Thursday 7:28 A.M.
"_Hai, so deshoo_," Taro Ikeda, project director, bowed into the red
telephone receiver, using that breathy, clipped speech all Japanese
reserve for their superiors. _"Kore wa honto ni muzakashi desu._ It has
been difficult, but they have finally agreed on the revised schedule.
In nine days--"
He paused to listen, then continued. "_Hai, so_. There is no other way.
_Hai_. The Diet will never approve the treaty unless there is some
dramatic symbol of the advantages of the alliance."
He halted. "_Hai_, security has been maintained here. With deepest
respect, the problem would seem to be with your--" He paused again.
Now tiny beads of sweat were glistening on his brow. "_Hai_, we are
ready. The vehicle is . . . _hai_." He bowed again. "Of course, there
will be no delay. The revised schedule is firm. _Hai_, Mino-sama, we--"
He was bowing ever more rapidly into the phone. "_Hai_, we have pushed
them as hard as we can." He bowed even deeper. "_Hai_, by tomorrow's
report. Of course, Mino-sama. Thank you, _domo arigato gozaimashita_. .
. ."
The line, a high-security satellite link connecting the Hokkaido
facility to the Mino Industries Building in the Ueno section of Tokyo,
had gone dead. Tanzan Mino, CEO of Mino Industries Group, had other
matters to concern himself with.
Taro Ikeda repressed a tremble. The technical part, the project here on
Hokkaido, was going well; what was happening on the Tokyo end? First
the delay of the funds, and now a rumored breach of security. KGB had
intercepted the protocol. That was the word from his informant close to
the CEO in Tokyo.
_Shigata ga nai_, he thought; sometimes things can't be helped.
Taro Ikeda was proud he had been personally selected by the CEO to be
project director for the top secret Hokkaido operation. He was fifty-
four years of age, a graduate of Tokyo University Law School, a twenty-
five-year veteran, now retired, of MITI, the Ministry of International
Trade and Industry. He was, in short, a mover in the New Japan and he
looked it--elegantly graying temples, tailored silk suits, a small
mustache to set off his high cheeks. At one time he had been the inside
choice for MITI vice
minister, before the CEO offered him a chance to fulfill a vision no
official source in the ministry could ever admit existed.
Overall, he told himself, the CEO should be pleased. He had carried out
his own responsibilities flawlessly. And MITl was providing an
unofficial umbrella of technical support, covering any unexpected
requirements. Through this project the CEO had set into motion a plan
that would soon alter dramatically Japan's place in the equation of
world power.
Bushido, the Way of the Warrior. The element of surprise. No one
outside Mino Industries knew what was really planned, not even the
prime contractors for the project. Security every step of the way. And
now the drama was ready, the curtain poised. Only a few more days, and
a technological miracle would soar upward from the earth, symbolizing
the first step in the realization of Japan's age-old ambition. The
world would know the twenty-first century had arrived, the Japanese
century. Mino Industries had made it possible.
The CEO's sense of timing was impeccable. Only last week he had
approved Taro Ikeda's final briefing to Noburu Takahashi, executive
director of the National Space Development Agency. NASDA, through
contracts to the Space Systems Division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries,
was in charge of the major hardware of the Japanese rocket program.
Takahashi was also an executive of the new Daedalus Corporation, an
unofficial "consultant."
Together they had traveled to the agency's space center on Tanegeshima,
the island six hundred miles south of Tokyo, to monitor the shakedown
launch of Japan's new H-2 rocket series. Although that vehicle was far
superior to both the American Titan 34D and the European Ariane 4, it
was a technological dinosaur compared to this project. This was unlike
anything the world had ever seen.
The project had begun over two years earlier, when he was still
director of MITI's Kokuki Buki-ka, the Aircraft and Ordnance Section.
An "anonymous" scenario--conceived by the CEO of Mino Industries Group,
Tanzan Mino--had arrived on his desk, detailing a revolutionary
proposal. Every director in MITI had received a copy.
The eventual "consensus"? It was too visionary, would aggravate Japan's
already delicate relationship with America. The Liberal Democratic
Party could never be seen to embrace such a project publicly.
Accordingly, MITI's parliamentary vice minister turned it down.
Officially. But that was merely _tatame_, his "public face." Afterward
the classified moves, the real moves, began. Perhaps, it was hinted, if
the idea were "explored" outside regular government channels. . . .
Top-secret feelers were sent to the Soviets.
With a green light, Tanzan Mino had immediately created the Daedalus
Corporation, hiring away Taro Ikeda and forty-seven of his MITI
aerospace engineers, the best and brightest, from Kokuki Buki-ka.
