Power and Empire

60

If there was one fortunate thing about being tired all the time, President Ryan knew, it was that he could usually nap at any given moment. It hadn’t always been that way. The Threat Board being what it was — urgent and stacked — it had a tendency to keep thinking people up at night. But as he spent more and more time with the sword of Damocles suspended over his head, Ryan’s brain and body formed an uneasy truce, allowing thoughts on topics such as nuclear destruction or a fragile economy to simmer in the background instead of boiling over the moment his head hit the pillow. Cathy said he dreamed more now, tossing and turning and mumbling nonsensical things in his sleep. Ryan rarely remembered his dreams, which made him believe there was a God, and that He was merciful, because the dreams of a powerful man with any conscience at all were, by necessity, bad dreams.

He woke to the change in pressure in his ears as Air Force One began a gradual descent over Japan. Hopefully, the four-hour nap would get his body clock somewhere in line with Japan time. They would be wheels-down at Yokota Air Base at nine-twenty a.m. local — giving him a full day of meetings when his brain told him it was eight-twenty p.m. in D.C. It was going to be a long one, so he shaved and put on a clean shirt and a midnight-blue tie. Cathy said the color made him look serious, which, he thought, was appropriate considering his upcoming meeting with President Zhao.

Though surely terrifying for the crew, the business with RV Meriwether had proven a litmus test for the power struggle that appeared to be going on inside China. Either Zhao was a liar or he didn’t have control of his military. The former, Ryan had come to hope. The latter would be a nightmare.

Special Agent Gary Montgomery sat on the sofa outside the President’s office and gazed out the windows at the ocean below. He didn’t much care for water. It could kill you, but you couldn’t kill it back. POTUS would be up soon, so Montgomery buttoned the top button on his white shirt and straightened his tie. He always brought two ties to work, a red one and a blue one — so he’d not be wearing the same color as his protectee. It was weird, Montgomery admitted that, but it was something he did for luck — well, that and countless hours at the range and in the gym. The President had been wearing a red power tie when they left Andrews, and Montgomery was happy he’d chosen a blue Brooks Brothers for today. This was his first flight with President Ryan, and he wanted everything to be perfect. His years in the Secret Service had taught him that if something could go wrong, it would. Montgomery didn’t relish the idea of having a man he respected as much as Jack Ryan standing over his shoulder when things inevitably turned to shit.

The Japanese took a dim view of firearms and strictly enforced who could and could not carry for all but the agents immediately surrounding the President. Even these were warned of Japanese gun laws, but no one stopped the President of the United States or the dozen close-protection agents who arrived in the motorcade with him. Montgomery had been told it was a wink-and-a-nod sort of agreement, with the Japanese not doing very much winking — or nodding.

Yeah, Tokyo was touted as the safest city in the world, but the President of the United States had enemies, and it took only one devoted son of a bitch to ruin your whole day — especially if half your team was standing around holding nothing but air when they should be holding SIG Sauer pistols.

Most of the heavy-weapon portion of the vehicle package would be staffed by Japanese police, yet the Secret Service still had two armored limos and a number of their own follow-ups and staff vehicles. When they did move on the ground, the motorcade would be a staggering forty-three vehicles long — not including the motorcycle escorts that would provide rolling roadblocks prior to every intersection. The helos from HMX-1 were already on the ground as well, with backup air support in the form of two CV-22 Ospreys that had recently been stationed at Yokota.

The fifteen-minute trip on Marine One from Yokota Air Base to downtown Tokyo would be a hell of a lot better than a forty-minute drive. Mitzi Snelson, lead advance for the detail, advised that the Palace Hotel — the location of POTUS’s bi-lat with the Chinese president — was buttoned up tight. She would meet them on the roof.

Montgomery looked at his watch and then knocked on the office door.

“Mr. President,” he said. “Wheels down in five minutes.”

Ryan’s voice came back through the door. “Very well. Everything good to go on the ground?”

