Never just Sabrina, always with the adjective before her name, and always with a smile. Sweet Sabrina … with the long brown hair and a ready smile … She and the boy died in a car wreck two years after Jiro graduated. Cassidy never remarried. He should have married again, Jiro Kimura told himself, and he involuntarily glanced through the open door at Shizuko, busy within. Perhaps Cassidy had never found another woman who measured up to Sweet Sabrina. Perhaps … Ah, if only he could go back. If only he could go back and relive those days, go back to the patio in Cassidy’s yard with Truax and Garcia and Layfield, with Sweet Sabrina serving cold beer to boys not yet twenty-one while Bob Cassidy pretended not to notice, someone tuning the radio to the station called “The Peak” because it played all the top hits. Just one day … that wouldn’t be asking too much. A hot day, in the high eighties or low nineties, so the sweat on your skin would evaporate as fast as it appeared, a hot, high, dry day, with that Colorado sun warming your face and a faint scent of juniper in the air and the shady side of Pikes Peak purple in the afternoon. Jiro missed those days. He missed those people. Or most of them, anyway. He certainly didn’t miss Major Tarleton, the physics professor, whose two uncles had died in the western Pacific, “fighting the Japs.” That was the way he’d phrased it, wasn’t it, while staring at Jiro as if he had personally ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor? There had been others, too, officers and enlisted, who went out of their way to let him know they didn’t appreciate the fact that a Japanese soldier was training at the U.s. Air Force Academy. Tarleton had been more than prejudiced — he had tried to ruin Jiro’s academic career, gave him a failing grade for quiz after quiz, even though every answer was correct. Afraid, alone, Jiro endured in silence. Then Tarleton accused him of cheating on an exam. An ice-cold Bob Cassidy called the young cadet into his office, grilled him until he had it all. The following Monday morning, Tarleton was gone, and Jiro heard no more about the alleged honor code violation. Cassidy was like that. He would risk everything to save one scared kid. Jiro Kimura took another drag at the beer and stared with unseeing eyes at the snowcapped cone of Fuji. Maybe what he missed was America. He wiped the tears from his eyes. They had never asked who his father was, what he did, how much money he had. Not once. They took him for who he was, what he was. And they made him one of them. Cassidy was a colonel now, the Air Force liaison officer at the U.s. embassy in Tokyo. He was still trim, still grinned, although maybe not as readily as he used to when Sweet Sabrina was alive. He worked too hard now. Jiro was sure of that. Good colonels work a lot more than captains, and Cassidy was a good one. In fact, he was one of the best. Back then some of the guys had called him “Hopalong” behind his back. Or “Butch.” They had to explain the references to Giro. He never did understand exactly how nicknames were derived or bestowed, although he did acquire the American taste for them. Still, for him, Cassidy was always Cassidy. Or Bob. How American! “Use my first name. That shows that you like me.”
Jiro was in the bedroom changing clothes when he heard the knock on the door and the sounds of Shizuko greeting Cassidy. “Oh, Colonel, so good to see you.” Shizuko’s English was not so good, but Cassidy had never had too much trouble understanding it. “Have you heard the news? About the emperor?” Cassidy’s voice was hard, very concerned. “What news?” He could hear the worry in Shizuko’s voice. “He was assassinated. They just announced it.” Shizuko said something that Jiro didn’t hear, then several seconds later he heard the sound of the television announcer. He quickly finished dressing and hurried into the living room. It was a small room, about a third the size of the one Cassidy used to have in Colorado Springs. Jiro shook his head, annoyed that that irrelevant thought should distract him at a time like this. He said hello to Cassidy, who gave a tiny bow while remaining intent on the television. “Sit, Colonel. Bob. Please.”
Cassidy knew some Japanese, apparently enough to follow the television announcer without too much difficulty. Shizuko hid her face in her hands. “Perhaps this isn’t a good evening …” Cassidy began, but Jiro waved him into silence. They sat on the mats in front of the television as the last of the afternoon light faded from the sky. It was completely dark when Jiro turned off the set and Shizuko went into the small Pullman-style kitchen to make dinner. Cassidy was about six feet tall, a wiry man with a runner’s build. Tonight he wore civilian clothes, dark slacks and a beige short-sleeve shirt. He had blue eyes, thinning sandy-colored hair, and a couple of chipped teeth, which had been that way for years. A cheap watch on his left wrist was his only jewelry. “Beer?”
