And the moment had been right. The following morning, Claire arrived at Takahashi's suite at 7:30 with two cups of coffee and a folder she had stayed up assembling. He was already at the desk. Mercer came back fast, she said, setting the folder in front of him. There's a connection to a man named Harold Stent.
Former private equity counsel, dissolved his firm eight years ago. He appears in the background of three separate entities, a small infrastructure fund, a media advisory group, a real estate LLC. None of them are large enough to register as significant on their own. Takahashi opened the folder. But, he said.
He heard a butt in her voice. Together, they represent positions in three of the four companies involved in your Pacific Northwest acquisition. She paused. The positions were established over the past 18 months. All minority stakes.
None of them triggering disclosure requirements. Takahashi was quiet. He looked at the page in front of him, then he turned to the next one. Amara Cole appears in connection with the media advisory group, Claire continued. Not by name in any official capacity, but Mercer found a shared address history, a business registration two years ago, quietly dissolved, filed under a different name.
The connection is thin. Another pause. But, it's there. Takahashi set the folder down. He looked at the window, the city gray and cool in the morning light.
He thought about a restaurant dining room, a woman standing at the edge of a table with her hands at her sides. The specific careful precision of her answer when he had asked where she had learned Japanese. Not a deflection, not a performance. But, an exact answer that was also, only if you knew what to listen for, a message from someone who respected the language, not from classes, not from study, from a person, a specific person who had a specific relationship to the language and to him. He had carried that phrase out of the restaurant with him.
He had turned it over in the car and again in the hotel and again at 3:00 in the morning when he had stopped pretending he was going to sleep. He knew who had taught her. He had known since last night. "There's one more thing." Claire said.
She reached forward and turned to the last page in the folder. "Mercer found a medical record. Not detailed, just a flag. Daisuke Mori was hospitalized 14 months ago. Cardiac episode.
He recovered, but his mobility has been limited since." She paused. "He's been living quietly in Kyoto." Takahashi looked at that page for a long time. He thought about a man with careful hands and an unhurried way of explaining things.