Debt of Honor

29—Written Records

The presentation went very well, and at the end of it Cathy Ryan was handed an exquisitely wrapped box by the Professor of Ophthalmic Surgery from Chiba University, who led the Japanese delegation. Unwrapping it, she found a scarf of watered blue silk, embroidered with gold thread. It looked to be more than a hundred years old.

"The blue goes so well with your eyes, Professor Ryan," her colleague said with a smile of genuine admiration. "I fear it is not a sufficiently valuable gift for what I have learned from you today. I have hundreds of diabetic patients at my hospital. With this technique we can hope to restore sight for most of them. A magnificent breakthrough, Professor." He bowed, formally and with clear respect.

"Well, the lasers come from your country," Cathy replied. She wasn't sure what emotion she was supposed to have. The gift was stunning. The man was as sincere as he could be, and his country might be at war with hers.

But why wasn't it on the news? If there were a war, why was this foreigner not under arrest? Was she supposed to be gracious to him as a learned colleague or hostile to him as an enemy? What the hell was going on? She looked over at Andrea Price, who just leaned against the back wall and smiled, her arms crossed across her chest.

"And you have taught us how to use them more efficiently. A stunning piece of applied research." The Japanese professor turned to the others and raised his hands. The assembled multitude applauded, and a blushing Caroline Ryan started thinking that she just might get the Lasker statuette for her mantelpiece after all. Everyone shook her hand before leaving for the bus that waited to take them back to the Stouffer's on Pratt Street.

"Can I see it?" Special Agent Price asked after all were gone and the door safely closed. Cathy handed the scarf over. "Lovely. You'll have to buy a new dress to go with it."

"So there never was anything to worry about," Dr. Ryan observed. Interestingly, once she'd gotten fifteen seconds into her lecture, she'd forgotten about it anyway. Wasn't that interesting?

"No, like I told you, I didn't expect anything." Price handed the scarf back, not without some reluctance. The little professor was right, she thought. It did go nicely with her eyes. "Jack Ryan's wife" was all she'd heard, and then some. "How long have you been doing this?"

"Retinal surgery?" Cathy closed her notebook. "I started off working the front end of the eye, right up to the time little Jack was born. Then I had an idea about how the retina is attached naturally and how we might reattach bad ones. Then we started looking at how to fix blood vessels. Bernie let me run with it, and I got a research grant from NIH to play with, and one thing led to another…"

"And now you're the best in the world at this," Price concluded the story.

"Until somebody with better hands comes along and learns how to do it, yes." Cathy smiled. "I suppose I am, for a few more months, anyway."

"So how's the champ?" Bernie Katz asked, entering the room and seeing Price for the first time. The pass on her coat puzzled him. "Do I know you?"

"Andrea Price." The agent gave Katz a quick and thorough visual check before shaking hands. He actually found it flattering until she added, "Secret Service."

"Where were the cops like you when I was a kid?" the surgeon asked gallantly.

"Bernie was one of my first mentors here. He's department chairman now," Cathy explained.

"About to be overtaken in prestige by my colleague. I come bearing good news. I have a spy on the Lasker Committee. You're in the finals, Cathy."

"What's a Lasker?" Price asked.

"There's one step up from a Lasker Prize," Bernie told her. "You have to go to Stockholm to collect it."

"Bernie, I'll never have one of those. A Lasker is hard enough."

"So keep researching, girl!" Katz hugged her and left.

I want it, I want it, I want it! Cathy told herself silently. She didn't have to give voice to the words. It was plain for Special Agent Price to see. Damn, didn't this beat guarding politicians?

"Can I watch one of your procedures?"

"If you want. Anyway, come on." Cathy led her back to her office, not minding her at all now. On the way they walked through the clinic, then one of the labs. In the middle of a corridor, Dr. Ryan stopped dead in her tracks, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a small notebook.

"Did I miss something?" Price asked. She knew she was talking too much, but it look time to learn the habits of your protectees. She also read Cathy Ryan as the type who didn't like being protected, and so needed to be made comfortable about it.

"You'll have to get used to me," Professor Ryan said, smiling as she scribbled a few notes. "Whenever 1 have an idea, I write it down right away."

"Don't trust your memory?"

"Never. You can't trust your memory with things that affect live patients. One of the first things they teach you in medical school." Cathy shook her head as she finished up. "Not in this business. Too many opportunities to screw up. If you don't write it down, then it never happened."

That sounded like a good lesson to remember, Andrea Price told herself, following her principal down the corridor. The code name, SURGEON, was perfect for her. Precise, smart, thorough. She might even have made a good agent except for her evident discomfort around guns.

