Early the next morning, Mariko came to have breakfast with her. After the meal, she took Daisy on a tour of the legendary Senso-ji Temple, then spent the afternoon doing a whirlwind lap through Shinjuku. By dinnertime they were back at the Yashida estate, where Shingen was waiting to have a serious talk.
"Miss Johnson is someone Director Fury holds in high regard." To strike a suitably formal tone, Shingen opened in English, getting straight to the point. "I'd be curious to hear your assessment of Yashida Corporation's current situation."
Baldy thinks highly of me? Since when? Still, Daisy couldn't exactly sell herself short, so she put on a knowing expression. "Yashida Corporation has serious problems."
"Oh?" Shingen pressed. "What kind of problems?"
Daisy studied him for a moment. Was he actually treating her like a real authority? She turned it over in her mind before answering. "Both internal and external."
Shingen let out a long sigh. "Has it become that obvious? Even outsiders can see how vulnerable we are."
Daisy was quietly surprised. That conclusion had come from piecing together her memories with scraps of information from various sources — she honestly wasn't sure a true outsider could have reached it from the clues available.
To Shingen's mind, the old man had done an excellent job keeping things under wraps. The fact that Daisy spoke with such confidence meant she had to be one of Nick Fury's inner circle, with access to intelligence channels well beyond the ordinary. S.H.I.E.L.D. might even have a mole planted in Yashida's upper management.
"I need S.H.I.E.L.D.'s help to get through this crisis," he said, his voice earnest and his resolve unmistakable.
Daisy badly wanted to tell him he'd misread the situation, but she doubted he'd believe her. She stalled, trying to figure out how to wriggle out of this without losing face.
"Forgive my bluntness — but as things stand, aren't you still unable to determine the direction of Yashida Corporation yourself?" She let the implication hang: you're not in a position to be cutting deals with S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Which is exactly why I need S.H.I.E.L.D.'s help — to put me in charge, provide protection, extend a loan and guarantee my position, until Yashida Corporation is back on stable footing."
"Ha." Daisy laughed, a trace of mockery creeping into her tone. "That's quite the ask. What exactly can you put on the table right now?"
"Yashida can transfer a portion of its shares to S.H.I.E.L.D."
"You're carrying over ten billion in debt. What would we want with shares? So we can help pay it off?"
"We can hand over the Adamantium alloy." Shingen offered a different chip.
Daisy was even less impressed. "The alloy is in your father's hands, isn't it? You're still just trying to use us to put yourself on top."
Neither offer landed. Shingen didn't flinch. He thought for a beat. "S.H.I.E.L.D. and I share a common enemy."
"S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have enemies," she said, not even convincing herself.
"You do. And they're right here in Japan."
He pressed on, as though to add weight to his words: "Someone has been steadily siphoning funds out of Yashida Corporation, but every time I've tried to trace it, I've come up empty. I think it's that old bastard working behind the scenes — he'd sooner burn every yen than leave a single one to me."
Shingen's face twisted with raw hatred. The loathing he felt for his own father ran bone-deep.
He's probably funneling money back to HYDRA, Daisy guessed. With global economic integration and runaway inflation, even an organization as large as HYDRA must be struggling. Whatever Nazi gold and Southeast Asian reserves they'd sat on were surely long gone — if they couldn't find outside funding, they'd be flat broke.
The major powers were printing money like mad and fighting trade wars. Poor HYDRA, caught in the middle, trading gold bullion for paper currency day after day. It was almost pitiable.
The subprime crisis had already erupted, driving prices even higher. Objectively speaking, real-estate developers and the big banks had, in their own roundabout way, done their bit against HYDRA too.
The real irony of the father-son rift was this: the old man was bleeding the company dry to prop up the organization, but his son had no idea — Shingen had conjured up a picture of a father who'd rather dump money into the ocean than hand any of it over.
Their relationship was that of enemies now. Let the misunderstanding stand. It wasn't really her problem. Daisy furrowed her brow slightly and continued listening to Shingen's speculation.
"The old bastard has been draining the company's capital for years, then pinning all the damage on me. If it ever comes out, I'll be the one holding the bag—"
Daisy listened patiently through five full minutes of grievances before he finally got to something worth her attention.
"They've been buying up huge quantities of goods on the open market — food staples, industrial machinery, energy supplies, chemical materials — an enormous amount of everything!" Shingen threw up both hands. Legally speaking, that was his money being spent. It killed him.
"Where did the supplies go?" Daisy pressed. "How much are we talking?"
Shingen produced a USB drive and fetched a laptop, nodding for her to look.
Daisy opened the files and skimmed rapidly.
The quantities were staggering — enough to supply an entire city. Every category of essential goods was represented, with records stretching back as far as thirty years.
The evidence, in the short term, wouldn't point to HYDRA. Nick Fury himself probably believed HYDRA had been destroyed after World War II. A massive, unexplained diversion of supplies was hard to link to an organization that had long since been filed away as defunct.
More troubling still: Shingen's data showed the supplies hadn't ended up in a Japanese base as she'd expected. Instead, they'd traveled south and vanished somewhere into the vast open ocean.
Not "Crown" Base near Kyoto. Not the underwater installation known as "Ichor."
How many HYDRA bases were in the southern hemisphere? Daisy could only recall "Purgatory," the HYDRA training camp in New Zealand; "Tarantula," the weapons center in Australia; and "Hive," on an unnamed island somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Which base it was, she couldn't say. She wasn't even certain any of this had anything to do with HYDRA.
She couldn't guarantee events would play out the way she imagined.
Noticing her hesitation, Shingen lowered his voice. "You can take the drive and file a report. I have all the originals. Or you can come with me and verify in person."
Daisy ran through the whole thing from beginning to end. This wasn't the sort of thing to rush to her superiors with — if Shingen had led her astray, she'd look like a fool. "I won't act on your word alone. I need to conduct my own investigation."
"That's entirely reasonable. Miss Johnson is welcome to verify everything herself." Shingen agreed without hesitation. This was only their second meeting — if Daisy had believed him without question, that would've been strange.
Daisy pocketed the drive, declined his offer to assign someone to assist her, and left the Yashida estate alone.