Debt of Honor

  “They just can’t make it, can they?” he asked his partner after an hour of reading over his shoulder. Ding read slowly, taking in every word one at a time. Well, it was study material, wasn’t it?

  “Not real smart, John.” Chavez looked up from his pages of notes and stretched, which was easier for his small frame than it was for Clark’s. “Professor Alpher wants me to identify three or four crucial fault-points for my thesis, bad decisions, that sort of thing. More to it than that, y‘know? What they had to do was, well, like step outside themselves and look back and see what it was all about, but the dumb fucks didn’t know how to do that. They couldn’t be objective. The other part is, they didn’t think anything all the way through. They had all those great tactical ideas, but they never really looked at where things were leading them. You know, I can identify the goofs for the doc, wrap it up real nice just like she wants, but it’s gonna be bullshit, John. The problem wasn’t the decisions. The problem was the people making them. They just weren’t big enough for what they were doing. They just didn’t see far enough, and that’s what the peons were paying them to do, y’know?” Chavez rubbed his eyes, grateful for the distraction. He’d been reading and studying for eleven hours, with only brief breaks for meals and head calls. “1 need to run a few miles,” he grumped, also weary from the flight.

  John checked his watch. “Forty minutes out. We’ve already started our descent.”

  “You suppose the big shots are any different today?” Ding asked tiredly.

  Clark laughed. “My boy, what’s the one thing in life that never changes?”

  The young officer smiled. “Yeah, and the other one is, people like us are always caught in the open when they blow it.” He rose and walked to the head to wash his face. Looking in the mirror, he was glad that they’d spend a day at an Agency safe house. He’d need to wash up and shave and unwind before putting on his mission identity. And maybe make some start notes for his thesis.

  Clark looked out the window and saw a Korean landscape lit up with the pink, feathery light of a breaking dawn. The lad was turning intellectual on him. That was enough for a weary, eyes-closed grin with his face turned to the plastic window. The kid was smart enough, but what would happen when Ding wrote the dumb fucks didn’t know how into his master’s thesis? He was talking about Gladstone and Bismarck, after all. That got him laughing so hard that he started coughing in the airliner-dry air. He opened his eyes to see his partner emerge from the first-class head. Ding almost bumped into one of the flight attendants, and though he smiled politely at her and stepped aside to let her pass, he didn’t track her with his eyes, Clark noticed, didn’t do what men usually did with someone so young and attractive. Clearly his mind was set on another female form.

  Damn, this is getting serious.

  Murray nearly exploded: “We can’t do that now! God damn it, Bill, we’ve got everything lined up, the information’s going to leak sure as hell, and that’s not even fair to Kealty, much less our witnesses.”

  “We do work for the President, Dan,” Shaw pointed out. “And the order came directly from him, not even through the AG. Since when did you care about Kealty, anyway?” It was, in fact, the same line Shaw had used on President Durling. Bastard or not, rapist or not, he was entitled to due process of law and a fair crack at defending himself. The FBI was somewhat maniacal on that, but the real reason for their veneration of judicial fair-play was that when you convicted a guy after following all the rules, you knew that you’d nailed the right bastard. It also made the appeals process a lot easier to swallow.

  “This accident thing, right?”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t want two big stories jockeying on the front page. This trade flap is a pretty big deal, and he says Kealty can wait a week or two. Dan, our Ms. Linders has waited several years, will another couple of weeks—”

  “Yes, and you know it,” Murray snapped back. Then he paused. “Sorry, Bill. You know what I mean.” What he meant was simple: he had a case ready to go, and it was time to run with it. On the other hand, you didn’t say no to the President.

  “He’s already talked to the people on the Hill. They’ll sit on it.”

  “But their staffers won’t.”

  10

  Seduction

  “1 agree it’s not good,” Chris Cook said.

