Our major concern at that point was time. We had a lot to do, and we weren't sure how long we had to do it. Furthermore, it would be foolhardy to assume everything was going to proceed smoothly. That apprehension was, in fact, soon to be thoroughly vindicated.
First, it wasn't all that simple to track down Tam. We finally discovered she'd already left the Robotics Lab and was back at the Tsukuba Hotel lunching with Matsugami and some of his senior staff. Returning there, however, did provide a perfect opportunity to grab our bags. Ken dragged her from the lunch with a phony excuse, and minutes later we were checked out, solving at least one logistics problem. Unfortunately, it also tipped off Matsugami and anybody else who might be interested that we were departing.
Next were the details of arranging for the chopper. While we were driving around trying to locate Tamara, Ken was busy on his car phone pulling strings to commandeer one of the two MITI helicopters. After three calls he managed to locate one at their auxiliary pad, currently being refueled and serviced. I listened to him lean on the service people, doing his diplomatic but firm deputy minister routine. End of long story: it would be on its way shortly, arriving in about an hour and a half.
Good, we thought. Plenty of time to handle the transmission of the still-unseen documents in Noda's silver case. In the car we brought Tam fully up to date on the extraordinary circumstances by which it had fallen into our possession, including its potential for use as leverage against Noda. Then we headed for the Teleconferencing Center, where we planned to open the thing, scan the contents with a reader, and bounce the pages to New York via satellite. Ken revealed the ministry had a high-security channel it used to communicate with the New York offices of JETRO, the Japan External Trade Organization over on Sixth Avenue, MITI's public relations arm. He declared we would just link up with that office and have them patch us through to the DNI computer. Nothing to it.
Which was correct, theoretically. When we marched in, Ken again flaunting his deputy minister walk-on priority, the white-shirted staff bowed to the floor, led us to the hard-copy scanner, turned it on, and diplomatically excused themselves, closing the security door. The place was ours.
Don't know why, but until that moment none of us had really wanted to know what was in Noda's case. Maybe a part of me still didn't, even then. Whatever the reason, however, none of us had bothered to take it out of Ken's briefcase for examination. Turned out that was a mistake.
He settled his satchel onto the desk, clicked it open, and out came the box for our first real look. As he wiped off the smoke, my initial reaction was to be dazzled. It was magnificent, a silversmith's masterpiece, engraved with all manner of mythological beast and fowl. A work of art in every sense. Never seen anything remotely like it.
The problem was, it wasn't merely locked. It was soldered shut. The silver lid had literally been welded on, leaving it essentially a solid piece. Noda, it turned out, left nothing to chance. Only a silversmith could crack the seal and divulge the contents. So we still had no idea what was inside, and worse, we'd managed to fritter away a valuable half hour coming to that fruitless discovery. Now what?
"Shit," said Tam. "When will we ever get a break?"
"Looks like we've got two choices," Ken announced ruefully, gazing down at the intractable chunk of metal in his hands. "We can do what we probably should have done in the first place: simply stash this for the moment and let Noda think we know what's in it. Or we can drive into Tokyo and locate somebody there who can open it, then transmit from MITI headquarters downtown."
Neither of these plans seemed particularly inspired. The first gave us nothing but presumptions for leverage, and the second could take hours. Noda, we all realized, was not a man who dallied.
"Actually"-Tam spoke up-"there's a third option. Surely Noda's going to find out sooner or later we came here to the Center. Believe me, he always learns everything eventually. So why not transmit something else now, anything, and then after you get the case open you can send the real data?"
"You mean, give him circumstantial cause to assume we've got the goods on him?" Sounded good to me. "Buying ourselves more time?"
"Right. It'll take him awhile to find out exactly what was transmitted. All he'll know for certain is that we sent something. In the meantime Ken can go on to Tokyo and proceed with plan B: open the case there and transmit the real contents."
He looked skeptical. "That might deceive everybody for a while, but not for long. There're too many links in the chain between here and DNI's New York office."
"But sending something now will gain time. It has to. Then you can go on to Tokyo and do what you need to from there. Tomorrow."
