“Come right,” he ordered over the radio circuit, bringing the flight to a new course of zero-five-five. They were still climbing, gradually, to save fuel for the exercise.
It was hard to believe that this aircraft design was almost thirty years old. But that was just the shape and the concept. Since the American engineers at McDonnell-Douglas had dreamed it all up, the improvements had been such as to transform everything but the silhouette. Almost everything on Sato’s personal bird was Japanese-made, even the engines. Especially the electronics.
There was a steady stream of aircraft in both directions, nearly all of them commercial wide-bodies carrying businessmen to or from Japan, from or to North America, on a well-defined commercial routing that traced down the Kurile chain, past the Kamchatka Peninsula, then on to the Aleutians. If anyone wondered how important his country was, Sato thought in the privacy of his cockpit, this was it. The low-angle sun reflected off the aluminum tail fins of numerous aircraft, and from his current altitude of thirty-seven thousand feet he could see them lined up—like cars on a highway, it seemed, yellow dots preceding white trails of vapor that stretched off into infinity. Then it was time to go to work.
The flight of four split into separated pairs left and right of the airliner track. The training mission for the evening was not complex, but vital nonetheless. Behind them, over a hundred miles to the southwest, an airborne early-warning aircraft was assuming its station just off the northeastern tip of Honshu. That was an E-767. Based on the twin-engine Boeing airliner (as the American E-3A was based on the far older 707 airframe), a rotating dome sat atop the converted wide-body. Just as his F-15J was an improved local version of an American fighter plane, so the E-767 was a vastly improved Japanese interpretation of another American invention. They’d never learn, Sato thought, his eyes scanning the horizon every few seconds before returning to the forward visual display. They’d invented so much, then given the unfulfilled rights to his countrymen for further perfection. In fact the Americans had played the same game with the Russians, improving every military weapon the latter had ever made, but in their arrogance ignoring the possibility that someone could do the same with their own magical systems. The radar on the E-767 was like nothing aloft. For that reason, the radar on the nose of his Eagle was switched off.
Simple in concept, the overall system was murderously complex in execution. The fighters had to know their precise position in three dimensions, and so did the AEW bird supporting them. Beyond that, radar pulses from the E-767 were precisely timed. The result was mere mathematics. Knowing the position of the transmitter, and their own position, the Eagles could then receive the radar reflections and plot the blips as though the data were generated by their own onboard radar systems. A meld of Soviet-developed bi-static radars and American airborne-radar technology, this system took the idea one step further. The AEW radar was frequency-agile, able to switch instantly from a longwave search mode to a shortwave fire-control mode, and it could actually guide air-to-air missiles fired by the fighters. The radar was also of sufficient size and power that it could, everyone thought, defeat stealth technology.
In only a few minutes it was clear that the system worked. The four air-to-air missiles on his wings were dummies, with no rocket motors. The seekerheads were real, however, and onboard instruments showed that the missiles were tracking inbound and outbound airliners even more clearly than they would have done from the Eagle’s own radar. It was a first, a genuinely new piece of military technology. Only a few years earlier, Japan would probably have offered it for sale, almost certainly to America, because this sort of thing had value beyond gold. But the world had changed, and the Americans would probably have not seen the point in spending the money for it. Besides, Japan wasn’t about to sell this to anyone. Not now, Sato thought. Especially not now.
Their hotel was not necessarily an especially good one. Though it catered to foreign visitors, the management recognized that not all gaijin were wealthy. The rooms were small, the corridors narrow, the ceilings low, and a breakfast of a glass of juice, a cup of coffee, and one croissant cost only fifty dollars instead of the hundred or so charged elsewhere. As the saying in the U.S. government went, Clark and Chavez were “living off the economy,” frugally, as Russians would have to do. It wasn’t all that great a hardship. Crowded and intense as Japan was, it was still far more comfortable than Africa had been, and the food, while strange, was exotic and interesting enough that the novelty hadn’t quite worn off yet. Ding might have grumped about the desire for a burger, but to say such a thing, even in Russian, would have broken cover. Returning after an eventful day, Clark inserted the key card in the slot on the door and twisted the knob. He didn’t even stop when he felt and removed the small piece of tape on the inside surface of the knob. Inside, he merely held it up to show Ding, then headed to the bathroom to flush it away.
Chavez looked around the room, wondering if it was bugged, wondering if this spook stuff was all it was cracked up to be. It certainly seemed so mysterious. The tape on the doorknob. Somebody wanted a meet. Nomuri. It had to be him. The fieldcraft was clever, Chavez told himself. Whoever had left the marker had just walked down the corridor, and his hand had probably just tapped the knob, a gesture that even a careful observer might have missed. Well, that was the idea.
“I’m going to head out for a drink,” “Klerk” announced in Russian. I’ll see what’s up.
“Vanya, you do too much of that.” Fine. It was his regular routine in any case.
“Some Russian you are,” Clark said for the microphones, if any, as he went out the door.
