Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (86 page)

“But if you find out, then what?”

“That I do not know. 1 do know that my country will feel much safer with the knowledge than without. Those are my orders. Can I force you to help us? No, I cannot. But if you do not help us, then you help to place your country at risk. Consider that,” he said with the coldness of a coroner. Clark shook his hand in an overtly friendly way and walked off.

“Five-point-seven, five-point-six, five-point-eight from the East German judge ...” Ding breathed when they were far enough away. “Jesus, John, you
are
a Russian.”

“You bet your ass, kid.” He managed a smile.

Kimura stayed on the dock for a few minutes, looking out across the bay at the dormant ships. Some were car carriers, more were conventional container ships, with seamanlike lines to slice through the waves as they plied their commerce on the seas. This seemingly ordinary aspect of civilization was almost a personal religion for Kimura. Trade drew nations together in need, and in needing one another they ultimately came to find a good reason to keep the peace, however acrimonious their relations might be otherwise. Kimura knew enough history to realize that it didn’t always work that way, however.

You are breaking the law,
he told himself.
You are disgracing your name and your family. You are dishonoring your friends and co-workers. You are betraying your country.

But, damn it!
whose
country was he betraying? The people selected the members of the Diet, and their elected representatives selected the Prime Minister—but the people really had had no say whatever in this. They, like his ministry, like the members of the Diet, were mere spectators. They were being lied to. His country was at war, and the people didn’t really know! His country had troubled itself to build nuclear arms, and the people didn’t know. Who had given that order? The government? The government had just changed over—again—and surely the time involved meant ... what?

Kimura didn’t know. He knew the Russian was right, to some extent anyway. The dangers involved were not easily predicted. His country was in such danger as had not existed in his lifetime. His nation was descending into madness, and there were no doctors to diagnose the problem, and the only thing Kimura could be sure of was the fact that it was so far over his head that he didn’t know where or how to begin.

But someone must do something. At what point, Kimura asked himself, did a traitor become a patriot, and a patriot a traitor?

He should have been resentful, Cook thought, finally getting to bed. But he wasn’t. The day had gone exceptionally well, all things considered. The others were praying for him to step on his weenie. That was plain enough, especially the two NIOs. They were so damned smart—they thought, Cook told himself with a broad smile at the ceiling. But they didn’t know diddly. Did they know they didn’t know? Probably not. They always acted superior, but when crunch time came and you hit them with a question—well, then, it was always
on one hand,
sir, followed by
on the other hand,
sir. How the hell could you make policy on that basis?

Cook, on the
other
hand, did know, and the fact that Ryan was aware of it, had instantly elevated him to de facto leadership of the working group, which had been met with both resentment and relief by the others around the table.
Okay,
they were now thinking,
we’ll let
him
take the risks.
All in all, he thought he’d managed things rather well. The others would both back him up and distance themselves from him, making their notations on the positions he generated to cover their asses should things go badly, as they secretly hoped, but also staying within the group’s overall position to bask in the light of success if things went well. They’d hope for that, too, but not as much, bureaucrats being what they were.

So the preliminaries were done. The opening positions were set. Adler would head the negotiating team. Cook would be his second. The Japanese Ambassador would lead the other side, with Seiji Nagumo as
his
second. The negotiations would follow a pattern as structured and stylized as Kabuki theater. Both sides of the table would posture and the real action would take place during coffee or tea breaks, as the members of the respective teams talked quietly with their counterparts. That would allow Chris and Seiji to trade information, to control the negotiations, and just maybe to keep this damned-fool thing from getting worse than it already was.

They’re going to be giving you money for providing information,
the voice persisted. Well, yes, but Seiji was going to be giving him information, too, and the whole point was to defuse the situation and to
save lives!
he answered back. The real ultimate purpose of diplomacy was to keep the peace, and that meant saving lives in the global context, like doctors but with greater efficiency, and doctors got paid well, didn’t they? Nobody dumped on them for the money they made. That noble profession, in their white coats, as opposed to the cookie-pushers at Foggy Bottom. What made them so special?

It’s about
restoring the peace,
damn
it! The money didn’t matter. That was a
side issue.
And since it
was
a side issue, he deserved it, didn’t he? Of course he did, Cook decided, closing his eyes at last.