"Maybe." He still wasn't totally convinced. "But all right-rather than waste time arguing, let's just go ahead and do it. No harm in any instance."
She peeked into his briefcase, a jumble of documents. "What have you got in here that we could send?"
"Today's Asahi Shimbun…" He laughed.
"Ken."
"Okay, okay." He laid the newspaper aside and was riffling through his paperwork. "How about a few MITI memos?"
"Nothing to do with Marketshare – 90, I hope," said Tam.
"Promise."
The apparatus was already humming, so he put through the connection to JETRO's New York office, whereupon Tam took over and gave them instructions for the phone link over to the DNI mainframe. It probably required all of a couple of minutes. Welcome to the Brave New World of global information technology.
Since we were just shooting in the dark, they transmitted some twenty or twenty-five pages. Actually it would have been almost better to send too few rather than too many. At four pages a minute, though, we were finished in no time. As something of a joke, Tam suggested using the file name Nipponica, homage to Noda's takeover pipe dream. Somehow it seemed poetic justice.
Whether the transparency of our ruse would be immediately evident to Matsuo Noda remained a big unknown. But… maybe Noda would have no real way of discovering we'd sent garbage, at least not for a while. The transmission done, we signed off, zipped up Ken's briefcase, and marched out as if we knew what we were doing. Still, it was only a bluff, and a shaky one at that. Which set me to thinking.
"Ken, it seems to me yours is the critical path in this play now." We were walking back to the executive parking lot where we'd left his car. "It's more important to have a real copy of the data stashed somewhere than it is for us to blow the country in the next two hours. Which means maybe you ought to take the chopper back yourself, send the stuff today, and let us just drive down to Narita in your car?"
"I agree." Tam nodded concurrence. "We can leave it there and you could have somebody pick it up tomorrow."
"That's dangerous, for both of you."
"Maybe so," she said, "but he's going to come after this case, guns blazing, as his first priority. Ken, you're the one who's going to have to stay out of his way now, not us. The quicker you move, the better."
"You've got a point. All right, if you want me to, then I could take the copter back to Tokyo myself and you can use the Toyota." He was fishing for his keys. "In fact, maybe you should just leave now."
"Let me check the schedule." I'd asked his secretary for a listing of the afternoon and evening flights in case we got delayed. It was now one-thirty. The next flight that looked like a sure thing was a United at seven forty-two, or maybe the JAL at nine. Then there was a Northwest at ten-fifteen. Loads of time.
"Look, we can wait for the chopper and at least see you off. Why don't we head back over to the hotel and have a drink. Solemnize the occasion-the final nailing of Matsuo Noda."
"Fine." He started the car. "But both of you get only one, at least whoever's driving does. I want you back in one piece."
The hotel bar was beginning to feel like a second home, though now it was deserted, the lunch trade long departed. Our ceremonial libation also provided my first real opportunity to study Ken Asano at leisure. I sat sipping my Suntory while he repeated once again the details of his upcoming political move at MITI. Given any kind of luck, the flap would render Noda's takeover a worldwide scandal.
Good. Tam and I had been Noda's point men, had done everything we knew to assist him, and now it was clear he'd been using us all along for his own ends. He was bent on bringing American industry back to life for the sole purpose of skimming the cream.
What other reason could there be? Noda's noble intention supposedly was to help rejuvenate those American corporations doing basic research-but the price was then to let Japan lift that R amp;D and translate it into consumer technology, thereby keeping for his team all the elements of real economic value in the chain from laboratory to cash register. They would be the ones refining their strategic capacity to transform new ideas into world-class products and economic leadership. Japan would retain the advanced engineering segment of product development, while tossing a few low-skill assembly plants to the U.S. to make us think we were still part of the action. It would, of course, be a fatal delusion. The high-tech hardware of tomorrow's world increasingly would be Japanese, while America became an economy of paper-shuffling MBAs and low-paid grease monkeys assembling products we no longer were able to design or engineer.