It was already a regular routine, and in many ways that was not new. For a generation, the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force had responded to Russian fighter activity out of the forward base at Dolinsk Sokol—at first in cooperation with the USAF—and one of the regular tracks taken by the Soviet Air Force had earned the name "Tokyo Express," probably an unknowing reference to a term invented in 1942 by the United States Marines on Guadalcanal.

For security reasons the E-767's were based with the 6th Air Wing at Komatsu, near Tokyo, but the two F-15J's that operated under the control of the E-767 now aloft over the town of Nemuro at the northeast tip of the island of Hokkaido were actually based on the Home Island at Chitose. These were a hundred miles offshore, and each carried eight missiles, four each of heat-seekers and radar-homers. All were warshots now, requiring only a target.

It was after midnight, local time. The pilots were well rested and alert, comfortably strapped into their ejection seats, their sharp eyes scanning the darkness while fingers made delicate course-corrections on the sticks. Their own targeting radars were switched off, and though their aircraft still flashed with anticollision strobe lights, those were easily switched off should the necessity arise, making them visually nonexistent.

"Eagle One-Five," the digital radio told the element leader, "check out commercial traffic fifty kilometers zero-three-five your position, course two-one-five, angels three-six."

"Roger, Kami," the pilot replied on keying his radio. Kami, the call sign for the orbiting surveillance aircraft, was a word with many meanings, most of them supernatural like "soul" or "spirit." And so they had rapidly become the modern manifestation of the spirits guarding their country, with the F-15J's as the strong arms that gave power to the will of those spirits. On command, the two fighters came right, climbing on a shallow, fuel-efficient slope for five minutes until they were at thirty-seven thousand feet, cruising outbound from their country at five hundred knots, their radars still off, but now they received a digital feed from the Kami that appeared on their own sets, one more of the new innovations and something the Americans didn't have. The element leader alternated his eyes up and down. A pity, he thought, that the hand-off display didn't integrate with his head-up display. Maybe the next modification would do that.

"There," he said over his low-power radio.

"I have it," his wingman acknowledged.

Both fighters turned to the left now, descending slowly behind what appeared to be an Air Canada 767-ER. Yes, the floodlit tail showed the maple-leaf logo of that airline. Probably the regular transpolar flight out of Toronto International into Narita. The timing was about right. They approached from almost directly astern—not quite exactly, lest an overly quick overtake result in a ramming—and the buffet told them that they were in the wake turbulence of a "heavy," a wide-bodied commercial transport. The flight leader closed until he could see the line of cabin lights, and the huge engine under each wing, and the stubby nose of the Boeing product. He keyed his radio again.

"Kami, Eagle One-Five."

"Eagle."

"Positive identification, Air Canada Seven-Six-Seven Echo Romeo, inbound at indicated course and speed." Interestingly, the drill for the BARCAP—Barrier Combat Air Patrol—was to use English. That was the international language of aviation. All their pilots spoke it, and it worked better for important communications.

"Roger." And on further command, the fighters broke off to their programmed patrol area. The Canadian pilot of the airliner would never know that two armed fighters had closed to within three hundred meters of his aircraft—but then he had no reason to expect that any would, because the world was at peace, at least this part of it.

For their part, the fighter-drivers accepted their new duties phlegmatically along with the modification in their daily patterns of existence. For the indefinite future no less than two fighters would hold this patrol station, with two more back at Chitose at plus-five alert, and another four at plus-thirty.

Their wing commander was pressing for permission to increase his alert-status further still, for despite what Tokyo said, their nation was at war, and that was what he'd told his people. The Americans were formidable adversaries, he'd said in his first lecture to his pilots and senior ground-staff. Clever ones, devious, and dangerously aggressive. Worst of all, at their best they were utterly unpredictable, the reverse of the Japanese who, he'd gone on, tended to be highly predictable. Perhaps that was why he'd been posted to this command, the pilots thought. If things went further, the first contact with hostile American forces would be here. He wanted to be ready for it, despite the huge price of money, fuel, and fatigue that attended it. The pilots thoroughly approved. War was a serious business, and though new to it, they didn't shrink from its responsibilities.

The time factor would soon become his greatest frustration, Ryan thought. Tokyo was fourteen hours ahead of Washington. It was dark there now, and the next day, and whatever clever idea he might come up with would have to wait hours until implementation. The same was true in the IO, but at least he had direct comms to Admiral Dubro's battle force. Getting word to Clark and Chavez meant going via Moscow, and then farther either by contact via RVS officer in Tokyo—not something to be done too frequently—or by reverse-modem message whenever Clark lit up his computer for a dispatch to the Interfax News Agency. There would necessarily be a time lag in anything he did, and that could get people killed.