The engineers were working hard, Sanchez saw, back at his chair in Pri-Fly. They’d repacked and realigned two bearings on the tailshaft, held their collective breath, and cracked their throttles a little wider on Number One. Eleven knots, edging toward twelve, enough to launch some aircraft for Pearl Harbor, enough to get the COD aboard with a full collection of engineers to head below and help the ChEng make his evaluation of the situation. As one of the senior officers aboard, Sanchez would learn of their evaluation over lunch. He could have flown off to the beach with the first group of fighters, but his place was aboard.
Enterprise
was far behind now, fully covered by P-3s operating out of Midway, and Fleet Intelligence was more and more confident that there were no hostiles about, enough that Sanchez was starting to believe them. Besides, the antisubmarine aircraft had dropped enough sonobuoys to constitute a hazard to navigation.

The crew was up now, and still a little puzzled and angry. They were up because they knew they’d make Pearl early, and were no doubt relieved that whatever danger they feared was diminishing. They were puzzled because they didn’t understand what was going on. They were angry because their ship had been injured, and by now they had to know that two submarines had been lost, and though the powers-that-were had worked to conceal the nature of the losses, ships do not keep secrets well. Radiomen took them down, and yeomen delivered them, and stewards overheard what officers said.
Johnnie Reb
had nearly six thousand people aboard, and the facts, as reported, sometimes got lost amid the rumors, but sooner or later the truth got out. The result would be predictable: rage. It was part of the profession of arms. However much the carrier sailors might disparage the bubbleheads on the beach, however great the rivalry, they were brothers (and, now, sisters), comrades to whom loyalty was owed.

But owed how? What would their orders be? Repeated inquiries to CINCPAC had gone unanswered. Mike Dubro’s Carrier Group Three had
not
been ordered to make a speed-run back to WestPac, and that made no sense at all. Was this a war or not? Sanchez asked the sunset.

“So how did you learn this?” Mogataru Koga asked. Unusually, the former prime minister was dressed in a traditional kimono, now that he was a man of leisure for the first time in thirty years. But he’d taken the call and extended the invitation quickly enough, and listened with intense silence for ten minutes.

Kimura looked down. “1 have many contacts, Koga-san. In my post I must.”

“As do I. Why have I not been told?”

“Even within the government, the knowledge has been closely held.”

“You are not telling me everything.” Kimura wondered how Koga could know that, without realizing that a look in the mirror would suffice. All afternoon at his desk, pretending to work, he’d just looked down at the papers in front of him, and now he could not remember a single document. Just the questions. What to do? Whom to tell? Where to go for guidance?

“1 have sources of information that I may not reveal, Koga-san.” For the moment his host accepted that with a nod.

“So you tell me that we have attacked America, and that we have constructed nuclear weapons?”

A nod.
“Hai.”

“I knew Goto was a fool, but I didn’t think him a madman.” Koga considered his own words for a moment. “No, he lacks the imagination to be a madman. He’s always been Yamata’s dog, hasn’t he?”

“Raizo Yamata has always been his ... his—”

“Patron?” Koga asked caustically. “That’s the polite term for it.” Then he snorted and looked away, and his anger now had a new target.
Exactly what you tried to stop. But you failed to do it, didn’t you?

“Koga often seeks his counsel, yes.”

“So. Now what?” he asked a man clearly out of his depth. The answer was entirely predictable.

“I do not know. This matter is beyond me. I am a bureaucrat. I do not make policy. I am afraid for us now, and I don’t know what to do.”

Koga managed an ironic smile and poured some more tea for his guest. “You could well say the same of me, Kimura-san. But you still have not answered a question for me. I, too, have contacts remaining. I knew of the actions taken against the American Navy last week, after they happened. But I have not heard about the nuclear weapons.” Just speaking those two words gave the room a chill for both men, and Kimura marveled that the politician could continue to speak evenly.

“Our ambassador in Washington told the Americans, and a friend at the Foreign Ministry—”

“I too have friends at the Foreign Ministry,” Koga said, sipping his tea.

“I cannot say more.”

The question was surprisingly gentle. “Have you been speaking with Americans?”

Kimura shook his head. “No.”