That depressing conclusion required the space of one Scotch. By then I was ready to order a second, hoping it would bring forth a solution to the problem the first had evoked with such alarming clarity.
But there wasn't time. At that moment we heard the MITI copter settling onto the pad next to the hotel parking lot.
"Ken, here's to success." I saluted him with the last melting ice cubes.
He toasted back, then signaled for the bill. Time to get moving.
The chopper was a new Aerospatiale AS 365N Twin Dauphin, big and white, a VIP four-seater. Single pilot, capable of 180. (The Japanese love those high-rotor French copters.) Guess Ken had called in a lot of chips to arrange this customized three-wheeler for a couple of gaijin. The seat-mile costs alone must have been staggering. But there it was, fully serviced and set to go.
He walked over, ducking the rotor, and advised the pilot that there had been a slight change of plans. They'd be returning directly back to Tokyo. The man, wearing a blue uniform, bowed and gave him a little salute. They seemed to be old friends. Well, I thought, if deputy ministers don't use this gold-plated extravagance, then who's it for?
Then he returned to pick up his briefcase (Noda's silver box safely therein), have a brief farewell, and give us his keys.
"Tamara, telex me the minute you get back. We'll proceed immediately. Full speed."
"Let's go for it." She smiled and drew his face down for a long, languorous kiss. I then shook his hand, and we headed for the car. Since our bags were just little carry-ons, we looked solid to catch the United flight with a couple of hours to spare, assuming traffic cooperated.
"Tam, how about taking the wheel? This left-hand-side-of- the-road driving takes practice. I almost hit somebody once in England."
"Sure." She reached for the keys, then turned back to wave to Ken. But he was already climbing aboard and didn't notice.
"Isn't it odd?" I mused, "We still haven't heard zip out of Noda. He must have realized by now we have his silver case. What's he planning to do? Where'll he try to head us off?"
"Good question." She turned the key in the ignition. "I'm not going to feel safe till we've got the actual goods on his phony sword. Not just some dummy data."
"My guess is he'll try and nail us at the airport. It'd be his best shot."
"At least Ken was smart enough to make the reservations under fake names, so he won't know which flight to watch."
"There're not that many. He could be covering them all. On the other hand, he'll assume we're arriving via the MITI chopper, so maybe we can dodge his hit squad."
"I feel like I've been run through a wringer." She was pulling out of the slot, backing around to begin making her way through the rows of staff vehicles, all with special Tsukuba parking stickers.
"You can say that again. Who could have guessed all the…"
I'd reached around to check the back window, hoping to get the heat going, when my field of vision turned an incandescent orange, bright and glaring, as though the sun had just come in for a close encounter. Before I could turn to see what… the dashboard rose up and slugged me in the teeth, as a shock wave flung us both against the seat belts.
We're dead, I thought. We've been bombed. Noda's just dropped…
Then I looked up.
The MITI Aerospatiale, about two hundred feet off the ground, had become a blazing sphere, a grotesque nova. Now its rotor blades were clawing the air, askew, while it circled downward like a wounded bird. An instant later it nosed into the parking lot behind us, hurtling fragments of tail assembly through several empty staff cars.
I sat mesmerized as a second ball of fire erupted where it had crashed. One of the fuel tanks had ignited, just like in the movies.
"Ken!" Tam let out a choked cry after the first few seconds of disbelief. Then she slammed the transmission into 'Park' and began ripping off her seat belt.
Where's she going? Doesn't she realize-?
Her door was open and she was stumbling out. That's when I finally came to my senses, which included the sobering thought that there might be more fuel tanks, such as the auxiliary, that hadn't yet blown.
"Wait!" I'd ripped off my own seat harness by that time and had rolled out to begin running after her as she stumbled across the snowy stretch of asphalt separating us from the flames.
She was moving like a gazelle, but I managed to catch up about thirty yards from the wreckage. Using a modified shoulder block, I pulled her around and tried to get a grip.
"Tam, nobody could survive that. We've got to stay back…"
At which point we both slipped and collapsed in a patch of snow… just as the last fuel tank detonated with the impact of a sonic boom. Memory can be a little unreliable under such circumstances, but I still remember more wreckage sailing past us, including a strut off the landing gear that gouged a furrow in the asphalt no more than ten feet from our heads.