How the hell, Chavez wondered, am I supposed to get any studying done? He’d been forced to leave his books in Korea—they were all in English, of course. He couldn’t take notes or go over things. If I have to lose time on my master’s, Ding thought, I’m going to ask the Agency to reimburse me for the blown courses.
The bar, half a block away, was most agreeable. The room was dark. The booths were small and separated by solid partitions, and a mirror behind the ranks of liquor bottles made countersurveillance easy. Better yet, the barstools were almost all taken, which forced him to look elsewhere after a show of disappointment. Clark strolled all the way to the back. Nomuri was waiting.
“Taking chances, aren’t we?” John said over the music. A waitress came up. He ordered a vodka, neat, specifying a local one to save money.
“Orders from home,” Nomuri told him. He stood without another word, clearly offended that a gaijin had taken the seat without asking permission first and left without even a polite bow.
Before the drink arrived, Clark reached under the table, finding a package taped in place there. In a moment it was in his lap, and would soon find its way inside his waistband behind his back. Clark always bought his working clothes in a full cut—the Russian disguise helped even more—and his shoulders provided ample overhang for hiding things, yet another reason, he thought, to stay in shape.
The drink arrived, and he took his time knocking it back, looking at the bar mirror and searching the reflections for faces that might have appeared in his memory before. It was a never-ending drill, and, tiring as it was, one he’d learned the hard way not to ignore. He checked his watch twice, both times unobtrusively, then a third time immediately before standing, leaving behind just enough cash to pay for the drink. Russians weren’t known as big tippers.
The street was busy, even in the late evening. Clark had established the routine nightcap over the past week, and on every other night he would roam the local shops. This evening he selected a bookstore first, one with long, irregular rows. The Japanese were a literate people. The shop always had people in it. He browsed around, selecting a copy of The Economist, then wandered more, aimlessly toward the back, where he saw a few men eyeing the manga racks. Taller than they, he stood right behind a few, close but not too close, keeping his hands in front of him, shielded by his back. After five or so minutes he made his way to the front
and paid for the magazine, which the clerk politely bagged for him. The next stop was an electronics store, where he looked at some CD players. This time he bumped into two people, each time politely asking their pardon, a phrase which he’d troubled himself to learn before anything else at Monterey. After that he headed back out onto the street and back to the hotel, wondering how much of the preceding fifteen minutes had been a total waste of time. None of it, Clark told himself. Not a single second.
In the room he tossed Ding the magazine. It drew a look of its own before the younger man spoke. “Don’t they have anything in Russian?”
“It’s good coverage of the difficulties between this country and America. Read and learn. Improve your language skills.”
Great, just fucking great, Chavez thought, reading the words for their real meaning. We’ve been activated, for-real. He’d never finish the master’s now, Ding grumped. Maybe they just didn’t want to jack his salary up, as CIA regulations specified for a graduate degree.
Clark had other things to do. The package Nomuri had transferred held a computer disk and a device that attached to a laptop. He switched it on, then inserted the disk into the slot. The file he opened contained only three sentences, and seconds after reading it, Clark had erased the disk. Next he started composing what to all intents and purposes was a news dispatch.
The computer was a Russian-language version of a popular Japanese model, with all the additional Cyrillic letters, and the hard part for Clark was that although he read and spoke Russian like a native, he was used to typing (badly enough) in English. The Russian-style keyboard drove him crazy, and he sometimes wondered if someone would ever pick up on this small chink in his cover armor. It took over an hour to type up the news article, and another thirty to do the more important part. He saved both items to the hard drive, then turned the machine off. Flipping it over, he removed the modem from its modular port and replaced it with the new one Nomuri had brought.
“What time is it in Moscow?” he asked tiredly.
“Same as always, six hours behind us, remember?”
“I’m going to send it to Washington, too.”
“Fine,” “Chekov” grunted. “I’m sure they’ll love it, Ivan Sergeyevich.”
Clark attached the phone line to the back of his computer and used the latter to dial up the fiberoptic line to Moscow. Transferring the report took less than a minute. He repeated the operation for the Interfax office in the American capital. It was pretty slick, John thought. The moment before the modem at one end linked up with the modem at the other sounded just like static—which it was. The mating signal was just a rough hiss unless you had a special chip, and he never called anyone but Russian press-agency offices. That the office in Washington might be tapped by the FBI was something else again. Finished, he kept one file and erased the other. Another day done, serving his country. Clark brushed his teeth before collapsing into his single bed.
“That was a fine speech, Goto-san.” Yamata poured a generous amount of sake into an exquisite porcelain cup. “You made things so clear.”
“Did you see how they responded to me!” The little man was bubbling now, his enthusiasm making his body swell before his host’s eyes.
“And tomorrow you will have your cabinet, and the day after you will have a new office, Hiroshi.”
“You’re certain?”
A nod and a smile that conveyed true respect. “Of course I am. My colleagues and I have spoken with our friends, and they have come to agree with us that you are the only man suited to save our country.”
