Vulcan's Forge

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.

The butler led her through several rooms, some traditional Japanese and some Western in style. At the open doors of an elevator, the butler indicated that Jill was to proceed alone.

“Mr. Ohnishi is waiting to the right as you exit the elevator.”

There was a discreet chime and the doors slid closed.

Feeling like an ant in the bottom of a kitchen sink, Jill smoothed her cream skirt against her legs as the brushed stainless steel elevator sedately ascended. When it stopped, Jill stepped onto a breezy loggia, forty feet above the ground. She turned to her right and saw a table set for two people, the silver glinting in the early Pacific light.

“I am delighted to be able to share my breakfast with you, Miss Tzu,” Takahiro Ohnishi said as he stood.

“I am delighted that you invited me,” Jill replied, walking toward the table.

She extended her hand, which Ohnishi ignored. Pissed at herself, Jill remembered whom she was dealing with and bowed deeply. Ohnishi replied with the barest nod of his head. “Won’t you sit down?”

Ohnishi did not look like an industrialist. He was thin and frail, with a voice made tenuous by the years. His snowy hair was sparse, revealing red blotches of scalp. His face was cadaverous, sallow and drawn. His hands were darkly liver-spotted and bony, like the claws of a small bird.

“Miss Tzu, I did not invite you, I merely caved in to your persistence. One hundred and fourteen calls and seventy-eight letters are enough to make any man capitulate.” Jill believed the comment was meant to be charming, but his flat delivery made her uncomfortable. In fact, Ohnishi made her uncomfortable. He looked like a corpse that refused to stop moving.

She smiled her best reporter’s smile. “I’m glad you did. Any longer and the station was going to make me pay for the stamps I was using.”

A servant appeared and poured coffee into her cup, adding one spoonful of sugar. Jill looked at him queerly, wondered how he knew she took her coffee this way.

“I know much more than that, Miss Tzu, otherwise I would have never let you on the grounds,” Ohnishi said, reading her expression, possibly her mind, for all she knew.

“Is that why no one asked to see my ID or search me when I came here?” She meant the question to be friendly, but it sounded almost defensive.

“I had you followed from your home at 1123 Blossom Tree Court in the Muani Condominium development. In fact, I’ve had you followed every day since granting this interview,” Ohnishi said so casually that Jill could not respond for a moment.

“Did you learn anything interesting?” she said sarcastically, her anger now beginning to rise.

“Yes, a lovely successful woman like you needs to get out more.”

Jill’s anger evaporated at his reply. “That’s the same thing my mother tells me.”

Much later, Jill realized his use of her mother’s exact words was no coincidence.

“I am sorry if my actions make you uncomfortable, but a man in my position must be cautious.”

“I understand. I don’t particularly like it, but I understand.”

The servant reappeared and placed a bowl of fruit in front of Jill. Again he gave nothing to Ohnishi.

“As my aide Kenji told you on the phone, I do not allow cameras on my property nor is this conversation to be recorded.”

“It won’t be, I assure you,” Jill said, setting her coffee cup into its saucer, fearful of spilling anything on the crisp linen cloth or cracking the translucent porcelain. She did not realize that she had been x-rayed twice since entering Ohnishi’s home, once at the front door and again in the elevator. Her verbal assurances were superfluous.

“I must say this is an amazing home,” Jill remarked to break the silence.

“Believe it or not, this structure was designed in 1867 by an obscure Tokyo architect, long before the technology was available for its construction. He took his own life only a few months after completing the drawings, knowing that his genius would never be appreciated in his time. It is supposition on my part, but I believe he thought his suicide would give his work the immortality it would never receive through construction.”

“I did not know that you were such a student of history.”

“Everything we know, Miss Tzu, is history. Just because it is not taught in schools from dusty texts does not lessen any information’s importance.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“Allow me to explain. The latest piece of information, no matter how current, is already history. I can look at a stock ticker as the trading goes on and already the information I’m seeing is history. Maybe it’s only a second old, but the events have already happened and nothing in my power can change them. If I decide to buy or sell based on that information, I would be basing that choice on history. All knowledge is like that and all decisions are made that way.”

“What if I decide to do something on a whim?”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know, say, quit my job.”