  Nagumo was looking down at the rug in the sitting room. He was too stunned at the events of the previous few days even to be angry. It was like discovering that the world was about to end, and that there was nothing he could do about it. Supposedly, he was a middle-level foreign-ministry official who didn’t “play” in the high-level negotiations. But that was window-dressing. His task was to set the framework for his country’s negotiating positions and, moreover, to gather intelligence information on what America really thought, so that his titular seniors would know exactly what opening positions to take and how far they could press. Nagumo was an intelligence officer in fact if not in name. In that role, his interest in the process was personal and surprisingly emotional. Seiji saw himself as a defender and protector of his country and its people, and also as an honest bridge between his country and America. He wanted Americans to appreciate his people and his culture. He wanted them to partake of its products. He wanted America to see Japan as an equal, a good and wise friend from whom to learn. Americans were a passionate people, so often ignorant of their real needs—as the overly proud and pampered often are. The current American stance on trade, if that was what it seemed to be, was like being slapped by one’s own child. Didn’t they know they needed Japan and its products? Hadn’t he personally trained American trade officials for years?

  Cook squirmed in his seat. He, too, was an experienced foreign-service officer, and he could read faces as well as anyone. They were friends, after all, and, more than that, Seiji was his personal passport to a remunerative life after government service.

  “If it makes you feel any better, it’s the thirteenth.”

  “Hmph?” Nagumo looked up.

  “That’s the day they blow up the last missiles. The thing you asked about? Remember?”

  Nagumo blinked, slow to recall the question he’d posed earlier. “Why then?”

  “The President will be in Moscow. They’re down to a handful of missiles now. I don’t know the exact number, but it’s less than twenty on each side. They’re saving the last one for next Friday. Kind of an odd coincidence, but that’s how the scheduling worked out. The TV boys have been prepped, but they’re keeping it quiet. There’ll be cameras at both places, and they’re going to simulcast the last two—blowing them up, I mean.” Cook paused. “So that ceremony you talked about, the one for your grandfather, that’s the day.”

  “Thank you, Chris.” Nagumo stood and walked to the bar to pour himself another drink. He didn’t know why the Ministry wanted that information, but it was an order, and he’d pass it along. “Now, my friend, what can we do about this?”

  “Not much, Seiji, at least not right away. I told you about the damned gas tanks, remember? I told you Trent was not a guy to tangle with. He’s been waiting for an opportunity like this for years. Look, I was on the Hill this afternoon, talking to people. You’ve never seen mail and telegrams like this one, and goddamned CNN won’t let the story go.”

  “I know.” Nagumo nodded. It was like some sort of horror movie. Today’s lead story was Jessica Denton. The whole country—along with a lot of the world—was following her recovery. She’d just come off the “grave” list, with her medical condition upgraded to “critical.” There were enough flowers outside her laminar room to give the impression of a lavish personal garden. But the second story of the day had been the burial of her parents and siblings, delayed by medical and legal necessities. Hundreds had attended, including every member of Congress from Tennessee. The chairman of the auto company had wanted to attend as well, to pay personal respects and apologize in person to the family, but been warned off for security reasons. He’d offered a sincere ap
ology on behalf of his corporation on TV instead and promised to cover all medical expenses and provide for Jessica’s continuing education, pointing out that he also had daughters. Somehow it just hadn’t worked. A sincere apology went a long way in Japan, a fact that Boeing had cashed in on when one of their 747s had killed several hundred Japanese citizens, but it wasn’t the same in America, a fact Nagumo had vainly communicated to his government. The attorney for the Denton family, a famous and effective litigator, had thanked the chairman for his apology, and noted dryly that responsibility for the deaths was now on the public record, simplifying his case preparation. It was only a question of amount now. It was already whispered that he’d demand a billion dollars.

  Deerfield Auto Parts was in negotiation with every Japanese auto assembler, and Nagumo knew that the terms to be offered the Massachusetts company would be generous in the extreme, but he’d also told the Foreign Ministry the American adage about closing the barn door after the horse had escaped. It would not be damage control at all, but merely a further admission of fault, which was the wrong thing to do in the American legal environment.