“We’re all set, sir,” Montgomery said, though he couldn’t help but feel like he was forgetting something. Decades on the job and this trip had him feeling like a damn rookie.

“Good,” Ryan said, opening the door. He was wearing a midnight-blue tie instead of the red one he’d had on when they left.

Montgomery bit his tongue and forced a smile.

Ryan saw his change in mood. “Is something wrong?”

“Not a thing, Mr. President.”

The Akasaka Guesthouse is very secure,” Yuki said. She was sitting beside Jack Ryan, Jr., on the Marunouchi subway line, heading back toward Tokyo Station and the Palace Hotel. Ryan’s chest needed stitches, but Adara had fixed him up with some superglue and a sticky bandage that stopped him from bleeding through his shirt.

The team had almost nothing to go on, aside from some cryptic phrases about a gang — and possibly the word “kill,” which was chilling in and of itself, if that’s what Chen had actually been saying. The fact that Chen was in town at all was bad news, and Jack tried to console himself that the man’s cadre was dead or in jail. Yuki’s superiors had told her the second gunman had survived and was in intensive care. Amanda Salazar and the man Ryan had knocked out were in police custody, refusing to talk. Their respective embassies had been notified and both would probably be released after all the visiting dignitaries left town — unless Yuki’s organization could find a reason to hold them.

“Thanks,” Ryan said. “I know you have plenty of work without me here having you run down a bunch of dead ends.”

Yuki smiled. “We have a saying here in Japan: Nokorimono ni wa fuku ga aru. Luck is in the leftovers.”

“I’m not sure what that means—”

“It means,” Yuki said, “that we must keep going. We find our luck by working through to the last.”

“I hope my friends have some luck with Chen’s computer.”

“I would be severely reprimanded for letting you tamper with that,” she said. “If my superiors were to find out.”

“I know,” Ryan said. “And like I said, I’m sorry to put you in this spot.”

The train rumbled to a stop at Kasumigaseki. They were two stops from Tokyo Station and the cars were getting crowded.

Three middle-aged women boarded and held the suspended rings in front of Ryan as the train began to move. His dad would not approve of his lack of chivalry.

“Japan has a load of cool proverbs,” he said. “But I don’t care for the custom of men sitting while women stand. I think I’ll offer one of these ladies my seat.”

Yuki put her hand on his arm and left it there. “Please,” she said. “It is more polite for you to sit.”

“Seriously?” Ryan said. “Because I might offend some other dude that didn’t think of it first?”

“No.” She smiled, leaning in close to share a secret. “You take up too much space.”

Ryan looked at her. She still hadn’t moved her hand off his arm, and he was fine with that. “Too much space?”

She squeezed his arm now, flirting a little, maybe. “You are quite bulky compared to most Japanese. I am embarrassed to say that some might think you kebukai yabanjin—a hairy barbarian.” She raised her eyebrows. “I do not think so, of course.”

“Of course.” Ryan gave her a slow nod, but he kept his seat until the train stopped at Tokyo Station.

Yuki led the way out of the Marunouchi tunnel. They opened their umbrellas against a steady rain and walked almost due west, past a water garden on the right, toward the Imperial Palace moat. Lots of water. Ryan had a lot of personal experience with the Secret Service. He was sure they’d already had scuba divers check the water features and run a couple dozen waterborne Attack on the Principal drills back on some lake near Beltsville.

They passed a small shrine, and a white castle across the water, the colors and edges of everything muted by the rain and mist.

“This country looks amazing when it’s wet,” he said.

“I think so as well,” Yuki said. “You must be careful, Jack. When you try to leave Japan, ushirogami wo hikareru—it will always tug at the hair on the back of your neck.”

“I can believe that—”

Chavez’s voice came over the net. He was still at the hotel babysitting Chen’s computer while Gavin Biery worked to break the passwords and encryption so he could conduct a remote assessment of its contents. Midas and Adara had been going from place to place, looking for any needles in the haystack of G20 venues. They all planned to link up around the hotel, across the street from the Imperial Palace and grounds.