“In that case, you would have a history of job dissatisfaction, a knowledge based on past performance that you could find another job, and confidence that you have put sufficient money in a bank to ensure security until you begin working again. All of these factors make your decision not whimsical at all, but rather calculating in fact.”

“I never thought about it in that way,” Jill said, intrigued.

“That is why you are not worth eight billion dollars and I am,” Ohnishi remarked, not boastful, just stating the truth.

“I asked your assistant if there were any taboo subjects for this interview and he assured me that you would be candid about anything I asked.”

“That is true.” The servant cleared Jill’s fruit plate and brought a silver salver of raw fish and thinly sliced beef. He placed some on her plate along with rice and several varieties of seaweed.

“Aren’t you eating, Mr. Ohnishi?” Jill asked after the servant vanished, again leaving his plate empty.

“My stomach and some of my small intestine were removed several years ago after I was diagnosed with cancer, Miss Tzu. I’m afraid I must eat intravenously. I may sample some of these dishes later, but I can’t swallow them. It is an unpleasant sight I assure you.”

Jill was thankful he did not get more graphic.

“I know your basic biography, Mr. Ohnishi,” Jill began the formal interview, a Waterman pen poised over her notebook. “You were born in Osaka, but your parents immigrated to the United States with your two older sisters when you were an infant. Your father was a chemical engineer working for UC at San Diego.”

“Correct,” Ohnishi interrupted. “My family all died during World War Two when Roosevelt imprisoned all Japanese nationals. My sisters died of typhus; they were barely into their teens. My mother died soon afterward of the same disease. The day he took his own life, my father told me to never forget them. I was seventeen years old.”

“You had an uncle who became your legal ward?”

“Yes, his name was Chuichi Genda.”

“If I read this correctly,” Jill said looking through her notes, “he was released from an internment camp in January 1943, arrested one week later, released again at the end of the war and spent the remainder of his life in and out of prisons on various charges.”

“Yes, my uncle had very strong beliefs about America and her treatment of our people both during the war and after. He often led violent campaigns against various policies. He was charged with inciting riots three times and convicted twice. He was, without a doubt, the most influential person in my life.”

“In what way?”

“His ideas on race, principally.”

“And what are those?” Jill asked, uncrossing her long legs. She knew that this was the most important part of her interview.

“You are a journalist — surely you are aware of my views.”

“I know you’ve been called a racist by nearly every social group in the United States and that your hiring policies resemble Nazi purity laws.”

Ohnishi laughed, a high thin note that startled Jill. “For lack of a better word, Miss Tzu, you are very naïve. There is no such thing as racism.” Before Jill could voice a protest, Ohnishi continued. “According to anthropologists, there are only four races on this planet: Asian, negro, caucasian, and aboriginal. Yet there is tension and fighting between hundreds of different groups. Correct?”

He did not wait for a reply. “If race is a motivating factor as you in the press imply, why is there so much fighting in the nations of Africa, why do the English and Irish bomb each other on a regular basis, why did the Nazis gas six million Jews? The answer is not racism, it’s tribalism.

“There may be only four races, but there are hundreds of different tribes, maybe thousands. Many groups still maintain a tribal name, such as the Apache or Zulu. But numerous groups no longer have distinct names, the white Anglo-Saxon here in America, the Northern Irish Protestants, or the upper class of Brazil.

“Each group is fighting to maintain the integrity of their tribe. The French and Germans are two separate tribes of people, culturally and religiously different, yet each falling into the caucasian race. There is only one way to account for the four wars they have fought since the middle of the last century: tribalism. The need to protect and ensure the security in perpetuity of one’s immediate group.

“Just because interracial strife makes good press does not make it the most common form. I will deny until my death that I am a racist. I care nothing for race. I am a tribalist. And my tribe, the Japanese, is all that I care for.

“Tribes are basically extended families, so when I give a top position to a fellow Japanese, I am merely helping one of my kin. That is no different than a man turning over his business to his son, a common practice all over the world. I have fought nearly three hundred court cases defending my right to hire and promote who I wish, and to date no one has been able to deny me.”

“If you have such a pro-Japanese view of the world, why is it you recently took up residence in the United States?” Jill asked, trying to remain calm and professional despite her revulsion.