It was about information. It always was, always would be. The real trick was in finding out what was going on. What was the other side doing? What were they thinking?

What is it that they want to accomplish? he asked himself.

War was always about economics, one of the few things that Marx had gotten right. It was just greed, really, as he'd told the President, an armed robbery writ large. At the nation-state level, the terms were couched in terms such as Manifest Destiny or Lebensraum or other political slogans to grab the attention and ardor of the masses, but that's what it came down to: They have it. We want it. Let's get it.

And yet the Mariana Islands weren't worth it. They were simply not worth the political or economic cost. This affair would ipso facto cost Japan her most lucrative trading partner. There could be no recovery from this, not for years. The market positions so carefully established and exploited since the 1960's would be obliterated by something politely termed public resentment but far more deeply felt than that. For what possible reason could a country so married to the idea of business turn its back on practical considerations?

But war is never rational, Jack. You told the President that yourself.

"So tell me, what the hell are they thinking?" he commanded, instantly regretting the profanity.

They were in a basement conference room. For the first meeting of the working group, Scott Adler was absent, off with Secretary Hanson. There were two National Intelligence Officers, and four people from State, and they looked as puzzled and bemused as he did, Ryan thought. Wasn't that just great. For several seconds nothing happened. Hardly unexpected, Jack thought. It was always a matter of clinical interest for him when he asked for real opinions from a group of bureaucrats: who would say what?

"They're mad and they're scared." It was Chris Cook, one of the commercial guys from State. He'd done two tours at the embassy in Tokyo, spoke the language passably well, and had run point on several rounds of the trade negotiations, always taking back seat to senior men and women, but usually the guy who did the real work. That was how things were, and Jack remembered resenting that others sometimes got the credit for his ideas. He nodded at the comment, seeing that the others around the table did the same, grateful that someone else had taken the initiative.

"I know why they're mad. Tell me why they're scared."

"Well, hell, they still have the Russians close by, and the Chinese, both still major powers, but we've withdrawn from the Western Pacific, right? In their mind, it leaves them high and dry—and now it looks to them like we've turned on them. That makes us potential enemies, too, doesn't it? Where does that leave them? What real friends do they have?"

"Why take the Marianas?" Jack asked, reminding himself that Japan had not been attacked by those countries in historically recent times, but had done so herself to all of them. Cook had made a perhaps unintended point. How did Japan respond to outside threats? By attacking first.

"It gives them defensive depth, bases outside their home islands."

Okay, that makes sense, Jack thought. Satellite photos less than an hour old hung on the wall. There were fighters now on the airstrips at Saipan and Guam, along with E-2C Hawkeye airborne-early-warning birds of the same type that operated off American carriers. That created a defensive barrier that extended twelve hundred miles almost due south from Tokyo. It could be seen as a formidable wall against American attacks, and was in essence a reduced version of Japanese grand strategy in the Second World War. Again Cook had made a sound observation.

"But are we really a threat to them?" he asked.

"We certainly are now," Cook replied.

"Because they forced us to be," one of the NIOs snarled, entering the discussion. Cook leaned across the table at him.

"Why do people start wars? Because they're afraid of something! For Christ's sake, they've gone through more governments in the last five years than the Italians. The country is politically unstable. They have real economic problems. Until recently their currency's been in trouble. Their stock market's gone down the tubes because of our trade legislation, and we've faced them with financial ruin, and you ask why they got a little paranoid? If something like this happened to us, what the hell would we do?" the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State demanded, rather cowing the National Intelligence Officer, Ryan saw.

Good, he thought. A lively discussion was usually helpful, as the hottest fire made the strongest steel.

"My sympathy for the other side is mitigated by the fact that they have invaded U.S. territory and violated the human rights of American citizens."

The reply to Cook's tirade struck Ryan as somewhat arch. The response was that of a lead hound on the scent of a crippled fox, able to play with the quarry instead of the other way around for a change. Always a good feeling.

"And we've already put a couple hundred thousand of their citizens out of work. What about their rights?"

"Fuck their rights! Whose side are you on, Cook?"