  The news had taken a while to sink in at home. As horrid as the auto accident had been, it seemed a small thing, and TV commentators on NHK had used the 747 incident to illustrate that accidents did happen, and that America had once inflicted something similar in type but far more ghastly in magnitude on the citizens of that country. But to American eyes the Japanese story had appeared to be justification rather than comparison, and the American citizens who’d backed it up were people known to be on the Japanese payroll. It was all coming apart. Newspapers were printing lists of former government officials who had entered such employment, noting their job experience and former salaries and comparing them with what they were doing now, and for how much. “Mercenary” was the kindest term applied to them. “Traitor” was one more commonly used epithet, especially by organized labor and every member of Congress who faced election.

  There was no reasoning with these people.

  “What will happen, Chris?”

  Cook set his drink down on the table, evaluating his own position and lamenting his remarkably bad timing. He had already begun cutting his strings. Waiting the extra few years for full retirement benefits——he’d done the calculations a few months earlier. Seiji had made it known to him the previous summer that his actual net income would quadruple to start with, and that his employers were great believers in pension planning, and that he wouldn’t lose his federal retirement investments, would he? And so Cook had started the process. Speaking sharply to the next-higher career official to whom he reported, letting others know that he thought his country’s trade policy was being formulated by idiots, in the knowledge that his views would work their way upward. A series of internal memoranda that said the same thing in measured bureaucratese. He had to set things up so that his departure would not be a surprise, and would seem to be based on principle rather than crass lucre. The problem was, in doing so he’d effectively ended his career. He would never be promoted again, and if he remained at State, at best he might find himself posted to an ambassadorship to ... maybe Sierra Leone, unless they could find a bleaker spot. Equatorial Guinea, perhaps. More bugs.

  You’re committed, Cook told himself, and so he took a deep breath, and, on reflection, another sip of his drink.

  “Seiji, we’re going to have to take the long view on this one. TRA”—he couldn’t call it the Trade Reform Act, not here—“is going to pass in less than two weeks, and the President’s going to sign it. The working groups at Commerce and Justice are already forming up. State will participate also, of course. Cables have gone out to several embassies to get copies of various trade laws around the world—”

  “Not just ours?” Nagumo was surprised.

  “They’re going to compare yours with others from countries with whom our trade relationships are ... less controversial right now.” Cook had to watch his language, after all. He needed this man. “The idea is to give them something to, well, to contrast your country’s laws with. Anyway, getting this thing fixed, it’s going to take some time, Seiji.” Which wasn’t an altogether bad thing, Cook reasoned. After all, it made for job security—if and when he crossed over from one employer to another.

  “Will you be part of the working group?”

  “Probably, yes.”

  “Your help will be invaluable, Chris,” Nagumo said quietly, thinking more rapidly now. “I can help you with interpreting our laws—quietly, of course,” he added, seizing at that particular straw.

  “I wasn’t really planning to stay at Foggy Bottom much longer, Seiji,” Cook observed. “We’ve got our hearts set on a new house, and—”

  “Chris, we need you where you are. We need—I need your help to mitigate this unfortunate set of circumstances. We have a genuine emergency on our hands, one with serious consequences for both our countries.”

  “I understand that, but—”

  Money, Nagumo thought, with these people it’s always money!

  “I can make the proper arrangements,” he said, more on annoyed impulse than as a considered thought. Only after he’d spoken did he grasp what he’d done—but then he was interested to see how Cook would react to it.

  The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State just sat there for a moment. He too was so caught up in the events that the real implications of the offer nearly slipped past him. Cook simply nodded without even looking up into Nagumo’s eyes.

  In retrospect, the first step—the turning over of national-security information—had been a harder one, and the second was so easy that Cook didn’t even reflect on the fact that now he was in clear violation of a federal statute. He had just agreed to provide information to a foreign government for money. It seemed such a logical thing to do under the circumstances. They really wanted that house in Potomac, and it wouldn’t be long before they’d have to start shopping for colleges.