“I had this home built six years ago,” Ohnishi pointed out.

“Yet you only moved here three months ago,” Jill retorted.

“I feel that I am most needed here. As you know, the Japanese are now the largest ethnic group in Hawaii, and if you’ll pardon my arrogance, I believe that they need my help.”

“Your help?”

“I wish to see Japanese prosper wherever their work takes them. While the media focuses on material trade imbalances, they completely ignore the amount of brain power that Japan exports each year. We send only our brightest people to work in foreign countries, strengthening our position overseas year by year. Let America send wide-eyed college students to build huts in Africa. We send CEOs to build corporations. I just want to do my part and ensure the success of this program.”

“And do you see your help extending to Hawaii’s native population?”

“They have suffered under the yoke of a white government far longer than we, so of course I wish to see them gain more power here on the islands. After all, tribally speaking, they are closer to us Japanese than to their current white overlords.”

“Surely you exaggerate when you use a term such as overlord to describe the state government,” Jill said a little nervously.

“On the contrary. How else would you describe a governing body that does not speak your language, does not understand your culture or religion, and has done nothing to bridge the socioeconomic gap? If the true Hawaiians are so satisfied with the current system, why do you think the island of Niihau, with its strict language and culture laws, is attracting so many natives to their traditional way of life? But primarily, my assistance is to those who are of Japanese descent, Miss Tzu.”

“Does your help include aiding Mayor Takamora? Some consider his acts treasonous.”

“I have not hidden my support of Mayor Takamora. I believe in his programs for ensuring the prosperity of Hawaii. It is time that the true owners of this state come forth and claim what is theirs without paying undue taxes to Washington.”

Ohnishi was referring to the Takamora-sponsored referendum now being discussed in the State House that would make foreign owners of Honolulu real estate exempt from paying most taxes if they agreed to place the money in social programs solely beneficial to Japanese and Japanese-American residents. If passed, the law would put tens of millions of tax dollars into the hands of the Japanese residents of the island. Some political analysts called it vote-buying, while others saw something deeper, state-buying.

The campaigning for Referendum 324 was at a crucial stage, with the vote only a week away. As with any controversial law, emotions across the state ran high and already had turned violent. The number of attacks against tourists and white residents had skyrocketed in the past few weeks. Roving gangs of Japanese youths prowled the city streets at night like modern-day ninjas, striking fear by their very presence.

“What about the increase in violence?”

“Miss Tzu, of course I don’t condone those people who use violence to achieve their aims, but I do understand their commitment. Hawaii has special needs and considerations that only we understand and it is paramount that we gain more control over our lives.”

“Some people see this as an attempt at secession,” Jill said, referring to the vice president’s speech of the night before.

“Some people would.” Ohnishi smiled, but his dark eyes remained impassive. “The interview is over, Miss Tzu. You must leave.”

Jill was startled at her abrupt dismissal, but she knew better than to protest. She tossed her pen and pad into her bag and stood.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Ohnishi,” Jill said formally.

“I wonder, Miss Tzu,” Ohnishi remarked absently, “which part of your racial heritage makes you the most uncomfortable with yourself, your Chinese half, or your Japanese which allows the Chinese to have any influence?”

Later, Jill was amazed how easily her reply had rolled off her tongue. “The Chinese, it’s given me the patience to put up with all the freaks I meet on the job.”

Her only memory of leaving the house was the echo of her heels against the marble foyer as she strode to the front door.

“Apart from her physical charms, what do you think of Miss Tzu?” Ohnishi asked after the elevator doors had closed behind her.

A dark shape split from the shadows of the loggia as if by mitosis. It padded across the terrace silently and eased into the recently vacated chair with the ease of a predatory cat.

“I believe that she is dangerous,” the shadow replied.

“Kenji, you are a worrier. She is nothing more than a voice in the wind. She will report what every other journalist writes, some diatribe full of half-truths and hyperbole that will be lost among the juicy murder stories and baseball scores.”

“Yet.”

“Yet nothing. The people, I mean the real people of this state, the ones who matter, won’t care what she says. The mayor and I have been whipping them into such a frenzy that her little report won’t make a bit of difference.”

