only by a low table and a coffee tray.
'Thank you for this,' Koga said simply.
'We had to meet,' President Ryan said. 'Any other time and we'd have people watching and timing us and trying to read our lips.' He poured a cup for his guest and then himself.
'Hai, the press in Tokyo have become much more forward in the past few days.' Koga made to lift his cup, but stopped. 'Whom do I thank for rescuing me from Yamata?'
Jack looked up. 'The decision was made here. The two officers are in the area, if you want to see them again personally.'
'If it is convenient.' Koga sipped at his cup. He would have preferred tea, but Ryan was doing his best to be a host, and the quality of the gesture impressed his guest. 'Thank you for letting me come, President Ryan.'
'I tried to talk to Roger about the trade problem, but… but I wasn't persuasive enough. Then I worried that something might be happening with Goto, but I didn't move quickly enough, what with the Russian trip and everything. It was all a great big accident, but I suppose war usually is. In any case, it is up to the two of us to heal that wound. I want it done as rapidly as possible.'
'The conspirators are all under arrest. They will appear in court for treason,' Koga promised.
'That is your affair,' the President replied. Which wasn't really true. Japan's legal system was a curious one in which courts often enough violated the country's constitution in favor of broader but unwritten cultural mores, something unthinkable to Americans. Ryan and America expected that the trials would go by the book with no such variations. Koga understood that fully. A reconciliation between America and Japan depended absolutely on that, along with a multitude of other understandings which could not be spoken, at least not at this level. For his own part, Koga had already made sure that the judges selected for the various trials understood what the rules were.
'I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen, and then, that madman Sato… My country and my people are shamed by it. I have so much to do, Mr. Ryan.'
Jack nodded. 'We both do. But it will be done.' He paused. 'The technical issues can be handled at the ministerial level. Between ourselves, I only wanted to be sure that we understood each other. I will trust your goodwill.'
'Thank you, Mr. President.' Koga set his cup down to examine the man on the opposite sofa. He was young for such a job, though not the youngest American president. Theodore Roosevelt would probably hold that distinction into eternity. On the lengthy flight from Tokyo he'd read up on John Patrick Ryan. The man had killed with his own hand more than once, had been threatened with his own death and that of his family, and had done other things which his intelligence advisers only speculated about. Examining his face over a brief span of seconds, he tried to understand how such a person could also be a man of peace, but the clues were not there to be seen, and Koga wondered if there was something in the American character that he'd never quite understood. He saw the intelligence and the curiosity, one to measure and the other to probe. He saw fatigue and sadness. His recent days must have been the purest form of hell, Koga was sure. Somewhere still in this building, probably, were the children of Roger and Anne Durling, and that would be like a physical weight for the man to carry about. It struck the Prime Minister that Ryan, like most Westerners, was not very skilled at concealing his inner thoughts, but that wasn't true, was it? There had to be other things happening behind those blue eyes, and those things were not being advertised. They were not in any way threatening, but they were there. This Ryan was samurai, as he'd said in his office a few days earlier, but there was an additional layer of complexity as well. Koga set that aside. It wasn't all that important, and there was something that he had to ask, a personal decision he'd made over mid-Pacific.
'I have a request, if that is permitted.'
'What is that, sir?'
'MR. PRESIDENT, this is not a good idea,' Price objected a few minutes later.
'Good or not, we're going to do it. Get it organized,' Ryan told her.
'Yes, sir.' Andrea Price withdrew from the room.
Koga watched the exercise and learned something else. Ryan was a man capable of making decisions and giving orders entirely without histrionics.
The cars were still at the West Entrance, and it was simply a matter of donning coats and getting into them. A total of four Suburbans U-turned in the parking area, heading south, then east toward the Hill. The motorcade this time didn't use sirens and lights, instead proceeding almost in accord with the traffic laws—but not quite. The empty streets made it easy for them to jump lights, and soon enough they turned left onto Capitol Street, and left again toward the building. There were fewer lights now in evidence. The steps had been cleared, allowing an easy climb up once the cars had parked and the Secret Service agents deployed. Ryan led Koga upwards, and presently they were both looking down into the now-empty bowl that had been the House chamber.
The Japanese Prime Minister stood erect at first. He clapped his hands loudly, once, to garner the attention of the spirits who, his religious beliefs told him, would still be here. Then he bowed formally, and said his prayers for them. Ryan was moved to do the same. There were no TV cameras present to record the moment—actually there were still a few network cameras about, but the evening news broadcasts were over, and the instruments stood idle, their crews in the control vans drinking coffee and unaware of what was taking place a hundred yards away. It took only a minute or two in any case. When it was over, an American hand was extended, and a Japanese hand took it, and two pairs of eyes came to an understanding that ministers and treaties could never really have achieved, and in the harsh February wind, peace was finally and completely made between two countries. Standing ten feet away, Andrea Price was glad that the White House photographer had come along, and the tears she blinked away from her eyes were not from the wind. Then she conducted the two men back down the steps and into separate cars.
'WHY DID THEY overreact so?' the Prime Minister asked, before sipping her sherry.
'Well, as you know I have not been fully briefed,' the Prince of Wales replied, first qualifying himself, since he didn't really speak for Her Majesty's Government. 'But your naval exercises did have the appearance of a threatening act.'
'Sri Lanka must come to terms with the Tamils. They've shown a regrettable reluctance to enter into substantive negotiations, and we were trying to influence them. After all, we have our own troops deployed as peacekeepers, and we don't want them to be held hostage to the overall situation.'
'Quite so, but then, why don't you withdraw your peacekeepers as the government requested?'
The Indian Prime Minister sighed tiredly—it had been a long flight for her, too, and under the circumstances a little exasperation was permissible. 'Your Royal Highness, if we withdraw our troops and then the situation flares up yet again, we will face difficulties with our own Tamil citizens. This is truly a most unhappy situation. We attempted to help assuage a difficult political impasse, entirely at our own expense, but then the Sri Lankan government finds itself unable to take the remedial action necessary to prevent an embarrassment to my country, and a continuing rebellion in their own. Then the Americans interfere without any real cause, and only bolster the intransigence of the Sri Lankans.'
'When does their Prime Minister arrive?' the Prince asked. The substantive reply was a shrug, followed by verbiage. 'We offered the chance to fly over together so that we might discuss the situation, but he regrettably declined. Tomorrow, I think. If his aircraft doesn't malfunction,' she added. That national-flag carrier had all manner of technical problems, not to mention a long-lived security threat.
'If you wish, the ambassador can probably arrange a quiet meeting.'
'Perhaps that would not be entirely useless,' the Prime Minister allowed. 'I also wish the Americans would get the proper spin on things. They've always been so hopeless on our part of the world.'
Which was the point of the exercise, the Prince understood. He and President Ryan had been friends for years, and India wanted him to be the intercessor. It would hardly have been the first time for such a mission on his part, but in all such cases the Heir Apparent was constrained to seek guidance from the government, which, in this case, meant the ambassador. Someone in Whitehall had decided that His Royal Highness's friendship with the new American President was more important than a government-to-government contact, and besides, it would make the monarchy look good at a time when such appearances were both useful and necessary. It also gave His Highness an excuse to visit some land in Wyoming which was quietly owned by the Royal Family, or 'the Firm,' as it was sometimes called by insiders.
'I see,' was as substantive a reply as he could make, but Britain had to take a request from India seriously. Once the brightest diadem in a world-spanning crown, that country was still an important trading partner, bloody
