Red Shark

“Yes… the publishers narrowly escaped assassination. After that, the press backed off its criticism. Believe me, the association knows how to intimidate the opposition. Also, someone fired shots at the house of an author who wrote that Hirohito was a clever politician who manipulated MacArthur and Truman to escape indictment as a war criminal.”

“Maybe those publishers and that author forgot that assassination is an honorable tradition in Japan.”

“So is dying for a cause, at least that’s what the association preaches. As I said, its members are very influential. Rumor has it they recently lobbied the prime minister to accept the missile defense system America has offered and that they want Japan to have a nuclear deterrent. It’s been said that a wealthy Japanese has even offered to pay to have one built.”

“But that’s insane—”

“Is it, now that North Korea has nuclear weapons and is ruled by this Marshal Jin? The question is—”

“The question is, has one of these association members made a secret deal with Jin, perhaps to get hold of nuclear weapons?”

She kept her eyes on the road as she weaved expertly around slower-moving traffic entering central Tokyo. “I’ve asked myself the same question, which is why I’ve started delving into who the members of the association are. Maybe one of them has a connection to Marshal Jin.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”

She touched his arm. “Not until I share what I have with the director of my division.”

“Have it your way.”

“Jake, I know we’re working together on this, but remember, this is Japan, not the States. I have to follow certain procedures. As for the association, I know it sounds crazy, but…” She shrugged, perhaps mystified by her country’s tendency to embrace such seemingly outdated, if not sinister, concepts. “I guess that’s why we Japanese are so misunderstood in the West.”

Scott glanced at her and saw a beautiful and modern Japanese woman. And a confident one, too. “I don’t know, we seem to be getting along just fine,” he said.

She smiled at him and said, “We are, aren’t we?”

Uniformed, white-gloved officers waved her through a security barrier and down the steep ramp leading to the underground parking garage of the Japan Defense Intelligence Headquarters, where daylight gave way to sodium vapor lamps. She wheeled into a marked parking space. “Ready to meet the director of my division?”

“Ready.”

27

JDIH Headquarters

“Irasshai — Welcome — Commander Scott.” With hands held flat against his thighs, Director of Technical Services Matsu Kubota, a small, wiry man in a black suit, bowed deeply and said, “It is such a pleasure to meet you.” Kubota’s eyes lingered momentarily on Scott’s bandaged hand, but he said nothing.

Behind Kubota’s cordiality Scott sensed a coldness, if not outright hostility, to his presence. Fumiko’s confident manner had given way to apprehension, which confirmed for Scott his assessment of Kubota.

Scott returned Kubota’s bow, aware that Western-style informality had not yet penetrated the inner sanctums of the male-dominated Japanese intelligence and defense services.

Kubota led them into a cramped conference room deep inside the blocky headquarters. For the first time Scott noticed that the building had no windows. The air was uncomfortably dry and dead from being continuously recycled through the structure’s antiradiological and antibiological purification system. Even so, cigarette smoke had permeated the room and its cheap furnishings.

Scott was introduced to a roomful of bowing Japanese, whom Kubota described as his technical aides. The men, like Kubota, wore black suits, white shirts, and narrow gray ties. They smiled politely, and each one said something to Scott in Japanese.

Kubota motioned Scott to sit at the head of the table, a place reserved for special guests. The aides took places around the table, which was cluttered with laptop computers and paper files, and immediately lit cigarettes and passed around ashtrays.

Kubota opened a flush panel in the conference table’s surface and manipulated a control to activate a flat-screen video monitor covering most of one wall. Fumiko, without being asked, served everyone bitter green tea and sticky rice cakes, after which Kubota got started in flat, but surprisingly unaccented, English.

“Here, Commander Scott, is the sequence of images from the digital video disc you provided.”

Murky at first, the images brightened as two men walked left to right from the main room of Fat’s villa, onto the veranda. Scott recognized it and saw where he had come up over the wall around the veranda and thrown the grenade at the drug-traffickers who’d been shooting at the SEALs on the road below the villa. He felt a knot in his guts.