Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

The President cocked his head to the side. “What?”

Jack smiled a little. “That’s something my wife likes to say about medi-

cine. You have to know the things you don’t know. You have to figure out

what the questions are before you can start looking for answers.”

“How do we do that?”

“Mary Pat has people out asking questions. We go over all the data we

have. We try to infer things from what we know, look for connections. You

can tell a lot from what the other guy is trying to do and how he’s going

about it. My biggest one now, why did they kill the two subs?” Ryan looked

past the President, out the window to the Washington Monument, that fixed,

firm obelisk of white marble.’ ‘They did it in a way that they think will allow

us a way out. We can claim it was a collision or something-”

“Do they really expect that we’ll just accept the deaths and-”

“They offered us the chance. Maybe they don’t expect it, but it’s a possi-

bility.” Ryan was quiet for perhaps thirty seconds. “No. No, they couldn’t

misread us that badly.”

“Keep thinking out loud,” Durling commanded.

“We’ve cut our fleet too far back-”

”I don’t need to hear that now,” was the answer, an edge on it.

Ryan nodded and held a hand up. ‘ ‘Too late to worry why or how, I know

that. But the important thing is, they know it, too. Everybody knows what we

have and don’t have, and with the right kind of knowledge and training, you

can infer what we can do. Then you structure your opci.ilions on a romhmu

lion of what you can do, and what he can do about it.”

“Makes sense. Okay, go on.”

“With the demise of the Russian threat, the submarine lone is essentially

out of business. That’s because a submarine is only good lor two limits,

really. Tactically, submarines are good for killing other suhs. But siraiogi

cally, submarines are limited. They cannot control the sea in the same way as

surface ships do. They can’t project power. They can’t ferry troops or goods

from one place to another, and that’s what sea control really means.” Jack

snapped his fingers. “But they can deny the sea to others, and Japan is an

island-nation. So they’re afraid of sea-denial.” Or, Jack added in his own

mind, maybe they just did what they could do. They crippled the carriers

because they could not easily do more. Or could they? Damn, it was still too

complicated.

“So we could strangle them with submarines?” Durling asked.

“Maybe. We did it once before. We’re down to just a few, though, and

that makes their countersub task a lot easier. But their ultimate trump against

such a move on our part is their nuclear capacity. They counter a strategic

threat to them with a strategic threat to us, a dimension they didn’t have in

1941. There’s something missing, sir.” Ryan shook his head, still looking at

the monument through the thick, bullet-resistant windows. “There’s some-

thing big we don’t know.”

“The why?”

‘ ‘The why may be it. First I want to know the what. What do they want?

What is their end-game objective?”

“Not why they’re doing it?”

Ryan turned his head back to meet the President’s eyes. “Sir, the decision

to start a war is almost never rational. World War One, kicked off by some

fool killing some other fool, events were skillfully manipulated by Leopold

something-or-other, ‘Poldi,’ they called him, the Austrian Foreign Minister.

Skilled manipulator, but he didn’t factor in the simple fact that his country

lacked the power to achieve what he wanted. Germany and Austria-Hungary

started the war. They both lost. World War Two, Japan and Germany took

on the whole world, never occurred to them that the rest of the world might

be stronger. Particularly true of Japan.” Ryan went on. “They never really

had a plan to defeat us. Hold on that for a moment. The Civil War, started by

the South. The South lost. The Franco-Prussian War, started by France.

France lost. Almost every war since the Industrial Revolution was initiated

by the side which ultimately lost. Q.E.D., going to war is not a rational act.

Therefore, the thinking behind it, the why isn’t necessarily important, be-

cause it is probably erroneous to begin with.”

‘ ‘I never thought of that, Jack.”

Ryan shrugged. “Some things are too obvious, like Buzz Fiedler said ear-

lier today.”

“But if the why is not important, then the what isn’t either, is it?”

“Yes, it is, because if you can discern the objective, if you can figure out

what they want, then you can deny it to them. That’s how you start to defeat

an enemy. And, you know, the other guy gets so interested in what he wants,

so fixed on how important it is, that he starts forgetting that somebody else

might try to keep him from getting it.”

“Like a criminal thinking about hitting a liquor store?” Durling asked,

both amused and impressed by Ryan’s discourse.

“War is the ultimate criminal act, an armed robbery writ large. And it’s

always about greed. It’s always a nation that wants something another nation

has. And you defeat that nation by recognizing what it wants and denying it

to them. The seeds of their defeat are usually found in the seeds of their

desire.”

“Japan, World War Two?”

“They wanted a real empire. Essentially they wanted exactly what the

Brits had. They just started a century or two too late. They never planned to

defeat us, merely to-” He stopped suddenly, an idea forming. “Merely to

achieve their goals and force us to acquiesce. Jesus,” Ryan breathed.

“That’s it! It’s the same thing all over again. The same methodology. The

same objective?” he wondered aloud.

It’s there, the National Security Advisor told himself. It’s all right there.

If you can find it. If you can find it all.

‘ ‘But we have a first objective of our own,” the President pointed out.

“I know.”

George Winston supposed that, like an old fire horse, he had to respond to

the bells. His wife and children still in Colorado, he was over Ohio now,

sitting in the back of his Gulfstream, looking down at the crab-shape of city

lights. Probably Cincinnati, though he hadn’t asked the drivers about their

route into Newark.

His motivation was partially personal. His own fortune had suffered badly

in the events of the previous Friday, drawn down by hundreds of millions.

The nature of the event, and the way his money was spread around various

institutions, had guaranteed a huge loss, since he’d been vulnerable to every

variety of programmed trading system. But it wasn’t about money. Okay, he

told himself, so I lost two hundred mill’. I have lots more where that came

from. It was the damage to the entire system, and above all the damage done

to the Columbus Group. His baby had taken a huge hit, and like a father

returning to the side of his married daughter in time of crisis, he knew that it

would always be his. / should have been there, Winston told himself. / could

have seen it and stopped it. At least I could have protected my investors. The

full effects weren’t in yet, but it was so bad as to be almost beyond compre-

hension. Winston had to do something, had to offer his expertise and coun-

sel. Those investors were still his people.

It was an easy ride into Newark. The Gulfstream touched down smoothly

and taxied off to the general-aviation terminal, where a car was waiting, and

one of his senior former employees. He wasn’t wearing a tie, which was

unusual for the Wharton School graduate.

Mark Gant hadn’t slept in fifty hours, and he leaned against the car for

stability because the very earth seemed to move under him, to the accom-

paniment of a headache best measured on the Richter Scale. For all that, he

was glad to be here. If anyone could figure this mess out, it was his former

boss. As soon as the private jet stopped, he walked over to stand at the foot

of the stairs.

“How bad?” was the first thing George Winston said. There was warmth

between the two men, but business came first.

“We don’t know yet,” Gant replied, leading him to the car.

“Don’t know?” The explanation had to wait until they got inside. Gant

handed over the first section of the Times without comment.

“Is this for real?” A speed-reader, Winston scanned across the opening

two columns, turning back to page 21 to finish a story framed by lingerie

ads.

Gant’s next revelation was that the manager Raizo Yamata had left behind

was gone. “He flew back to Japan Friday night. He said to urge Yamata-san

to come to New York to help stabilize the situation. Or maybe he wanted to