“Sure.”
“Good to see you, Bob.” Kimura spoke like an American, Cassidy thought, with fluent, unaccented English. “When I heard the news on the radio, I almost turned around and went home,” Cassidy told his host. “Thought you and Shizuko might want some privacy. But I figured that these get-together times are so hard to arrange that …”
“Yeah. I needed to talk to you. This assassination is not good.” Jiro Kimura thought for several seconds, then shook his head. “Not good. Japan is on a strange, dangerous road.”
Cassidy looked around the apartment, accepted the offered beer. Kimura turned on a radio, played with the dial until he got music, then resumed his seat just across from his guest. “They are preparing to move the planes to forward bases,” Jiro said. “We are packing everything, crating all the support gear, all the special tools, spare engines, parts, tires, everything.”
“You mean bases outside of Japan?”
“Yes.”
Robert Cassidy sat in silence, digesting Kimura’s comment. Finally, he sipped his beer, then waited expectantly for his host to decide what else he wanted to say. For some reason, at that moment he recalled Jiro as he had first known him, a lost, miserable doolie at the U.s. Air Force Academy. A more forlorn kid, Cassidy had never met. Of course, the Japanese had sent their very best to the United States as an exchange student. Jiro finished second in his class, with a 3.98 grade point average — in aeronautical engineering. The first person in the class was a black girl from Georgia with a 180 IQ. After graduation, she didn’t spend a day in uniform; she went on to get a Ph.d. in physics on the Air Force’s dime. The last Cassidy heard, she was doing fusion research at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
Jiro became a first-rate fighter pilot — for Japan. Now he was flying an airplane that had been developed in the utmost secrecy. Until Ki-mura mentioned the new Zero to him six months ago, Cassidy had not known of the plane. Judging by the startled reaction his report caused in Washington when he sent it in, no one there knew about it, either. Since then he had received a blizzard of requests from Washington for further information on the new plane, and he had had just two further conversations with Jiro. The first occurred when he invited the Kimuras to dinner in Tokyo. Jiro didn’t mention his job during the course of the evening. Cassidy couldn’t bring himself to ask a question. It was obvious that Jiro had wrestled with his conscience long and hard before he violated the Japanese security regs the first time. Cassidy decided that the next move was up to Jiro. If he wanted to tell the U.s. government Japanese secrets, Cassidy would convey the information. But he would not ask. Last month he and Jiro had attended a baseball game together. In the isolation of a nearly empty upper deck of the stadium, Jiro discussed in general terms the dimensions of the Japanese military buildup that had been under way for at least five years. Some of that information Cassidy knew from other sources; some was new. He merely listened, asked questions only to clarify, then wrote a detailed report that evening when he got home. That afternoon Jiro had been short on specifics. Whatever internal battle Jiro was fighting then was apparently over now. Tonight he met Cassidy’s gaze. “The new Zero is the most advanced fighter on earth. Very maneuverable, stealthy, good range, speed, easy to fly. Very sophisticated radar and computer, GPS”—THIS was the global positioning system—“all the goodies. And it has Athena.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Cassidy said. “Athena is, or was, the American project code name for some very advanced stealth technology, an active ECM protection system. Somehow Japan acquired the technology, which had almost died in the United States due to a lack of development funds.”
Cassidy nodded. American spending on research and development of military technology had slowed to a trickle since the end of the Cold War. Jiro continued. “Athena arrived here just when the government was looking to spend serious money on developing a military tech edge.
They latched onto Athena and made it the centerpiece of the new Zero.”
“Explain to me how it works.”
When Jiro didn’t immediately reply, Cassidy added, “You know you don’t have to tell me anything, Jiro. I didn’t ask you for anything.”
“I know! I want to tell you, Bob.” Jiro Kimura searched for words. He stood and went out on the balcony. Cassidy followed. “I was born in this country. I live here. But America is also my home. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“I have two homes, two peoples. I will tell you what I can, and you must pass it on in great secrecy. If the Japanese find out I have even spoken of these matters, I will be in serious trouble.”
“Up to your ass in it, kiddo. I understand.”