“I’ve been trying to call you, ’mano,” Chavez said. “Gavin got in.” His voice was far from happy.

“Okay,” Ryan said. “An assassination plot?”

“Gav’s still going over files,” Chavez said. “But not so far. Just as Eddie Feng suspected, Chen is connected to the Beijing subway bombing. He was paid a nice sum for that one. But get this. Did you read about the soldier getting killed in Chad and an attack on a Navy vessel somewhere over near Bali?”

“Yeah,” Jack said.

“Chen received payments around the time of those attacks — and, of course, the bombing in Argentina.”

Ryan pondered the ramifications. “Taiwan?”

“Not even close,” Chavez said. “Foreign Minister Li. Gav got some weird hits checking some back channels. First he thought the connection was just because Li was a victim in the Argentina thing, but Li and a PRC general named Xu own shares in a diamond mine in West Africa. Get this, Vincent Chen’s sister, Lily, is a minority partner in the same mine.”

Ryan stopped in his tracks. “So Chen and Foreign Minister Li are connected? Maybe the sister hired Chen to kill her business partner.”

Yuki turned around to listen to Jack’s half of the conversation.

“We have to pass this up the chain,” Jack said.

“Gerry’s getting it to our friends at the Crossing now.”

He meant Liberty Crossing, home of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — Mary Pat Foley. She would know if there was anything in the works regarding Li.

“I’ll get back to you,” Chavez said. “Gerry’s calling.”

Ryan filled Yuki in as they crossed Uchibori Street, which was blocked off to vehicular traffic for the entire block in front of the hotel. They were able to walk north, along the Imperial Garden moat.

Yuki stopped with the gathered crowd directly across the street from the hotel. A dozen uniformed police officers and security guards in white hardhats formed a polite but unyielding skirmish line along the sidewalk, allowing people to look as long as they were empty-handed. Photography, or even holding a phone, was strictly prohibited.

Three helicopters thumped in the gray sky overhead, two peeling off while the third hovered over the hotel roof, settling in for a landing. Marine One. Jack felt his gut twist, knowing that his father was stepping into some serious unknowns.

“You needn’t worry about the President,” Yukiko said. “The Wadakura fountains and ponds form a natural barrier to the south of this venue and the police have closed the roads around the entire block.” She nodded toward a large white tent at the end of the street. “Any delivery or staff support vehicle — even those of the police — must be screened with mirrors and explosive-detection canines. Pedestrians, including security, must show their credentials at that point, and then again inside the building, passing through metal detectors at both locations. It is like the layers of an onion. Concentric rings, countermeasures to thwart bombings, armed assailants, missiles, biological and chemical attacks, and crazy people with samurai swords. You see, it appears that every conceivable attacker has been covered.”

“Even kebukai yabanjin?” Jack said.

“Especially the hairy barbarians,” Yuki said.

Sirens yelped and a motorcade of fifteen cars turned off Uchibori and into the security tent half a block down.

The black Toyota sedan behind the police lead vehicles bore the red flags of the People’s Republic of China.

“Zhao,” Ryan mused.

The motorcade proceeded under the hotel portico, out of the rain. Men in dark suits sprang from the two follow-up sedans, facing outbound as they surrounded the limousine. Some of them would be Japanese SPs — Security Police — but like the United States, China preferred to bring a relatively large contingent of her own personnel.

Ryan took a half-step forward in order to get a better look. It was hard to be certain in the rain from so far away.

“Do those two guys look familiar?”

Yuki moved up beside him. “I… think so.”

President Zhao exited his limo, purposely shielded from clear view by the vehicle and the pillars in front of the hotel entry. He and several members of his security detail disappeared into the hotel. The motorcade pulled forward and then stopped again. More security men got out and surrounded a second protectee.

“Foreign Minister Li,” Yuki said. “I know who those men were.”

“Me too,” Ryan said into the microphone on his neck loop.

“Hey, guys… We got a problem.”