Debt of Honor

enough that he wasn't the only one around. As he stood looking at the latest automated wonder from Nikon, he felt someone bump into him.

'Watch where you're going,' a gruff voice said in English and moved on. Clark took a few seconds before heading in the other direction, leaving the corner and heading down an alley. A minute later he found a shadowy place and waited. Nomuri was there quickly.

'This is dangerous, kid.'

'Why do you think I hit you with that signal?' Nomuri's voice was low and shaky. It was fieldcraft from a TV series, about as realistic and professional as two kids sneaking a smoke in the boys' room of their junior high. The odd part was that, important as it was, Nomuri's message occupied about one minute. The rest of the time was concerned with procedural matters.

'Okay, number one, no contact at all with your normal rat-line. Even if they're allowed out on the street, you don't know them. You don't go near them. Your contact points are gone, kid, you understand?' Clark's mind was going at light-speed toward nowhere at the moment, but the most immediate priority was survival. You had to be alive in order to accomplish something, and Nomuri, like Chavez and himself, were 'illegals,' unlikely to receive any sort of clemency after arrest and totally separated from any support from their parent agency.

Chet Nomuri nodded. 'That leaves you, sir.'

'That's right, and if you lose us, you return to your cover and you don't do anything. Got that? Nothing at all. You're a loyal Japanese citizen, and you stay in your hole.'

'But—'

'But nothing, kid. You are under my orders now, and if you violate them, you answer to me!' Clark softened his voice. 'Your first priority is always survival. We don't issue suicide pills and we don't expect movie-type bullshit. A dead officer is a dumb officer.' Damn, Clark thought, had the mission been different from the very beginning, they would have had a routine established—dead-drops, a whole collection of signals, a selection of cutouts—but there wasn't time to do that now, and every second they talked here in the shadows there was the chance that some Tokyoite would let his cat out, see a Japanese national talking to a gaijin, and make note of it. The paranoia curve had risen fast, and would only get steeper.

'Okay, you say so, man.'

'And don't forget it. Stick to your regular routine. Don't change anything except maybe to back off some. Fit in. Act like everybody else does. A nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Hammers hurt, boy. Now, here's what I want you to do.' Clark went on for a minute. 'Got it?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Get lost.' Clark headed down the alley, and entered his hotel through the delivery entrance, thankfully unwatched at this time of night. Thank God, he thought, that Tokyo had so little crime. The American equivalent would be locked, or have an alarm, or be patrolled by an armed guard. Even at war, Tokyo was a safer place than Washington, D.C.

'Why don't you just buy a bottle instead of going out to drink?' 'Chekov' asked, not for the first time, when he came back into the room.

'Maybe I should.' Which reply made the younger officer's eyes jerk up from his paper and his Russian practice. Clark pointed to the TV, turned it on, and found CNN Headline News, in English. Now for my next trick. How the hell do I get the word in? he wondered. He didn't dare use the fax machine to America. Even the Washington Interfax office was far too grave a risk, the one in Moscow didn't have the encryption gear needed, and he couldn't go through the Embassy's CIA connection either. There was one set of rules for operating in a friendly country, and another for a hostile one, and nobody had expected the rules that made the rules to change without warning. That he and other CIA officers should have provided forewarning of the event was just one more thing to anger the experienced spy; the congressional hearings on that one were sure to be entertaining if he lived long enough to enjoy them.

The only good news was that he had the name of a probable suspect in the murder of Kimberly Norton. That, at least, gave him something to fantasize about, and his mind had little other useful activity to undertake at the moment. At the half-hour it was clear that even CNN didn't know what was going on, and if CNN didn't know, then nobody did. Wasn't that just great, Clark thought. It was like the legend of Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam of Troy who always knew what was happening, and who was always ignored. But Clark didn't even have a way of getting the word out…did he?

I wonder if…? No. He shook his head. That was too crazy.

'All ahead full,' the Commanding Officer of Eisenhower said.

'All ahead full, aye,' the quartermaster on the enunciator pushed the handles forward. A moment later the inner arrow rotated to the same position. 'Sir, engine room answers all ahead full.'

'Very well.' The CO looked over at Admiral Dubro. 'Care to lay any bets, sir?'

The best information, oddly enough, came from sonar. Two of the battle group's escorts had their towed- array sonars, called 'tails,' streamed, and their data, combined with that of two nuclear submarines to the formation's starboard, indicated that the Indian formation was a good way off to the south. It was one of those odd instances, more common than one might expect, where sonar far outperformed radar, whose electronic waves were limited by the curve of the earth, while sound waves found their own deep channels. The Indian fleet was over a hundred fifty miles away, and though that was spitting distance for jet attack aircraft, the Indians were looking to their south, not the north, and it further appeared that Admiral Chandraskatta didn't relish night-flight operations and the risks they entailed for his limited collection of Harriers. Well, both men thought, night landings on a carrier weren't exactly fun.

'Better than even,' Admiral Dubro replied after a moment's analysis.

'I think you're right.'

The formation was blacked out, not an unusual circumstance for warships, all its radars turned off, and the only radios in use were line-of-sight units with burst-transmission capability, which broadcast for hundredths of seconds only. Even satellite sets generated side-lobes that could betray their position, and their covert passage south of Sri Lanka was essential.

'World War Two was like this,' the CO went on, giving voice to his nerves. They were depending on the most human of fundamentals. Extra lookouts had been posted, who used both regular binoculars and 'night-eye' electronic devices to sweep the horizon for silhouettes and mast-tops, while others on lower decks looked closer in for the telltale 'feather' of a submarine periscope. The Indians had two submarines out on which Dubro did not have even an approximate location. They were probably probing south, too, but if Chandraskatta was really as smart as he feared, he would have left one close in, just as insurance. Maybe. Dubro's deception operation had been a skillful one.

'Admiral?' Dubro's head turned. It was a signalman. 'FLASH Traffic from CINCPAC.' The petty officer handed over the clipboard and held a red-covered flashlight over the dispatch so that the battle-group commander could read it.

'Did you acknowledge receipt?' the Admiral asked before he started reading.

'No, sir, you left orders to chimp everything down.'

'Very good, sailor.' Dubro started reading. In a second he was holding both the clipboard and the flashlight. 'Son of a bitch!'

Special Agent Robberton would drive Cathy home, and with that notification, Ryan again became a government functionary rather than a human being with a wife and family. It was a short walk to Marine One, its rotor already turning. President and Mrs. Durling, JUMPER and JASMINE, had done the requisite smiles for the cameras and had used the opportunity of the long flight to beg off answering any questions. Ryan trailed behind like some sort of equerry.

'Take an hour to get caught up,' Durling said as the helicopter landed on the south lawn of the White House. 'When is the Ambassador scheduled in?'

'Eleven-thirty,' Brett Hanson replied.

'I want you, Arnie, and Jack there for the meeting.'

'Yes, Mr. President,' the Secretary of State acknowledged.

The usual photographers were there, but most of the White House reporters whose shouted questions so