The DASS just leaned back into his chair and smiled as he slid the knife in. "I thought I was supposed to tell everyone what they're thinking. Isn't that what we're here for? What they're thinking is that we've jerked them around, bashed them, belittled them, and generally let them know that we tolerate them through sufferance and not respect since before I was born. We've never dealt with them as equals, and they think that they deserve better from us, and they don't like it. And you know," Cook went on, "I don't blame them for feeling that way. Okay, so now they've lashed out. That's wrong, and I deplore it, but we need to recognize that they tried to do it in as non-lethal a way as possible, consistent with their strategic goals. That's something we need to consider here, isn't it?"

"The Ambassador says his country is willing to let it stop here," Ryan told them, noting the look in Cook's eyes. Clearly he'd been thinking about the situation, and that was good. "Are they serious?"

He'd asked another tough question again, something that the people around the table didn't much like. Tough questions required definitive answers, and such answers could often be wrong. It was toughest for the NIOs.

The National Intelligence Officers were senior people from CIA, DIA, or NSA, usually. One of them was always with the President to give him an opinion in the event of a rapidly evolving crisis. They were supposed to be experts in their fields, and they were, as, for that matter, was Ryan, who'd been an NIO himself. But there was a problem with such people. An NIO was generally a serious, tough-minded man or woman. They didn't fear death, but they did fear being wrong on a hard call. For that reason, even putting a gun to one's head didn't guarantee an unequivocal answer to a tough question. He looked from face to face, seeing that Cook did the same, with contempt on his face.

"Yes, sir, I think it likely that they are. It's also likely that they will offer us something back. They know that they have to let us save face here, too. We can count on it, and that will work in our favor if we choose to negotiate with them."

"Would you recommend that?"

A smile and a nod. "It never hurts you to talk with somebody, no matter what the situation is, does it? I'm a State Department puke, remember? I have to recommend that. I don't know the military side. I don't know if we can contest this thing or not. I presume we can, and that they know we can, and that they know they're gambling, and that they're even more scared than we are. We can use that in our favor."

"What can we press for?" Ryan asked, chewing on his pen.

"Status quo ante," Cook replied at once. "Complete withdrawal from the Marianas, restoration of the islands and their citizens to U.S. rule, reparations to the families of the people killed, punishment of those responsible for their deaths." Even the NIOs nodded at that, Ryan saw. He was already starting to like Cook. He spoke his mind, and what he said had a logic to it.

"What will we get?" Again the answer was plain and simple.

"Less." Where the hell has Scott Adler been hiding this guy? Ryan thought. He speaks my language. "They have to give us something, but they won't give it all back."

"And if we press?" the National Security Advisor asked.

"If we want it all back, then we may have to fight for it," Cook said. "If you want my opinion, that's dangerous." Ryan excused the facile conclusion. He was, after all, a State Department puke, and part of that culture.

"Will the Ambassador have the clout to negotiate?"

"I think so, yes," Cook said after a moment. "He has a good staff, he's a very senior professional diplomat. He knows Washington and he knows how to play in the bigs. That's why they sent him here."

Jaw, jaw is better than war, war. Jack remembered the words of Winston Churchill. And that was true, especially if the former did not entirely preclude the threat of the latter.

"Okay," Ryan said. "I have some other things that need doing. You guys stay here. I want a position paper. I want options. I want multiple opening positions for both sides. I want end-game scenarios. I want likely responses on their part to theoretical military moves on our part. Most of all," he said directly to the NIOs, "I want a feel for their nuclear capacity, and the conditions under which they might feel the need to make use of it."

"What warning will we have?" The question, surprisingly, came from Cook. The answer, surprisingly, came from the other NIO, who felt the need, now, to show something of what he knew.

"The Cobra Dane radar on Shemya still works. So do the DSPS satellites. We'll get launch warning and impact prediction if it comes to that. Dr. Ryan, have we done anything—"

"The Air Force has air-launched cruise missiles in the stockpile. They would be carried in by B-1 bombers. We also have the option of rearming Tomahawk cruise missiles with W-80 warheads as well for launch by submarines or surface ships. The Russians know that we may exercise that option, and they will not object so long as we keep it quiet."

"That's an escalation," Cook warned. "We want to be careful about that."

"What about their SS-19's?" the second NIO inquired delicately.

"They think they need them. It will not be easy to talk them out of 'em." Cook looked around the table. "We have nuked their country, remember. It's a very sensitive subject, and we're dealing with people motivated by paranoia. I recommend caution on that issue."

"Noted," Ryan said as he stood. "You know what I want, people, get to work." It felt a little good to be able to give an order like that, but less so to have to do it, and less still in anticipation of the answers he would receive for his questions. But you had to start somewhere.

