preciated the irony in the fact that Gant had it almost exactly right. He
himself could hardly have done it better. “Bottom line, it’s a major hiccup,
but no more than that.”
“Europe?” Ryan asked.
“It’ll be rougher over there because they’re not as well organized, but
their central banks have somewhat more power,” Gant said. “Their govern-
ments can also interfere more in the marketplace. That’s both a help and a
hurt. But the end result is going to be the same. It has to be, unless everyone
signs on to the same suicide pact. People in our business don’t do that.”
Fiedler’s turn: “How do we sell it?”
‘ ‘We get the heads of the major institutions together just as fast as we
can,” Winston replied. “I can help if you want. They listen to me, too.”
“Jack?” the President asked with a turn of the head.
“Yes, sir. And we do it right away.”
Roger Durling gave it a few more seconds of thought before turning to the
Secret Service agent next to his desk. “Tell the Marines to get my chopper
over here. Tell the Air Force to get something warmed up for New York.”
Winston demurred. “Mr. President, I have my own.”
Ryan took that one. “George, the Air Force guys are better. Trust me.”
Durling rose and shook hands all around before the Secret Service agents
conducted the others downstairs and out onto the South Lawn to await the
helicopter flight to Andrews. Ryan stayed put.
“Will it really work? Can we really fix it that easily?” The politician in
Roger Durling distrusted magic fixes to anything. Ryan saw the doubts and
framed his answer appropriately.
“It ought to. They need something up there, and they will surely want it to
work. The crucial element is that they have to know that the takedown was a
deliberate act. That makes it artificial, and if they believe that it was artifi-
cial, then it’s easier for everyone to accept an irregular fix to it.”
“I guess we’ll see.” Durling paused. “Now what does that tell us about
Japan?”
‘ ‘It tells us that their government isn’t the prime moving force behind this.
That’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the effort will be
poorly organized at some levels, that the Japanese people are disconnected
from the effort, and that there may be elements in their government very
uncomfortable with the undertaking.”
“The bad news?” the President asked.
“We still don’t know what their overall objective is. The government is
evidently doing what it’s told. It has a solid strategic position in WestPac,
and we still don’t know what to do about it. Most important of all-”
“The nukes.” Durling nodded. “That’s their trump. We’ve never been at
war against someone with nuclear arms, have we?”
“No, sir. That’s a new one, too.”
The next transmission from Clark and Chavez went out just after midnight
Tokyo time. This time Ding had drafted the article. John had run out of inter-
esting things to say about Japan. Chavez, being younger, did an article that
was lighter, about young people and their attitudes. It was |iisi il«- < met. (nilyou have to work hard on those, and Ding, it turned nui. had K ,tm. .1 |M>» in
write coherently at George Mason University.
“Northern Resource Area?” John asked, typing the i|iiesiiuii mi ilx < mnputer screen. Then he turned the machine on the codec i.ihle/ should have seen it sooner. It's in one of the houk\ t>
Indonesia, belonged to the Dutch back then, wan tin- Snuiheni Hi I,.M»,C
Area when they kicked off Big Mistake No. 2. Can- to i;m-\\ »li,n tin \,»ih
ern one was?
Clark just took one look and pushed the computer hack \ <-v $.i*i»\ l'a»lovich, go ahead and send it." Ding erased the dialog mi tin- M !«•«•« amihooked up the modem to the phone. The dispatch went uui M.
18:08 in Moscow and 10:08 both at Langley and in the White lluuu-, HIM!
Jack was just reentering his office after his time at the opposite I.MIM-I ••( thr
West Wing when his STU-6 started warbling.
“Yeah.”
“Ed here. We just got something important from our (H-ople in «<>unii>
The fax is coming over now. A copy’s on the way to Sergcy. too
“Okay, standing by.” Ryan flipped the proper switch and he .ml ilw la*
simile printer start to turn out its copy.
Winston wasn’t all that easy a man to impress. The VC-2<> version <>l ihr
Gulfstream-III business jet, he saw, was as nicely appointed as Ins |H-I»OHU|
aircraft-the seats and carpet were not as plush, but the commuim iiimnn
gear was fabulous . . . even enough to make a real techno-wceme like Mark
happy, he thought. The two older men took the chance to catch up mi *lccp
while he observed the Air Force crewmen run through their pix-fli^ht i hei k
list. It really wasn’t at all different from what his crewmen did, hul K van luul
been right. It somehow made a difference to see military-type insignia <»ntheir shoulders. Three minutes later the executive jet was airborne and licmling north for New York's La Guardia, with the added benefit thai they already had a priority approach setup, which would save fifteen minutes til thetop end of the trip. As he listened, the sergeant working the communicationsbay was arranging an FBI car to meet them at the general-aviation terminal,and evidently the Bureau was now calling everyone who mattered in themarkets for a meeting at their own New York headquarters. How remark-able, he thought, to see the government acting in an efficient manner. What apity they couldn't do that all the time.Mark Gant was not paying attention to any of that. He was working on hiscomputer, preparing what he called the case for the prosecution. He'd needabout twenty minutes to get the exhibits printed up on acetate sheets for anoverhead projector, something the FBI ought to be prepared for, they bothhoped. From that point on ... who would deliver the information? Probablyme, Winston thought. He'd let Fiedler and the Fed Chairman propose thesolution, and that was fair. After all, a government guy had come up with it.Brilliant, George Winston told himself with an admiring chuckle. Whydidn't I think of that? What else ...?"Mark, make a note. We'll want to fly the European central-bank boysover here to see this. I don't think doing it over a teleconference line willreally cut it."Gant checked his watch.' 'We'll have to call right after we get in, George,but if we do the timing ought to work out okay. The evening flights into NewYork-yeah, they'll get in in the morning, and probably we can coordinateeverything for a Friday restart."Winston looked aft. "We'll tell them when we get in. I think they need tocatch some Z's for right now."Gant nodded agreement. "It's going to work, George. That Ryan guy ispretty smart, isn't he?"Now was a time to take it slow, Jack told himself. He was almost surprisedthat his phone hadn't rung yet, but on reflection he realized that Golovkowas reading the same report, was looking at the same map on his wall, andwas also telling himself to think it through as slowly and carefully as circum-stances allowed.It was starting to make sense. Well, almost. ' 'Northern Resource Area''had to mean Eastern Siberia. The term "Southern Resource Area," asChavez had stated in his report, had once been the term used by the Japanesegovernment in 1941 to identify the Dutch East Indies, back when their primestrategic objective had been oil, then the principal resource needed for anavy and now the most important resource for any industrialized nationneeding power to run its economy. Japan was the world's largest importer ofoil despite an earnest effort to switch over to nuclear power for electricity.And Japan had to import so much else; only coal was in natural abundance.Supertankers were largely a Japanese invention, the more efficiently tomove oil from the Persian Gulf fields to Japanese terminals. But they neededother things, too, and since she was an island nation, those commodities allhad to come by sea, and Japan's navy was small, far too small to secure thesea-lanes.On the other hand, Eastern Siberia was the world's last unsurveyed terri-tory, and Japan was now conducting the survey, and the sea-lanes from theEurasian mainland to Japan-Hell, why not just build a railroad tunnel anddo it the easy way? Ryan asked himself.