The day usually started at six, but that didn’t make it easy, Jack thought. Paul Robberton had gotten the papers and started the coffee, Andrea Price turned to also, helping Cathy with the kids. Ryan wondered about that until he saw an additional car parked in the driveway. So the Secret Service thought it was a war. His next step was to call the office, and a minute later his STU-6 started printing the morning faxes. The first item was unclassified but important. The Europeans were trying to dump U.S. T-Bills, and nobody was buying them, still. One such day could be seen as an aberration. Not a second one. Buzz Fiedler and the Fed Chairman would be busy again, and the trader in Ryan worried. It was like the Dutch kid with his thumb in the dike. What happened when he spotted another leak? And even if he could reach it, what about the third?

News from the Pacific was unchanged, but getting more texture.
John Stennis
would make Pearl Harbor early, but
Enterprise
was going to take longer than expected. No evidence of Japanese pursuit. Good. The nuke hunt was under way, but without results, which wasn’t surprising. Ryan had never been to Japan, a failing he regretted. His only current knowledge was from overhead photographs. In winter months when the skies over the country were unusually clear, the National Reconnaissance Office had actually used the country (and others) to calibrate its orbiting cameras, and he remembered the elegance of the formal gardens. His other knowledge of the country was from the historical record. But how valid was that knowledge now? History and economics made strange bedfellows, didn’t they?

The usual kisses sent Cathy and the kids on their way, and soon enough Jack was in his official car for Washington. The sole consolation was that it was shorter than the former trip to Langley.

“You should be rested, at least,” Robberton observed. He would never have talked so much to a political appointee, but somehow he felt far more at ease with this guy. There was no pomposity in Ryan.

“I suppose. The problems are still there.”

“Wall Street still number one?”

“Yeah.” Ryan looked at the passing countryside after locking the classified documents away. “I’m just starting to realize, this could take the whole world down. The Europeans are trying to sell off their treasuries. Nobody’s buying. The market panic might be starting there today. Our liquidity is locked up, and a lot of theirs is in our T-Bills.”

“Liquidity means cash, right?” Robberton changed lanes and speeded up. His license plate told the state cops to leave him alone.

“Correct. Nice thing, cash. Good thing to have when you get nervous—and not being able to get it, that
makes
people nervous.”

“You like talking 1929, Dr. Ryan? I mean, that bad?”

Jack looked over at his bodyguard. “Possibly. Unless they can untangle the records in New York—it’s like having your hands tied in a fight, like being at a card table with no money, if you can’t play, you just stand there. Damn.” Ryan shook his head. “It’s just never happened before, and traders don’t much like that either.”

“How can people so smart get so panicked?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did anybody take away? Nobody blew up the mint”—he snorted—“it would have been our case!”

Ryan managed a smile. “You want the whole lecture?”

Paul’s hands gestured on the wheel. “My degree’s in psychology, not economics.” The response surprised him.

“Perfect. That makes it easy.”

The same worry occupied Europe. Just short of noon, a conference call for the central bankers of Germany, Britain, and France resulted in little more than multilingual confusion over what to do. The past years of rebuilding the countries of Eastern Europe had placed an enormous strain on the economies of the countries of Western Europe, who were in essence paying the bill for two generations of economic chaos. To hedge against the resulting weakness of their own currencies, they’d bought dollars and American T-Bills. The stunning events in America had occasioned a day of minor activity, all of it down but nothing terribly drastic. That had all changed, however, after the last buyer had purchased the last discounted lot of American Treasuries—for some the numbers were just too good—with money taken from the liquidation of equities. That buyer already thought it had been a mistake and cursed himself for again riding the back of a trend instead of the front. At 10:30 A.M. local time, the Paris market started a precipitous slide, and inside of an hour, European economic commentators were talking about a domino effect, as the same thing happened in every market in every financial center. It was also noted that the central banks were trying the same thing that the American Fed had attempted the previous day. It wasn’t that it had been a bad idea. It was just that such ideas only worked once, and European investors weren’t buying. They were bailing out. It came as a relief when people started buying up stocks at absurdly low prices, and they were even grateful that the purchases were being made in yen, whose strength had reasserted itself, the only bright light on the international financial scene.