It was just that such ideas only worked once, and European investors weren’t
buying. They were bailing out. It came as a relief when people started buy-
ing up stocks at absurdly low prices, and they were even grateful that the
purchases were being made in yen, whose strength had reasserted itself, the
only bright light on the international financial scene.
“You mean,” Robberton said, opening the basement door to the West
Wing. “You mean to tell me that it’s that screwed up?”
“Paul, you think you’re smart?” Jack asked. The question took the Secret
Service man aback a little.
“Yeah, I do. So?”
“So why do you suppose that anybody else is smarter than you are?
They’re not, Paul,” Ryan went on. “They have a different job, but it isn’t
about brains. It’s about education and experience. Those people don’t know
crap about running a criminal investigation. Neither do I. Every tough job
requires brains, Paul. But you can’t know them all. Anyway, bottom line,
okay? No, they’re not any smarter than you, and maybe not as smart as you.
It’s just that it’s their job to run the financial markets, and your job to do
something else.”
“Jesus,” Robberton breathed, dropping Ryan off at his office door. His
secretary handed off a fistful of phone notes on his way in. One was marked
Urgent! and Ryan called the number.
“That you, Ryan?”
“Correct, Mr. Winston. You want to see me. When?” Jack asked, open-
ing his briefcase and pulling the classified things out.
“Anytime, starting ninety minutes from now. I have a car waiting down-
stairs, a Gulfstream with warm motors, a car waiting at D.C. National.” His
voice said the rest. It was urgent, and no-shit serious. On top of that came
Winston’s reputation.
“I presume it’s about last Friday.”
“Correct.”
“Why me and not Secretary Fiedler?” Ryan woiuk-tvd.
“You’ve worked there. He hasn’t. If you want him to MI in on it, line
He’ll get it. I think you’ll get it faster. Have you been following tlu- (manual
news this morning?”
“It sounds like Europe’s getting squirrelly on us.”
“And it’s just going to get worse,” Winston said. And he was piohuMy
right. Jack knew.
“You know how to fix it?” Ryan could almost hear the head at the other
end shake in anger and disgust.
“I wish. But maybe I can tell you what really happened.”
“I’ll settle for that. Come down as quick as you want,” Jack told him.
“Tell the driver West Executive Drive. The uniformed guards will be ex-
pecting you at the gate.”
“Thanks for listening, Dr. Ryan.” The line clicked off, and Jack won-
dered how long it had been since the last time George Winston had said that
to anyone. Then he got down to his work for the day.
The one good thing was that the railcars used to transport the “H-i i” boost-
ers from the assembly plant to wherever were standard gauge. That ac-
counted for only about 8 percent of Japanese trackage and was, moreover,
something discernible from satellite photographs. The Central Intelligence
Agency was in the business of accumulating information, most of which
would never have any practical use, and most of which, despite all manner of
books and movies to the contrary, came from open-source material. It was
just a matter of finding a railway map of Japan to see where all the standard-
gauge trackage was and starting from there, but there were now over two
thousand miles of such trackage, and the weather over Japan was not always
clear, and the satellites were not always directly overhead, the better to see
into valleys that littered a country composed largely of volcanic mountains.
But it was also a task with which the Agency was familiar. The Russians,
with their genius and mania for concealing everything, had taught CIA’s
analysts the hard way to look for the unlikely spots first of all. An open plain,
for example, was a likely spot, easy to approach, easy to build, easy to ser-
vice, and easy to protect. That was how America had done it in the 19605,
banking incorrectly on the hope that missiles would never become accurate
enough to hit such small, rugged point targets. Japan would have learned
from that lesson. Therefore, the analysts had to look for the difficult places.
Woods, valleys, hills, and the very selectivity of the task ensured that it
would require time. Two updated KH-n photosatellites were in orbit, and
one KH-I2 radar-imaging satellite. The former could resolve objects down
to the size of a cigarette pack. The latter produced a monochrome image of
far less resolution, but could see through clouds, and, under favorable cir-
47«
TOM CI.ANCY
cumstances, could actually penetrate the ground, down to as much as ten
meters; in fact it had been developed for the purpose of locating otherwise
invisible Soviet missile silos and similarly camouflaged installations.
That was the good news. The bad news was that each individual frame of
imagery had to be examined by a team of experts, one at a time; that every
irregularity or curiosity had to be reexamined and graded; that the time in-
volved despite-indeed, because of-the urgency of the task was immense.
Analysts from the CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Intelli-
gence and Threat Analysis Center (I-TAC) were grouped together for the
task, looking for twenty holes in the ground, knowing nothing other than the
fact that the individual holes could be no less than five meters across. There
could be one large group of twenty, or twenty individual and widely sepa-
rated holes. The first task, all agreed, was to get new imagery of the whole
length of standard-gauge rails. Weather and camera angles impeded some of
that task, and now on the third day of the hunt, 20 percent of the needed
mapping still remained undone. Already thirty potential sites had been iden-
tified for further scrutiny from new passes at slightly different light levels
and camera angles which would allow stereo-optic viewing and additional
computer enhancement. People on the analysis team were talking again
about the 1991 Scud-hunts. It was not a pleasant memory for them. Though
many lessons had been learned, the main one was this: it wasn’t really all
that hard to hide one or ten or twenty or even a hundred relatively small
objects within the borders of a nation-state, even a very open, very flat one.
And Japan was neither. Under the circumstances, finding all of them was a
nearly impossible task. But they had to try anyway.
It was eleven at night, and his duties to his ancestors were done for the mo-
ment. They would never be fully carried out, but the promises to their spirits
he’d made so many years before were now accomplished. What had been
Japanese soil at the time of his birth was now again Japanese soil. What had
been his family’s land was now again his family’s land. The nation that had
humbled his nation and murdered his family had finally been humbled, and
would remain so for a long, long time. Long enough to assure his country’s
position, finally, among the great nations of the world.
In fact, even greater than he’d planned, he noted. All he had to do was
look at the financial reports coming into his hotel suite via facsimile printer.
The financial panic he’d planned and executed was now moving across the
Atlantic. Amazing, he thought, that he hadn’t anticipated it. The complex
financial maneuvers had left Japanese banks and businesses suddenly cash-
rich, and his fellow zaibatsu were seizing the opportunity to buy up Euro-
pean equities for themselves and their companies. They’d increase the
national wealth, improve their position in the various European national
economies, and publicly appear to be springing to the assistance of others.
1)1 HI 01 HONOR 4/.j
Yumulu judged thai Japan would bend some efforts to hol|> IIIHIIH- mil ol lu-i
predicament. His country needed markets alter all, and with tin- siultlni in
crease in Japanese ownership of their private companies, |K-ihaps now I uiu
pean politicians would listen more attentively to their su^oslionv Noi
certain, he thought, but possible. What they would definitely listen lo was
power. Japan was facing down America. America would never Ix- ahle to
confront his country, not with her economy in turmoil, her military do
fanged, and her President politically crippled. And it was an election year as
well. The finest strategy, Yamata thought, was to sow discord in the house of
your enemy. That he had done, taking the one action that had simply not
occurred to the bonehead military people who’d led his country down the
path of ruin in 1941.
“So,” he said to his host. “How may I be of service?”
“Yamata-san, as you know, we will be holding elections for a local gov-
ernor.” The bureaucrat poured a stiff shot of a fine Scotch whiskey. “You
are a landowner, and have been so for some months. You have business in-