get used to the idea. I want the COs to drill their people up. You're never ready enough, Ron. Never.'
'True,' the civilian conceded. He'd come over with SOSUS printouts to demonstrate that all known submarine contacts were off the screen. Two hydrophone arrays that were operated from the island of Guam were no longer available. Though connected by undersea cable to the rest of the network, they'd evidently been turned off by the monitoring facility on Guam, and nobody at Pearl had yet been able to trick them back on. The good news was that a backup array off Samar in the Philippines was still operating, but it could not detect the Japanese SSKs shown by satellite to be replenishing off Agana. They'd even gotten a good count. Probably, Mancuso thought. The Japanese still painted the hull numbers on the sails, and the satellite cameras could read them. Unless the Japanese, like the Russians and then the Americans, had learned to spoof reconnaissance efforts by playing with the numbers—or simply erased them entirely.
'It would be nice to have a few more fast-attacks, wouldn't it?' Jones observed after a minute's contemplation of the chart.
'Sure would. Maybe if we can get some direction from Washington…'
His voice trailed off, and Mancuso thought a little more. The location of every sub under his command was marked with a black silhouette, even the ones in overhaul status. Those were marked in white, showing availability dates, which was not much help at the moment. But there were five such silhouettes at Bremerton, weren't there?
The Special Report card appeared on all the major TV networks. In every case the hushed voice of an anchorperson told people that their network shows would be interrupted by a speech from the President about the economic crisis with which his administration had been dealing since the weekend. Then came the Presidential Seal. Those who had been following the events were surprised to see the President smiling.
'Good evening.
'My fellow Americans, last week we saw a major event take place in the American financial system.
'I want to begin my report to you by saying that the American economy is strong. Now'—he smiled—'that may seem a strange pronouncement given all that you've heard in the media and elsewhere. But let me tell you why that is so. I'll start off with a question:
'What has changed? American workers are still making cars in Detroit and elsewhere. American workers are still making steel. Kansas farmers have their winter wheat in and are preparing for a new planting season. They're still making computers in the Silicon Valley. They're still making tires in Akron. Boeing is still making airplanes. They're still pumping oil out of the ground in Texas and Alaska. They're still mining coal in West Virginia. All the things you were doing a week ago, you are still doing. So what has changed?
'What changed was this: some electrons traveled along some copper wires, telephone lines like this one'— the President held up a phone cord and tossed it aside on his desk—'and that's all,' he went on in the voice of a good, smart neighbor come to the house to offer some kindly advice. 'Not one person has lost his life. Not a single business has lost a building. The wealth of our nation is unchanged. Nothing has gone away.
'And yet, my fellow Americans, we have begun to panic—over what?
'In the past four days we have determined that a deliberate attempt was made to tamper with the U.S. financial markets. The United States Department of Justice, with the assistance of some good Americans within those markets, is now building a criminal case against the people responsible for that. I cannot go further at the moment because even your President does not have the right to tamper with the right of any person to a fair and impartial trial. But we do know what happened and we do know that what happened is entirely artificial.
'Now, what are we going to do about it?' Roger Durling asked. 'The financial markets have been closed all week. They will reopen at noon on Friday and…'
33—Reversal Points
'It can't possibly work,' Kozo Matsuda said over the translation. 'Raizo's plan was perfect—better than perfect,' he went on, talking as much to himself as the telephone receiver. Before the crash he'd worked in conjunction with a banker associate to use the opportunity to cash in on the T-Bill transactions, which had gone a long way to recapitalizing his troubled conglomerate. It had also made his cash account yen-heavy in the face of international obligations.
'When do the European markets open?' Somehow in the excitement of the moment he couldn't remember.
'London is nine hours behind us. Germany and Holland are eight. Four this afternoon,' the man on the other end of the phone said. 'Our people have their instructions.' And those were clear: to use the renewed power of their national currency to buy as many European equities as possible so that when the financial panic ended, two or three years from now, Japan would be so enmeshed in that multinational economy as to be a totally integral part of it; so vital to their survival that separation would run the renewed danger of financial collapse. And they wouldn't risk that, not after recovery from the worst economic crisis in three generations, and certainly not after Japan had played so important and selfless a part in restoring prosperity to three hundred million Europeans. It was troubling that the Americans suspected a hand in what had taken place, but Yamata-san had assured them all that no records could possibly exist—wasn't that the masterstroke of the entire event, the elimination of records and their replacement with chaos? Businesses could not operate without precise financial records of their transactions, and denied those, they simply stopped. Rebuilding them would require weeks or months, Matsuda was sure, during which time the paralysis would allow Japan—more precisely, his fellow zaibatsu—to cash in, in addition to the brilliant strategic moves Yamata had executed through their government agencies. The integrated nature of the plan was the reason why all his fellows had signed on to it.
'It really doesn't matter, Kozo. We took Europe down, too, and the only liquidity left in the world is ours.'
'Good one, Boss,' Ryan said, leaning on the doorframe.
'A long way to go,' Durling said, leaving his chair and heading out of the Oval Office before saying anything more. The President and National Security Advisor headed into the White House proper, past the technicians who alone had been allowed in. It wasn't time to face reporters yet.
'It's amazing how philosophical it is,' Jack said as they took the elevator to the residential floor.
'Metaphysics, eh? You did go to a Jesuit school, didn't you?'
'Three, actually. What is reality?' Jack asked rhetorically. 'Reality to them is electrons and computer screens, and if there's one thing I learned on the Street, it's that they don't know investments worth a damn. Except Yamata, I suppose.'
'Well, he did all right, didn't he?' Durling asked.
'He should have left the records alone. If he'd left us in free-fall…'
Ryan shrugged. 'It might just have kept going. It just never occurred to him that we might not play by his rules.' And that, Jack told himself, would be the key to everything. The President's speech had been a fine mix of things said and unsaid, and the targeting of the speech had been precise. It had been, in fact, the first PsyOp of a war.
'The press can't stay dumb forever.'
'I know.' Ryan even knew where the leak would start, and the only reason it hadn't happened already was the FBI. 'But we need to keep them dumb just a little longer.'
It started cautiously, not really as part of any operational plan at all, but more as a precursor to one. Four B- 1B Lancer bombers lifted off from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, followed by two KC-10 tankers. The combination of latitude and time of year guaranteed darkness. Their bomb bays were fitted with fuel tanks instead of weapons. Each aircraft had a crew of four, pilot and copilot, plus two systems operators.
The Lancer was a sleek aircraft, a bomber equipped with a fighter's stick instead of a more conventional control yoke, and pilots who had flown both said that the B-1B felt and flew like a slightly heavy F-4 Phantom, its greater weight and larger size giving the bomber greater stability and, for now, a smoother ride. For the moment
