Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

of Six Columbus Lane, the new headquarters building of the Columbus

Group, a changeover was taking place.

The room was breathtaking in every possible aspect. The walls were solid

walnut, not veneer, and lovingly maintained by a well-paid team of crafts-

men. Two of the walls were polished glass that ran from the carpet to the

Celotex ceiling panels, and offered a view of New York Harbor and beyond.

The carpet was thick enough to swallow up shoes-and to deliver a nasty

static shock, which the people here had learned to tolerate. The conference

table was forty feet of red granite, and the chairs around it priced out at

nearly two thousand dollars each.

The Columbus Group, founded only eleven years before, had gone from

being just one more upstart, to enfant terrible, to bright rising light, to seri-

ous player, to among the best in its field, to its current position as a corner-

stone of the mutual-funds community. Founded by George Winston, the

company now controlled a virtual fleet of fund-management teams. The

three primary teams were fittingly called Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, be-

cause when Winston had founded the company, at the age of twenty-nine,

he’d just read and been captivated by Samuel Eliot Morison’s The European

Discovery of the New World, and, marveling at the courage, vision, and

sheer chutzpah of the restless navigators from Prince Henry’s school, he’d

decided to chart his own course by their example. Now forty, and rich

beyond the dreams of avarice, it was time to leave, to smell the roses, to take

his ninety-foot sailing yacht on some extended cruises. In fact, his precise

plans were to spend the next few months learning how to sail Cristobol as

expertly as he did everything else in his life, and then to duplicate the voy-

ages of discovery, one every summer, until he ran out of examples to follow,

and then maybe write his own book about it.

He was a man of modest size that his personality seemed to make larger.

A fitness fanatic-stress was the prime killer on the Street-Winston posi-

tively glowed with the confidence imparted by his superb conditioning. He

walked into the already-full conference room with the air of a President-

elect entering his headquarters after the conclusion of a successful cam-

paign, his stride fast and sure, his smile courtly and guileless. Pleased with

this culmination of his professional life on this day, he even nodded his head

to his principal guest.

“Yamata-san, so good to see you again,” George Winston said with an

extended hand. “You came a long way for this.”

“For an event of this importance,” the Japanese industrialist replied,

“how could I not?”

Winston escorted the smaller man to his seat at the far end of the table

before returning toward his own at the head. There were teams of lawyers

and investment executives in between-rather like football squads at the line

of scrimmage, Winston thought, as he walked the length of the table, guard-

ing his own feelings as he did so.

It was the only way out, damn it, Winston told himself. Nothing else

would have worked. The first six years running this place had been the great-

est exhilaration of his life. Starting with less than twenty clients, building

their money and his reputation at the same time. Working at home, he re-

membered, his brain racing to outstrip his paces across the room, one com-

puter and one dedicated phone line, worried about feeding his family,

blessed by the support of his loving wife despite the fact that she’d been

pregnant the first time-with twins, no less, and still she’d never missed a

chance to express her love and confidence-parlaying his skill and instinct

into success. By thirty-five it had all been done, really. Two floors of a

downtown office tower, his own plush office, a team of bright young

“rocket scientists” to do the detail work. That was when he’d first thought

about getting out.

In building up the funds of his clients, he’d bet his own money, too, of

course, until his personal fortune, after taxes, was six hundred fifty-seven

million dollars. Basic conservatism would not allow him to leave his money

behind, and besides, he was concerned about where the market was heading,

and so he was taking it all out, cashing in and switching over to a more con-

servative manager. It seemed a strange course of action even to himself, but

he just didn’t want to be bothered with this business anymore. Going “con-

servative” was dull, and would necessarily cast away enormous future op-

portunities, hut, he’d asked himself for years, what was the point? He owned

MX palatial homes, two personal automobiles at each, a helicopter, he leased

a personal jet, Cristobol was his principal toy. He had everything he’d ever

wanled, and even with conservative portfolio management, his personal

wealth would continue to rise faster than the inflation rate because he didn’t

have the ego to spend even as much as the annualized return would generate.

And so he’d parcel it out in fifty-million-dollar blocks, covering every seg-

ment of the market through investment colleagues who had not achieved his

personal success, but whose integrity and acumen he trusted. The switchover

iiiul been under way for three years, very quietly, as he’d searched for a wor-

Ihy successor for the Columbus Group. Unfortunately, the only one who’d

Mcpped forward was this little bastard.

“Ownership” was the wrong term, of course. The true owners of the

group were the individual investors who gave their money to his custody,

and that was a trust which Winston never forgot. Even with his decision

made, his conscience clawed at him. Those people relied on him and his

people, but him most of all, because his was the name on the most important

door. The trust of so many people was a heavy burden which he’d borne with

skill and pride, but enough was enough. It was time to attend to the needs of

his own family, five kids and a faithful wife who were tired of’ ‘understand-

ing” why Daddy had to be away so much. The needs of the many. The needs

of Ihe few. But the few were closer, weren’t they?

Raizo Yamata was putting in much of his personal fortune and quite a bit

of the corporate funds of his many industrial operations in order to make

good the funds that Winston was taking out. Quiet though Winston might

wish it to be, and understandable as his action surely was to anyone with a

I’cel for the business, it would still become cause for comment. Therefore it

was necessary that the man replacing him be willing to put his own money

hack in. That sort of move would restore any wavering confidence. It would

also cement the marriage between the Japanese and American financial sys-

tems. While Winston watched, instruments were signed that “enabled” the

funds transfer for which international-bank executives had stayed late at

their offices in six countries. A man of great personal substance, Raizo

Yamata.

Well, Winston corrected himself, great personal liquidity. Since leaving

the Wharton School, he’d known a lot of bright, sharp operators, all of them

cagey, intelligent people who’d tried to hide their predatory nature behind

facades of humor and bonhomie. You soon developed an instinct for them. It

was that simple. Perhaps Yamata thought that his heritage made him more

unreadable, just as he doubtless thought himself to be smarter than the aver-

age bear-or bull in this case, Winston smiled to himself. Maybe, maybe

not, he thought, looking down the forty-foot table. Why was there no excite-

incnl in the man? The Japanese had emotions, too. Those with whom he’d

done business had been affable enough, pleased as any other man to make a

big hit on the Street. Get a few drinks into them and they were no different

from Americans, really. Oh, a little more reserved, a little shy, perhaps, but

always polite, that’s what he liked best about them, their fine manners,

something that would have been welcome in New Yorkers. That was it,

Winston thought. Yamata was polite, but it wasn’t genuine. It was pro forma

with him, and shyness had nothing to do with it. Like a little robot. . . .

No, that wasn’t true either, Winston thought, as the papers slid down the

table toward him. Yamata’s wall was just thicker than the average, the better

to conceal what he felt. Why had he built such a wall? It wasn’t necessary

here, was it? In this room he was among equals; more than that, he was now

among partners. He had just signed over his money, placed his personal

well-being in the same boat as so many others. By transferring nearly two

hundred million dollars, he now owned over one percent of the funds

managed by Columbus, which made him the institution’s largest single in-

vestor. With that status came control of every dollar, share, and option the