Sudden Threat (18 page)

Matt looked at Rathburn, and said, “Governments can ‘do’ Henka and people can ‘do’ Henka. The only constant in Henka is that it always serves the common Japanese good.”

He dropped the last match. The sticks crossed in the ashtray, looking like a pile of bones.

“So that is ten, I believe. The only question is, Will there be a spark? Or is it already smoldering and we just don’t see it,” he asked himself, thinking, then pulling a match out of the book and striking it. The flame burned eerily bright in the darkened cabin of the aircraft as he held the match above the ashtray.

“Do they seek to shed the implications that Western thought set their society on the correct path?”

“Thought you didn’t know anything?”

“I know some stuff,” Matt said.

“How does that square with Kaitachi’s Taiwan-China issue?”

“I don’t know, sir. Let me ask you, what do you make of all of this? And why did you ask me about Japan instead of my real areas of expertise?”

Rathburn looked away. “The ambassador’s visit just didn’t make sense to me.”

The plane droned along, and Matt dropped the lit match into the ashtray.

The matches ignited simultaneously, burning a fluorescent white, then fading to orange. Both men fixed their gaze on the flame.

“Something about a fire makes you stare at it,” Rathburn said.

“Agreed.”

The plane etched a trace across the sky, arching toward the Philippines where a government delegation, and God knows what else, would meet them. 

As Matt drifted to sleep, a thought nibbled at his mind, spiraling into the black void that brought rest. What was it? There, he had it for a moment.

Something about watching fires.

CHAPTER 28

Georgetown, Washington, DC

Dick Diamond stood at the window of Saul Fox’s Georgetown townhouse reading his Blackberry. Looking up, he could see the Potomac, some stores along M Street, and a glimpse of the Kennedy Center. It was, after all, prime real estate. He had turned up Puccini again, Calaf’s voice belting out, “
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me, il nome mio nessun saprà.
” But my secret is hidden within me. None will know my name!

Diamond pocketed his digital assistant and ran a well-manicured hand along the revolver he had purchased, then walked to the bed and fitted the weapon between the mattress and box spring. He stepped back, assessed its positioning, and made an adjustment. Then he sat on the bed, leaned back a bit, and let his arm fall naturally along the mattress. He felt around and determined the pistol needed to be moved about six inches toward the headboard and a few inches toward the edge. His considerable weight had crushed the mattress into the pistol, making retrieval at the right moment awkward, if not impossible.

And that would not be good.

He removed the pistol and awkwardly stuffed it in his coat pocket, confident that he could place it properly when necessary and have it … available.

As soon as his hand left his jacket, Saul Fox came walking into the bedroom, wearing a white robe that had the letters SF stenciled on the left breast pocket in gold thread—real gold.

“Dick, we need to talk about this Philippine thing,” Fox said.

“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes, I presume so,” Fox agreed. He sat on a chaise and the robe fell away, exposing a short, bare leg.

Diamond sat in a cherry Thonet No. 14 chair made of six pieces of steamed and bent cane wood. It was nearly a hundred years old, and Diamond thought he was going to break the chair as his large derriere pressed into the antique.

“You know Takishi, right?” Fox asked.

Diamond hesitated, not wanting to answer right away. “Yes, of course. He’s a big wheel in Japan, and he was a student at Harvard B School when I was teaching at the JFK School. Quite popular, bright mind, very … Japanese.”

“Good. Good,” Fox said. He pulled the robe over his leg and rubbed his face with an open palm as if to test his shave.

“How so?”

“I’m thinking about everything we’re hearing. We’ve got one dead guy in the Philippines. Patterson, something like that. Matt Garrett was supposedly roaming around down there from the CIA. Stone had his press conference, and now we’ve got an infantry company going there.”

“Still all very manageable within the big picture. I mean an A team and a rifle company, that’s not much more than we let Stone send to Afghanistan.”

Fox smiled, then his expression changed as he sat up. “I know. That’s sort of my point. Our entire plan was to let Nine-eleven happen, however that was going to play out, then use it as a window of opportunity for our own purposes; to achieve lasting fame. Brilliant.”

