Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

only thing that’s prevented that to this point is that financial reporters don’t

know crap about what they cover.”

“Otherwise they’d be working for us,” Gant said, rejoining the conversa-

tion. “Thank God their sources are keeping it zipped for the time being, but

I’m surprised it hasn’t broken out all the way yet.” Just maybe, he thought,

the media didn’t want to start a panic either.

Ryan’s phone rang and he went to answer it. “Buzz, it’s your conference

call.” The Secretary’s physical state was apparent when he rose. The man

wavered and grabbed the back of a chair to steady himself. The Chairman

was only a touch more agile, and if anything both men were yet more shaken

by what they had just learned. Fixing something that had broken was a suffi-

ciently difficult task. Fixing something deliberately and maliciously de-

stroyed could hardly be easier. And it had to be fixed, and soon, lest every

nation in Europe and North America join the plunge into a deep, dark can-

4«4

TOM CI.ANCY

yon. The climb out of it would require both years and pain, and that was

under the best of political circumstances-the long-term political ramifica-

tions of such a vast economic dislocation could not possibly be grasped at

this stage, though Ryan was already recoiling from that particular horror.

Winston looked at the National Security Advisor’s face, and it wasn’t

hard to read his thoughts. His own elation at the discovery was gone now

that he’d given the information over to others. There ought to have been

something else for him to say: how to fix matters. But all of his intellectual

energy had been expended in building his case for the prosecution, as it

were. He hadn’t had the chance yet to take his analysis any further.

Ryan saw that and nodded with a grim smile of respect. “Good job.”

“It’s my fault,” Winston said, quietly so as not to disturb the conference

call proceeding a few feet away. “I should have stayed in.”

“I’ve bailed out once myself, remember?” Ryan got back into a chair.

“Hey, we all need a change from time to time. You didn’t see this coming. It

happens all the time. Especially here.”

Winston gestured angrily. “I suppose. Now we can identify the rapist, but

how the hell do you get unraped? Once it’s happened, it’s happened. But

those were my investors he fucked. Those people came to me. Those people

trusted me.” Ryan admired the summation. That was how people in the

business were supposed to think.

“In other words, now what?”

Gant and Winston traded a look. “We haven’t figured that one out.”

“Well, so far you’ve outperformed the FBI and SEC. You know, I

haven’t even bothered checking how my portfolio did.”

‘ ‘Your ten percent of Silicon Alchemy won’t hurt you. Long term,” Win-

ston said, “new communications gadgets always make out, and they have a

couple of honeys.”

‘ ‘Okay, that’s settled for now.” Fiedler rejoined the group.’ ‘All the Euro-

pean markets are shut down, just like we are, until we can get things sorted

out.”

Winston looked up. “All that means is, there’s a hell of a flood, and

you’re building the levee higher and higher. And if you. run out of sandbags

before the river runs out of water, then the damage will only be worse when

you lose control.”

“We’re all open to suggestions, Mr. Winston,” Fiedler said gently.

George’s reply matched it in kind.

“Sir, for what it’s worth, I think you’ve done everything right to this

point. I just don’t see a way out.”

“Neither do we,” the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board observed.

Ryan stood. “For the moment, gentlemen, I think we need to brief the

President.”

1)1 HI 01 HONOR .»«s

“What an interesting idea,” Yamata said. Ho know lu-‘d h.ul l mm h in

drink. He knew that he was basking in the sheer satisfaction l uirtymp out

what had to be the most ambitious financial gambit in history. Ho know (hat

his ego was expanding to its fullest size since-when’.’ Hvon roachin^ llio

chairmanship of his conglomerate hadn’t been this .satisfactory. Ho’d

crushed a whole nation and had altered the course of his own, and yot ho had

never even considered public office of any kind. And why not? ho asked

himself. Because that had always been a place for lesser men.

“For the moment, Yamata-san, Saipan will have a local governor. Wo

will hold internationally supervised elections. We need a candidate,” the

Foreign Ministry official went on. “It must be someone of stature. It would

be helpful if it were a man known and friendly to Goto-san, and a man with

local interests. I merely ask that you consider it.”

“I will do that.” Yamata stood and headed for the door.

Well. He wondered what his father would have thought of that. It would

mean stepping down from chairmanship of his corporation . . . but-but

what? What corporate worlds had he failed to conquer? Was it not time to

move on? To retire honorably, to enter the formal service of his nation. After

the local government situation was cleared up … then? Then to enter the

Diet with great prestige, because the insiders would know, wouldn’t they?

Hai, they would know who had truly served the interests of the nation, who

more than the Emperor Meiji himself had brought Japan to the first rank of

nations. When had Japan ever had a political leader worthy of her place and

her people? Why should he not take the honor due him? It would all require

a few years, but he had those years. More than that, he had vision and the

courage to make it real. Only his peers in business knew of his greatness

now, but that could change, and his family name would be remembered for

more than building ships and televisions and all the other things. Not a trade-

mark. A name. A heritage. Would that not make his father proud?

“Yamata?” Roger Durling asked. “Tycoon, right, runs a huge company? I

may have bumped into him at some reception or other when I was Vice Pres-

ident.”

“Well, that’s the guy,” Winston said.

“So what are you saying he did?” the President asked.

Mark Gant set up his computer on the President’s desk, this time with a

Secret Service agent immediately behind him and watching every move, and

this time he took it slow because Roger Durling, unlike Ryan, Fiedler, and

the Fed Chairman, didn’t really understand all the ins and outs. He did prove

to be an attentive audience, however, stopping the presentation to ask ques-

tions, making a few notes, and three times asking for a repeat of a segment of

the presentation. Finally he looked over to the Secretary of the Treasury.

“Buzz?”

“I want our people to verify the information independently-”

“That won’t be hard,” Winston told them. “Any one of the big houses

will have records almost identical to this. My people can help organize it for

you.”

“If it’s true, Buzz?”

“Then, Mr. President, this situation comes more under Dr. Ryan’s pur

view than mine,” SecTreas replied evenly. His relief was tempered witli

anger at the magnitude of what had been done. The two outsiders in the Oval

Office didn’t yet understand that.

Ryan’s mind was racing. He’d ignored Gant’s repeated explanation of the

“how” of the event. Though the presentation to the President was clearer

and more detailed than the first two times-the man would have made a fine

instructor at a business school-the important parts were already fixed in the

National Security Advisor’s mind. Now he had the how, and the how told

him a lot. This plan had been exquisitely planned and executed. The timing

of the Wall Street takedown and the carrier/submarine attack had not been an

accident. It was therefore a fully integrated plan. Yet it was also a plan which

the Russian spy network had not uncovered, and that was the fact that kept

repeating itself to him.

Their existing net is inside the Japanese government. It is probably con-

centrated on their security apparatus. But that net failed to give them strate-

gic warning for the military side of the operation, and Sergey Nikolay’ch

hasn’t connected Wall Street with the naval action yet.

Break the model, Jack, he told himself. Break the paradigm. That’s when

it became clearer.

“That’s why they didn’t get it,” Ryan said almost to himself. It was like

driving through patches of fog; you got into a clear spot followed by another

clouded one. “It wasn’t really their government at all. It really was Yamata

and the others. That’s why they want THISTLE back.” Nobody else in the

room knew what he was talking about.

“What’s that?” the President asked. Jack turned his eyes to Winston and

Gant, then shook his head. Durling nodded and went on. “So the whole

event was one big plan?”