Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

because they knew they’d make Pearl early, and were no doubt relieved dial

whatever danger they feared was diminishing. They were pu//led Ixvause

they didn’t understand what was going on. They were angry because then

ship had been injured, and by now they had to know that two submarines had

been lost, and though the powers-that-were had worked to conceal the nature

of the losses, ships do not keep secrets well. Radiomen took them down, and

yeomen delivered them, and stewards overheard what officers said. Jolninic

Reh had nearly six thousand people aboard, and the facts, as reported, some-

times got lost amid the rumors, but sooner or later the truth got out. The

result would be predictable: rage. It was part of the profession of arms. How-

ever much the carrier sailors might disparage the bubbleheads on the beach,

however great the rivalry, they were brothers (and, now, sisters), comrades

to whom loyalty was owed.

But owed how? What would their orders be? Repeated inquiries to CINC-

PAC had gone unanswered. Mike Dubro’s Carrier Group Three had not

been ordered to make a speed-run back to WestPac, and that made no sense

at all. Was this a war or not? Sanchez asked the sunset.

“So how did you learn this?” Mogataru Koga asked. Unusually, the former

prime minister was dressed in a traditional kimono, now that he was a man

of leisure for the first time in thirty years. But he’d taken the call and ex-

tended the invitation quickly enough, and listened with intense silence for

ten minutes.

Kimura looked down. “I have many contacts, Koga-san. In my post I

must.”

“As do I. Why have I not been told?”

“Even within the government, the knowledge has been closely held.”

“You are not telling me everything.” Kimura wondered how Koga could

know that, without realizing that a look in the mirror would suffice. All af-

ternoon at his desk, pretending to work, he’d just looked down at the papers

in front of him, and now he could not remember a single document. Just the

questions. What to do? Whom to tell? Where to go for guidance?

‘ ‘I have sources of information that I may not reveal, Koga-san.” For the

moment his host accepted that with a nod.

“So you tell me that we have attacked America, and that we have con-

structed nuclear weapons?”

A nod. “Hai.”

“I knew Goto was a fool, but I didn’t think him a madman.” Koga con-

sidered his own words for a moment. ‘ ‘No, he lacks the imagination to be a

madman. He’s always been Yamata’s dog, hasn’t he?”

“Raizo Yamata has always been his … his-”

“Patron?” Koga asked caustically. “That’s the polite term for it.” Then

he snorted and looked away, and his anger now had a new target. Exactly

what you tried to stop. But you failed to do it, didn’t you?

“Koga often seeks his counsel, yes.”

“So. Now what?” he asked a man clearly out of his depth. The answer

was entirely predictable.

‘ ‘I do not know. This matter is beyond me. I am a bureaucrat. I do not

make policy. I am afraid for us now, and I don’t know what to do.”

Koga managed an ironic smile and poured some more tea for his guest.

“You could well say the same of me, Kimura-san. But you still have not

answered a question for me. I, too, have contacts remaining. I knew of the

actions taken against the American Navy last week, after they happened. But

I have not heard about the nuclear weapons.” Just speaking those two words

gave the room a chill for both men, and Kimura marveled that the politician

could continue to speak evenly.

“Our ambassador in Washington told the Americans, and a friend at the

Foreign Ministry-”

“I too have friends at the Foreign Ministry,” Koga said, sipping his tea.

“I cannot say more.”

The question was surprisingly gentle. “Have you been speaking with

Americans?”

Kimura shook his head. “No.”

The day usually started at six, but that didn’t make it easy, Jack thought. Paul

Robberton had gotten the papers and started the coffee, Andrea Price turned

to also, helping Cathy with the kids. Ryan wondered about that until he saw

an additional car parked in the driveway. So the Secret Service thought it

was a war. His next step was to call the office, and a minute later his STU-6

started printing the morning faxes. The first item was unclassified but impor-

tant. The Europeans were trying to dump U.S. T-Bills, and nobody was buy-

ing them, still. One such day could be seen as an aberration. Not a second

one. Buzz Fiedler and the Fed Chairman would be busy again, and the trader

in Ryan worried. It was like the Dutch kid with his thumb in the dike. What

happened when he spotted another leak? And even if he could reach it, what

about the third?

News from the Pacific was unchanged, but getting more texture. John

Stennis would make Pearl Harbor early, but Enterprise was going to take

longer than expected. No evidence of Japanese pursuit. Good. The nuke hunt

was under way, but without results, which wasn’t surprising. Ryan had never

been to Japan, a failing he regretted. His only current knowledge was from

overhead photographs. In winter months when the skies over the country

were unusually clear, the National Reconnaissance Office had actually used

Ihc country (and others) to calibrate its orbiting cameras, and In- u-im-mlx-ioil

Ihc elegance of the formal gardens. His other knowledge of tin- roundv was

from the historical record. But how valid was that knowledge now’.’ History

and economics made strange bedfellows, didn’t they?

The usual kisses sent Cathy and the kids on their way, and soon enough

Jack was in his official car for Washington. The sole consolation was that it

was shorter than the former trip to Langley.

“You should be rested, at least,” Robberton observed. He would never

have talked so much to a political appointee, but somehow he felt far more at

case with this guy. There was no pomposity in Ryan.

“I suppose. The problems are still there.”

“Wall Street still number one?”

“Yeah.” Ryan looked at the passing countryside after locking the classi-

fied documents away. ‘ ‘I’m just starting to realize, this could take the whole

world down. The Europeans are trying to sell off their treasuries. Nobody’s

buying. The market panic might be starting there today. Our liquidity is

locked up, and a lot of theirs is in our T-Bills.”

“Liquidity means cash, right?” Robberton changed lanes and speeded

up. His license plate told the state cops to leave him alone.

“Correct. Nice thing, cash. Good thing to have when you get nervous-

and not being able to get it, that makes people nervous.”

“You like talking 1929, Dr. Ryan? I mean, that bad?”

Jack looked over at his bodyguard. ‘ ‘Possibly. Unless they can untangle

the records in New York-it’s like having your hands tied in a fight, like

being at a card table with no money, if you can’t play, you just stand there.

Damn.” Ryan shook his head. “It’s just never happened before, and traders

don’t much like that either.”

“How can people so smart get so panicked?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did anybody take away? Nobody blew up the mint”-he

snorted-‘ ‘it would have been our case!”

Ryan managed a smile. “You want the whole lecture?”

Paul’s hands gestured on the wheel. “My degree’s in psychology, not ec-

onomics.” The response surprised him.

“Perfect. That makes it easy.”

The same worry occupied Europe. Just short of noon, a conference call for

the central bankers of Germany, Britain, and France resulted in little more

than multilingual confusion over what to do. The past years of rebuilding the

countries of Eastern Europe had placed an enormous strain on the economies

of the countries of Western Europe, who were in essence paying the bill for

two generations of economic chaos. To hedge against the resulting weakness

of their own currencies, they’d bought dollars and American T-Bills. The

stunning events in America had occasioned a day of minor activity, all of it

down but nothing terribly drastic. That had all changed, however, after the

last buyer had purchased the last discounted lot of American Treasuries-for

some the numbers were just too good-with money taken from the liquida-

tion of equities. That buyer already thought it had been a mistake and cursed

himself for again riding the back of a trend instead of the front. At 10:30 A.M.

local time, the Paris market started a precipitous slide, and inside of an hour,

European economic commentators were talking about a domino effect, as

the same thing happened in every market in every financial center. It was

also noted that the central banks were trying the same thing that the Ameri-

can Fed had attempted the previous day. It wasn’t that it had been a bad idea.