“Yes, but are we the only ones looking in the window?” Diamond asked, getting Fox’s point.

“That’s what I want you to talk to Takishi about.”

CHAPTER 29

Tokyo, Japan

Japanese Prime Minister Kirusu Mizuzawa sat in his office in the
Kantei
, the Japanese equivalent of the White House. Upon becoming prime minister two years ago, he had decorated his workplace with various pictures and mementoes he had acquired throughout his distinguished military and political careers.

One of his first actions as prime minister was to place next to the map of Japan a large map of Southeast Asia. Sitting at his desk, he could look up and see the four major islands of Japan in large scale, as well as the Pacific Rim from the northeastern Chinese border to central Australia. Centrally locat-ed were the Philippine Islands. Just to the north of the Philippines was the island of Formosa, or Taiwan. He had circled Taiwan and the Philippines with red highlighter and put a question mark next to Indonesia.

He stood and walked around the front of his desk, leaning against it. He was a short man in his mid-seventies. His face was wrinkled like that of a Chinese Shar-Pei. His eyes peeked from between two coin slots in his wizened face. He kept his black hair cropped close to his head with a crew cut. A scar from an American bayonet during the Great Pacific War ran across the top of his right forearm. It had not healed properly and curved outward in grotesque fashion.

He took his suit jacket off and placed it over the back of his chair. He then slipped on his black samurai robe and walked through the open glass doors behind his desk. The night air was cool and heavy, settling upon Mizuzawa in wavy mists. Stepping with a bare foot past a decorative rock, he strode onto the bridge that spanned the dark koi pond. He watched the large orange and white fish smack at the water’s surface and swim lazily in another direction. A small pagoda faced him on the other side of the pond.

His robe flowing with his gait, he strode slowly around the carefully trimmed hedges in the garden. He stopped and raised his arms, palms stretched outward, then slowly brought them down, beginning a jujitsu ritual of relaxation. He performed several maneuvers, eyes closed, as he felt the enemy surrounding him.

An unarmed method of defense, jujitsu was designed to throw the opponent off-balance through movement and deception. Karate differed in that it focused on the accurate application of well-timed blows to the opponent. Mizuzawa moved in rhythmic harmony, clearing his mind for the monumental decisions that lay ahead. His process of Henka had been gradual, but he felt that he had a consensus within the administration and that they were convinced of the course he had chosen.

In the courtyard stood a bronze statue of Confucius. He relied on Confucian ideology as his spiritual guide and, more than ever, needed reassurance that he was embarking on the correct path. He looked at the painting and bowed. Kneeling on a red satin pillow, he closed his eyes and prayed silently. He asked for the wisdom to do what was correct for Japan and the courage to act on the wisdom. He felt that Confucius was listening and continued to ask for the right and proper guidance. He asked for forgiveness in advance should he fail.

It was a prayer he had been making daily for two years, ever since he launched compartmentalized sectors of his government on the mission that would elevate Japan’s security resources to the same level as its economic and political resources. Under his direction, Japan would be a true superpower.

His society had suffered the humiliation of Western dominance long enough. With America so fully engaged in the Global War on Terror, he sensed a rare geopolitical opportunity. He saw America losing its hegemonic control as it got further sucked into the twirling vortex of Muslim extremism. Assuredly, there would be missteps, and Japan needed to be prepared to capitalize on those as they occurred. Similarly, China and North Korea loomed just over the horizon, and Mizuzawa had suffered the last embarrassment of a missile shot across his land from China or North Korea.

Mizuzawa believed that with political systems in turmoil, economic systems would soon follow. With a reduction in Japanese exports to those economic systems, the Japanese economy would wither. Such a path would add insult to injury. Western domination, followed by Japanese decline, would be unacceptable. Preemptive measures to ensure Japanese security, Mizuzawa assured himself, were in order.

Mizuzawa finished his prayer and stood, feeling relaxed and confident.

