Jack Ryan 8 - Debt of Honor (12 page)

“So what have we got so far?”

“Nothing on point yet,” Mary Pat replied. “But we have learned some interesting things about Hiroshi Goto. He has a few bad habits.” She elaborated.

“He doesn't like us very much, does he?”

“He likes female Americans just fine, if you want to call it that.”

“It's not something we can use very easily.” Ryan leaned back in his chair. It was distasteful, especially for a man whose elder daughter would soon start dating, something that came hard to fathers under the best of circumstances. “There's a lot of lost souls out there, MP, and we can't save them all,” Jack said without much conviction in his voice.

“Something smells about this, Jack.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don't know. Maybe it's the recklessness of it. This guy could be their Prime Minister in another couple of weeks. He's got a lot of support from the zaibatsu. The present government is shaky. He ought to be playing statesman, not cocksman, and putting a young girl on display like that…”

“Different culture, different rules.” Ryan made the mistake of closing tired eyes for a moment, and as he did so his imagination conjured up an image to match Mrs. Foley's words. She's an American citizen, Jack. They're the people who pay your salary. The eyes opened back up. “How good's your officer?”

“He's very sharp. He's been in-country for six months.”

“Has he recruited anybody yet?”

“No, he's under orders to go slow. You have to over there. Their society has different rules. He's identified a couple unhappy campers, and he's taking his time.”

“Yamata and Goto…but that doesn't make sense, does it? Yamata just took a management interest on the Street, the Columbus Group. George Winston's outfit. I know George.”

“The mutual-funds bunch?”

“That's right. He just hung 'em up, and Yamata stepped up to take his place. We're talking big bucks, MP. Hundred-million minimum for the price of admission. So you're telling me that a politician who professes not to like the
United States
hangs out with an industrialist who just married himself to our financial system. Hell, maybe Yamata is trying to explain the facts of life to the guy.”

“What do you know about Mr. Yamata?” she asked.

The question caught Jack short. “Me? Not much, just a name. He runs a big conglomerate. Is he one of your targets?”

“That's right.”

Ryan grinned somewhat crookedly. “MP, you sure this is complicated enough? Maybe toss in another element?”

In
Nevada
, people waited for the sun to set over the mountains before beginning what had been planned as a routine exercise, albeit with some last-minute modifications. The Army warrant officers were all experienced men, and they remained bemused by their first official visit to “Dreamland,” as the Air Force people still called their secret facility at
Groom
Lake
. This was the place where you tested stealthy aircraft, and the area was littered with radar and other systems to determine just how stealthy such things really were. With the sun finally gone and the clear sky dark, they manned their aircraft and lifted off for a night's testing. The mission for tonight was to approach the Nellis flight line, to deliver some administrative ordnance, and to return to
Groom
Lake
, all undetected. That would be hard enough.

Jackson
, wearing his J-3 hat, was observing the newest entry in the stealth business. The Comanche had some interesting implications in that arena, and more still in special operations, fast becoming the most fashionable part of the Pentagon. The Army said they had a real magic show worth watching, and he was here to watch…

“Guns, guns, guns!” the warrant officer said over the guard channel ninety minutes later. Then on intercom, “God, what a beautiful sight!”

The ramp at Nellis Air Force Base was home to the Air Force's largest fighter wing, today augmented further still with two visiting squadrons for the ongoing Red Flag operation. That gave his Comanche over a hundred targets for its 20-millimeter cannon, and he walked his fire among the even rows of aircraft before turning and exiting the area to the south. The casinos of
Las Vegas
were in sight as he looped around, making room for the other two Comanches, then it was back down to fifty feet over the uneven sand on a northeasterly heading.

“Getting hit again. Some Eagle jockey keeps sweeping us,” the backseater reported.

“Locking up?”

“Sure as hell trying to, and—Jesus—”

An F-I5C screeched overhead close enough that the wake turbulence made the Comanche rock a little. Then a voice came up on guard.

“If this was an Echo, I'd have your ass.”

