“You’d make a good high school physics teacher.”
“What about the silk?” asked Giordino.
“Kamatori’s kimono,” Weatherhill said over his shoulder as he hurried into the trophy room.
Pitt turned to Mancuso. “Where do you intend to set off your firecrackers where they’ll do the most damage?”
“We don’t have enough C-Eight to do a permanent job, but if we can place it near a power supply, we can set back their schedule for a few days, maybe weeks.”
Stacy returned with a three-meter section of garden hose. “How do you want it sliced?”
“Divide it into four parts,” Pitt answered. “One for each of you. I’ll carry the magnet as a backup.”
Weatherhill came back from the trophy room carrying torn shreds of Kamatori’s silk kimono, some showing bloodstains, and began passing them out. He smiled at Pitt. “Your placement of our samurai friend made him a most appropriate piece of wall decor.”
“There is no sculpture,” Pitt said pontifically, “that can take the place of an original.”
“I don’t want to be within a thousand kilometers when Hideki Suma sees what you’ve done to his best friend.” Giordino laughed, throwing the broken remains of the two roboguards into a pile in a corner of the room.
“Yes,” Pitt said indifferently, “but that’s what he gets for pissing off the dark side of the fence.”
Loren, her face still and angered, observed in mounting shock the awesome technical and financial power behind Suma’s empire as he led her and Diaz on a tour through a complex that was far more vast than she could ever imagine. There was much more to it than a control center to send, prime, and detonate signals to a worldwide array of nuclear bombs. The seemingly unending levels and corridors also contained countless laboratories, vast engineering and electronic experimental units, a fusion research facility, and a nuclear reactor plant incorporating designs still on the drawing boards of the Western industrialized countries.
Suma said proudly, “My primary structural engineering and administration offices and scientific think tank are housed in Edo City. But here, safe and secure under Soseki Island, is the core of my research and development.”
He ushered them into a lab and pointed out a large open vat of crude oil. “You can’t see them, but eating away at the oil are second-generation genetically engineered microbes that actually digest the petroleum and multiply, launching a chain reaction and destroying the oil molecules. The residue can then be dissolved by water.”
“That could prove a boon for the cleanup of oil spills,” commented Diaz.
“One useful purpose,” said Suma. “Another is to deplete a hostile country’s oil reserves.”
Loren looked at him in disbelief. “Why cause such chaos? For what gain?”
“In time, Japan will be almost totally independent of oil. Our total generating power will be nuclear. Our new technology in fuel cells and solar energy will soon be incorporated in our automobiles, replacing the gasoline engine. Deplete the world’s reserves with our oil-eating microbes, and eventually all international transportation— automobiles, trucks, and aircraft—grinds to a halt.”
“Unless replaced by Japanese products,” Diaz stated coldly.
“A lifetime,” Loren said, becoming skeptical. “It would take a lifetime to dry up the billion-gallon oil reserve stored in our underground salt mines.”
Suma smiled patiently. “The microbes could totally deplete United States strategic oil reserves in less than nine months.”
Loren shook her head, unable to absorb the horrible consequences of all she’d been exposed to in the past few hours. She could not conceive of one man causing such a chaotic upheaval. She also could not accept the awful possibility that Pitt might already be dead.
“Why are you showing us all this?” she asked in a whisper. “Why aren’t you keeping it a secret?”
“So you can tell your President and fellow congressmen that the United States and Japan are no longer on equal terms. We now have an unbeatable lead, and your government must accept our demands accordingly.” Suma paused and stared at her. “As to generously giving away secrets, you and Senator Diaz are not scientists or engineers. You can only describe what you’ve seen in vague layman terms. I have shown you no scientific data but merely an overall view of my projects. You will take home nothing that can prove useful in copying our technical superiority.”
“When will you allow Congresswoman Smith and I to leave for Washington?” asked Diaz.
Suma looked at his watch. “Very soon. As a matter of fact, you will be airlifted to my private airfield at Edo City within the hour. From there, one of my executive jets will fly you home.”
“Once the President hears of your madness,” Diaz snapped, “he’ll order the military to blow this place to dust.”
Suma gave vent to a confident sigh and smiled. “He’s too late. My engineers and robotic workers are ahead of schedule. You did not know, could not have known, the Kaiten Project was completed a few minutes after we began the tour.”
“It’s operational?” Loren spoke in a shocked whisper.
Suma nodded. “Should your President be foolish enough to launch an attack on the Dragon Center, my detection systems will alert me in ample time to signal the robots to deploy and detonate the bomb cars.” He hesitated only long enough to flash a hideous grin. “As Buson, a Japanese poet, once wrote, ‘With his hat blown off/the stiff-necked scarecrow/stands there quite discomfited.’
“The President is the scarecrow, and he stands stymied because his time is gone.”
54
LIVELY, BUT NOT HURRIEDLY, Pitt led them into the building of the retreat that housed the elevator. He walked in the open while the others dodged from cover to cover behind him. He met no humans but was halted by a robotic security guard at the elevator entrance.
This one was programmed to speak only in Japanese, but Pitt had no trouble in deciphering the menacing tone and the weapon pointing at his forehead. He raised his hands in front of him with the palms facing forward and slowly moved closer, shielding the others from its video receiver and detection sensors.
Weatherhill and Mancuso stealthily closed in from the flanks and jabbed their statically charged hoses against the box containing the integrated circuits. The armed robot froze as if in suspended animation.
“Most efficient,” Weatherhill observed, recharging his length of hose by rubbing it vigorously against the silk.
“Think he tipped off his supervisory control?” Stacy wondered.
“Probably not,” Pitt replied. “His sensory capability was slow in deciding whether I was a threat or simply an unprogrammed member of the project.”
Once inside the deserted elevator, Weatherhill opted for the fourth level. “Six opens onto the main floor of the control center,” he recalled. “Better to take our chances and exit on a lower level.”
“The hospital and service units are on four,” Pitt briefed him.
“What about security?”
“I saw no sign of guards or video monitors.”
“Suma’s outside defenses are so tight he doesn’t have to concern himself with interior security,” said Stacy.
Weatherhill agreed. “A rogue robot is the least of his problems.”
They tensed as the elevator arrived and the doors slid open. Fortunately it was empty. They entered, but Pitt hung back, head tilted as if listening to a distant sound. Then he was inside, pressing the button for the fourth level. A few seconds later they stepped out into a vacant corridor.
They moved quickly, silently, following Pitt. He stopped outside the hospital and paused at the door.
“Why are you stopping here?” Weatherhill asked softly.