He sat upon a pillow, overlooking the pond. Doing so, he thought back to his childhood. He remembered being fifteen years old when he heard that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had been an unqualified success. He had swelled with pride in his family and his nation. He had asked his father if he could serve in the armed forces like his two brothers. His father gave him permission, telling him he needed to fight for his country. He saw limited action on Okinawa and watched Americans kill his two brothers in the battle.

He winced as he remembered being nineteen years old and hearing of the atomic bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why had the Americans dropped the bombs only on the Asian race? Could they not bear to destroy their own precious European culture with the same devastation that they wreaked on the diminutive yellow people?

He had read Truman’s memoirs with disgust. Despite those lies, he was convinced the bomb was available for use on the Germans but saved for the Japanese. Why did the Americans not lock up the immigrant Germans when they joined the war in Europe? But they felt at liberty to shame and humiliate the Japanese immigrants who had, for whatever reason, searched for a new life in America. Worse, it took them fifty years to give those innocent Japanese bystanders the proper recompense for their losses. Most were dead, anyway. Why had America denied the Japanese immigration rights? Mizuzawa worked himself into a rage, clenching his fists.
Americans—self-righteous bastards!

Mizuzawa believed that the Japanese people owed the Americans nothing. The United States had defeated his country in battle and occupied his people’s land to shape Japan in the Western image.
No more,
Mizuzawa thought to himself,
no more.

Yes, the Japanese Empire would once again rise from the sea, not like some hideous monster, spraying foam and seawater in all directions, but like the benevolent vessel that she was, sifting through the fog of the post-9-11 world order and aiding the sinking ships around her.

He was at peace, sitting cross-legged on the bridge, suspended above the water. With his eyes shut, another Sun Tzu maxim rolled through his mind.

Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion.

CHAPTER 30

Subic Bay, Luzon Island, Philippines

Juan Ayala stuffed his cell phone into his pocket. Talbosa, his mentor, had given him the word to execute his mission. Ayala had made two subsequent calls: one to his assault element at Manila International Airport and one to his support team leader at the naval base, where he was located as well. Ayala was about half a kilometer from the team that would create the diversion before he personally led the attack on the American position.

As he cleaned the Shansi pistol that he had carried with him through ten years of the revolution, he smiled thinly at the opportunity to kill more Americans. Only twenty-two, he remembered receiving the Chinese mock up of the broom-handled Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistol from an Abu Sayyaf veteran when he was a twelve-year-old boy living in the wastelands of Olongapo, a city of brothels just outside Subic Bay Naval Base.

He carried four ten-round stripper clips of .45- caliber ammunition for the thirty-centimeter-long pistol with attachable buttstock, the broom handle, which allowed Ayala to shoulder-fire the weapon or use it in pistol-grip mode. It had served him well on the stupid American sitting alone in his truck on the naval base. That had almost been too easy. He had asked the man for a cigarette.

“Hey, Joe, any smoke?” he had said to the man sitting in the white SUV. The man, with his elbow propped on the frame of the open window, had not been alarmed at the sight of the short brown man with a deep scar running from his right ear to his chin. The fool had shut off the ignition and reached into his pockets, acting without hesitation.

Images of ten-year-old Filipino girls who had turned to whoring for the American sailors had sprung through Ayala’s mind. From less than a meter away, without hesitation or remorse, he had leveled the pistol and pulled the trigger. One shot was all he had required. The .45 caliber bullet had struck the
Yanqui
in the forehead, just above the nose, causing bright red blood to spray outward and onto the windshield of the Blazer.

Surprising to Ayala, the man’s forehead had remained largely intact. The bigger hole had been to the back of his head, where the exit wound had removed a quarter of his cranium. Ayala had then taken his roll of M186 demolition charge and taped pieces in strategic locations on the vehicle. The M186 consisted of pentaerythrite tetranitrate (PETN), a highly sensitive and powerful explosive that he had acquired from the last ammunition raid they had conducted at the naval base. He had rigged the blasting caps so that they would ignite when the driver-side door was opened and a metal clothes pin snapped shut, completing an electrical circuit to the vehicle battery. Proud of his work, he had then faded into the darkness moments before two airplanes landed not a half kilometer away from his latest victory for the cause.