“I just knew you Air Force guys were like that. See you at the barn.”

“Roger. Out.” In the distance at
twelve o'clock
, the fighter lit off its afterburners in salute.

“Good news, bad news,
Sandy
,” the backseater observed.

Stealthy, but not quite stealthy enough. The low-observable technology built into the Comanche was good enough to defeat a missile-targeting radar, but those damned airborne early-warning birds with their big antennas and signal-processor chips kept getting hits, probably off the rotor disc, the pilot thought. They had to do a little more work on that. The good news was that the F-15C, with a superb missile-tracking radar, couldn't get lockup for his AMRAAMs, and a heat-seeker was a waste of time for all involved, even over a cold desert floor. But the F-15E, with its see-in-the-dark gear, could have blown him away with a 20mm cannon. Something to remember. So, the world was not yet perfect, but Comanche was still the baddest helicopter ever made.

CWO-4 Sandy Richter looked up. In the dry, cold desert air he could see the strobe lights of the orbiting E-3A AW ACS. Not all that far away. Thirty thousand feet or so, he estimated. Then he had an interesting thought. That Navy guy looked smart enough, and maybe if he presented his idea in the right way, he'd get a chance to try it out…

“I'm getting tired of this,” President Durling was saying in his office, diagonally across the West Wing from Ryan's. There had been a couple of good years, but they'd come to a screeching halt in the past few months. “What was it today?”

“Gas tanks,” Marty Caplan replied. “Deerfield Auto Parts up in
Massachusetts
just came up with a way to fabricate them into nearly any shape and capacity from standard steel sheets. It's a robotic process, efficient as hell. They refused to license it to the Japanese—”

“Al Trent's district?” the President cut in.

“That's right.”

“Excuse me. Please go on.” Durling reached for some tea. He was having trouble with afternoon coffee now. “Why won't they license it?”

“It's one of the companies that almost got destroyed by overseas competition. This one held on to the old management team. They smartened up, hired a few bright young design engineers, and pulled their socks up. They've come up with half a dozen important innovations. It just so happens that this is the one that delivers the greatest cost-efficiency. They claim they can make the tanks, box 'em, and ship them to
Japan
cheaper than the Japanese can make them at home, and that the tanks are also stronger. But we couldn't even make the other side budge on using them in the plants they have over here. It's computer chips all over again,” Caplan concluded.

“How is it they can even ship the things over—”

“The ships, Mr. President.” It was Caplan's turn to interrupt. “Their car carriers come over here full and mainly return completely empty. Loading the things on wouldn't cost anything at all, and they end up getting delivered right to the company docks.
Deerfield
even designed a load-unload system that eliminates any possible time penalty.”

“Why didn't you push on it?”

“I'm surprised he didn't push,” Christopher Cook observed.

They were in an upscale private home just off
Kalorama Road
. An expensive area of the
District of Columbia
, it housed quite a few members of the diplomatic community, along with the rank-and-file members of the
Washington
community, lobbyists, lawyers, and all the rest who wanted to be close, but not too close, to where the action was, downtown.

“
Deerfield
would only license their patent.” Seiji sighed. “We offered them a very fair price.”

“True,” Cook agreed, pouring himself another glass of white wine. He could have said, But, Seiji, it's their invention and they want to cash in on it, but he didn't. “Why don't your people—”

It was Seiji Nagumo's turn to sigh. “Your people were clever. They hired particularly bright attorney in
Japan
and got their patent recognized in record time.” He might have added that it offended him that a citizen of his country could be so mercenary, but that would have been unseemly under the circumstances. “Well, perhaps they will come to see the light of reason.”

“It could be a good point to concede, Seiji. At the very least, sweeten your offer on the licensing agreement.”

“Why, Chris?”

“The President is interested in this one.” Cook paused, seeing that Nagumo didn't get it yet. He was still new at this. He knew the industrial side, but not the politics yet. “
Deerfield
is in Al Trent's congressional district.
Trent
has a lot of clout on the Hill. He's chairman of the Intelligence Committee.”

