At the Sharpe End by Ashton Hugh

Author:Ashton, Hugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: money, japan, gang, police, finance, gangster, technology, tokyo, consultant, asia, adventure action, fx, north korea, yakuza, lehman, thriller action, sharpe, exchange, stockbroker
Publisher: j-views

Chapter 9: Tokyo

The “M&M Trading” currency brokerage seemed destined to be a success. All four partners were actively involved in making the business work efficiently, and Kim had been as good as his word about sending on the money he’d promised to Sharpe for finding Katsuyama. This had arrived as bundles of cash, and now sat in a bank account. Sharpe had arranged to rent office space in a new building in a business park on the western outskirts of Tokyo. It was the other side of town, and a long way from their houses, but was on a reasonably direct train route, and came quite cheap, as the result of an initiative to move businesses into the suburbs. The main reason for choosing the office was that it came with a high-speed fibre-optic Internet link already in place, which made life a lot easier. Meema pointed out, however, that they were going to need a lot of voice lines and some sort of telephone exchange, or at any rate, some way of placing and receiving many calls at once.

“We’ll do it as voice over IP,” suggested Vishal, referring to the technology of using the Internet to make phone calls. “But we will be needing a few more traditional outside lines, too, as backup, I am thinking. Kenneth-san, it is your job to be asking the telephone company men to install at least four lines here as fast as they possibly can be doing it. It will be my job to be talking to my friends who are making these software telephone exchanges for the Internet phones and arranging for delivery and installation.”

So Sharpe, aided by Mieko, cajoled and pleaded with NTT, the Japanese telephone company, to install six more lines into the building (he’d added two more to Vishal’s original estimate for safety). After being told three times by different sales staff at NTT that the job could never be done in that particular building, he eventually managed to speak to a senior installation manager, who promised him that the work would be carried out within six weeks. He was about to explode over the phone and consign the whole of the Japanese telephone system to eternal damnation, but Mieko calmed him down, and he spent the rest of the afternoon fuming at the inefficiency of telephone companies in general and NTT in particular.

Much to his surprise, the NTT engineers arrived the next day and had completed the work within three hours. That’s Japan all over, he told himself. First they tell you a thing is impossible, then tell you it’s difficult, then they come along and do it perfectly in next to no time.

It had also been Sharpe’s job to negotiate with the companies providing the market data feeds. He’d had enough experience in his consultancy with the Tokyo banks to be able to hold his own with the vendors, and to work his way through the long and complex contracts they provided, as well as fending off the constant offers of extra services for which he could see no possible need.

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