Debt of Honor

something that had broken was a sufficiently difficult task. Fixing something deliberately and maliciously destroyed could hardly be easier. And it had to be fixed, and soon, lest every nation in Europe and North America join the plunge into a deep, dark canyon. The climb out of it would require both years and pain, and that was under the best of political circumstances—the long-term political ramifications of such a vast economic dislocation could not possibly be grasped at this stage, though Ryan was already recoiling from that particular horror.

Winston looked at the National Security Advisor's face, and it wasn't hard to read his thoughts. His own elation at the discovery was gone now that he'd given the information over to others. There ought to have been something else for him to say: how to fix matters. But all of his intellectual energy had been expended in building his case for the prosecution, as it were. He hadn't had the chance yet to take his analysis any further.

Ryan saw that and nodded with a grim smile of respect. 'Good job.'

'It's my fault,' Winston said, quietly so as not to disturb the conference call proceeding a few feet away. 'I should have stayed in.'

'I've bailed out once myself, remember?' Ryan got back into a chair.

'Hey, we all need a change from time to time. You didn't see this coming. It happens all the time. Especially here.'

Winston gestured angrily. 'I suppose. Now we can identify the rapist, but how the hell do you get unraped? Once it's happened, it's happened. But those were my investors he fucked. Those people came to me. Those people trusted me.' Ryan admired the summation. That was how people in the business were supposed to think.

'In other words, now what?'

Gant and Winston traded a look. 'We haven't figured that one out.'

'Well, so far you've outperformed the FBI and SEC. You know, I haven't even bothered checking how my portfolio did.'

'Your ten percent of Silicon Alchemy won't hurt you. Long term,' Winston said, 'new communications gadgets always make out, and they have a couple of honeys.'

'Okay, that's settled for now.' Fiedler rejoined the group. 'All the European markets are shut down, just like we are, until we can get things sorted out.'

Winston looked up. 'All that means is, there's a hell of a flood, and you're building the levee higher and higher. And if you. run out of sandbags before the river runs out of water, then the damage will only be worse when you lose control.'

'We're all open to suggestions, Mr. Winston,' Fiedler said gently.

George's reply matched it in kind. 'Sir, for what it's worth, I think you've done everything right to this point. I just don't see a way out.'

'Neither do we,' the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board observed.

Ryan stood. 'For the moment, gentlemen, I think we need to brief the President.'

'What an interesting idea,' Yamata said. He knew he'd had too much to drink. He knew that he was basking in the sheer satisfaction of carrying out what had to be the most ambitious financial gambit in history. He know that his ego was expanding to its fullest size since—when? Even reaching the chairmanship of his conglomerate hadn't been this satisfactory. He'd crushed a whole nation and had altered the course of his own, and yet he had never even considered public office of any kind. And why not? he asked himself. Because that had always been a place for lesser men.

'For the moment, Yamata-san, Saipan will have a local governor. We will hold internationally supervised elections. We need a candidate,' the Foreign Ministry official went on. 'It must be someone of stature. It would be helpful if it were a man known and friendly to Goto-san, and a man with local interests. I merely ask that you consider it.'

'I will do that.' Yamata stood and headed for the door.

Well. He wondered what his father would have thought of that. It would mean stepping down from chairmanship of his corporation…but—but what? What corporate worlds had he failed to conquer? Was it not time to move on? To retire honorably, to enter the formal service of his nation. After the local government situation was cleared up…then? Then to enter the Diet with great prestige, because the insiders would know, wouldn't they? Hai, they would know who had truly served the interests of the nation, who more than the Emperor Meiji himself had brought Japan to the first rank of nations. When had Japan ever had a political leader worthy of her place and her people? Why should he not take the honor due him? It would all require a few years, but he had those years. More than that, he had vision and the courage to make it real. Only his peers in business knew of his greatness now, but that could change, and his family name would be remembered for more than building ships and televisions and all the other things. Not a trademark. A name. A heritage. Would that not make his father proud?

'Yamata?' Roger Durling asked. 'Tycoon, right, runs a huge company? I may have bumped into him at some reception or other when I was Vice President.'

'Well, that's the guy,' Winston said.

'So what are you saying he did?' the President asked.

Mark Gant set up his computer on the President's desk, this time with a Secret Service agent immediately behind him and watching every move, and this time he took it slow because Roger Durling, unlike Ryan, Fiedler, and the Fed Chairman, didn't really understand all the ins and outs. He did prove to be an attentive audience, however, stopping the presentation to ask questions, making a few notes, and three times asking for a repeat of a segment of the presentation. Finally he looked over to the Secretary of the Treasury.

'Buzz?'

'I want our people to verify the information independently—'

'That won't be hard,' Winston told them. 'Any one of the big houses will have records almost identical to this. My people can help organize it for you.'

'If it's true, Buzz?'

'Then, Mr. President, this situation comes more under Dr. Ryan's purview than mine,' SecTreas replied evenly. His relief was tempered with anger at the magnitude of what had been done. The two outsiders in the Oval Office didn't yet understand that.

Ryan's mind was racing. He'd ignored Gant's repeated explanation of the 'how' of the event. Though the presentation to the President was clearer and more detailed than the first two times—the man would have made a fine instructor at a business school—the important parts were already fixed in the National Security Advisor's mind. Now he had the how, and the how told him a lot. This plan had been exquisitely planned and executed. The timing of the Wall Street takedown and the carrier/submarine attack had not been an accident. It was therefore a fully integrated plan. Yet it was also a plan which the Russian spy network had not uncovered, and that was the fact that kept repeating itself to him.

Their existing net is inside the Japanese government. It is probably concentrated on their security apparatus. But that net failed to give them strategic warning for the military side of the operation, and Sergey Nikolay'ch hasn't connected Wall Street with the naval action yet.

Break the model, Jack, he told himself. Break the paradigm. That's when it became clearer.

'That's why they didn't get it,' Ryan said almost to himself. It was like driving through patches of fog; you got into a clear spot followed by another clouded one. 'It wasn't really their government at all. It really was Yamata and the others. That's why they want THISTLE back.' Nobody else in the room knew what he was talking about.

'What's that?' the President asked. Jack turned his eyes to Winston and Gant, then shook his head. Durling nodded and went on. 'So the whole event was one big plan?'

'Yes, sir, but we still don't know it all.'

'What do you mean?' Winston asked. 'They cripple us, start a world-wide panic, and you say there's more?'

'George, how often have you been over there?' Ryan asked, mainly to get information to the others.

'In the last five years? I guess it comes out to an average of about once a month. My grandchildren will be using up the last of my frequent-flyer miles.'

'How often have you met with government people over there?'

Winston shrugged. 'They're around a lot. But they don't matter very much.'

'Why?' the President asked.