Gant nodded agreement. “It’s going to work, George. That Ryan guy is pretty smart, isn’t he?”
Now was a time to take it slow, Jack told himself. He was almost surprised that his phone hadn’t rung yet, but on reflection he realized that Golovko was reading the same report, was looking at the same map on his wall, and was also telling himself to think it through as slowly and carefully as circumstances allowed.
It was starting to make sense. Well, almost. “Northern Resource Area” had to mean Eastern Siberia. The term “Southern Resource Area,” as Chavez had stated in his report, had once been the term used by the Japanese government in 1941 to identify the Dutch East Indies, back when their prime strategic objective had been oil, then the principal resource needed for a navy and now the most important resource for any industrialized nation needing power to run its economy. Japan was the world’s largest importer of oil despite an earnest effort to switch over to nuclear power for electricity. And Japan had to import so much else; only coal was in natural abundance. Supertankers were largely a Japanese invention, the more efficiently to move oil from the Persian Gulf fields to Japanese terminals. But they needed other things, too, and since she was an island nation, those commodities all had to come by sea, and Japan’s navy was small, far too small to secure the sea-lanes.
On the other hand, Eastern Siberia was the world’s last unsurveyed territory, and Japan was now conducting the survey, and the sea-lanes from the Eurasian mainland to Japan—Hell, why not just build a railroad tunnel and do it the easy way? Ryan asked himself.
Except for one thing. Japan was stretching her abilities to accomplish what she had already done, even with a gravely diminished American military and a five-thousand-mile buffer of Pacific waters between the American mainland and her own home islands. Russia’s military capacity was even more drastically reduced than America’s, but an invasion was more than a political act. It was an act against a people, and the Russians had not lost their pride. The Russians would fight, and they were still far larger than Japan. The Japanese had nuclear weapons on ballistic launchers, and the Russians, like the Americans, did not—but the Russians did have bombers, and fighter-bombers, and cruise missiles, all with nuclear capability, and bases close to Japan, and the political will to make use of them. There would have to be one more element. Jack leaned back, staring at his map. Then he lifted his phone and speed-dialed a direct line.
“Admiral Jackson.”
“Robby? Jack. I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“You said that one of our attaches in Seoul had a little talk with—”
“Yeah. They told him to sit tight and wait,” Jackson reported.
“What exactly did the Koreans say?”
“They said ... wait a minute. It’s only half a page, but I have it here. Stand by.” Jack heard a drawer open, probably a locked one. “Okay, paraphrasing, that sort of decision is political not military, many considerations to be looked at, concern that the Japanese could close their harbors to trade, concern about invasion, cut off from us, they’re hedging. We haven’t gone back to them yet,” Robby concluded.
“OrBat for their military?” Jack asked. He meant “order of battle,” essentially a roster of a nation’s military assets.
“I have one around here.”
“Short version,” Ryan ordered.
“A little larger than Japan’s. They’ve downsized since reunification, but what they retained is high-quality. Mainly U.S. weapons and doctrine. Their air force is pretty good. I’ve played with them and—”
“If you were an ROK general, how afraid would you be of Japan?”
“I’d be wary,” Admiral Jackson replied. “Not afraid, but wary. They don’t like Japan very much, remember.”
“I know. Send me copies of that attaché report and the ROK OrBat.”
“Aye aye.” The line clicked off. Ryan called CIA next. Mary Pat still wasn’t available, and her husband picked up. Ryan didn’t bother with preliminaries.
“Ed, have you had any feedback from Station Seoul?”
“The ROKs seem very nervous. Not much cooperation. We’ve got a lot of friends in the KCIA, but they’re clamming up on us, no political direction as yet.”
“Anything different going on over there?”
“Well, yes,” Ed Foley answered. “Their air force is getting a little more active. You know they have established a big training area up in the northern part of the country, and sure enough they’re running some unscheduled combined-arms exercises. We have some overheads of it.”
“Next, Beijing,” Ryan said.
“A whole lot of nothing. China is staying out of this one. They say that they want no part of this, they have no interest in this. It doesn’t concern them.”
“Think about that, Ed,” Jack ordered.
“Well, sure, it does concern them ... oh ...”
It wasn’t quite fair and Ryan knew it. He now had fuller information than anyone else, and a huge head start on the analysis.
“We just developed some information. I’ll have it sent over as soon as it’s typed up. I want you down here at two-thirty for a skull session.”
“We’ll be there,” the almost-DDO promised.
And there it was, right on the map. You just needed the right information, and a little time.
Korea was not a country to be intimidated by Japan. The latter country had ruled the former for almost fifty years earlier in the century, and the memories for Koreans were not happy ones. Treated as serfs by their conquerors, to this day there were few quicker ways to get dead than to refer to a Korean citizen as a Jap. The antipathy was real, and with the growing Korean economy and the competition to Japan that it made, the resentment was bilateral. Most fundamental of all was the racial element. Though Korea and Japan were in fact countries of the same genetic identity, the Japanese still regarded Koreans as Hitler had once regarded Poles. The Koreans, moreover, had their own warrior tradition. They’d sent two divisions of troops to Vietnam, had built a formidable military of their own to defend against the now-dead madmen to their north. Once a beaten-down colony of Japan, they were now tough, and very, very proud. So what, then, could have cowed them out of honoring treaty commitments to America?
