notes on his way in. One was marked
'That you, Ryan?'
'Correct, Mr. Winston. You want to see me. When?' Jack asked, opening his briefcase and pulling the classified things out.
'Anytime, starting ninety minutes from now. I have a car waiting downstairs, a Gulfstream with warm motors, a car waiting at D.C. National.' His voice said the rest. It was urgent, and no-shit serious. On top of that came Winston's reputation.
'I presume it's about last Friday.'
'Correct.'
'Why me and not Secretary Fiedler?' Ryan wondered.
'You've worked there. He hasn't. If you want him to get in on it, then he'll get it. I think you'll get it faster. Have you been following the financial news this morning?'
'It sounds like Europe's getting squirrelly on us.'
'And it's just going to get worse,' Winston said. And he was probably right. Jack knew.
'You know how to fix it?' Ryan could almost hear the head at the other end shake in anger and disgust.
'I wish. But maybe I can tell you what really happened.'
'I'll settle for that. Come down as quick as you want,' Jack told him. 'Tell the driver West Executive Drive. The uniformed guards will be expecting you at the gate.'
'Thanks for listening, Dr. Ryan.' The line clicked off, and Jack wondered how long it had been since the last time George Winston had said that to anyone. Then he got down to his work for the day.
The one good thing was that the railcars used to transport the 'H-11' boosters from the assembly plant to wherever were standard gauge. That accounted for only about 8 percent of Japanese trackage and was, moreover, something discernible from satellite photographs. The Central Intelligence Agency was in the business of accumulating information, most of which would never have any practical use, and most of which, despite all manner of books and movies to the contrary, came from open-source material. It was just a matter of finding a railway map of Japan to see where all the standard-gauge trackage was and starting from there, but there were now over two thousand miles of such trackage, and the weather over Japan was not always clear, and the satellites were not always directly overhead, the better to see into valleys that littered a country composed largely of volcanic mountains.
But it was also a task with which the Agency was familiar. The Russians, with their genius and mania for concealing everything, had taught CIA's analysts the hard way to look for the unlikely spots first of all. An open plain, for example, was a likely spot, easy to approach, easy to build, easy to service, and easy to protect. That was how America had done it in the 1960's, banking incorrectly on the hope that missiles would never become accurate enough to hit such small, rugged point targets. Japan would have learned from that lesson. Therefore, the analysts had to look for the difficult places. Woods, valleys, hills, and the very selectivity of the task ensured that it would require time. Two updated KH-11 photosatellites were in orbit, and one KH-12 radar-imaging satellite. The former could resolve objects down to the size of a cigarette pack. The latter produced a monochrome image of far less resolution, but could see through clouds, and, under favorable circumstances, could actually penetrate the ground, down to as much as ten meters; in fact it had been developed for the purpose of locating otherwise invisible Soviet missile silos and similarly camouflaged installations. That was the good news. The bad news was that each individual frame of imagery had to be examined by a team of experts, one at a time; that every irregularity or curiosity had to be reexamined and graded; that the time involved despite—indeed, because of—the urgency of the task was immense.
Analysts from the CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center (I-TAC) were grouped together for the task, looking for twenty holes in the ground, knowing nothing other than the fact that the individual holes could be no less than five meters across. There could be one large group of twenty, or twenty individual and widely separated holes. The first task, all agreed, was to get new imagery of the whole length of standard-gauge rails. Weather and camera angles impeded some of that task, and now on the third day of the hunt, 20 percent of the needed mapping still remained undone. Already thirty potential sites had been identified for further scrutiny from new passes at slightly different light levels and camera angles which would allow stereo-optic viewing and additional computer enhancement. People on the analysis team were talking again about the 1991 Scud-hunts. It was not a pleasant memory for them. Though many lessons had been learned, the main one was this: it wasn't really all that hard to hide one or ten or twenty or even a hundred relatively small objects within the borders of a nation-state, even a very open, very flat one. And Japan was neither. Under the circumstances, finding all of them was a nearly impossible task. But they had to try anyway.
It was eleven at night, and his duties to his ancestors were done for the moment. They would never be fully carried out, but the promises to their spirits he'd made so many years before were now accomplished. What had been Japanese soil at the time of his birth was now again Japanese soil. What had been his family's land was now again his family's land. The nation that had humbled his nation and murdered his family had finally been humbled, and would remain so for a long, long time. Long enough to assure his country's position, finally, among the great nations of the world.
In fact, even greater than he'd planned, he noted. All he had to do was look at the financial reports coming into his hotel suite via facsimile printer. The financial panic he'd planned and executed was now moving across the Atlantic. Amazing, he thought, that he hadn't anticipated it. The complex financial maneuvers had left Japanese banks and businesses suddenly cash-rich, and his fellow zaibatsu were seizing the opportunity to buy up European equities for themselves and their companies. They'd increase the national wealth, improve their position in the various European national economies, and publicly appear to be springing to the assistance of others.
Yamata judged that Japan would bend some efforts to help Europe out of her predicament. His country needed markets alter all, and with this sudden increase in Japanese ownership of their private companies, perhaps now the European politicians would listen more attentively to their suggestions.
'So,' he said to his host. 'How may I be of service?'
'Yamata-san, as you know, we will be holding elections for a local governor.' The bureaucrat poured a stiff shot of a fine Scotch whiskey. 'You are a landowner, and have been so for some months. You have business interests here. I suggest that you might be a perfect man for the job.'
For the first time in years, Raizo Yamata was startled.
In another room in the same hotel an admiral, a major, and a captain of Japan Air Lines held a family reunion.
'So, Yusuo, what will happen next?' Torajiro asked.
'What I think will happen next is that you will return to your normal flight schedule back and forth to America,' the Admiral said, finishing his third drink. 'If they are as intelligent as I believe them to be, then they will see that the war is already over.'
'How long have you been in on this, Uncle?' Shiro inquired with deep respect. Having now learned of what his uncle had done, he was awed by the man's audacity.
'From when I was a
more to this than meets the eye.'
'How so?' Torajiro asked.
Yusuo poured himself another shot. His fleet was safe, and he was entitled to unwind, he thought, especially with his brother and nephew, now that all the stress was behind him. 'We've spoken more and more in the past few years, but most of all right before he bought that American financial house. And so, now? My little operation happens the same day that their stock market crashes…? An interesting coincidence, is it not?' His eyes twinkled.
