Debt of Honor

'Hi, Dan,' Jack said, standing when he came in.

'Mr. President,' Murray said first. He didn't know the other man in the room.

'Hi, I'm Scott Adler.'

'Hello, sir.' Murray took his hand. Oh, that was the guy running the negotiations with the Japs, he realized.

Some work had already been accomplished. Ryan could not believe that Adler was the leak. The only others who knew were himself, the President, Brett Hanson, Ed and Mary Pat, and perhaps a few secretaries. And Christopher Cook.

'How close are we keeping tabs on Japanese diplomats?' Ryan asked.

'They don't move around without somebody keeping an eye on them,'

Murray assured them. 'We're talking espionage?'

'Probably. Something very important leaked out.'

'It has to be Cook,' Adler said. 'It just has to be.'

'Okay, there are some things you need to know,' the National Security Advisor said. 'Less than three hours ago we slam-dunked their air defenses. We think we killed ten or eleven aircraft.' He could have gone further, but did not. It was still possible that Adler was the leak, after all, and the next step of Operation ZORRO had to come as a surprise.

'That's going to make them nervous, and they still have nuclear weapons. A bad combination, Jack,' the Deputy Secretary of State pointed out.

Nukes. Murray thought. Jesus.

'Any changes in their negotiating position?' the President asked.

Adler shook his head. 'None, sir. They will offer us Guam back, but they want the rest of the Marianas for themselves. They're not backing off a dot from that, and nothing I've said has shaken them loose.'

'Okay.' Ryan turned. 'Dan, we've been in contact with Mogataru Koga—'

'He's the ex-Prime Minister, right?' Dan asked, wanting to make sure he was up to speed on this. Jack nodded.

'Correct. We have two CIA officers in Japan covered as Russians, and they met with Koga under that cover. But Koga got himself kidnapped by the guy who we think is running the whole show. He told Koga that he knew about contacts with Americans.'

'It has to be Cook,' Adler said again. 'Nobody else on the delegation knows, and Chris does my informal contacts with their number-two, Seiji Nagumo.' The diplomat paused, then let his anger show. 'It's just perfect, isn't it?'

'Espionage investigation?' Murray asked. Significantly, he saw, the President let Ryan handle the answer.

'Fast and quiet, Dan.'

'And then?' Adler wanted to know.

'If it's him, we flip the bastard right over.' Murray nodded at once on hearing the FBI euphemism.

'What do you mean, Jack?' Durling asked.

'It's a real opportunity. They think they have a good intel source, and they've shown the willingness to use the information from it. Okay,' Jack said, 'we can use that to our advantage. We give them some juicy information and then we stick it right up their ass.'

The most immediate need was to buttress the air defenses for the Home Islands. That realization caused no small amount of thinking at Japanese defense headquarters, and most uncomfortably, it was based on partial information, not the precise sort of data that had been used to prepare the overall operational plan that the military high command was trying to stick with. The best radar warning systems their country owned were seaborne on the four Kongo-class Aegis destroyers patrolling off the northern Marianas.

They were formidable ships with self-contained air-defense systems. Not quite as mobile as the E-767's, they were more powerful, however, and able to take care of themselves. Before dawn, therefore, an order was flashed out for the four-ship squadron to race north to establish a radar-picket line east of the Home Islands. After all, the U.S. Navy wasn't doing anything, and if their country's defenses came back together, there was yet a good chance for a diplomatic solution.

On Mutsu, Admiral Sato saw the logic of it when he receipted the signal and gave orders for his ships to go to their maximum sustained speed. Nonetheless, he was concerned. He knew that his SPY radar systems could detect stealthy aircraft, something the Americans had demonstrated in tests against his own, and his ships were sufficiently powerful that American aircraft would not lightly engage them. What worried him was that for the first time his country was not acting but reacting to American moves. That, he hoped, was temporary.

'That's interesting,' Jones observed at once. The traces were only a few minutes old, but there were two of them, probably representing more than two ships in a tight formation, making noise and with a slight northerly bearing change.

'Surface ships, sure as hell,' OT 2/c Boomer observed. 'This looks like pounding—' He stopped when Jones circled another trace in red.

'And that's a blade-rate. Thirty-plus knots, and that means warships in one big hurry.' Jones walked over to the phone and called ComSubPac.

'Bart? Ron? We have something here. That 'can squadron that's been operating around Pagan.'

'What about it?' Mancuso asked.

'They seem to be doing a speed-run north. We have anybody up waiting for them?' Then Jones remembered several inquiries about the waters around Honshu. Mancuso wasn't telling him everything, as was to be expected for operational matters. The way he evaded the question would be the real answer, the civilian thought.

'Can you plot me a course?'

Bingo. 'Give us a little while, an hour maybe? The data is still a little fuzzy, Skipper.'

The voice was not overly disappointed at the answer, Jones noted. 'Aye, sir. We'll keep you posted.'

'Good work, Ron.'

Jones replaced the phone and looked around. 'Senior Chief? Let's start doing a plot on these traces.' Somewhere north, he thought, somebody was waiting. He wondered who it might be, and came up with one answer.

Time was working in the opposite direction now. Hiroshi Goto opened his cabinet meeting at ten in the morning, local time, which was midnight in Washington, where his negotiators were. It was clear that the Americans were making a contest of it, though some in the room thought that it could just be a negotiating ploy, that they had to make some show of force in order to be taken seriously at the negotiating table. Yes, they had stung the air-defense people badly, but that was all. America could not and would not launch systematic attacks against Japan. The risks were too great. Japan had nuclear-tipped missiles, for one thing. For another, Japan had sophisticated air defenses despite the events of the previous night, and then there was simple arithmetic. How many bombers did America have? How many could strike at their country even if there were nothing to stop them? How long would such a bombing campaign take? Did America have the political will for it? The answers to all of these questions were favorable to their country, the cabinet members thought, their eyes still fixed on the ultimate goal, whose shining prize glittered before them, and besides, each man in this room had a patron of sorts to make sure that they took the proper spin on things. Except Goto, they knew, whose patron was elsewhere at the moment.

For the moment, the Ambassador in Washington would object strongly to the American attack on Japan, and note that it was not a helpful act, and that there would be no further concessions until they were stopped. It would be further noted that any attack on the Japanese mainland would be considered an exceedingly grave matter; after all, Japan had not attacked vital American interests directly…yet. That threat, behind the thinnest of veils, would surely bring some rationality to the situation.

Goto nodded agreement to the suggestions, wishing that his own patron were about to support him and knowing that Yamata had already bypassed him and spoken with defense officials directly. He'd have to talk to Raizo about that.

'And if they come back?' he asked.

'We'll have our defenses at maximum alert tonight, and when the destroyers arrive on station, they will be as