Chapter 1 — The Price of a Word

The first thing Elena Ward noticed about the Japanese delegation was that none of them touched the water.

At eight fourteen on a rainy Thursday in Chicago, every crystal glass at the Marlowe Room had been filled, polished, and placed precisely two inches above its folded napkin. Eight glasses stood before the guests from Kiyohara Industrial, yet not one had been lifted. Their chairman, Masato Kiyohara, sat with his hands folded beside his plate. The two lawyers at his left were equally still. Only the youngest member, a woman with a silver fountain pen, looked toward the door as though measuring the distance to an exit.

Elena had worked in expensive restaurants long enough to recognize a negotiation that had gone wrong before dessert. What unsettled her was the seating. The Americans were arranged along the windows, with the skyline and its glittering reflection behind them. The Japanese visitors faced the room. The arrangement was supposed to honor the guests. Tonight it made them look as though they were on trial.

At the head of the table sat Victor Sloane, founder of Northbridge Systems and the loudest man in any room he entered. He wore an understated watch that cost more than Elena's annual rent, and he made a point of looking at it whenever anyone else spoke. Across from him sat Masato, whose expression revealed little beyond disciplined fatigue.

Elena collected an untouched appetizer while Victor told a story about his first trip to Osaka. The story involved a misplaced briefcase, a mistaken identity, and a waiter he described as unable to understand basic English. Every time he reached the word waiter he glanced at Elena, expecting her to laugh. She did not.

'You're very serious,' he said as she reached for his plate.

'Only when I'm holding porcelain worth several hundred dollars, sir.'

A few guests smiled. Victor was not among them. 'What's your name?'

'Elena.'

'Elena what?'

'Ward.'

'Well, Miss Ward, perhaps you can solve a problem. Our friends have become extremely concerned about a harmless clause. A translation issue, apparently.'

Masato looked down. The young woman with the fountain pen—Aiko Tanaka, according to the place card—closed her notebook.

'We have asked for the original technical annex,' Aiko said in English. Her voice was controlled but unmistakably firm. 'Until we receive it, the document cannot be signed.'

Victor smiled at her the way someone might smile at a child who had interrupted adults. 'And you will receive everything your attorneys need. But surely we can finish dinner without turning it into an examination.'

Elena knew about the transaction from the newspapers. Northbridge was selling a controlling interest in a high-performance battery manufacturer to Kiyohara Industrial. The deal would rescue a struggling Illinois factory, preserve thousands of jobs, and give the Japanese company a manufacturing foothold in the American Midwest. Its announced value was six hundred and eighty million dollars. The press had called it a triumph of international cooperation.

What the papers had not mentioned was the silent young woman who had arrived at the restaurant carrying a locked document case. That detail was something Elena noticed herself.