Not Japan. Korea had little to fear from direct attack, and Japan could hardly use her nuclear weapons on Korea. Wind patterns would transport whatever fallout resulted right back to the country that had sent the weapons.
But immediately to Korea’s north was the world’s most populous country, with the world’s largest standing army, and that was enough to frighten the ROKs, as it would frighten anyone.
Japan needed and doubtless wanted direct access to natural resources. It had a superb and fully developed economic base, a highly skilled manpower pool, all manner of high-tech assets. But Japan had a relatively small population in proportion to her economic strength.
China had a vast pool of people, but not as yet highly trained, a rapidly developing economy still somewhat lacking in high technology. And like Japan, China needed better access to resources.
And to the immediate north of both China and Japan was the world’s last unexploited treasure house.
Taking the Marianas would prevent or at least hinder the approach of America’s principal strategic arm, the U.S. Navy, from approaching the area of interest. The only other way to protect Siberia was from the west, through all of Russia. Meaning that the area was in fact cut off from outside assistance. China had her own nuclear capacity to deter Russia, and a larger land army to defend the conquest. It was a considerable gamble, to be sure, but with the American and European economies in a shambles, unable to help Russia, yes, it did all make good strategic sense. Global war on the installment plan.
The operational art, moreover, was not new in the least. First cripple the strong enemy, then gobble up the weak one. Exactly the same thing had been attempted in 1941-1942. The Japanese strategic concept had never been to conquer America, b
ut to cripple the larger country so severely that acquiescence to her southern conquests would become a political necessity. Pretty simple stuff, really, Ryan told himself. You just had to break the code. That’s when the phone rang. It was his number-four line.
“Hello, Sergey,” Ryan said.
“How did you know?” Golovko demanded.
Jack might have answered that the line was set aside for the Russian’s direct access, but didn’t. “Because you just read the same thing 1 did.”
“Tell me what you think?”
“I think you are their objective, Sergey Nikolay’ch. Probably for next year.” Ryan’s voice was light, still in the flush of discovery, which was always pleasant despite the nature of the new knowledge.
“Earlier. Autumn, I should imagine. The weather will work more in their favor that way.” Then came a lengthy pause. “Can you help us, Ivan Emmetovich? No, wrong question. Will you help us?”
“Alliances, like friendships, are always bilateral,” Jack pointed out. “You have a president to brief. So do I.”
32
Special Report
As an officer who had once hoped to command a ship like this one, Captain Sanchez was glad he’d chosen to remain aboard instead of flying his fighter off to the Naval Air Station at Barbers Point. Six gray tugboats had nudged USS John Stennis into the graving dock.
There were over a hundred professional engineers aboard, including fifty new arrivals from Newport News Shipbuilding, all of them below and looking at the power plant. Trucks were lined up on the perimeter of the graving dock, and with them hundreds of sailors and civilian yard employees, like doctors or EMTs, Bud imagined, ready to switch out body parts.
As Captain Sanchez watched, a crane lifted the first brow from its cradle, and another started turning, to lift what looked like a construction trailer, probably to rest on the flight deck. The gate on the dock wasn’t even closed yet. Somebody, he saw, was in a hurry.
“Captain Sanchez?”
Bud turned to see a Marine corporal. He handed over a message form after saluting. “You’re wanted at CINCPACFLT Operations, sir.”
“That’s totally crazy,” the president of the New York Stock Exchange said, managing to get the first word in.
The big conference room at the FBI’s New York office looked remarkably like a courtroom, with seats for a hundred people or more. It was about half empty, and the majority of people present were government employees of one sort or another, mainly FBI and SEC officials who’d been working the takedown case since Friday evening. But the front row was filled entirely with senior traders and institution chairmen.
George had just taken them through his version of the events of the previous week, using an overhead projector to display trends and trades and going slowly because of the fatigue level that had to affect the judgment of everyone trying to understand what he was saying. The Fed Chairman just then entered the room, having made his calls to Europe. He gave Winston and Fiedler a thumbs-up and took a seat in the back for the moment.
“It may be crazy, but that’s what happened.”
The NYSE head thought about that. “That’s all well and good,” he said after a few seconds, meaning that it wasn’t well and good at all, and everybody knew it. “But we’re still stuck in the middle of a swamp, and the alligators are gathering around us. I don’t think we can hold them off much longer.” There was general agreement on that point. Everyone in the front row was surprised to see their former colleague smile.
Winston turned to the Secretary of the Treasury. “Buzz, why don’t you deliver the good news?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, there is a way out,” Fiedler said confidently. His next sixty seconds generated incredulous silence. The traders didn’t even have the wit to turn and look at one another. But if they didn’t exactly nod with approval, neither did anyone object, even after a seemingly endless period of consideration.