Start-up financing had been provided by the CEO personally, with some
matching contributions by the top executives of Japan's major
_zaibatsu_, industrial groups. The scenario was an easy sell, since
they all realized its payoff would be staggering. The only requirement
was that it remain top secret until the appropriate moment, when the
Diet would be formally notified. By that time, however, there would be
no turning back. Everything would have to go forward as a package.
Under the CEO's direction, Taro Ikeda and his forty- seven MITI
engineers had relocated here on Hokkaido to oversee a secret, fast-
track project. Forty-seven. Perhaps, he sometimes mused, that number
was no coincidence. Perhaps it was an unconscious act of historical
resonance. Forty-seven brilliant young technicians, just like the
forty-seven ronin, the samurai of the famous legend. Those ronin had
bided their time for many years, living in obscurity and ignominy until
the moment when they rose up in triumph.
_Bushido_. You must always make your opponent do battle on your own
terms. And today money and technology were Japan's most powerful
weapons. Why not use them strategically, the CEO had argued. The time
had come to engage other unsuspecting nations with concentrated
strength, in a forcible move to achieve Japan's long-term objectives.
The Way of the Warrior.
Taro Ikeda surveyed his office, his personal command center. The space
was appointed like the headquarters of a field marshall: a deep
metallic gray with video screens along one wall permitting him
continuously to monitor activities in every sector of the facility. And
across the top of his black slate desk was marshalled a line of gray
telephones with scramblers, each a secure direct line to the offices of
one of the project's prime contractors.
The first was to Nagoya, to the head office of Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries. Theirs was the initial contract let by the CEO after the
project financing was in place. Indeed, Mitsubishi's Nagoya Aircraft
Works was the ideal choice to manufacture the air-breathing
turboramjets-scramjets for the vehicle. That conglomerate had produced
over fifty thousand aircraft engines during the great Pacific war, and,
more recently, their new Komaki North plant was responsible for the
powerful oxygen-hydrogen engines that composed the first stage of the
giant H-2 booster. The phone on his desk connected him directly to the
office of Yoshio Matsunami, Mitsubishi's general manager for space
systems. The massive scramjets for this project had been manufactured
in Nagoya under a veil of total secrecy, then static-tested at their
aeropropulsion test facility and individually shipped here to Hokkaido
in unmarked railcars.
Another line connected him to the head office of Nissan's aeronautical
and space division in Tokyo, already in charge of all solid rocket
boosters for the Japan Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science. The
CEO had hired their senior propulsion engineers to resolve problems
connected with air-breathing combustion of liquid hydrogen.
The third connection was to Hitachi City, sixty miles from Tokyo.
Hitachi, Limited manufactured the booster cases for the new H-2
vehicle, and their extensive experience with composite alloys at high-
temperatures made them the obvious choice to create the hypersonic air-
frame.
There were other lines as well. The vehicle's inertial- guidance system
and flight controls--both based on advanced Soviet designs--had been
produced at Japan's National Aerospace Laboratory. Preliminary wind-
tunnel tests had been assigned to the Kakuda Propulsion Center, whose
rocket-engine development facilities were already being used to support
NASDA's program in oxygen-hydrogen thruster R&D.
The last high-security line connected him directly to Tsukuba Space
Center at Tsukuba Science City, forty miles from Tokyo, the nerve
center for all Japanese manned space-flight research. Their clean-rooms
and deep-space tracking facilities were comparable to any in the world,
and their Fujitsu SX-10 supercomputer--which, with 128 processors for
parallel processing, performed nine billion calculations per second--
could provide realtime simulation of a complete hypersonic flight
profile.
Feeling impatient now to begin the day, Taro Ikeda settled back and
reached for the phones. Each contractor would give him a quick morning
update, and then he would outline any further component tests or
retrofitting as required. In truth, these exchanges had long since be-
come scarcely more than rituals, since the project was all but
completed. The major components had already been designed, delivered,
and assembled. The contractors had been paid, the reports and evidence
of their participation declared top secret and locked away from any
possible prying eyes. All traces of the project had been safely
secured.
There was, he reminded himself, only one major problem remaining. As
part of the initial scenario, the Soviets had agreed to provide a
laundered payment of one hundred million American dollars, to be used
for Tanzan Mino's "incidental expenses" in the Liberal Democratic Party
hierarchy. To avoid another Recruit-bribe fiasco like the one that
brought down the prime minister in 1989, the money had to be
scrupulously clean and totally untraceable.
But the funds had not arrived.
How the Soviets had secured the hard currency required outside of
regular government channels, he could not imagine. There were even
reports the money had been secretly "embezzled" from certain slipshod
ministries. That it was, in fact, hot money.
But if those funds didn't come through within eight days, fully
laundered, the project would have to be put on hold, as a matter of
strategy, and precaution. The treaty could not be placed before the
Diet unless passage was assured. Promises had to be kept.