"Another hard day?" Nomuri asked.

"I thought with Yamata gone it would get easier," Kazuo said. He shook his head, leaning back against the fine wood rim of the tub. "I was wrong."

The others nodded curt agreement at their friend's observation, and they all missed Taoka's sexual stories now. They needed the distraction, but only Nomuri knew why they had ended.

"So what is going on? Now Goto says that we need America. Last week they were our enemies, and now we are friendly again? This is very confusing for a simple person like me," Chet said, rubbing his closed eyes, and wondering what the bait would draw. Developing his rapport with these men had not been easy because they and he were so different, and it was to be expected that he would envy them, and they him. He was an entrepreneur, they thought, who ran his own business, and they the senior salarymen of major corporations. They had security. He had independence. They were expected to be overworked. He marched to his own drum. They had more money. He had less stress. And now they had knowledge, and he did not.

"We have confronted America," one of their number said.

"So I gather. Isn't that highly dangerous?"

"In the short term, yes," Taoka said, letting the blisteringly hot water soothe his stress-knotted muscles. "Though I think we have already won."

"But won what, my friend? I feel I have started watching a mystery in the middle of the show, and all I know is that there's a pretty, mysterious girl on the train to Osaka." He referred to a dramatic convention in Japan, mysteries based on how efficiently the nation's trains ran.

"Well, as my boss tells it," another senior aide decided to explain, "it means true independence for our country."

"Aren't we independent already?" Nomuri asked in open puzzlement. "There are hardly any American soldiers here to annoy us anymore."

"And those under guard now," Taoka observed. "You don't understand. Independence means more than politics. It means economic independence, too. It means not going to others for what we need to survive."

"It means the Northern Resource Area, Kazuo," another of their number said, going too far, and knowing it from the way two pairs of eyes opened in warning.

"I wish it would mean shorter days and getting home on time for a change instead of sleeping in a damned coffin-tube two or three nights a week," one of the more alert ones said to alter the course of the conversation.

Taoka grunted. "Yes, how can one get a girl in there?" The guffaws that followed that one were forced, Nomuri thought.

"You salarymen and your secrets! Ha!" the CIA officer snapped. "I hope you do better with your women." He paused. "Will all this affect my business?" A good idea, he thought, to ask a question like that.

"For the better, I should think," Kazuo said. There was general agreement on that point.

"We must all be patient. There will be hard times before the good ones truly come."

"But they will come," another suggested confidently. "The really hard part is behind us."

Not if I can help it, Nomuri didn't tell them. But what the hell did "Northern Resource Area" mean? It was so like the intelligence business that he knew he'd heard something important, quite without knowing what the hell it was all about. Then he had to cover himself with a lengthy discourse on his new relationship with the hostess, to be sure, again, that they would remember this, and not his questions.

It was a shame to have to arrive in the darkness, but that was mere fortune. Half of the fleet had diverted for Guam, which had a far better natural harbor, because all the people in these islands had to see the Japanese Navy—Admiral Sato was weary of the "Self-Defense Force" title. His was a navy now, composed of fighting ships and fighting men that had tasted battle, after a fashion, and if historians would later comment that their battle had not been a real one or a fair one, well, what military textbook did not cite the value of surprise in offensive operations? None that he knew of, the Admiral told himself, seeing the loom of Mount Takpochao through his binoculars. There was already a powerful radar there, up and operating, his electronics technicians had told him an hour earlier. Yet another important factor in defending what was again his country's native soil.

He was alone on the starboard bridge wing in the pre-dawn gloom. Such an odd term, he thought. Gloom? Not at all. There was a wonderful peace to this, especially when you were alone to keep it to yourself, and your mind started editing the distractions out. Above his head was the faint buzz of electronic gear, like a hive of slumbering bees, and that noise was soon blanked out. There was also the distant hum of the ship's systems, mostly the engines, and air-conditioning blowers, he knew, shrugging it off. There were no human noises to trouble him. The captain of Mutsu enforced good bridge discipline. The sailors didn't speak unless they had reason to, concentrating on their duties as they were supposed to do. One by one, Admiral Sato eliminated the extraneous noises. That left only the sound of the sea, the wonderful swish of steel hull parting the waves. He looked down to see the fan shaped foam whose white was both brilliant and faint at the same time, and aft the wide swath was a pleasant fluorescent green from the disturbance of phytoplankton, tiny creatures that came to the surface at night for reasons Sato had never troubled himself to understand. Perhaps to enjoy the moon and stars, he told himself with a smile in the darkness. Ahead was the island of Saipan, just a space on the horizon blacker than the darkness itself; it seemed so because it occulted the stars on the western horizon, and a seaman's mind knew that where there were no stars on a clear night, then there had to be land. The lookouts at their stations atop the forward superstructure had seen it long before him, but that didn't lessen the pleasure of his own discovery, and as with sailors of every generation there was something special to a landfall, because every voyage ended with discovery of some sort.