“You and David Takamora may be creating a situation that you cannot control and one I am sure has no bearing on our true objective.”

“You sound like Ivan Kerikov’s lackey,” Ohnishi accused.

Kenji’s black eyes went flat. “That is not what I meant. But we have a responsibility to him that you may be jeopardizing by financing the youth gangs and talking to reporters like Jill Tzu.”

“You have been in my employ since you were a boy, Kenji. You have only known the simplicity of one master. I, on the other hand, have known many, my conscience first and foremost and now that pig Kerikov. I know how to serve both. Kerikov will get his precious concession, but only at the price I dictate.”

“This uprising is proceeding too quickly. That is not part of your bargain with him.”

“But it is part of my plan, Kenji, and that is all you need to know and believe.” Ohnishi’s tone of finality subdued his aide. “I am wondering about your loyalty, Kenji. You no longer act like my Hachiko.”

Ohnishi was referring to a much-beloved Japanese dog from the 1920s who waited each afternoon at a train station for his master to return from work. One day, the master did not return, for he had died at his desk at Tokyo University. The faithful dog returned every day to the very train platform for ten years, waiting for a master who would never come. The name Hachiko is still synonymous with loyalty in Japan.

“Two days ago you disappeared for the night without telling me,” Ohnishi continued, “and now you are questioning my orders. Forget about Jill Tzu and concentrate on your other duties. Tonight we shall begin the bombings. Nothing serious, just a small show of force directed at those who oppose the referendum.”

Kenji stood, his body flowing from the chair as if made of quicksilver, yet tensed as only a martial arts expert can be. “I will see to it personally.”

He glided off the terrace, his tabi-shod feet merely brushing the tile. Once out of sight of Ohnishi, any trace of subservience evaporated and his handsome face took on an even keener edge. He mumbled, “You feeble-minded old fool; you have no idea who or what you’re dealing with.”

He went back to his private office to ensure that Jill Tzu never filed her interview with Takahiro Ohnishi.

Jill raked her fingers through her thick hair in utter frustration. She pursed her full lips, forming a seductive kiss, then blew a loud raspberry. Her feet were up on the control console of the studio’s editing room, her long legs stretched almost to the bank of monitors. She swung them down, ignoring the fact that her culotte shorts had just given her technician a view he’d brag about for a week.

“This isn’t working, Ken,” she muttered darkly.

“Give me a break will ya, Jill? We’ve been at this for six hours. It’s not like you’re going to get a Pulitzer for this,” the scraggly-bearded techie said in his defense.

“Yeah, but just maybe it’ll be my ticket to the network. Just think about it, Ken. If I leave, you won’t have anyone bitching at you at all hours of the day or night.”

“Keep wearing those shorts and you can piss and moan all you want,” Ken teased.

“Watch it, I know a good sexual harassment lawyer.” Jill smiled for the first time in an hour. “All right, let’s go through this one more time.”

This day in the editing room was the culmination of three months’ work on Takahiro Ohnishi. Jill had begun hunting down her story shortly after the reclusive billionaire had moved to Hawaii and Referendum 324 had first been proposed. At thirty-two, she was already too cynical to believe in coincidences and she’d begun looking for a connection between Ohnishi and Honolulu’s controversial mayor, David Takamora, and his even more polemic actions.

She’d found, just through her own television station’s financial and scheduling records, that Takamora had purchased more advertising space during his campaign than his public files showed he’d had the money for. At just her station, there was a discrepancy of nearly one hundred thousand dollars, and she knew he’d campaigned just as heavily on the other channels. Where had the secret funds come from?

Jill lacked any concrete evidence that Ohnishi had privately funded the majority of Takamora’s campaign, but she was damned sure that was what had happened. Ohnishi, with his billions, had bought himself a city.

A journalism professor had once told her that only prosecutors in courtrooms needed proof. A reporter never needed to prove anything, all she had to do was implicate and wait for the self-incriminating defense. A few years later an aging editor said at his drunken retirement party that news never happened, it was created.

Jill’s piece on Ohnishi was nearly ready. In fact this morning’s interview had really been unnecessary; she’d just wanted to meet the man, to get a better sense of what made him tick.

