"Look," Roy Newton told his main client. "You're going to take a beating, okay? Nobody can change that. Call it bad luck if you want, but shit happens."

It was his tone that surprised the other man. Newton was almost being insolent. He wasn't apologizing at all for his gross failure to change things, as he was paid to do, as he had promised that he could do when he'd first been hired to lobby for Japan, Inc. It was unseemly for a hireling to speak in this way to his benefactor, but there was no understanding Americans, you gave them money to do a job, and they—

"But there are other things going on, and if you have the patience to take a longer view"—long view had already been tried, and Newton was grateful for the fact that his client had good-enough language skills to catch the difference—"there are other options to be considered."

"And what might those be?" Binichi Murakami asked acidly. He was upset enough to allow his anger to show for once. It was just too much. He'd come to Washington in the hope that he could personally speak out against this disastrous bill, but instead had found himself besieged with reporters whose questions had only made clear the futility of his mission. And for that reason he'd been away from home for weeks, despite all sorts of entreaties to return to Japan for some urgent meetings with his friend Kozo Matsuda.

"Governments change," Newton replied, explaining on for a minute or so.

"Such a trivial thing as that?"

"You know, someday it's going to happen in your country. You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise." Newton didn't understand how they could fail to grasp something so obvious. Surely their marketing people told them how many cars were bought in America by women. Not to mention the best lady's shaver in the world. Hell, one of Murakami's subsidiaries made it. So much of their marketing effort was aimed at attracting women customers, and yet they pretended that the same factors would never come to be in their own country. It was, Newton thought, a particularly strange blind spot.

"It really could ruin Durling?" The President was clearly getting all sorts of political capital from TRA.

"Sure, if it's managed properly. He's holding up a major criminal investigation, isn't he?"

"No, from what you said, he's asked to delay it for—"

"For political reasons, Binichi." Newton did not often first-name his client. The guy didn't like it. Stuffed shirt. But he paid very well, didn't he?

"Binichi. you don't want to get caught playing with a criminal mailer, especially for political reasons. Expeciallv where the abuse of women is involved. It's an eccentricity of the American political system," he explained patiently.

"We can't meddle with that, can we?" It was an ill-considered question. He'd never quite meddled at this level before, that was all.

"What do you think you pay me for?"