The first to speak, predictably, was the managing director of Cummings, Carter, and Cantor. CCC had died around 3:15 on the previous Friday, caught moving the wrong way, its cash reserves wiped out, and then denied help from Merrill Lynch in a move which, in fairness, the managing director could not really fault.
“Is it legal?” he asked.
“Neither the United States Department of Justice nor the Securities and Exchange Commission will consider your cooperation to be any sort of violation. I will say,” Fiedler added, “that any attempt to exploit the situation will be dealt with very severely indeed—but if we all work together, antitrust and other considerations will be set aside in the interests of national security. That is irregular, but it is now on record, and you all heard me say it. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the intention and the word of the United States government.”
Well, damn, the assembled multitude thought. Especially the law-enforcement people.
“Well, you all know what happened to us at Triple-C,” the director said, looking around, and his natural skepticism was tempered with the beginnings of genuine relief. “I don’t have a choice here. I have to buy into this.”
“I have something to add.” Now the Fed Chairman walked to the front of the room. “1 just finished calling the central-bank heads of Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. They’re all flying here tonight. We’ll get together right here tomorrow morning to set up a system by which they also can cooperate in this effort. We are going to stabilize the dollar. We are going to fix the T-Bill market. The American banking system will not go down on us. I am going to propose to the Open Market Committee that anyone who holds on to U.S. Treasuries—that is, extends the three-month and six-month notes for one renewal cycle—gets an extra fifty basis points as a reward from the U.S. government for helping us through this situation. We will also give the same bonus to anyone who buys T-Bills in the next ten days after the markets reopen.”
Smart move, Winston thought. Very smart move. That would draw foreign money into America, away from Japan, and really firm up the dollar—while attacking the yen. The Asian banks that dumped on the dollar would get it in the back of the neck for the move. So two could play the game, eh?
“You need legislation for that,” a treasuries expert objected.
“We’ll get it, we’ll have ink on paper by Friday-a-week. For the moment, that is the policy of the Federal Reserve, approved and supported by the President of the United States,” the Chairman added.
“They’re giving us our life back, people,” Winston said, pacing up and down again in front of the wooden rail. “We have been attacked by people who wanted to take us down. They wanted to cut our heart out. Well, looks like we have some pretty good doctors here. We’re going to be sick for a while, but by the end of next week it’s going to be okay.”
“Friday noon, eh?” the NYSE asked.
“Correct,” Fiedler told him, staring hard now and waiting for a response. The executive gave it another few seconds of thought, then stood.
“You will have the full cooperation of the New York Stock Exchange.” And the prestige of the NYSE was enough to overcome any doubts. Full cooperation was inevitable, but speed in the decision cycle was vital, and in ten more seconds the market officials were standing, smiling, and thinking about getting their shops back together.
“There will be no program trading until further notice,” Fiedler said. “Those ’expert systems’ nearly killed us. Friday is going to be exciting under the best of circumstances. We want people to use their brains, not their Nintendo systems.”
“Agreed,” NASDAQ said for the rest.
“We need to rethink those things anyway,” Merrill Lynch announced thoughtfully.
“We will coordinate through this office. Think things through,” the Fed Chairman told them. “If you have ideas on how to make the transition go more smoothly, we want to know about it. We will reconvene at six. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in this together. For the next week or so we are not competitors. We are team members.”
“I have about a million individual investors depending on my house,” Winston reminded them. “Some of you have more. Let’s not forget that.” There was nothing like an appeal to honor. It was a virtue that all craved, even those who lacked it. Fundamentally, honor was itself a debt, a code of behavior, a promise, something inside yourself that you owed to the others who saw it in you. Everyone in this room wanted all the others to look and see a person worthy of respect and trust, and honor. An altogether useful concept, Winston thought, most particularly in time of trouble.
And then there was one, Ryan thought. The way it always seemed to work at this level, you took care of the simple jobs first and saved the really tough ones for last.
The mission now was more to prevent war than to execute it, but the latter would be part of the former.
The control of Eastern Siberia by Japan and China would have the effect of creating a new—what? Axis? Probably not that. Certainly a new world economic powerhouse, a rival to America in all categories of power. It would give Japan and China a huge competitive advantage in economic terms.
That in and of itself was not an evil ambition. But the methods were. The world had once operated by rules as simple as those of any jungle. If you got it first, it was yours—but only if you had the strength to hold it. Not terribly elegant, nor especially fair by contemporary standards, but the rules had been accepted because the stronger nations generally gave citizens political stability in return for loyalty, and that was usually the first step in the growth of a nation. After a while, however, the human need for peace and security had grown into something else—a desire for a stake in the governance of their country. From 1789, the year that America had ratified its Constitution, to 1989, the year that Eastern Europe had fallen, a mere two centuries, something new had come into the collective mind of mankind. It was called by many names—democracy, human rights, self-determination—but it was fundamentally a recognition that the human will had its own force, and mainly for good.