Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

suda’s real-estate holdings both in Japan and America, and that the failure of

lh.il conglomerate would reduce his reserves to dangerous levels. The prob-

lem was that even though he could survive the corporate failure in both real

uiul theoretical terms, it required only the perception that his reserves were

weaker than they actually were to bring his institution down, and that idea

could appear in a newspaper merely through the misunderstanding of a sin-

gle reporter. The consequences of such a misguided report, or rumor, could

begin a run on the bank, and make real what was not. Certainly the money

withdrawn would then be deposited elsewhere-there was too much to go

under mattresses, after all-in which case it would be lent back by a fellow

corporate banker to safeguard his colleague’s position, but a second-order

crisis, which was quite possible, could bring everything crashing down.

What went unsaid, and for that matter largely unthought, was that the men

in this room had brought the crisis upon themselves through ill-considered

dealings. It was a crucial blindspot that all shared-or nearly all, Yamata

told himself.

“The basic problem is that our country’s economic foundation rests not

on rock, but on sand,” Yamata began, speaking rather like a philosopher.

” As weak and foolish as the Americans are, fortune has given them things

which we lack. As a result, however clever our people are, we are always at

u disadvantage.” He had said all of this before, but now, for the first time,

they were listening, and it required all of his self-control not to gloat. Rather

he dialed back his level of rhetoric even more than he had in previous dis-

courses. He looked over to one of them, who had always disagreed with him

before.

“Remember what you said, that our real strengths are the diligence of our

workers and the skill of our designers? That was true, my friend. These are

strengths, and more than that, they are strengths that the Americans do not

have in the abundance which we enjoy, but because fortune has for reasons

of her own smiled on the gaijin, they can checkmate our advantages because

they have converted their good fortune into real power, and power is some-

thing we lack.” Yamata paused, reading his audience once more, watching

their eyes and gauging the impassivity there. Even for one born of this cul-

ture and reared in its rules, he had to take his gamble now. This was the

moment. He was sure of it. “But, really, that is not entirely the case either.

They chose to take that path, while we have chosen not to. And so, now, we

must pay the price for that misjudgment. Except for one thing.”

“And what is that?” one asked for all the others.

“Now, my friends, fortune smiles on us, and the path to real national

greatness is open to us. In our adversity we may, if we choose, find oppor-

tunities.”

Yamata told himself that he had waited fifteen years for this moment.

Then he considered the thought, watching and waiting for a response, and

realized that he’d really waited a lifetime for it, since the age of ten, when in

February 1944, he alone of his family had boarded the ship that would take

him from Saipan to the Home Islands. He could still remember standing at

the rail, seeing his mother and father and younger siblings standing there on

the dock, Raizo being very brave and managing to hold back his tears, know-

ing as a child knows that he would see them again, but also knowing that he

would not.

They’d killed them all, the Americans, erased his family from the face of

the earth, encouraged them to cast their lives away, off the cliffs and into the

greedy sea, because Japanese citizens, in uniform or out, were just animals

to the Americans. Yamata could remember listening to the radio accounts of

the battle, how the “Wild Eagles” of the KidoButai had smashed the Amer-

ican fleet, how the Emperor’s invincible soldiers had cast the hated Ameri-

can Marines back into the sea, how they had later slaughtered them in vast

numbers in the mountains of the island claimed from the Germans after the

r’irst World War, and even then he’d known the futility of having to pretend

to believe lies, for lies they had to be, despite the comforting words of his

uncle. And soon the radio reports had gone on to other things, the victorious

bailies over the Americans that crept ever closer to home, the uncom-

prehending rage he’d known when his vast and powerful country had found

herself unable to stop the barbarians, the terror of the bombing, first by day

and then by night, burning his country to the ground one city at a time. The

orange glow in the night sky, sometimes near, sometimes far, and the lies of

his uncle, trying to explain it, and last of all the relief he’d seen on the man’s

face when all was over. Except that it had never been relief for Raizo

Yamata, not with his family gone, vanished from the face of the earth, and

even when he’d seen his first American, a hugely tall figure with red hair and

freckles on his milky skin who’d clipped him on the head in the friendly way

one might do for a dog, even then he’d known what the enemy looked like.

It wasn’t Matsuda who spoke in reply. It couldn’t be. It had to be another,

one whose corporation was still immensely strong, or apparently so. It also

had to be one who had never agreed with him. The rule was as important as it

was unspoken, and though eyes didn’t turn, thoughts did. The man looked

down at his half-empty cup of tea-this was not a night for alcohol-and

pondered his own fate. He spoke without looking up, because he was afraid

to see the identical look in the eyes arrayed around the black lacquer table.

“How, Yamata-san, would we achieve that which you propose?”

“No shit?” Chavez asked. He spoke in Russian, for you were not supposed

to speak English here at Monterey, and he hadn’t learned that colloquialism

in Japanese yet.

‘ ‘Fourteen agents,” Major Oleg Yurievich Lyalin, KGB (retired), replied,

as matter-of-factly as his ego allowed.

“And they never reactivated your net?” Clark asked, wanting to roll his

eyes.

“They couldn’t.” Lyalin smiled and tapped the side of his head. “Tms-

li i was my creation. It turned out to be my life insurance.”

Ni> shit, Clark almost said. That Ryan had gotten him out alive was some-

where lo the right of a miracle. Lyalin had been tried for treason with the

normal KGB attention to a speedy trial, had been in a death cell, and known

the routine as exactly as any man could. Told that his execution date was a

week hence, he’d been marched to the prison commandant’s office, in-

formed of his right as a Soviet citizen to appeal directly to the President for

executive clemency, and invited to draft a handwritten letter to that end. The

less sophisticated might have thought the gesture to be genuine. Lyalin had

known otherwise. Designed to make the execution easier, after the letter was

sealed, he would be led back to his cell, and the executioner would leap from

un open door to his right, place a pistol right next to his head and fire. As a

result it was not overly surprising that his hand had shaken while holding the

ballpoint pen, and that his legs were rubbery as he was led out. The entire

ritual had been carried out, and Oleg Yurievich remembered his amazement

on actually reaching his basement cell again, there to be told to gather up

what belongings he had and to follow a guard, even more amazingly back to

Ihe commandant’s office, there to meet someone who could only have been

an American citizen, with his smile and his tailored clothes, unaware of

KGB’s wry valedictory to its traitorous officer.

“I would’ve pissed my pants,” Ding observed, shuddering at the end of

the story.

“I was lucky there,” Lyalin admitted with a smile. “I’d urinated right

before they took me up. My family was waiting for me at Sheremetyevo. It

was one of the last PanAm flights.”

“Hit the booze pretty hard on the way over?” Clark asked with a smile.

‘ ‘Oh, yes,” Oleg assured him, not adding how he’d shaken and then vom-

ited on the lengthy flight to New York’s JFK International Airport, and had

insisted on a taxi ride through New York to be sure that the impossible vi-

sion of freedom was real.

Chavez refilled his mentor’s glass. Lyalin was trying to work his way off

hard liquor, and contented himself with Coors Light. “I’ve been in a few

tight places, tovarich, but that one must have been really uncomfortable.”

“I have retired, as you see. Domingo Estebanovich, where did you learn