. Would you please follow me?” The butler was Japanese, of course, wearing a somber black livery reminiscent of the early part of the century.
“Thank you,” she replied, slinging her purse over her shoulder.
The interior spaces of the house were broken by stark geometrical walls. The structures were not bound by any normal parameters of construction. Some hung ten feet or more in the air, and others were mere ripples across the floor. The foyer was a massive open space, domed by a delicate lattice of steel and glass that cast a spiderweb shadow on the white marble floor. Stairs, landings, and balconies cantilevered into the foyer as if defying gravity. Having no basis of comparison, Jill simply assumed that the decidedly Oriental watercolors and paintings on the walls were priceless.