What had happened to the money? Whatever it was, he thought with a
worried sigh, the CEO had better solve it and soon. If he didn't, the
whole project might have to be put on hold until next year's session of
the Diet, and their secrecy would probably be impossible to maintain
for another whole year. A disaster.
He had just completed the last call when he noticed a flashing alert on
the main computer terminal, advising him that the morning's hypersonic
test in Number One was scheduled to begin at 0800 hours. He grunted and
typed in an acknowledgment. In his view it was a waste of time,
overkill. The SX-10's simulation had already taken them further than
they needed to go. But, all right, humor the Soviet team. It would only
require a morning.
His contractor briefings now out of the way, he transferred all
communication channels to the computer modems that lined the walls,
then rose and walked back to the small alcove at the rear of his
office. He paused a moment to calm his thoughts, then slid aside the
_shoji_ screens to reveal what was, for him, the most important room in
the facility.
Here in the North Quadrant the CEO had constructed a traditional
teahouse, _tatami_-floored with walls and ceiling of soft, fresh cedar
and pine. In this refuge Taro Ikeda performed an essential morning
ritual, the brief meditation that quieted his spirit. He knew well the
famous adage of swordsmanship, that the true master lives with his mind
in a natural state.
The challenge ahead would require all the discipline of a samurai
warrior, the Way of Zen. And the first rule, the very first, was your
mind must be empty, natural, unattached, in order to succeed.
As he seated himself on the reed surface of the _tatami_,
_zazen_-style, he methodically began clearing his mind. The moment was
sacred.
But then, drifting through unasked, came an admonition of the great
Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. "Intelligence is everything. You
must know your opponent's plan even before he knows it himself."
It was true. The security for this project had been airtight, except
for one minor breach. Someone in the Tokyo office had stupidly
transmitted the final protocol over an unsecured satellite channel. It
had been intercepted by Soviet intelligence.
Fortunately, the Russian blunderers had been unable to decipher the
encryption. But someone--either in the KGB or the GRU--had been so
desperate he had secretly enlisted the assistance of the U.S. National
Security Agency's top cryptographer. It was a brilliant move, because
NSA's supercomputers might eventually be able to break the code.
When Tanzan Mino learned of the breach, he had given orders that the
NSA expert be neutralized, quickly, and the protocol retrieved. If it
became public knowledge prematurely, the entire scenario could be
destroyed. Now, happily, the NSA individual had been identified. The
rest would be easy. An unfortunate price to pay, but a simple solution.
With that thought to comfort him, he gazed at the polished natural
woods of the teahouse and let his mind drift into perfect repose.
Thursday 1:07 A.M.
The first round went wide, nicking the edge of the dolphin fresco.
Vance listened, startled, at the explosion, at first thinking it was a
sharp crack of thunder from outside. Then he heard the bullet sing into
the dark, a high-pitched hiss. For a moment he wondered if he was
dreaming, his mind adrift in the bloody myths of the palace. Then a
second explosion flared from the direction of the archway, grazing his
neck.
"_Eva!_" He threw his body across hers, slamming her against the
alabaster portico. His free hand slapped awkwardly at the candle,
crushing out the last sputter of flame. As he swung around, the empty
ouzo bottle clattered into the dark, spinning, its revolving sound a
beacon. Get it, he thought, and stretched across the stone to grope in
the dark. Finally he felt the smoothness of the glass gliding at the
edge of his reach. Slowly, carefully, his fingers circled the neck and
he pulled it toward him.
The room was black now, its silence deep as a tomb. Then the gun flamed
once more, and again, the two rounds ricocheting off the ancient walls
somewhere around them. After that, silence returned, no sound except
for the heave of breathing, whose he wasn't sure.
As he reached to quiet her, she whispered. "Michael, they want me." She
tried to struggle up. "You've got to let--'"
"No." He forced her back, whispering. "We can't leave when the party's
just beginning."
Still grasping the neck of the bottle, he moved silently across the
floor. The stone slabs were icy, while the night music of the rain
seemed to come from another world.
He pressed against the wall, feeling for the doorway until he sensed a
shadow slip past, slowly edging into the room. The muzzle of a pistol
glinted against the flare of lightning outside, and he realized it was
no more than a couple of feet away.
_Now.
_He swung the empty bottle with all his might, aiming for the tip of
the muzzle.
The impact coursed up his arm as the bottle splintered against the
metal. The intruder's startled intake of breath was masked by the
clatter of the weapon against the stone floor.
He'll reach for it, Vance told himself. Lots of luck, pal.
He brought the fractured bottle upward with all his strength, aiming
for the face. Although the figure was still formless, he let instinct
guide his hand. The rough feel of shirt fabric brushed past his fingers
and then the softness of flesh. A scream of surprise pierced the dark.
Bingo.
Got the neck, he thought, and with a twist he drove the shattered
bottle in. A warm wetness gushed against his hand.