She and Ken watched in silence as the first half of the piece ran. Stock footage of Ohnishi, David Takamora, and the violent street gangs currently preying on white tourists in the city were interspersed with close-up shots of Jill doing commentary in front of city hall. As the scenes began focusing more on the gangs, especially one violent image of four Asian youths beating an elderly white woman, Jill reached for the goose-necked microphone and began laying in a new voice-over, one not from the contrived script she had written, but one from her heart.

“Hawaii is the Aloha State. The word means love as well as good-bye in the native tongue, and in these times it means both simultaneously. Good-bye to love. Good-bye to everything that our island paradise has stood for since Captain Cook first came here two hundred years ago, and good-bye to the traditions that reigned on the islands since the first inhabitants 1,500 years before that.

“Where once we melded and blended into one people, neither all caucasian nor all Polynesian nor all Asian, today we stand divided from our neighbors and friends. Now all it takes is having eyes a little too round or skin a little too light and anyone on the street can become a target. Racial hatred has grown here like some cancer, some dread disease without cause whose cure seems equally elusive. Fostered by men like Takahiro Ohnishi, with his well-publicized views of racial purity, and van-guarded by youth gangs bent on violent expression, the state has been galvanized into two intractable camps: those who want Referendum 324 and those who fear it as many have feared tyranny before.

“Last night, the vice president called Referendum 324 the beginning of a secessionist movement, and perhaps he’s right. The last time America faced a crisis like this, the Southern states withdrew from the Union because they believed in their way of life, one built on the conviction that people of other races are inferior. Today a segment of Hawaii’s population believes they have a mandate to control everyone’s lives because there is a little more Japanese flowing in their veins. They say that their Samurai ways are superior, that they can calm the streets once again if we agree to live under a system that stifles freedom of expression and the belief that every one is created equal. In this reporter’s opinion, that sounds an awful lot like extortion.

“As the ronin scour the streets for white faces to victimize, their emperor sits inside his glass and steel home, safe behind a wall of hatred and bigotry. Since his arrival a darkness has descended, a black veil that no one seems able or willing to lift. Today, the hotels along the beaches, the condos near Diamond Head, and the cruise liners are all empty. People are afraid to come to Hawaii. I spoke with one hotel manager yesterday who told me that tourists are already canceling reservations for next year.

“A self-generating downward spiral has been created by the actions of those who now seem to control our streets. As more tourists are frightened away, more people will lose their jobs and seek the security and fraternity represented by the gangs, thus increasing their ability to terrorize. Only this morning the President placed the troops stationed at Pearl Harbor on full alert in order to protect the federal government’s interests on the islands.

“Who is going to protect our interests?

“Mayor Takamora’s police force does not act to control the gangs. Will he ever ask for the National Guard to step in and take control of a situation he can no longer handle? For surely we face a crisis as dire as any these islands have faced since the first time a Japanese force descended in 1941.”

Jill angrily pushed the microphone aside as she watched a monitor displaying David Takamora’s announcement four weeks earlier that he wanted to run in the gubernatorial elections in the fall.

Ken was too stunned to speak for an instant, and when he caught his voice, he stammered, “Jesus, Jill, you can’t run that.”

“Of course I can’t. It’s the truth, and right now we’re not allowed to report the truth,” she said bitterly.

The in-house phone rang. The unit was built into the console next to where Jill’s feet were propped back up against the complicated machine. She snatched it up, tucking her hair behind her right ear as she swung the receiver to her head.

“I know, I know, forty-five minutes to air.” Only her producer would disturb her in the editing room.

“You’ve got five.”

“What in the hell are you talking about, Hank? We don’t air for an hour.”

“You know the rules, Jill. Every piece that chronicles the violence must be cleared by Hiroshi.” Hiroshi Kyato was the station’s news director.

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You can shove your five-minute deadline. I’m not some second-class citizen.”

“Wait, I didn’t mean anything by it, I mean I don’t mean any disrespect for who you are. It’s just, well, you know. .” His voice trailed off.

The producer backpedaled so fast that it truly stunned Jill. Race was polarizing the station, too. Jill was half-Japanese, and Hank was a caucasian from New Jersey, and he was now deadly afraid that he’d offended her.