And so had this one.

More sounds. First the jerky whirs of electrical motors turning radar systems, then something else. He knew he was late noticing it, off to starboard, a deep rumble, like something tearing, growing rapidly in intensity until he knew it could only be the roar of an approaching aircraft. He lowered his binoculars and looked off to the right, seeing nothing until his eyes caught movement close aboard, and two dart shapes streaked overhead. Mutsu trembled in their wake, giving Admiral Sato a chill followed by a flush of anger. He pulled open the door to the wheelhouse.

"What the hell was that?"

"Two F-3S conducting an attack drill," the officer of the deck replied. "They've been tracking them in CIC for several minutes. We had them illuminated with our missile trackers."

"Will someone tell those 'wild eagles' that flying directly over a ship in the dark risks damage to us, and foolish death to them!"

"But, Admiral—" the OOD tried to say.

"But we are a valuable fleet unit and I do not wish one of my ships to have to spend a month in the yard having her mast replaced because some damned fool of an aviator couldn't see us in the dark!"

"Hai. I will make the call at once."

Spoiling my morning that way, Sato fumed, going back out to sit in the leather chair and doze off.

Was he the first guy to figure it out? Winston asked himself. Then he asked himself why he should find that surprising. The FBI and the rest were evidently trying to put things back together, and their main effort was probably to defend against fraud. Worse, they were also going over all the records, not just those of the Columbus Group. It had to be a virtual ocean of data, and they would have been unfamiliar with the stuff, and this was a singularly bad time for on-the-job training.

The TV told the story. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank had been on all the morning talk shows, which had to have kept his driver busy in D.C. this day, followed by a strong public statement in the White House Press Room, followed by a lengthy interview on CNN. It was working, after a fashion, and TV showed that as well. A lot of people had shown up at banks before lunch, surprised there to find piles of cash trucked out the previous night to make what in military terms was probably called a show of force. Though the Chairman had evidently jawboned every major banker in the country, the reverse was true of the tellers meeting depositors at their windows: Oh, you want cash? Well, of course we have all you need. In not a few cases, by the time people got home they started to feel a new variety of paranoia—keep all this cash at home?—and by afternoon some had even begun coming back to redeposit.

That would be Buzz Fiedler's work, too, and a good man he was, Winston thought, for an academic. The Treasury Secretary was only buying time, and doing so with money, but it was a good tactic, good enough to confuse the public into believing things were not as bad as they appeared.

Serious investors knew better. Things were bad, and the play in the banks was a stopgap measure at best. The Fed was dumping cash into the system. Though a good idea for a day or so, the net effect by the end of the week had to be to weaken the dollar further still, and already American T-Bills were about as popular in the global financial community as plague rats. Worst of all, though Fiedler had prevented a banking panic for the time being, you could hold back a panic only so long, and unless you could restore confidence in a real way, the longer you played stopgap games, the worse would be the renewed panic if those measures failed, for then there would be no stopping it. That was what Winston really expected. Because the Gordian knot around the throat of the investment system would not soon be untied.

Winston thought he had decoded the likely cause of the event, but along the way he'd learned that there might not be a solution. The sabotage at DTC had been the master stroke. Fundamentally, no single person knew what he owned, what he'd paid for it, when he'd gotten it, or what cash he had left; and the absence of knowledge was metastatic. Individual investors didn't know. Institutions didn't know. The trading houses didn't know. Nobody knew.

How would the real panic start? In short order, pension funds would have to write their monthly checks—but would the banks honor them? The Fed would encourage them to do so, but somewhere along the line there would be one bank that would not, due to troubles of its own—just one, such things always began in a single place, after all—and that would start yet another cascade, and the Fed would have to step in again by boosting the money supply, and that could start a hyperinflationary cycle. That was the ultimate nightmare. Winston well remembered the way that inflation had affected the market and the country in the late 1970's, the "malaise" that had indeed been real, the loss of national confidence that had manifested itselt with nut cases building cabins in the Northwestern mountains and had movies about life after the apocalypse. And even then inflation had topped out at what? Thirteen percent or so. Twenty-percent interest rates. A country suffering from nothing more than the loss of confidence that had resulted from long gas lines and a vacillating president. Those times might well seem nostalgic indeed.

