home for their own militaries to analyze. Finding out the things that the Japanese didn’t want the Americans to know was the job of another agency, the CIA. So did the tail mean the Japanese knew that Jiro had talked?
One of Cassidy’s fears was that his report of the conversation with Jiro had been compromised — that is, passed right back to the Japanese. Alas, the United States had suffered through too many spy scandals in the last twenty years. Bitter, disappointed men seemed all too willing to sell out their colleagues and their country for money. God knows, the Japanese certainly had enough money. He would have to report being tailed to the embassy security officer; perhaps he should do that now, and ask him if anyone else had reported being followed. He picked up the telephone and held it in his hand, but he didn’t dial. This phone was probably tapped, too. If he called embassy security and reported the tail, it would look like he had something to hide. He went to the window and stood looking at the Tokyo skyline, or what little he could see of it from a fifth-floor window. He checked his watch. Two hours. He was supposed to meet Jiro in two hours. Jiro had mentioned Colorado Springs when he called earlier that day. Two days ago, when Cassidy had dinner at the Kimuras’, he and Jiro had agreed that the mention of that city would be the code for a meet at a site they agreed upon then. The code had been Jiro’s idea. Cassidy had a bad taste in his mouth about the whole thing. Neither one of them was a trained spy; they were in over their heads. They were going to compromise themselves.
Even if they didn’t, Cassidy had this feeling deep down that this episode was going to cost him a close friend. He turned his mind back to the problem at hand. Jiro had called, and a plainclothes tailing team had been waiting when he left the embassy compound. Perhaps they were monitoring all the calls from Kimura’s base and had intercepted this one, then decided to check to see if Kimura was meeting people he had no good reason to meet. Or maybe they were onto Kimura. Maybe they knew he had spilled some secrets to the Americans. Maybe they were trying to rope in Kimura’s U.s. contact. Maybe, maybe, maybe … Cassidy changed into civilian clothes while he mulled the problem over, then went into the kitchen and got a beer from the refrigerator. Hanging on the wall was a photo of himself at the controls of an F-16. The plane was high, over thirty thousand feet, brilliantly lit by the sun, against a sky so blue it was almost black. Cassidy stood sipping beer as he looked at the photo. What he saw in his mind’s eye was not the F-16, but the new Zero. He had actually seen it. Last week. From a hill near the Japanese air base at Niigata. He had hiked up carrying a video camera in a hard case on a strap over his shoulder. He had videotaped the new fighters taking off and landing. Although the base was six miles away, on the climb-out and approach they came within a half mile of where he was standing. He had also gotten some still pictures with a 35- mm camera from just under the glide path. He had driven into a noise-saturated neighborhood beside the base and snapped the photos from the driver’s seat of his car as the planes went overhead. The CIA had sent him a gadget to play with as the new Zero flew over, a device that resembled a portable cassette player and could pass for one on casual examination. It did, however, have a three-foot-long antenna that he had to dangle out the window. Cassidy did all this high-tech spying in plain sight. Only one person had paid any attention to him, a youngster on a tricycle, who sat on the sidewalk four feet away and watched him fiddle with the cassette player and antenna as the jets flew over. He remembered the sense of relief that came over him when he was finished. He had started the car and slipped it into gear while he took one last careful look around to see if anyone was watching.