“Hold on, Hank,” Jill said quickly. “What I mean to say is that I’m not a cub reporter on her first assignment. I know what the boundaries are. I don’t need Hiro and his thought police telling me what to say on the air.”

“I’m sorry, Jill,” Hank said tiredly. “I’ve been on edge ever since Hiro agreed to help Mayor Takamora reduce tensions in the city by running tamer pieces on the situation. So far you are about the only reporter who hasn’t called me a graduate of the Josef Goebbels School of Broadcast Journalism.”

“Haven’t you talked to Hiro about this?”

“Sure did. He told me to hand over every segment about the violence or hand in my resignation.”

“All right, listen, my piece isn’t done yet, or, well, it is, but I’m not going to let that son of a bitch cut it up. I’m going to take it home tonight, tone it some. If anyone is going to censor my work, it’ll be me. I won’t be the person to cost you your job.”

“Jill, you can’t do that. Your story belongs to the station. It’s not your private property.”

“Try and stop me, Hank.”

Jill set the phone back in the cradle and popped the tape from the editing machine, slipping it in her handbag slung across the back of her chair. She stood.

“What are you going to do?” Ken asked from behind his thick glasses.

“I don’t know yet.” She left the darkened room.

The subtle chirping of cicadas was a rhythmic accompaniment to the moon-drenched night. The air was warm, but charged with the humidity of a recently passed thunderstorm. Jill sat on the lanai of her condo, her bare feet propped against a patio table and a glass of zinfandel idly twirling between her long fingers.

She’d been home for a couple of hours, but the long bath and half bottle of wine had done little to calm her frayed nerves. Three months she’d been working on the Ohnishi piece, three fucking months, and it would be chopped up into tiny pieces on the cutting room floor and run as a human interest story, no doubt. If she’d ever questioned the connection between Ohnishi and Takamora, she had her proof now — and the links ran even deeper, to her own news director. Was no one immune to this racial factionalism other than her?

She was really wondering if it was all worth it. All the sacrifices she’d made in her life, all the thought she’d put into her career, and here she was, about to have her accomplishments hacked apart because they cut too close to the truth.

“Son of a bitch.” Despite herself, she was almost in tears.

Everything in her life had been built around journalism. She’d let almost everything else go in order to reach the upper echelons of her profession. Few boyfriends lasted more than a month or so of her eighty-hour work weeks. She’d spent her last vacation working as a temporary secretary at a sewage treatment plant, tracking down allegations of groundwater contamination.

Her infrequent talks with her mother invariably turned to Jill’s lack of a husband and children. Every time Jill bragged about a breaking story, her mother would ask where her grandbabies were. Jill would always end the conversation angrily defending her career, but would always be racked with guilt, knowing that her mother was partly right.

Jill did want a husband and children, but she also wanted to be a journalist. There was a balance between the two that she just couldn’t seem to find. How much of her career should she give up for a family? How much family should she forego for a career?

And now her career might be about over. She could refuse to hand in her story and face probable dismissal, or she could cut the piece herself, destroying every shred of her integrity.

She wondered if she should send the story directly to New York. She had a few friends in the network — maybe she could get someone to watch it, see if it was worth running on the national feed. Lord knew nothing like it had been sent from Hawaii in a long time.

Her phone rang. Jill got up from the lanai to answer it, but as soon as she put the receiver to her ear, the line went dead. Crank call or wrong number, she didn’t care.

She finished the last bit of wine in a heavy swallow and put the empty glass in the dishwasher, leaning against the tiled counter. She’d exhausted two of the three traditional female relaxation techniques, the bath and the wine, and there weren’t any stores open this late, so she couldn’t go shopping. She decided on a masculine diversion — she’d go out. Sitting at home and brooding wasn’t her style anyway. She could do the voice-over in the morning, but tonight she wanted a diversion, something to get her mind off her job, off her parents, off everything.

There would be a vast assortment of eligible bachelors at the tourist hotels near the beach. Before heading into her bedroom, she put an Aerosmith CD into the player and cranked the volume to seven. The heavy bass and pounding tempo immediately made her feel better. Defiantly bad-girl music for a bad-girl type of night.