  That morning on the Nikkei Dow would long be remembered. It had taken that long for people to grasp what Seiji Nagumo now knew—that they weren’t kidding this time. It wasn’t rice all over again, it wasn’t computer chips all over again, it wasn’t automobiles or their parts, not telecommunications gear or construction contracts or cellular phones. It was, in fact, all of the above, twenty years of pent-up resentment and anger, some justified, some not, but all real and exploding to the surface at a single time. At first the editors in Tokyo just hadn’t believed what they’d been told by their people in Washington and New York, and had redrafted the stories to fit their own conclusions until they themselves had thought the information through and come to the stunning realization on their own. The Trade Reform Act, the papers had pontificated only two days earlier, was just one more blip, a joke, an expression of a few misguided people with a long history of antipathy to our country that will soon run its course. It was now something else. Today it was a most unfortunate development whose possibility of enactment into Federal Law cannot now be totally discounted.

  The Japanese language conveys information every bit as well as any other, once you break the code. In America the headlines are far more explicit, but that is merely an indelicate directness of expression typical of the gaijin. In Japan one talked more elliptically, but the meaning was there even so, just as clear, just as plain. The millions of Japanese citizens who owned stock read the same papers, saw the same morning news, and reached the same conclusions. On reaching their workplaces, they lifted phones and made their calls.

  The Nikkei Dow had once ridden beyond thirty thousand yen of benchmark value. By the early 1990s, it had fallen to half of that, and the aggregate cash cost of the “write-down” was a number larger than the entire U.S. government debt at the time, a fact which had gone virtually unnoticed in the United States—but not by those who had taken their money from banks and placed it in stocks in an attempt to get something more than a 2 percent compounded annualized return. Those people had lost sizable fractions of their life s
avings and not known whom to blame for it.

  Not this time, they all thought. It was time to cash in and put the money back into banks—big, safe, financial institutions that knew how to protect their depositors’ funds. Even if they were niggardly in paying interest, you didn’t lose anything, did you?

  Western reporters would use terms like “avalanche” and “meltdown” to describe what began when the trading computers went on-line. The process appeared to be orderly. The large commercial banks, married as they were to the large corporations, sent the same depositors’ money that came in the front door right out the back door to protect the value of corporate stocks. There was no choice, really. They had to buy up huge portfolios in what turned out to be a vain stand against a racing tide. The Nikkei Dow lost fully a sixth of its net value in one trading day, and though analysts proclaimed confidently that the market was now grossly undervalued and a huge technical adjustment upward was inevitable, people thought in their own homes that if the American legislation really became law, the market for the goods their country made would vanish like the morning fog. The process would not stop, and though none said it, everyone knew it. This was especially clear to the bankers.

  On Wall Street, things were different. Various sages bemoaned the interference of government in the marketplace; then they thought about it a little bit. It was plain to see, after all, that if Japanese automobiles had trouble clearing customs, that if the popular Cresta was now cursed with a visual event that few would soon put behind them, then American cars would sell more, and that was good. It was good for Detroit, where the cars were assembled, and for Pittsburgh, where much of the steel was still forged; it was good for all the cities in America (and Canada, and Mexico), where the thousands of components were made. It was good, further, for all the workers who made the parts and assembled the cars, who would have more money to spend in their communities for other things. How good? Well, the majority of the trade imbalance with Japan was accounted for in automobiles. The sunny side of thirty billion dollars could well be dumped into the American economy in the next twelve months, and that, quite a few market technicians thought after perhaps as much as five seconds’ reflection, was just good as hell, wasn’t it? Conservatively, thirty billion dollars going into the coffers of various companies, and all of it, one way or another, would show up as profits for American corporations. Even the additional taxes paid would help in lowering the federal deficit, thus lowering demands on the money pool, and lowering the cost of government bonds. The American economy would be twice blessed. Toss in a little schadenfreude for their Japanese colleagues, and even before the Street opened for business, people were primed for a big trading day.