“And?”

“And
Trent
is a good guy to keep happy.”

Nagumo considered that for a minute or so, sipping his wine and staring out the window. Had he known that fact earlier in the day, he might have sought permission to give in on the point, but he hadn't and he didn't. To change now would be an admission of error, and Nagumo didn't like to do that any more than anyone else in the world. He decided that he'd suggest an improved offer for licensing rights, instead—not knowing that by failing to accept a personal loss of face, he'd bring closer something that he would have tried anything to avoid.

Complexity Theory

Things rarely happen for a single reason. Even the cleverest and most skillful manipulators recognize that their real art lies in making use of that which they cannot predict. For Raizo Yamata the knowledge was usually a comfort. He usually knew what to do when the unexpected took place—but not always.

“It has been a troublesome time, that is true, but not the worst we have experienced,” one of his guests pronounced. “And we are having our way again, are we not?”

“We've made them back off on computer chips,” another pointed out. Heads nodded around the low table.

They just didn't see, Yamata told himself. His country's needs coincided exactly with a new opportunity. There was a new world, and despite
America
's repeated pronouncements of a new order for that new world, only disorder had replaced what had been three generations of—if not stability, then at least predictability. The symmetry of East and West was now so far back in the history of contemporary minds that it seemed like a distant and unpleasant dream. The Russians were still reeling from their misguided experiment, and so were the Americans, though most of their pain was self-inflicted and had come after the event, the fools. Instead of merely maintaining their power, the Americans had cast it aside at the moment of its ascendancy, as they had so often in their history, and in the dimming of two formerly great powers lay the opportunity for a country that deserved to be great.

“These are small things, my friends,” Yamata said, graciously leaning across the table to refill cups. “Our national weakness is structural and has not changed in real terms in our lifetime.”

“Please explain, Raizo-chan,” one of his friendlier peers suggested.

“So long as we lack direct access to resources, so long as we cannot control that access ourselves, so long as we exist as the shopkeeper of other nations, we are vulnerable.”

“Ah!” Across the table a man waved a dismissive hand. “I disagree. We are strong in the things that matter.”

“And what are those things?” Yamata inquired gently.

“First and most importantly, the diligence of our workers, the skill of our designers…” The litany went on while Yamata and his other guests listened politely.

“And how long will those things matter if we no longer have resources to use, oil to burn?” one of Yamata's allies inquired with a litany of his own.

“
Nineteen forty-one
all over again?”

“No, it will not be that way…exactly,” Yamata said, rejoining the conversation. “Then it was possible for them to cut off our oil because we bought almost all of it from them. Today it is more subtle. Back then they had to freeze our assets to prevent us from spending them elsewhere, yes? Today they devalue the dollar relative to the yen, and our assets are trapped there, are they not? Today they trick us into investing our money there, they complain when we do, they cheat us at every turn, they keep what we give to them for their property, and then they steal back what we've bought!”

This tack caused heads first to turn and then to nod. Every man in the room had lived through that experience. That one, Yamata saw, had bought
Rockefeller
Center
in
New York
, had paid double what it was really worth, even in that artificially inflated real-estate market, been tricked and cheated by the American owners. Then the yen had risen relative to the dollar, which meant that the dollar had lost value relative to the yen. If he tried to sell now, everyone knew, it would be a disaster. First, the real-estate market in
New York City
had dropped of its own accord; second, and as a result, the buildings were worth only half of the dollars that had already been paid; third, the dollars were worth only half the value in yen that they had been in the beginning. He'd be lucky to get back a quarter of what he'd put into the deal. In fact, the rent he was earning barely paid the interest payments on the outstanding debt.