She spent over an hour choosing her outfit and makeup. Finally she was dressed to kill, from black tap panties to a hip-hugging Nina Ricci dress. Six hours a week in a gym ensured that she had a body that would turn even a blind man’s head.

Just as she was resettling her breasts in the strapless dress, there was a crash of breaking glass. She whirled toward the sliding glass bedroom doors as a darkly dressed figure burst through the gauzy curtains. The first man was quickly followed by two more, their booted feet crushing the shards against the teal carpet.

Jill screamed shrilly. For an instant her panic overcame the natural urge to flee, and that hesitation cost her.

Two of the men raced toward her, guns clamped in their gloved fists. Jill began backing away, but a pistol whipped out and caught her on the jaw, snapping her head around and knocking her to the floor. She was unconscious before her diamond pendant necklace settled in her cleavage.

The man who had struck her peeled off his black ski mask. It was Takahiro Ohnishi’s assistant, Kenji.

“Tie her,” he ordered.

He searched the house until he found the room Jill used as an office. Two walls were lined with expensive video equipment, the type used for high-quality editing work. More than likely her piece on Ohnishi was here. Kenji rifled the filing cabinet and desk with professional adroitness, but turned up nothing.

In disgust he went back out to the living room. On a small geometric lucite table near the front door rested a thick manila envelope. He tore it open and a videocassette slid into his hand. He returned to the office and slid the tape into a VCR.

Jill Tzu’s story ran for the first and only time. As Kenji had suspected, it documented his employer’s known violations of civil employment laws and Ohnishi’s support of Honolulu Mayor David Takamora’s gubernatorial election bid for the fall. Jill had also managed to slip in several references to the escalating violence surrounding the campaign and the possibility that Ohnishi was financing that as well. Popping the tape from the VCR, Kenji slid it into the inside pocket of his dark windbreaker.

He returned to the bedroom where Jill was laid across the bed, hands cuffed behind her and a gag stuffed into her lipsticked mouth. She was still unconscious.

Nevertheless, Kenji whispered into her ear, “An excellent piece of reporting, Miss Tzu. You are correct on all charges. Mr. Ohnishi is financing the violence in Honolulu. Though not for much longer, I assure you.” He turned to his henchmen. “Let’s go.”

They bundled Jill into the bedspread and carried her from her home as if she were a rolled-up carpet. The cicadas paused as the party ducked through the bushes toward their hidden vehicle.

Twenty miles away, thunderous applause swept across the Honolulu Convention Center as Mayor David Takamora took the stage, sending a palpable compression wave echoing through the cavernous hall. Twelve thousand people filled the room, many waving placards in support of Honolulu’s controversial mayor. The air was charged with the energy of the massed throng as their hero raised his arms over his head in recognition of the crowd’s adoration.

Under the glare of the television crew’s klieg lights, Takamora appeared much more handsome than he did in person. The lights and makeup hid the pocks of adolescent acne on his face and darkened the thin strands of silver that wove through his thick hair. He held his body erect and confident, showing off a lean stomach that was nothing more than a girdle and a continual holding of his breath. The effort would inevitably cause severe back pain after the speech.

Such small hoaxes can be forgiven in most men in their fifties if they did not go deeper than the surface. In Takamora’s case, it would take more than a little makeup to hide the flaws in his personality and morals.

Pathologically ambitious, Takamora had turned to the darker side of politics to gain his current office. From the very beginning of his career as a board member of the city’s building commission, he had made it clear to any developer who cared to listen that he would almost joyfully take bribes to help a project gain quick approval.

He amassed several hundred thousand dollars in just a few years and used that money as a war chest to battle for the mayor’s office. Some said that he cut so many deals to get on the ballot that he kept a knife on his desk rather than a pen. He waged one of the ugliest campaigns for mayor of any American city in history. His main opponent, a councilwoman of excellent standing, withdrew from the race when her daughter was brutally raped after leaving a Honolulu nightclub. Takamora didn’t know if the rape was coincidence or the act of an overzealous assistant.

