forward, getting some sun as submariners often did-as indeed their captain
was doing, bare-chested atop the sail, drinking tea and smiling for everyone
to see. His next mission was to patrol the area west of the Bonins, to inter-
cept any American ship-more likely a submarine-that attempted to close
the Home Islands. It promised to be typical submarine duty, Ugaki thought:
dull but demanding. He’d have to talk to his crew about how important it
was.
“So where’s the patrol line?” Jones asked, pushing the envelope again.
“Along i65-East for the moment,” Admiral Mancuso said, pointing at
the chart. “We’re thin, Jonesy. Before I commit them to battle, I want them
to get used to the idea. I want the COs to drill their people up. You’re never
ready enough, Ron. Never.”
“True,” the civilian conceded. He’d come over with SOSUS printouts to
demonstrate that all known submarine contacts were off the screen. Two hy-
drophone arrays that were operated from the island of Guam were no longer
available. Though connected by undersea cable to the rest of the network,
they’d evidently been turned off by the monitoring facility on Guam, and
nobody at Pearl had yet been able to trick them back on. The good news was
that a backup array off Samar in the Philippines was still operating, but it
could not detect the Japanese SSKs shown by satellite to be replenishing off
Agana. They’d even gotten a good count. Probably, Mancuso thought. The
Japanese still painted the hull numbers on the sails, and the satellite cameras
could read them. Unless the Japanese, like the Russians and then the Ameri-
cans, had learned to spoof reconnaissance efforts by playing with the num-
bers-or simply erased them entirely.
“It would be nice to have a few more fast-attacks, wouldn’t it?” Jones
observed after a minute’s contemplation of the chart.
“Sure would. Maybe if we can get some direction from Washington …”
His voice trailed off, and Mancuso thought a little more. The location of
every sub under his command was marked with a black silhouette, even the
ones in overhaul status. Those were marked in white, showing availability
dates, which was not much help at the moment. But there were five such
silhouettes at Bremerton, weren’t there?
The Special Report card appeared on all the major TV networks. In every
case the hushed voice of an anchorperson told people that their network
shows would be interrupted by a speech from the President about the eco-
nomic crisis with which his administration had been dealing since the week-
end. Then came the Presidential Seal. Those who had been following the
events were surprised to see the President smiling.
“Good evening.
“My fellow Americans, last week we saw a major event take place in the
American financial system.
“I want to begin my report to you by saying that the American economy
is strong. Now”-he smiled-“that may seem a strange pronouncement
given all that you’ve heard in the media and elsewhere. But let me tell you
why that is so. I’ll start off with a question:
“What has changed? American workers are still making cars in Detroit
and elsewhere. American workers are still making steel. Kansas farmers
have their winter wheat in and are preparing for a new planting season.
They’re still making computers in the Silicon Valley. They’re still making
tires in Akron. Boeing is still making airplanes. They’re still pumping oil out
of the ground in Texas and Alaska. They’re still mining coal in West Vir-
ginia. All the things you were doing a week ago, you are still doing. So what
has changed?
“What changed was this: some electrons traveled along some copper
wires, telephone lines like this one”-the President held up a phone cord
and tossed it aside on his desk-“and that’s all,” he went on in the voice of
a good, smart neighbor come to the house to offer some kindly advice. “Not
one person has lost his life. Not a single business has lost a building. The
wealth of our nation is unchanged. Nothing has gone away.
“And yet, my fellow Americans, we have begun to panic-over what?
‘ ‘In the past four days we have determined that a deliberate attempt was
made to tamper with the U.S. financial markets. The United States Depart-
ment of Justice, with the assistance of some good Americans within those
markets, is now building a criminal case against the people responsible for
that. I cannot go further at the moment because even your President does noi
have the right to tamper with the right of any person to a fair and impartial
trial. But we do know what happened and we do know that what happened is
entirely artificial.
“Now, what are we going to do about it?” Roger Durling asked.
“The financial markets have been closed all week. They will reopen at
noon on Friday and …”
Reversal Points
“It can’t possibly work,” Kozo Matsuda said over the translation. “Raizo’s
plan was perfect-better than perfect,” he went on, talking as much to him-
self as the telephone receiver. Before the crash he’d worked in conjunction
with a banker associate to use the opportunity to cash in on the T-Bill trans-
actions, which had gone a long way to recapitalizing his troubled conglom-
erate. It had also made his cash account yen-heavy in the face of
international obligations. But that was not a problem, was it? Not with the
renewed strength of the yen and corresponding weakness of the American
dollar. It might even make sense, he thought, to purchase American interests
through intermediaries-a good strategic move once the American equities
market resumed its free fall.
“When do the European markets open?” Somehow in the excitement of
the moment he couldn’t remember.
“London is nine hours behind us. Germany and Holland are eight. Four
this afternoon,” the man on the other end of the phone said. “Our people
have their instructions.” And those were clear: to use the renewed power of
their national currency to buy as many European equities as possible so that
when the financial panic ended, two or three years from now, Japan would
be so enmeshed in that multinational economy as to be a totally integral part
of it; so vital to their survival that separation would run the renewed danger
of financial collapse. And they wouldn’t risk that, not after recovery from
the worst economic crisis in three generations, and certainly not after Japan
had played so important and selfless a part in restoring prosperity to three
hundred million Europeans. It was troubling that the Americans suspected a
hand in what had taken place, but Yamata-san had assured them all that no
records could possibly exist-wasn’t that the masterstroke of the entire
event, the elimination of records and their replacement with chaos? Busi-
nesses could not operate without precise financial records of their transac-
tions, and denied those, they simply stopped. Rebuilding them would require
weeks or months, Matsuda was sure, during which time the paralysis would
allow Japan-more precisely, his fellow zaibatsu-to cash in, in addition to
the brilliant strategic moves Yamata had executed through their government
agencies. The integrated nature of the plan was the reason why all his fel-
lows had signed on to it.
“It really doesn’t matter, Kozo. We took Europe down, too, and the only
liquidity left in the world is ours.”
“Good one, Boss,” Ryan said, leaning on the doorframe.
“A long way to go,” Durling said, leaving his chair and heading out of
the Oval Office before saying anything more. The President and National
Security Advisor headed into the White House proper, past the technicians
who alone had been allowed in. It wasn’t time to face reporters yet.
‘ ‘It’s amazing how philosophical it is,” Jack said as they took the elevator
to the residential floor.
“Metaphysics, eh? You did go to a Jesuit school, didn’t you?”
“Three, actually. What is reality?” Jack asked rhetorically. “Reality to
them is electrons and computer screens, and if there’s one thing I learned on
the Street, it’s that they don’t know investments worth a damn. Except
Yamata, I suppose.”
“Well, he did all right, didn’t he?” Durling asked.
“He should have left the records alone. If he’d left us in free-fall . . .”
Ryan shrugged. “It might just have kept going. It just never occurred to him
that we might not play by his rules.” And that, Jack told himself, would be
the key to everything. The President’s speech had been a fine mix of things
said and unsaid, and the targeting of the speech had been precise. It had
been, in fact, the first PsyOp of a war.
“The press can’t stay dumb forever.”
“I know.” Ryan even knew where the leak would start, and the only rea-
son it hadn’t happened already was the FBI. “But we need to keep them
dumb just a little longer.”
It started cautiously, not really as part of any operational plan at all, but more