Debt of Honor

more power,' Gant said. 'Their governments can also interfere more in the marketplace. That's both a help and a hurt. But the end result is going to be the same. It has to be, unless everyone signs on to the same suicide pact. People in our business don't do that.'

Fiedler's turn: 'How do we sell it?'

'We get the heads of the major institutions together just as fast as we can,' Winston replied. 'I can help if you want. They listen to me, too.'

'Jack?' the President asked with a turn of the head.

'Yes, sir. And we do it right away.'

Roger Durling gave it a few more seconds of thought before turning to the Secret Service agent next to his desk. 'Tell the Marines to get my chopper over here. Tell the Air Force to get something warmed up for New York.'

Winston demurred. 'Mr. President, I have my own.'

Ryan took that one. 'George, the Air Force guys are better. Trust me.'

Durling rose and shook hands all around before the Secret Service agents conducted the others downstairs and out onto the South Lawn to await the helicopter flight to Andrews. Ryan stayed put.

'Will it really work? Can we really fix it that easily?' The politician in Roger Durling distrusted magic fixes to anything. Ryan saw the doubts and framed his answer appropriately.

'It ought to. They need something up there, and they will surely want it to work. The crucial element is that they have to know that the takedown was a deliberate act. That makes it artificial, and if they believe that it was artificial, then it's easier for everyone to accept an irregular fix to it.'

'I guess we'll see.' Durling paused. 'Now what does that tell us about Japan?'

'It tells us that their government isn't the prime moving force behind this. That's good news and bad news. The good news is that the effort will be poorly organized at some levels, that the Japanese people are disconnected from the effort, and that there may be elements in their government very uncomfortable with the undertaking.'

'The bad news?' the President asked.

'We still don't know what their overall objective is. The government is evidently doing what it's told. It has a solid strategic position in WestPac, and we still don't know what to do about it. Most important of all—'

'The nukes.' Durling nodded. 'That's their trump. We've never been at war against someone with nuclear arms, have we?'

'No, sir. That's a new one, too.'

The next transmission from Clark and Chavez went out just after midnight Tokyo time. This time Ding had drafted the article. John had run out of interesting things to say about Japan. Chavez, being younger, did an article that was lighter, about young people and their attitudes. It was just the cover, but you have to work hard on those, and Ding, it turned out, had learned how to write coherently at George Mason University.

'Northern Resource Area?' John asked, typing the question on the computer screen. Then he turned the machine on the coffee table.

I should have seen it sooner. It's in one of the books back at Seoul, mano. Indonesia, belonged to the Dutch back then, was the Southern Resource Area when they kicked off Big Mistake No. 2. Can you imagine what the Northern one was?

Clark just took one look and pushed the computer back Yevgeniy Pavlovich, go ahead and send it.' Ding erased the dialog on the screen and hooked up the modem to the phone. The dispatch went out seconds later. Then the two officers traded a look. It had been a productive day after all.

The timing for once could scarcely have been better: 00:08 in Tokyo was 18:08 in Moscow and 10:08 both at Langley and in the White House, and Jack was just reentering his office after his time at the opposite corner of the West Wing when his STU-6 started warbling.

'Yeah.'

'Ed here. We just got something important from our people in Japan. The fax is coming over now. A copy's on the way to Sergey, too.

'Okay, standing by.' Ryan flipped the proper switch and heard the facsimile printer start to turn out its copy.

Winston wasn't all that easy a man to impress. The VC-20 version the Gulfstream-III business jet, he saw, was as nicely appointed as his personal aircraft—the seats and carpet were not as plush, but the communication gear was fabulous…even enough to make a real techno-weenie like Mark happy, he thought. The two older men took the chance to catch up on sleep while he observed the Air Force crewmen run through their pre-flight checklist. It really wasn't at all different from what his crewmen did, but Ryan had been right. It somehow made a difference to see military-type insignia on their shoulders. Three minutes later the executive jet was airborne and heading north for New York's La Guardia, with the added benefit that they already had a priority approach setup, which would save fifteen minutes at the top end of the trip. As he listened, the sergeant working the communications bay was arranging an FBI car to meet them at the general-aviation terminal, and evidently the Bureau was now calling everyone who mattered in the markets for a meeting at their own New York headquarters. How remarkable, he thought, to see the government acting in an efficient manner. What a pity they couldn't do that all the time.

Mark Gant was not paying attention to any of that. He was working on his computer, preparing what he called the case for the prosecution. He'd need about twenty minutes to get the exhibits printed up on acetate sheets for an overhead projector, something the FBI ought to be prepared for, they both hoped. From that point on…who would deliver the information? Probably me, Winston thought. He'd let Fiedler and the Fed Chairman propose the solution, and that was fair. After all, a government guy had come up with it. Brilliant, George Winston told himself with an admiring chuckle. Why didn't I think of that? What else…?

'Mark, make a note. We'll want to fly the European central-bank boys over here to see this. I don't think doing it over a teleconference line will really cut it.'

Gant checked his watch. 'We'll have to call right after we get in, George, but if we do the timing ought to work out okay. The evening flights into New York—yeah, they'll get in in the morning, and probably we can coordinate everything for a Friday restart.'

Winston looked aft. 'We'll tell them when we get in. I think they need to catch some Z's for right now.'

Gant nodded agreement. 'It's going to work, George. That Ryan guy is pretty smart, isn't he?'

Now was a time to take it slow, Jack told himself. He was almost surprised that his phone hadn't rung yet, but on reflection he realized that Golovko was reading the same report, was looking at the same map on his wall, and was also telling himself to think it through as slowly and carefully as circumstances allowed.

It was starting to make sense. Well, almost. 'Northern Resource Area' had to mean Eastern Siberia. The term 'Southern Resource Area,' as Chavez had stated in his report, had once been the term used by the Japanese government in 1941 to identify the Dutch East Indies, back when their prime strategic objective had been oil, then the principal resource needed for a navy and now the most important resource for any industrialized nation needing power to run its economy. Japan was the world's largest importer of oil despite an earnest effort to switch over to nuclear power for electricity. And Japan had to import so much else; only coal was in natural abundance. Supertankers were largely a Japanese invention, the more efficiently to move oil from the Persian Gulf fields to Japanese terminals. But they needed other things, too, and since she was an island nation, those commodities all had to come by sea, and Japan's navy was small, far too small to secure the sea-lanes.

On the other hand, Eastern Siberia was the world's last unsurveyed territory, and Japan was now conducting the survey, and the sea-lanes from the Eurasian mainland to Japan—Hell, why not just build a railroad tunnel and do it the easy way? Ryan asked himself.

Except for one thing. Japan was stretching her abilities in doing what she had already done, even with a gravely diminished American military and a five-thousand-mile buffer of Pacific waters between the American mainland and her own home islands. Russia's military machine was even more drastically reduced than America's, but an invasion was more than a political act. It was an act against a people, and the Russians had not lost their pride. The Russians would fight, and they were still far larger than Japan. The Japanese had nuclear weapons on ballistic launchers, and the Russians, like the Americans, did not—but the Russians did have submarines, and fighter-bombers, and cruise missiles, all with nuclear capability, and bases close to Japan, and the political will to make use of them. There would have to be one more element. Jack leaned back, staring at his map. Then he lifted