Now he stood poised to go far beyond his own ambition. He was the last of the speakers at this pro-Referendum 324 rally, and the crowd was already roused to a fever pitch.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Takamora said, quieting the crowd with hand gestures. He spoke in Japanese. “Ladies and gentlemen, a little over a year ago you gave me a mandate when you elected me to help this city prosper, to create new jobs and security for our way of life. Since then I have done everything in my power to make this happen. But I’ve found myself limited by the very office with which you entrusted me.

“While we’ve been able to attract Japanese companies to our city, state and federal regulators have stalled our efforts. When Ohnishi Heavy Industries wanted to build a computer assembly plant in Honolulu, the government in Washington refused to allow import permits for the machinery needed to set up the plant. When I wanted to privatize our police force, with the blessing of you, the voters, the Supreme Court called that an unconstitutional act because it might be construed as a private militia.

“Now I want to see our tax dollars stay here on Hawaii rather than disappear into the federal cesspit, and I’m being called a secessionist. Referendum 324 does not equal secession, it means parity. Our state is now wholly self-sufficient. We trade more with Japan than we do with California, so why shouldn’t we be entitled to keep the tax revenue from our own labor? I no longer see any benefits from Washington, just inept meddling. I see us helping to prop up a system that has simply gotten away from itself, and I say: Don’t take us with you.

“While the mainland sinks into a bottomless pit of crime and drug abuse, where drive-by shootings no longer make the news, where teenage pregnancy accounts for thirty percent of the children born, where welfare assistance has turned into a crutch for those too lazy to work, we have prospered.

“Do you think it fair we should pay for their corruption?”

The frenzied crowd shouted a defiant, “No!”

“Is it right that we must pay for their excesses?”

Again, with one hate-filled voice the crowd screamed, “No!”

“Last night, the vice president of the United States branded me a secessionist.” The crowd was transmuting into a mindless mob, barely kept in check by Takamora’s voice. “I say, Don’t tempt me.”

Takamora’s last words were spoken in a low hiss, then he ducked from the stage, wearing the adulation of the crowd like a cloak. An aide handed him a bottle of beer and a towel. He took a quick swig and wiped the greasy makeup from his face.

“Listen to them,” he said to the assembled aides. “They’re ready for anything.”

As Takamora leaned into the sound of the crowd beyond the maroon curtain, an aide slid a ringing cellular phone from his pocket, listened for an instant, then handed it to Takamora.

“Yes.”

“Congratulations, David, a rousing speech.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ohnishi, I’m pleased you were able to hear it.” The microphones in the convention center had been wired into a transceiver and the signals sent to Ohnishi’s house. “Can you still hear the crowd, sir?”

“Yes, you are certainly the man of the hour.”

“Only with your help, Mr. Ohnishi,” Takamora replied honestly, acknowledging the massive support given to him by the aging industrialist.

“I think now is the time to step up our campaign, don’t you?” Ohnishi’s comment was not really a question, it was a command.

“I agree, sir,” Takamora replied, keeping the pretense of a free will. “What do you have in mind?”

“A few bombings, better arms for the youth gangs, and a little more selectivity to their targets. Our day is rapidly approaching, so we must be more organized. Kenji will contact you in the morning with all the particulars.”

“But the vote for Referendum 324 is still a week away — aren’t we jumping the gun slightly?”

“Some unforeseen contingencies have arisen that may force me to abandon the subterfuge of Referendum 324. Who cares if the people won’t be allowed their vote? We will give them what they want anyway. What I want to know is if your National Guard troops will maintain their loyalty throughout our campaign.”

“You can count on them, sir, at least those units that I’ve personally built up since taking office. As you know, the crack units here in Honolulu are made up of Japanese-Americans, young men and women who feel the same as we do. It is only a matter of time until the governor calls them out, unwittingly putting more of our people on the streets. I guarantee that they will not interfere with your gangs.”

“And if the President calls out federal troops?”

Takamora hesitated for an instant. “The guardsmen will be willing to take them on. Remember, the military presence on the island represents the greatest source of antagonism among our people. It is the same here as it was on Okinawa following the rape of that little girl in 1996.”

“Good, and, David, never question me again.” Ohnishi’s tone was saccharine, but hard edged.

Takamora shut off the phone with a snap, angered that his euphoria of a few moments ago had been chilled by Ohnishi. He tried to look composed as he handed the phone back to his assistant, but failed miserably.