"Tam, he never knew what hit him. It had to be instantaneous." I was trying to brush the wet snow off her face as I slipped my arm around her shoulders. She was still holding back the tears, but only just.
"We didn't even have a real good-bye." Her words were jagged. "There were so many things… I was hoping we…"
Her voice trailed off into tears.
"Look, I only knew him for a day, but that was enough to learn some things. Kenji Asano was a wise and noble soul. Everything about him was good."
She took my hand and held it against her cheek. "Matt, he was so kind. That was what… He was… all that I…" Her eyes were reflecting back the flames, now billowing into the pale afternoon sky. Around us the labs were emptying as technicians raced toward the lot, white coats fluttering.
"You know, he said something to me today. About you…"
"What?" She glanced up, her face streaked. "What did he say?"
"He must have known there was danger. He sort of asked me to look out for you."
"Danger?" She looked back at the wreckage, and a new tear trailed down her left cheek. "I guess we don't really know for sure, do we? Maybe it was just a fuel tank rupture, or…"
"You don't believe that."
"No." The tears, abruptly, were gone. "Matsuo Noda just took away the one… Matt, I'm going to kill him."
It was a sentiment I shared in buckets. The question was merely how. Medieval torture seemed too kind. I started to say something inane, and then, finally, the shocking truth landed with the force of that last explosion.
"Tam, that was supposed to be us." I was gazing at the flames, watching talons of metal contort in the heat. "Noda thought we were going to be on that copter."
"My God, of course."
"We've got to get out of here. Now. There's nothing anybody can do for Ken."
"I'm not leaving till I've settled the score."
"Be reasonable. There's no way we can do it here. This is Noda's turf." I was urging her to her feet. "We'll find a way. All I ask is that he know we were the ones who did him in."
"But how can we just leave?"
"What else are we supposed to do? There's nothing left." I tried to take her hand. "Come on."
She finally relented and, with one last tearful stare, turned to follow me back to the car. By then a crowd of technicians was surging in around us.
Ken's blue Toyota was still running. Without a word she buckled in, shoved the stick into gear, and turned for the exit, whereupon she barely avoided colliding with the first racing fire engine.
"Look, are you okay? I can drive if you…"
"Matt, don't say anything more, please." The tears had vanished. "Can I just think for a while? Just give me some quiet to think." She was gripping the wheel with raw anger. "Please."
"You've got it."
By the time we reached the highway, she was driving mechanically but with absolute precision, almost as though tragedy had somehow sharpened her reflexes, her logical processes.
It's a curious thing, but different people respond differently to disaster, and Tam was one of those rare few who become harder, not softer. I could see it in her eyes. As the minutes ticked by, and we reached the packed thoroughfare that would take us south, it even got to be a little unsettling. What in hell was going through her head?
Finally, after about an hour of bumper-to-bumper freeways, I couldn't take the silence any more. Without asking anybody's permission, I reached over and clicked on the radio. It was set for a classical station, the music Chopin. Was this Ken's regular fare? I wondered. Was he a romantic at heart or a classicist? Guess I'd never know… that, or much of anything else about him. Which thought brought with it a renewed sadness. Kenji Asano was a man of the East who was as much of the West as anybody I'd ever met in Japan. I'd wanted him for a friend.
When you get to be my age, you don't make too many new friends, not real ones. After forty, it's acquaintances. The roots of true friendship extend so deep that there's never really time to plant them if you start too late. Maybe it's because there's always a part missing, that shared experience of being young and crazy and broke. Those times back when you both still believed anything was possible. New friends can't begin sentences with "Remember that weekend before you were married when we got drunk and…" Getting old is tough, and that's one of the toughest parts. But somehow I felt, with Ken, that I'd known him forever. Could be that's absurd, but I really did. So quite apart from the tragedy of his death, I felt cruelly robbed. It sounds selfish, maybe, but it's the truth. A sad but true truth.
