external energy so well. Screeching through the atmosphere at 27,000 kilo-
meters per hour, air friction would have destroyed most materials, but not
this one, at least not in the few seconds it took, and at the end of the process,
the material would form part of the bomb itself. Elegant, the engineers
thought, using that most favored of words in their profession, and that made
it worth the time and the trouble. When each body was complete, each was
loaded onto a dolly and rolled off to the storage room. Only three remained
to be worked on. This part of the project was two weeks behind schedule,
much to everyone’s chagrin.
RV Body #8 began the first machining process. If the bomb was deto-
nated, the uranium-238 from which it was made would also create most of
the fallout. Well, that was physics.
It was just another accident, perhaps occasioned by the early hour. Ryan ar-
rived at the White House just after seven, about twenty minutes earlier than
usual because traffic on U.S. Route 50 happened to be uncommonly smooth
all the way in. As a result, he hadn’t had time to read through all his early
briefing documents, which he bundled under his arm at the west entrance.
National Security Advisor or not, Jack still had to pass through the metal
detector, and it was there that he bumped into somebody’s back. The some-
body in question was handing his service pistol to a uniformed Secret Ser-
vice agent.
“You guys still don’t trust the Bureau, eh?” a familiar voice asked the
plainclothes supervisory agent.
“Especially the Bureau!” was the good-humored retort.
“And I don’t blame them a bit,” Ryan added. “Check his ankle, too,
Mike.”
Murray turned after passing through the magnetic portal. “I don’t need
the backup piece anymore.” The Deputy Assistant Director pointed to the
papers under Jack’s arm. “Is that any way to treat classified documents?”
Murray’s humor was automatic. It was just the man’s nature to needle an
old friend. Then Ryan saw that the Attorney General had just passed through
as well, and was looking back in some annoyance. Why was a cabinet mem-
ber here so early? If it were a national-security matter, Ryan would have
known, and criminal affairs were rarely so important as to get the President
into his office before the accustomed eight o’clock. And why was Murray
accompanying him? Helen D’Agustino was waiting beyond to provide per-
sonal escort through the upstairs corridors. Everything about the accidental
confrontation lit off Ryan’s curiosity.
“The Boss is waiting,” Murray said guardedly, reading the look in Jack’s
eyes.
“Could you stop by on the way out? I’ve been meaning to call you about
something.”
“Sure.” And Murray walked off without even a friendly inquiry about
Cathy and the kids.
Ryan passed through the detector, turned left, and headed up the stairs to
his corner office for his morning briefs. They went quickly, and Ryan was
settling into his morning routine when his secretary admitted Murray to his
office. There was no point in beating around the bush.
‘ ‘A little early for the A.G. to show up, Dan. Anything I need to know’.’
Murray shook his head. “Not yet, sorry.”
“Okay,” Ryan replied, shifting gears smoothly. “Is it something I ouj>lu
to know?”
“Probably, but the Boss wants it on close-hold, and it doesn’t have na-
tional-security implications. What did you want to see me about?”
Ryan took a second or two before answering, his mind going at its accus-
tomed speed in such a case. Then he set it aside. He knew that he could trust
Murray’s word. Most of the time.
“This is code-word stuff,” Jack began, then elaborated on what he’d
learned from Mary Pat the day before. The FBI agent nodded and listened
with a neutral expression.
“It’s not exactly new, Jack. Last few years we’ve been taking a quiet look
at indications that young ladies have been-enticed? Hard to phrase this
properly. Modeling contracts, that sort of thing. Whoever does the recruiting
is very careful. Young women head over there to model, do commercials,
that sort of thing, goes on all the time. Some got their American careers
started over there. None of the checks we’ve run have turned up anything,
but there are indications that some girls have disappeared. One in particular,
as a matter of fact, she fits your man’s description. Kimberly something, I
don’t recall the last name. Her father is a captain in the Seattle police depart-
ment, and his next-door neighbor is SAC of our Seattle office. We’ve gone
through our contacts in the Japanese police agencies, quietly. No luck.”
‘ ‘What does your gut tell you?” Ryan asked.
“Look, Jack, people disappear all the time. Lots of young girls just pack
up and leave home to make their way in the world. Call it part feminism, part
just wanting to become an independent human being. It happens all the time.
This Kimberly-something is twenty, wasn’t doing well at school, and just
disappeared. There’s no evidence to suggest kidnapping, and at twenty
you’re a free citizen, okay? We have no right to launch a criminal investiga-
tion. All right, so her dad’s a cop, and his neighbor is Bureau, and so we’ve
sniffed around a little. But we haven’t turned up anything at all, and that’s as
far as we can take it without something to indicate that a statute may have
been violated. There are no such indicators.”
“You mean, a girl over eighteen disappears and you can’t-”
“Without evidence of a crime, no, we can’t. We don’t have the manpower
lo (rack down every person who decides to make his or her own future with-
out Idling Mom and Dad about it.”
“You didn’t answer my initial question, Dan,” Jack observed to his
guest’s discomfort.
“There are people over there who like their women with fair hair and
round eyes. There’s a disproportionate number of missing girls who’re
blonde. We had trouble figuring that out at first until an agent started asking
Ihcir friends if they maybe had their hair color changed recently. Sure
•nough, the answer was yes, and then she started asking the question regu-
Iwly. A ‘yes’ happened in enough cases that it’s just unusual. So, yes, I think
•omething may be happening, but we don’t have enough to move on,” Mur-
ray concluded. After a moment he added, “If this case in question has na-
lional-security implications . . . well…”
“What? “Jack asked.
“Let the Agency check around?”
That was a first for Ryan, hearing from an FBI official that the CIA could
Investigate something. The Bureau guarded its turf as ferociously as a
momma grizzly bear defended her cubs. ‘ ‘Keep going, Dan,” Ryan ordered.
“There’s a lively sex industry over there. If you look at the porn they like
10 watch, it’s largely American. The nude photos you see in their magazines
are mainly of Caucasian females. The nearest country with a supply of such
females happens to be us. Our suspicion is that some of these girls aren’t just
models, but, again, we haven’t been able to turn anything solid enough to
pursue it.” And the other problem, Murray didn’t add, was twofold. If some-
thing really were going on, he wasn’t sure how much cooperation he’d re-
ceive from local authorities, meaning that the girls might disappear forever.
If it were not, the nature of the investigation would be leaked and the entire
episode would appear in the press as another racist piece of Japan-bashing.
“Anyway, it sounds to me like the Agency has an op running over there. My
best advice: expand it some. If you want, I can brief some people in on what
we know. It isn’t much, but we do have some photographs.”
“How come you know so much?”
“SAC Seattle is Chuck O’Keefe. I worked under him once. He had me
talk to Bill Shaw about it, and Bill okayed a quiet look, but it didn’t lead
anywhere, and Chuck has enough to keep his division busy as it is.”
“I’ll talk to Mary Pat. And the other thing?”
“Sorry, pal, but you have to talk to the Boss about that.”
Goddamn it! Ryan thought as Murray walked out. Are there always se-
crets?
6
looking In, looking Out
In many ways operating in Japan was highly difficult. There was the racial
part of it, of course. Japan was not strictly speaking a homogeneous society;
the Ainu people were the original inhabitants of the islands but they mainly
lived on Hokkaido, the northernmost of the Home Islands. Still called an
aboriginal people, they were also quite isolated from mainstream Japanese
society in an explicitly racist way. Similarly Japan had an ethnic-Korean mi-
nority whose antecedents had been imported at the turn of the century as
cheap labor, much as America had brought in immigrants on both the Atlan-
tic and Pacific coasts. But unlike America, Japan denied citizenship rights to