It was amazing, when you stopped to think about it. The Japanese designed, manufactured, and tested the ultimate fighter plane, one invisible to radar, put it into squadron service, and the United States knew nothing about it — didn’t even know it existed, until one of the pilots sought out the U.s. air attache at the American embassy and told him. Perhaps, Cassidy thought as he looked out the window to see if the tails were still waiting, the Japanese are too far from war. As it has for Americans, war for them has become an abstraction, an event of the historical past that students read about in school — dates, treaties, forgotten battles with strange names. War is no longer the experience of a whole people, the defining event of an entire generation. Today the only people with combat experience are a few professional soldiers, like Cassidy. As a young man, he had flown in the Gulf War — he even shot down a Mig — and he dropped some bombs in Bosnia. His recollections of those days seemed like something remembered from an old B movie, bits and pieces of a past that was fragmentary, fading, irrelevant. Today war is sold as a video game, Cassidy decided. Shoot at the bad guys and they fall down. If the score is too low, put in another coin and play the game again. You can’t get hurt. You can’t get … dead! All you can lose are a few coins. Cassidy had to make a decision. Kimura had called, had wanted to see him. The tails were out there. If he didn’t go to the meet, Kimura was safe, for the time being anyway, and he would not learn what Kimura wanted the American government to know. On the other hand, if he went, he might be followed, despite his best efforts, and Kimura might wind up in prison, or worse. Hell, Cassidy might wind up in prison, which would really be a unique capstone for his Air Force career. Jiro seemed to have a lot of faith in the U.s. government, Cassidy mused. Cassidy had long ago lost his. Still, Jiro had to do what he thought right. Indeed, he had an obligation to do so. That is what they teach at the Air Force Academy, isn’t it? He finished the beer, tossed the empty can into the trash. He belched. Okay, Jiro. Ready or not, here I come.
Bob Cassidy was standing near the large incense burner at the Asak-usa Temple when he saw Jiro Kimura buy a bundle of incense sticks.
He lit them at one of the two nearby braziers, then tossed them into the large burner. Cassidy went over and the two stood in the crowd, waving the holy smoke over their hair and face. “I was followed,” Cassidy said in a low voice, “but I think I lost them.”
“Me, too. I’ve been riding the subways for an hour. Sorry I’m late.”
“They’ve tapped the phones at the embassy or your base.”
“Probably both places,” Jiro said under his breath. “They are very efficient.” He led the way to the water fountain, where he helped himself to a dipper, filled it with water, and sipped it. “God only knows what you’ll catch drinking out of that. You’ll probably shit for a week. Your damn teeth are gonna fall out.”
“Uh-huh.” Jiro handed the dipper to the person behind him, then moved on. Few Japanese spoke English, so Cassidy’s remarks didn’t disturb anyone. Jiro went into the Buddhist temple and tossed some coins into the offertory. He moved forward to the rail and prayed while Cassidy hung back. At the door, he moved over beside Cassidy. “It’s Siberia. Our wing commander told us this morning in a secret intel briefing. In two weeks, he said.”
“He has a timetable?”
“Yes. We were told to be ready to tackle the Russian air force and destroy it.”
“Did he say why you are going?”
“Just what I’ve told you. Cryptic as hell, isn’t it?”
Cassidy walked with Kimura out of the temple. They stood for a moment on the steps watching the people around the incense burner. “Happy, aren’t they?” Cassidy said. Kimura didn’t answer. He went back into the temple, to the fortune drawers on the right side of the altar. “I may not see you before you go,” said Cassidy, who had followed Jiro back into the temple. “You won’t. Ten to one, when we go in tomorrow, they’ll close the base, lock us up. It’s a miracle they didn’t think of that today.”
“Maybe they wanted to see who you would talk to.”
“Maybe,” Jiro muttered. He put a hundred-yen coin in the offering slot and picked up a large aluminum tube. He shook it, then turned it upside down and examined the opening. The head of a stick was just visible there. He pulled it out. “Seventy-six,” he said, and put the stick “back into the tube. “I’m trying to tell you, amigo. They may already have burned you.”
“I wish to Christ we were back in the Springs.”
The sudden shift of subject threw Bob Cassidy. “Those were good times,” he said, because he could think of nothing else to say. “With Sweet Sabrina,” Jiro said. He opened drawer number seventy-six and took out a sheet of paper. He closed the drawer, moved a couple of steps back, then glanced at the paper. “Yeah,” Cassidy said. He had a lump in his throat. Jiro didn’t seem to notice. He folded up the paper and put it in his pocket. “We’ll meet again someday. In this life or the next.”
“”This life or the next,”' Cassidy echoed. The words gave him goose bumps — the cadets at the Academy used to say that to one another on graduation day. He pointed toward Jiro’s pocket, the paper from the drawer. “Was your fortune good?”
Cassidy snorted. “That stuff is crap.”
“Yeah.”
“A racket for the monks, to get money from suckers.”
“I gotta go, Bob.”
“Hey, man.”