That one there, Yamata thought, had bought a major motion-picture studio, and across the table a rival had done the same. It was all Raizo could do not to laugh at the fools. What had each bought? That was simple. In each case, for a price of billions of dollars, they had purchased three hundred or so hectares of real estate in
Los Angeles
and a piece of paper that said they now had the ability to make movies. In both cases the previous owners had taken the money and quite openly laughed, and in both cases the previous owners had recently made a quiet offer to buy the properly back for a quarter, or less, of what the Japanese businessman had paid—enough to retire the outstanding debt and not a single yen more.

It went on and on. Every time a Japanese company had taken its profits from
America
and tried to reinvest them back in
America
, the Americans screamed about how
Japan
was stealing their country. Then they overcharged for everything. Then their government policy made sure that the Japanese lost money on everything, so that Americans could then buy it all back at cut-rate prices, all the while complaining that those prices were too high.
America
would rejoice at recovering control of its culture, such as it was, when in reality what had happened was the largest and best concealed robbery in world history.

“Don't you see? They're trying to cripple us, and they are succeeding,” Yamata told them in a quiet, reasonable voice.

It was the classic business paradox which all know but all forget. There was even a simple aphorism for it: borrow one dollar and the bank owns you; borrow a million dollars and you own the bank.
Japan
had bought into the American auto market, for example, at a time when the
U.S.
auto industry, fat from its huge exclusive clientele, was driving up prices and allowing quality to stagnate while its unionized workers complained about the dehumanizing aspects of their work—the highest-paid jobs in blue-collar
America
. The Japanese had started in that market at an even lower status than Volkswagen, with small, ugly cars that were not all that well made and contained unimpressive safety features, but that were superior to American designs in one way: they were fuel-efficient.

Three historical accidents had then come to
Japan
's aid. The American Congress, upset with the “greed” of oil companies who wanted to charge world price for their products, had placed a cap on the wellhead price of domestic crude oil. That had frozen American gasoline prices at the lowest level in the industrial world, discouraged new oil exploration, and encouraged Detroit to make large,

heavy, fuel-inefficient cars. Then the 1973 war between
Israel
and the Arab states had placed American drivers in gasoline lines for the first time in thirty years, and the trauma had stunned a country that had deemed itself above such things. Then they'd realized that
Detroit
only made automobiles that drank gasoline as though through the floodgates of a dam. The “compact” cars that the American manufacturers had started making in the previous decade had almost immediately grown to midsize, were no more fuel-efficient than their larger cousins, and weren't all that well made in any case. Worst of all, the American manufacturers, to a man, had all recently invested money in large-car plants, a fact that had almost been the undoing of Chrysler. This oil shock had not lasted long, but long enough for
America
to rethink its buying habits, and the domestic companies had not possessed the capital or the engineering flexibility to change rapidly to what unaccustomedly nervous American citizens wanted.

Those citizens had immediately increased purchases of Japanese automobiles, especially in the crucial, trend-setting West Coast markets, which had had the effect of funding research and development for the Japanese firms, which in turn had hired American styling engineers to make their products more attractive to their growing market and utilized its own engineers to improve such things as safety. Thus, by the second great oil shock of 1979,
Toyota
, Honda, Datsun (later Nissan), and Subaru were in the right place with the right product. Those were the salad days. The low yen and high dollar had meant that even relatively low prices guaranteed a handsome profit, that their local dealers could add a surcharge of a thousand dollars or more for allowing people to purchase these marvelous automobiles—and that had given them a large, eager sales force of American citizens.

What had never occurred to any of the men at the table, Yamata knew, was the same thing that had never occurred to the executives of General Motors and the United Auto Workers union. Both had assumed that a happy state of affairs would extend into blissful eternity. Both had forgotten that there was no Divine Right of Businessmen any more than there was a Divine Right of Kings.
Japan
had learned to exploit a weakness of the American auto industry. In due course,
America
had learned from its own mistakes, and just as Japanese companies had capitalized on American arrogance, in the same way they almost immediately built—or bought—monuments to their own. Meanwhile the American companies had ruthlessly downsized everything from their automobile designs to their payrolls because they had relearned the economic facts of life even as the Japanese had allowed themselves to forget them. The process went mainly unseen, especially by

the players, who were not assisted by the media “analysts” who were too busy looking at trees to discern the shape of the cyclical forest.