I was still thinking those thoughts when the four-o'clock newscast came on. For a moment neither of us noticed, but then Tam snapped alert and turned up the volume. The report was opening with a live remote from Tsukuba Science City. I couldn't really follow very well, but she realized that and began to translate as it went along.
"… was the first tragedy of its kind for the ministry, and there are widespread calls for an official inquiry. Dr. Kenji Asano, nationally known director of The Institute for New Generation Computer Technology, died today here at Tsukuba Science City when a MITI helicopter, an Aerospatiale Twin Dauphin, crashed due to a malfunction. No cause has yet been ascertained for the accident, which also took the life of the pilot, Yuri Hachiro, a MITI veteran with fifteen years of service. The condition of the wreckage has made it impossible to determine how many other passengers may have been on board, although MITI sources report that two visiting American scientists are also thought to have been traveling with Dr. Asano. Their names are being withheld by the ministry at this time, pending the completion of a full investigation…
Next came an interview with a MITI official, after which the reporter offered a wrap-up.
"… believe Dr. Asano's death represents a significant blow to several vital sectors of MITI's computer race with America. However, the vice minister has assured NHK that MITI's research effort will redouble its commitment to…"
Tam clicked it off. "Two birds with one stone."
"What?"
"Matt, by bringing down the 'copter with all three of us in it, he was planning to stop MITI and us both. Now he may think he did."
"You're right." I looked at her, and finally understood the real import of the crash. "Which means we're now officially dead. If nobody else knows we weren't on that chopper, why would Noda?"
She didn't answer for a long moment. Finally she said, "Maybe that gives us the time we'll need."
"Time to nail him."
"Right. I've been thinking. About what it all means."
"Noda's play?"
"Not just that. I'm talking about Japan. Everything. You know, this country could lead the world someday, maybe even now, if it wanted. It has the finest schools, the most disciplined people; it's not hung up on a lot of 'superpower' male-macho bullshit. It could be a beacon in the dark, a force for good. But what has Noda done? He's turned it all upside down. He's exploited the noble things about Japan for his own selfish ends. Greed and power."
"Lucifer, the fallen angel. Who walked out on the Kingdom?"
"I guess so. But I'm also thinking about what he did to me. He exploited the fact I was part Japanese, that I understand the potential this country has. He made me think that's what I would be helping him realize. But all along he intended to pervert it. He's perverted us, Matthew. Both of us. Perverted us and used us. And now that we're no longer needed, he's tried to kill us."
"High time we evened things out."
"Damned right. I learned a lot when I lived here. About the Japanese mind. And you understand legal tactics. Swordsmanship. I think we're ready."
"Ready?"
"To turn our knowledge against him."
"Start probing for the niche in his armor?"
"No. There's no time for that." She was silent for a moment, as though preparing her words. "We've got to just sink him. Obliterate Dai Nippon totally. And with it Matsuo Noda."
"You mean… go public about the sword? The problem with that is…"
"Exactly. Everything's destroyed. So why not forget about the sword for a while? Whatever you know about it, at this point that's just your word against his. I mean we have to bring the whole thing down."
"Tam, we're talking billions of dollars. This could take a while. That number is a little hard to argue with."
"But what if that's both his strength and his weakness." She glanced over at me. "Look, I've been thinking about what we might try. Maybe there is a way."
"To assault him on the money front?"
"Right, but we'll need your friend Bill Henderson. Think he'd help?"
I nodded. "If you want him, I'll see that he pitches in."
"Good." She turned her eyes back to the road. "Matt, I'm Fujiwara. Did I ever tell you that? And a Fujiwara's duty is to protect the emperor of Japan. For a thousand years it's been their job."
She'd cracked. Begun talking gibberish. "What's that got to do with-?"
"Noda thinks he's going to exploit the Emperor. Well, he's got a big surprise in store. I am now going to use Dai Nippon to destroy him and then drive a stake into DNI's heart. Matthew, I'm going to make Matsuo Noda's billions just disappear."
"That's impossible."
"Watch me."