This would be far worse, something not like America at all, something from the Weimar Republic, something from Argentina in the bad old days, or Brazil under military rule. And it wouldn't stop just with America, would it? Just as in 1929, the ripple effects would spread far, crippling economies across the world, well beyond even Winston's capacity for prediction. He would not be badly hurt personally, George knew. Even the 60-percent diminution of his personal wealth would leave a vast and comfortable sum—he always hedged some of his bets on issues that owned physically real things, like oil or gold; and he had his own gold holdings, real metal bars in vaults, like a miser of old—and since major depressions were ultimately deflationary, the relative value of his diverse holdings would actually increase after a time. He knew that he and his family would survive and thrive, but the cost to those less fortunate than himself was economic and social chaos. And he wasn't in the business just for himself, was he? Over time he'd come to think long at night about the little guys who'd seen his TV ads and entrusted him with their savings. It was a magic word, trust. It meant that you had an obligation to the people who gave it to you. It meant that they believed what you said about yourself, and that you had to prove that it was real, not merely to them, but to yourself as well. Because if you failed, then houses were not bought, kids not educated, and the dreams of real people not unlike yourself would die aborning. Bad enough just in America, Winston thought, but this event would—could—affect the entire world.

And he had to know what he'd done. It was not an accident. It had been a well-considered plan, executed with style. Yamata. That clever son of a bitch, Winston thought. Perhaps the first Japanese investor he'd ever respected. The first one who'd really understood the game both tactically and strategically. Well, that was sure as hell the case. The look on his face, those dark eyes over the champagne glass. Why didn't you see it then? So that was the game after all, wasn't it?

But no. It couldn't be the entire game. A part of it, perhaps, a tactic aimed at something else. What? What could be so important that Raizo Yamata was willing to kiss off his personal fortune, and along the way destroy the very global markets upon which his own corporations and his own national economy depended? That was not something to enter the mind of a businessman, certainly not something to warm the soul of a maven on the Street. It was strange to have it all figured out and yet not understand the sense of it. Winston looked out the window as the sun set on New York Harbor. He had to tell somebody, and that somebody had to understand what this was all about. Fiedler? Maybe. Better somebody who knew the Street…and knew other things, too. But who?

"Are they ours?" All four lay alee in Laolao Bay. One of their number was tucked alongside an oiler, doubtless taking on fuel.

Oreza shook his head. "Paint's wrong. The Navy paints its ships darker, bluer, like."

"They look like serious ships, man." Burroughs handed the binoculars back.

"Billboard radars, vertical-launch cells for missiles, antisub helicopters. They're Aegis 'cans, like our Burke class. They're serious, all right. Airplanes are afraid of 'em." As Portagee watched, a helicopter lifted off one and headed for the beach.

"Report in?"

"Yeah, good idea."

Burroughs went into the living room and put the batteries back in his phone. The idea of completely depowering it was probably unnecessary, but it was safe, and neither man was interested in finding out how the Japanese treated spies, for that was what they were. It was also awkward, putting the antenna through the hole in the bottom of the serving bowl and then holding it next to your head, but it did give a certain element of humor to the exercise, and they needed a reason to smile at something.

"NMCC, Admiral Jackson."

"You have the duty again, sir?"

"Well, Master Chief, I guess we both do. What do you have to report?"

"Four Aegis destroyers offshore, east side of the island. One's taking fuel on now from a small fleet oiler. They showed up just after dawn. Two more car carriers at the quay, another on the horizon outbound. We counted twenty fighter aircraft a while ago. About half of them are F-15's with twin tails. The other half are single tails, but I don't know the type. Otherwise nothing new to tell you about."

Jackson was looking at a satellite photo only an hour old showing four ships in line-ahead formation, and fighters dispersed at both the airfields. He made a note and nodded.

"What's it like there?" Robby asked. "I mean, they hassling anybody, arrests, that sort of thing?" He heard the voice at the other end snort.

"Negative, sir. Everybody's just nice as can be. Hell, they're on TV all the time, the public-access cable channel, telling us how much money they plan to spend here and all the things they're gonna do for us." Robby heard the disgust in the man's voice.

"Fair enough. I might not always be here. I do have to get a little sleep, but this line is set aside for your exclusive use now, okay?"

"Roger that, Admiral."

"Play it real cool, Master Chief. No heroic shit, okay?"

"That's kid stuff, sir. I know better," Oreza assured him.

