Critical Mass (25 page)

Read Critical Mass Online

Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass
3.79Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“IN FORTY MINUTES THE JAPANESE AMBASSADOR TO THE United States is going to walk through that door and start asking me a lot of tough questions,” the President said. “And if he decides to hold a news conference either before our meeting, or afterward, the cat will be out of the bag.”
It was Saturday noon. The President had called a number of people to the Oval office, among them his National Security Adviser Dan Milligan, Secretary of State John Cronin, his advisers for Far East Affairs Harvey Hook, and Domestic and International Finance Maxwell F. Peale, his Press Secretary Martin Hewler, and the DCI Roland Murphy.
“At least it's the weekend,” Peale said. “The panic on Wall Street won't be so bad.”
“If he holds it inside his embassy, there won't be much we can say or do,” Hewler said. “But once he steps outside, we'll do the orchestration.” Hewler was a big, shambling bear of a man with a direct and very honest view about everything and everyone. He was enormously popular among the press corps.
“Don't tell me somebody's watching him,” Cronin said.
“I have a friend over at the
Post
who'll tip me off if Shirö makes a move.”
“Won't this friend of yours take this request as a news story in itself?” Cronin pursued the issue.
“No,” Hewler said simply.
Cronin turned back to the President. “Of course, none of this comes as a surprise. Prime Minister Kunihiro has shown that he's willing to go to almost any lengths to save face. He
took a terrific battering over the Diet's failure to come up with what he thought was a fair amount of financial help to the Western Alliance for the war with Iraq. This now may be nothing more than a catalyst for him.”
“He's clutching at straws,” Harvey Hook, the Far East expert, said. “But I have to agree with John. There is a new feeling of national unity in Japan that is increasingly causing overt moves, especially in the marketplace. We've talked about this before.”
“Nobody has prevented them from investing here,” Peale said. “But what Harvey is getting at are perceptions and the backlash they're causing.”
“Get to the point,” the President said harshly.
“The point is this, Mr. President,” Hook said. “Rightly or wrongly there is a growing anti-Japan sentiment in this country. The Warsaw Pact has been dismantled. The Russian threat has faded with their internal problems. Quaddafi is quiet. Iran is behaving itself. We've settled the issue with Iraq for the most part. And China is being docile for the moment. So who will be our new enemies? The Japanese?”
Hook looked to the others, but no one said a thing.
“The Japanese have a monetary surplus, and the public perception is that they're buying up America, so let's restrict trade with them, and let's place severe restrictions on what they're able to purchase in this country. The fact of the matter, however, is that the British own twice as much property in the United States as the Japanese do. But, the Brits are our friends. And their eyes are round, their skin is white, and they speak the same language, better than we do—they don't make Ls out of their Rs—and they didn't attack Pearl Harbor.”
“We were talking about the Japanese reaction,” the President said.
“That's right, Mr. President. The Japanese are reacting to the anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. It has become a point of honor to them during a time when their national psyche, if you want to call it that, is so confused that
political faction differences in Tokyo have damn near erupted into all-out war.”
“What you're saying is that we've brought this on ourselves,” the President's National Security adviser put in.
“What I'm saying is that the Japanese have become the second richest country in the world … in terms of GNP, and they don't know what to do with their wealth. They feel that they've become a superpower, and yet they've outlawed any real military. They are the only people in the world to have suffered a nuclear attack in a war they began and lost. They had to endure the reorganization of their own government at the point of a gun. Their own children have rebelled against the old traditions of music and dress. They've developed an inferiority complex over their short stature relative to Westerners, and even the shape of their eyes. So much so that they spend hundreds of millions annually on cosmetic surgery. And yet they are beginning to develop feelings of superiority that they're having a terribly difficult time in reconciling with everything else.”
“The whole damn country is psychotic? Is that what you're trying to tell us?” Milligan asked.
“Confused,” Hook replied softly.
“With their clout, that makes them dangerous,” Milligan said. “Thank God they haven't developed a big military, or become a nuclear power.”
“In the middle of all that they've taken official notice that we're spying on them,” the President said, turning to Murphy. “What do I tell Ambassador Shir
?”
“That we do spy on them,” the DCI said heavily. “We have been since shortly after the war, and no president before you, other than Truman, has suggested otherwise.”
“That's not what I'm asking, General,” the President said, a dangerous edge to his voice.
