The door of the airliner opened under the gentle ministrations of the senior stewardess. Prime Minister Mo-gataru Koga, his coat buttoned, and his tie straightened in his collar by a flustered aide, stood in the door briefly, assaulted by a blast of cold February air, and headed down the steps. The Air Force band struck up “Ruffles and Flourishes.”
Acting Secretary of State Scott Adler was waiting at the bottom. The two had never met, but both had been fully briefed, Adler rather more quickly, as this was his fourth and most important arrival of the day. Koga looked just like his pictures. The man was grossly ordinary, about five feet six inches in height, of middle age, with a full head of black hair. His dark eyes were neutral–or tried to be, Adler thought on closer examination. There was sadness there. Hardly a surprise, the diplomat thought as he extended his hand.
“Welcome, Mr. Prime Minister.”
“Thank you, Mr. Adler.” The two men walked to the podium. Adler spoke a few muted words of welcome–this speech, drafted at Foggy Bottom, had taken an hour to get right, which amounted to about a minute to the world. Then Koga came to the microphone.
“First of all, I must thank you, Mr. Adler, and thank your country, for allowing me to come today. As surprising as this gesture is, I have come to understand that such things are a tradition in your vast and generous country. I come to represent my country today on a sad but necessary mission. I hope it will be a mission of healing for your country and for mine. I hope that your citizens and
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ours can see in this tragedy a bridge to a peaceful future.” Koga stepped back, and Adler led him off down the red carpet, as the assembled band played Kimagayo, the brief anthem of Japan which had actually been written by an English composer a hundred years earlier. The Prime Minister looked at the honor guard and tried to read the young faces, looking for hatred or disgust in them, but finding only impassivity on the way to the waiting car. Adler got in behind him.
“How are you feeling, sir?” SecState asked.
“Well, thank you. I slept on the flight.” Koga assumed that the question was a mere pleasantry, then learned that it was not. It had been Ryan’s idea, not Adler’s, oddly enough, made somewhat more convenient by the time of day. The sun was down below the horizon now, and the sunset would be a brief one, as clouds rolled in from the northwest.
“If you wish, we can see President Ryan on the way to your embassy. The President instructed me to say that if you would prefer not to do so, because of the lengthy flight or other reasons, he will not be offended.” Scott was surprised that Koga didn’t hesitate an instant.
“I gladly accept this honor.”
The acting Secretary of State pulled a portable radio from his coat pocket. “EAGLE to SWORDBASE. Affirmative.” Adler had chuckled a few days earlier to learn his Secret Service codename. “EAGLE” was the English counterpart to his German-Jewish surname.
“SWORDBASE copies affirmative,” the encrypted radio crackled back.
“EAGLE, out.”
The motorcade speeded up Suitland Parkway. Under other circumstances a news helicopter might have tracked them with a live camera, but Washington airspace was effectively shut down for the moment. Even National Airport was closed, with its flights shunted to Dulles or Baltimore-Washington International. Koga hadn’t noticed the driver, who was American. The car turned right off the parkway, then hopped a block to the ramp for I-295, which turned almost immediately into 1-395, a bumpy thoroughfare that led across the Anacostia River toward
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downtown Washington. As it merged with the main roadway, the stretch Lexus in which he was sitting veered to the right. Another identical car took its place as his formed up with three Secret Service Suburbans in a maneuver that took a mere five seconds. The empty streets made the rest of the trip easy, and in but a few minutes, his car turned onto West Executive Drive.
“Here they come, sir,” Price said, notified by the uniformed guard at the gatehouse.
Jack walked outside just as the car halted, not sure of the protocol for this–one more thing he’d yet to figure out about his new job. He almost moved to pull open the door himself, but a Marine corporal got there first, yanking the door and saluting like a robot.
“Mr. President,” Koga said on standing up.
“Mr. Prime Minister. Please come this way.” Ryan gestured with his hand.
Koga had never been to the White House before, and it struck him that had he flown over–what? three months earlier–to discuss the trade problems that had led to a shooting war . . . yet another shameful failure. Then Ryan’s demeanor came through the haze. He’d read once that the full ceremonies of a state arrival were not the sign of importance here–well, that was not possible or appropriate in any case, Koga told himself. But Ryan had stood alone at the door, and that must have meant something, the Japanese Prime Minister told himself on the way up the stairs. A minute later, whizzed through the West Wing, he and Ryan were alone in the Oval Office, separated only by a low table and a coffee tray.
“Thank you for this,” Koga said simply.
“We had to meet,” President Ryan said. “Any other time and we’d have people watching and timing us and trying to read our lips.” He poured a cup for his guest and then himself.
“Hai, the press in Tokyo have become much more forward in the past few days.” Koga made to lift his cup, but stopped. “Whom do I thank for rescuing me from Ya-mata?”
Jack looked up. “The decision was made here. The two
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officers are in the area, if you want to see them again personally.”
“If it is convenient.” Koga sipped at his cup. He would have preferred tea, but Ryan was doing his best to be a host, and the quality of the gesture impressed his guest. “Thank you for letting me come, President Ryan.”
“I tried to talk to Roger about the trade problem, but . . . but I wasn’t persuasive enough. Then I worried that something might be happening with Goto, but I didn’t move quickly enough, what with the Russian trip and everything. It was all a great big accident, but I suppose war usually is. In any case, it is up to the two of us to heal that wound. I want it done as rapidly as possible.”
“The conspirators are all under arrest. They will appear in court for treason,” Koga promised.
“That is your affair,” the President replied. Which wasn’t really true. Japan’s legal system was a curious one in which courts often enough violated the country’s constitution in favor of broader but unwritten cultural mores, something unthinkable to Americans. Ryan and America expected that the trials would go by the book with no such variations. Koga understood that fully. A reconciliation between America and Japan depended absolutely on that, along with a multitude of other understandings which could not be spoken, at least not at this level. For his own part, Koga had already made sure that the judges selected for the various trials understood what the rules were.
“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen, and then, that madman Sato … My country and my people are shamed by it. I have so much to do, Mr. Ryan.”
Jack nodded. “We both do. But it will be done.” He paused. “The technical issues can be handled at the ministerial level. Between ourselves, I only wanted to be sure that we understood each other. I will trust your goodwill.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” Koga set his cup down to examine the man on the opposite sofa. He was young for such a job, though not the youngest American president. Theodore Roosevelt would probably hold that distinc-
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tion into eternity. On the lengthy flight from Tokyo he’d read up on John Patrick Ryan. The man had killed with his own hand more than once, had been threatened with his own death and that of his family, and had done other things which his intelligence advisers only speculated about. Examining his face over a brief span of seconds, he tried to understand how such a person could also be a man of peace, but the clues were not there to be seen, and Koga wondered if there was something in the American character that he’d never quite understood. He saw the intelligence and the curiosity, one to measure and the other to probe. He saw fatigue and sadness. His recent days must have been the purest form of hell, Koga was sure. Somewhere still in this building, probably, were the children of Roger and Anne Durling, and that would be like a physical weight for the man to carry about. It struck the Prime Minister that Ryan, like most Westerners, was not very skilled at concealing his inner thoughts, but that wasn’t true, was it? There had to be other things happening behind those blue eyes, and those things were not being advertised. They were not in any way threatening, but they were there. This Ryan was samurai, as he’d said in his office a few days earlier, but there was an additional layer of complexity as well. Koga set that aside. It wasn’t all that important, and there was something that he had to ask, a personal decision he’d made over mid-Pacific.