To normalize things further, the exchange rate changed—as it had to change with so much money flowing in one direction—but the Japanese industrialists hadn't seen it coming any more clearly than
Detroit
had noted the approach of its own troubles. The relative value of the yen had gone up, and that of the dollar down, despite the best efforts of Japanese central bankers to keep their own currency weak. With that change went much of the profit margin of the Japanese firms—including the values of properties bought in
America
that had crashed enough in value to be seen as net losses. And you couldn't transport
Rockefeller
Center
to
Tokyo
in any case.

It had to be this way. Yamata saw that even if these men did not. Business was a cycle, like riding a wave up and down, and no one had as yet found a way to make the cycle smooth out.
Japan
was all the more vulnerable to it, since, in serving
America
, Japanese industry was really part of the American economy and subject to all of its vagaries. The Americans would not remain more foolish than the Japanese indefinitely, and with their return to sanity, they would have their advantages of power and resources yet again, and his chance would be gone forever. His country's chance, too, Yamata told himself. That was also important, but it was not the thing that made his eyes burn.

His country could not be great so long as its leaders—not in the government, but here around this table—failed to understand what greatness was. Manufacturing capacity was nothing. The simple act of cutting the shipping lanes to the sources of raw materials could idle every factory in the country, and then the skill and diligence of the Japanese worker would have no greater meaning in the great scheme of things than a Buson haiku. A nation was great because of power, and his country's power was just as artificial as a poem. More to the point, national greatness was not something awarded, but something won; it had to be acknowledged by another great nation that had been taught humility…or more than one. Greatness came not from a single national asset. It came from many. It came from self-sufficiency in all things—well, in as many things as possible. His companions around the table had to see that before he could act on their behalf and his nation's. It was his mission to raise up his nation and to humble others. It was his destiny and his duty to make these things happen, to be the catalyst for all the energy of others.

But the time was not yet right. He could see that. His allies were many, but there were not enough of them, and those who opposed him were too fixed in their thinking to be persuaded. They saw his point, but not as clearly as he did, and until they changed their way of thinking, he could do no more than what he was doing now, offering counsel, setting the stage. A man of surpassing patience, Yamata-san smiled politely and ground his teeth, with the frustration of the moment.

“You know, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this place,” Ryan said as he took his place in the leather chair to the President's left.

“I said that once,” Durling announced. “It cost me three tenths of a point of unemployment, a fight with
House Ways
and Means, and ten real points of approval rating.” Though his voice was grave, he smiled when he said it. “So what's so hot that you're interrupting my lunch?”

Jack didn't make him wait, though his news was important enough to merit a dramatic reply: “We have our agreement with the Russians and Ukrainians on the last of the birds.”

“Starting when?” Durling asked, leaning forward over his desk and ignoring his salad.

“How does next Monday grab you?” Ryan asked with a grin. “They went for what Scott said. There've been so many of these START procedures that they want just to kill the last ones quietly and announce that they're gone, once and for all. Our inspectors are already over there, and theirs are over here, and they'll just go and do it.”

“I like it,” Durling replied.

“Exactly forty years, boss,” Ryan said with some passion, “practically my whole life since they deployed the SS-6 and we deployed Atlas, ugly damned things with an ugly damned purpose, and helping to make them go away—well, Mr. President, now I owe you one. It's going to be your mark, sir, but I can tell my grandchildren that I was around when it happened.” That Adler's proposal to the Russians and Ukrainians had been Ryan's initiative might end up as a footnote, but probably not.

“Our grandchildren either won't care or they'll ask what the big deal was,” Arnie van Damm observed, deadpan.

“True,” Ryan conceded. Trust Arnie to put a neutral spin on things.

“Now tell me the bad news,” Durling ordered.

“Five billion,” Jack said, unsurprised by the hurt expression he got in return. “It's worth it, sir. It really is.”