"Then close down, Oreza. Good work." Jackson heard the line go dead before he set his phone down. "Better you than me, man," he added to himself. Then he looked over at the next desk.

"Got it on tape," an Air Force intelligence officer told him. "He confirms the satellite data. I'm inclined to believe that he's still safe."

"Let's keep him that way. I don't want anybody calling out to them without my say-so," Jackson ordered.

"Roge-o, sir." I don't think we can anyway, he didn't add.

"Tough day?" Paul Robberton asked.

"I've had worse," Ryan answered. But this crisis was too new for so confident an evaluation. "Does your wife mind…?"

"She's used to having me away, and we'll get a routine figured out in a day or so." The Secret Service agent paused. "How's the Boss doing?"

"As usual he gets the hard parts. We all dump on him, right?" Jack admitted, looking out the window as they turned off Route 50. "He's a good man, Paul."

"So are you, doc. We were all pretty glad to get you back." He paused. "How tough is it?" The Secret Service had the happy circumstance of needing to know almost everything, which was just as well, since they overheard almost everything anyway.

"Didn't they tell you? The Japanese have built nukes. And they have ballistic launchers to deliver them."

Paul's hands tightened on the wheel. "Lovely. But they can't be that crazy."

"On the evening of December 7, 1941, USS Enterprise pulled into Pearl Harbor to refuel and rearm. Admiral Bill Halsey was riding the bridge, as usual, and looked at the mess from the morning's strike and said, 'When this war is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.' " Ryan wondered why he'd just said that.

"That's in your book. It must have been a good line for the guys around him."

"I suppose. If they use their nukes, that's what'll happen to them. Yeah, they have to know that," Ryan said, his fatigue catching up with him.

"You need about eight hours, Dr. Ryan, maybe nine," Robberton said judiciously. "It's like with us. Fatigue really messes up your higher-brain functions. The Boss needs you sharp, doc, okay?"

"No argument there. I might even have a drink tonight," Ryan thought aloud.

There was an extra car in the driveway, Jack saw, and a new face that looked out the window as the official car pulled into the parking pad.

"That's Andrea. I already talked with her. Your wife had a good lecture today, by the way. Everything went just fine."

"Good thing we have two guest rooms." Jack chuckled as he walked into the house. The mood was happy enough, and it seemed that Cathy and Agent Price were getting along. The two agents conferred while Ryan ate a light dinner.

"Honey, what's going on?" Cathy asked.

"We're involved in a major crisis with Japan, plus the Wall Street thing."

"But how come—"

"Everything that's happened so far has been at sea. It hasn't broken the news yet, but it will."

"War?"

Jack looked up and nodded. "Maybe."

"But the people at Wilmer today, they were just as nice—you mean they don't know either?"

Ryan nodded. "That's right."

"That doesn't make any sense!"

"No, honey, it sure doesn't." The phone rang just then, the regular house phone. Jack was the closest and picked it up. "Hello?"

"Is this Dr. John Ryan?" a voice asked.

"Yeah. Who's this?"

"George Winston. I don't know if you remember, but we met last year at the Harvard Club. I gave a little speech about derivatives. You were at the next table over. By the way, nice job on the Silicon Alchemy IPO."

"Seems like a while ago," Ryan said. "Look, it's kinda busy down here, and—"

"I want to meet with you. It's important," Winston said.

"What about?"

"I'll need fifteen or twenty minutes to explain it. I have my G at Newark. I can be down whenever you say." The voice paused. "Dr. Ryan, I wouldn't be asking unless I thought it was important."

Jack thought about it for a second. George Winston was a serious player.

His rep on the Street was enviable: tough, shrewd, honest. And, Ryan remembered, he'd sold control of his fleet to somebody from Japan. Somebody named Yamata—a name that had turned up before. "Okay, I'll squeeze you in. Call my office tomorrow about eight for a time."

"See you tomorrow then. Thanks for listening." The line went dead.

When he looked over at his wife, she was back at work, transcribing notes from her carry-notebook to her laptop computer, an Apple IIIc laptop.

"I thought you had a secretary for that," he observed with a lopsided smile.

"She can't think about these things when she writes up my notes. I can." Cathy was afraid to relate Bernie's news on the Lasker. She'd picked up several bad habits from her husband. One of them was his Irish-peasant belief in luck, and how you could spoil luck by talking about it. "I had an interesting idea today, just after the lecture."

"And you wrote it right down," her husband observed. Cathy looked up with her usual impish smile.

"Jack, if you don't write it down—"

"Then it never happened."