“When will it begin?” Goto asked, suddenly sobered by the words, remembering exactly what his ascension would mean.
“When the people are with us.”
“Are you sure we can—”
“Yes, I am sure.” Yamata paused. “There is one problem, however.”
“What is that?”
“Your lady friend, Hiroshi. If the knowledge becomes public that you have an American mistress, it compromises you. We cannot afford that,” Yamata explained patiently. “I hope you will understand.”
“Kimba is a most pleasant diversion for me,” Goto objected politely.
“I have no doubt of it, but the Prime Minister can have his choice of diversions, and in any case we will be busy in the next month.” The amusing part was that he could build up the man on one hand and reduce him on the other, just as easily as he manipulated a child. And yet there was something disturbing about it all. More than one thing. How much had he told the girl? And what to do with her now?
“Poor thing, to send her home now, she will never know happiness again.”
“Undoubtedly true, but it must be done, my friend. Let me handle it for you? Better it should be done quietly, discreetly. You are on the television every day now. You cannot be seen to frequent that area as a private citizen would. There is too great a danger.”
The man about to be Prime Minister looked down, sipping his drink, so transparently measuring his personal pleasure against his duties to his country, surprising Yamata yet again—but no, not really. Goto was Goto, and he’d been chosen for his elevation as much—more—for his weaknesses than his strengths.
“Hai,” he said after reflection. “Please see to it.”
“I know what to do,” Yamata assured him.
15
A Damned, Foolish Thing
Behind Ryan’s desk was a gadget called a STU-6. The acronym probably meant “secure telephone unit,” but he had never troubled himself to find out. It was about two feet square, and contained in a nicely made oak cabinet hand-crafted by the inmates of a federal prison. Inside were a half dozen green circuit-boards, populated with various chips whose function was to scramble and unscramble telephone signals. Having one of these in the office was one of the better government status symbols.
“Yeah,” Jack said, reaching back for the receiver.
“MP here. Something interesting came in. SANDALWOOD,” Mrs. Foley said, her voice distinct on the digital line. “Flip on your fax?”
“Go ahead and send it.” The STU-6 did that, too, fulfilling the function with a simple phone line that headed to Ryan’s facsimile printer. “Did you get the word to them—”
“Yes, we did.”
“Okay, wait a minute ...” Jack took the first page and started reading it. “This is Clark?” he asked.
“Correct. That’s why I’m fast-tracking it over to you. You know the guy as well as I do.”
“I saw the TV coverage. CNN says their crew got a little roughed up....” Ryan worked his way down the first page.
“Somebody bounced a soda can off the producer’s head. Nothing more serious than a headache, but it’s the first time anything like that has happened over there—that Ed and I remember, anyway.”
“Goddamn it!” Ryan said next.
“I thought you’d like that part.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, Mary Pat.”
“Glad to help.” The line went dead.
Ryan took his time. His temper, he knew, was always his greatest enemy. He decided to give himself a moment to stand and head out of his office to the nearest water cooler, which was tucked in his secretary’s office. Foggy Bottom, he’d heard, had once been a nice marsh before some fool had decided to drain it. What a pity the Sierra Club hadn’t been around then to force an environmental-impact statement. They were so good at obstructing things, and didn’t much care whether the things they halted were useful or not, and as a result they occasionally did some public good. But not this time, Ryan told himself, sitting back down. Then he lifted the STU-6 and punched the speed-dial button for State.
“Good morning, Mr. Secretary,” the National Security Advisor said pleasantly. “What’s the story about the demonstration outside the Tokyo Embassy yesterday?”
“You saw CNN the same as I did, I’m sure,” Hanson replied, as though it were not the function of an American embassy mission to provide better information than any citizen could get wit
h his oatmeal.
“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact, but I would really like to have the opinion of embassy personnel, like maybe the political officer, maybe even the DCM,” Ryan said, allowing a little of his irritation to show. Ambassador Chuck Whiting was a recent political appointee, a former senator who had then become a Washington lawyer, and had actually represented some Japanese business interests, but the Deputy Chief of Mission was an experienced man and a Japan specialist who knew the culture.
“Walt decided to keep his people in. He didn’t want to provoke anything. I’m not going to fault him for that.”
“That may be, but I have in my hand an eyewitness report from an experienced field officer who—”
“I have it, too, Ryan. It looks alarmist to me. Who is this guy?”
“As I said, an experienced field officer.”
“Umm-hmm, I see he knows Iran.” Ryan could hear the crackle of paper over the phone. “That makes him a spook. I guess that colored his thinking a little. How much experience in Japan?”
“Not much, but—”
“There you are. Alarmist, as I said. You want me to follow up on it, though?”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary.”
“Okay, I’ll call Walt. Anything else? I’m prepping for Moscow, too.”
“Please, let’s light a fire under them?”
“Fine, Ryan. I’ll make sure that gets through. Remember, it’s already nighttime over there, okay?”