"Clancy, Tom - Debt Of HonorUC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

dence. The property settlement had been moved up on the calendar due to a
death in the attorney's family, and so the attorney was scheduled for a red-
eye flight, two hours from now, to Hawaii.
It was Mr. Yamata's first property closing on American soil. Though he
owned many properties in the continental United States, the actual title
transfer had always been handled by other attorneys, invariably American
citizens, who had done precisely what they had been paid to do, generally
with oversight by one of Mr. Yamata's employees. But not this time.
There were several reasons for it. One was that the purchase was personal
and not corporate. Another was that it was close, only two hours by private
jet from his home. Mr. Yamata had told the settlement attorney that the
property would be used for a weekend getaway house. With the astronomi-
cal price of real estate in Tokyo, he could buy several hundred acres for
the price of a modestly large penthouse apartment in his city of residence.
The view from the house he planned to build on the promontory would be
breathtaking, a vista of the blue Pacific, other islands of the Marianas Ar-
chipelago in the distance, air as clean as any on the face of the earth. For
all those reasons Mr. Yamata had offered a princely fee, and done so with
a charming smile.
And for one reason more.
The various documents slid clockwise around the circular table, stopping
at each chair so that signatures could be affixed at the proper place, marked
I OM < I A N< V
with yellow Posl-ll notes, and then it was time lor Mr. Yamala to reach into
liis coat pocket and withdraw an envelope. He took out the check and handed
it to the attorney.
"Thank you, sir," the lawyer said in a respectful voice, as Americans
always did when money was- on the table. It was remarkable how money
made them do anything. Until three years before, the purchase of land here
by a Japanese citizen would have been illegal, but the right lawyer, and the
right case, and the right amount of money had fixed that, too. "The title
transfer will be recorded this afternoon."
Yamata looked at the seller with a polite smile and a nod, then he rose and
left the building. A car was waiting outside. Yamata got in the front passen-
ger seat and motioned peremptorily for the driver to head off. The settlement
was complete, and with it the need for charm.
Like most Pacific islands, Saipan is of volcanic origin. Immediately to the
east is the Marianas Trench, a chasm fully seven miles deep where one geo-
logical plate dives under another. The result is a collection of towering cone-
shaped mountains, of which the islands themselves are merely the tips. The
Toyota Land Cruiser followed a moderately smooth road north, winding
around Mount Achugao and the Mariana Country Club toward Marpi Point.
There it stopped.
Yamata alighted from the vehicle, his gaze resting on some farm struc-
tures that would soon be erased, but instead of walking to the building site
for his new house, he headed toward the rocky edge of the cliff. Though a
man in his early sixties, his stride was strong and purposeful as he moved
across the uneven field. If it had been a farm, then it had been a poor one, he
saw, inhospitable to life. As this place had been, more than once, and from
more than one cause.