“No, sir, I understand that. But the fact of the matter is that some person or group in Japan has hired an organization of East German mercenaries to steal the components for a nuclear weapon. We don't know if they've been successful yet, though we're reasonably sure that they've got at least one
of the parts. Nor do we know what their eventual target might be, or the reason they might be doing such a thing.”
“But we do know there have been killings,” the President said.
“Yes.”
“Which is exactly what Ambassador Shir
is coming here in a few minutes to ask me about. What do I tell him?”
“That two economic advisers to the U.S. Ambassador to Japan were murdered by a person or persons unknown, and for unknown reasons. And that in a wholly separate incident, an unknown Occidental, possibly an American, was involved in an altercation in the Imperial Palace's Outer Gardens in which one or more Japanese nationals were killed.”
“He'll know that's a lie.”
“Yes, Mr. President, he'll almost certainly know that.”
“You're suggesting that I stonewall it.”
“I don't think we have any other choice, Mr. President. Otherwise we definitely would be letting the cat out of the bag as you say.” Murphy leaned forward to emphasize his point. “Involve the Japanese and we will be barred from continuing our investigation on their soil.”
“A predecessor of mine ended up with egg on his face when he tried to deny that we were sending U-2 spy planes over the Soviet Union.”
“Yes, sir, there are risks.”
“In this case we're talking about spying on a friendly country.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if, as it has been suggested this morning, the Japanese are confused, and they are trying to save face by using this incident as a catalyst, the financial implications could be enormous.”
“It couldn't come at a worse time,” Peale, the president's economic adviser, suggested.
“You can say that again, Maxwell,” the President agreed. “I'm going to have to offer the man something. Some concession, some promise, something. Anything.”
“Stall him,” Murphy said.
“Why?” the President asked sharply.
“If we can offer the Japanese government the villain, especially a Japanese villain, with the promise that we'll keep it quiet, they'll find a way to save face. I can guarantee it.”
“What are you talking about?” Cronin demanded, but the President held off his secretary of state.
“Just a minute, John.”
“We may be on the verge of a breakthrough in Europe,” Murphy said.
“McGarvey?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have we found his wife and daughter? Are their kidnappers in custody?”
“Not yet,” Murphy said. “But we were correct in our assumption that the kidnapping was carried out to lure McGarvey from Japan, which of course clinches the connection between the Japanese and the STASI.”
Murphy quickly told them everything that had happened in France, including the obscure clue of the necklace and blackened diamond that McGarvey's daughter had evidently left for him in the chalet outside of Grenoble.
“What does it mean?” Milligan asked.
“We're not quite sure … or I should say we
weren't
quite sure until McGarvey made his move. If he's heading where we think he's heading then we'll have it.”
“Go on,” the President said.
“As of a few hours ago he was in Athens, which surprised us because earlier in the day he'd spoken with my deputy director of operations on the telephone from Paris. When he was asked what his next move would be, he said he was going to wait there. Sooner or later the kidnappers would make contact with him, he said. And he did check into the Hotel Inter-Continental, but he slipped out almost immediately and flew from Orly to Greece.”
“How do we know this?” Milligan asked.
“You may recall, the French found a sophisticated communications device used by the terrorists at Orly. The SDECE handed it over to us, and one of my Paris Station
people gave it to McGarvey. The idea was for him to use it to intercept the kidnappers' transmissions, if and when he got close to them. But we modified the device, adding what's called an EPIRB … an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. It's a National Security Agency-designed version of a civilian device. It transmits an intermittent signal that's picked up by our satellites from which we can pinpoint his location to within a couple of yards or less.”
“He's in Athens, you say?” the President asked. “What does that tell you?”
“He was in Athens, Mr. President. But he didn't stay long. He went south to Piraeus, which is Athens' seaport, from where he evidently hired a boat.”
“Where's he going?”
“It took my people all morning to come up with the answer,” Murphy said. “McGarvey is heading to the Greek island of Santorini.”
“Yes,” Cronin said, seeing it before the others. “Santorini, the island most Greeks think was part of the lost city-state of Atlantis.”
“I don't understand,” the President admitted.
“Neither did I,” Murphy said. “But my people tell me that Santorini was also famous for its black diamonds.”
“Clever,” the President said after a moment. “And you say that McGarvey figured this out on his own?”
Murphy nodded. “Nobody ever denied that the man was bright.”
“His daughter too, evidently,” the President said. “What can we do for him? Assuming that the kidnappers are holed up somewhere on or near Santorini. It's a big island, filled with tourists this time of the year, I would imagine.”

Other books

The Outcast by Rosalyn West
Need You Tonight by Roni Loren
The Prize by Stacy Gregg
A Gamma's Choice by Amber Kell
Death at the Bar by Ngaio Marsh
Girl Defective by Simmone Howell