CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
USA
Randi Russell hustled down the hallway, already late because of a number of wrong turns. It never ceased to irritate her that she could flawlessly navigate the tangle of ancient streets and alleys crisscrossing the Middle East, but every time she came to headquarters, she got lost. Of course, she set foot in Virginia rarely and then only when there was no other option.
She spotted the conference room she’d been searching for and picked up her pace a bit. The men waiting for her were the agency’s top minds on Japan and, in light of the shit storm going on in the Pacific, probably had better things to do.
Randi juggled her notepad and coffee, gripping the door handle and grimacing as she entered the room. She hated office buildings and everything about them. The smell, the fluorescent light, the cheesy artwork. But most of all, she hated the bureaucracy that incubated in them like bacteria.
The two men sitting next to each other behind the table didn’t immediately react to her arrival other than to stare. Not an uncommon reaction in the scheme of things. She’d met them in passing years ago but, by design, she was a bit of a ghost. And she’d apparently built quite a reputation based on a bunch of outlandish stories quietly passed around Langley’s back offices. Most weren’t true, of course. The vast majority of the CIA’s employees would never have the clearance to hear the even more outlandish real ones.
The man on the right suddenly leaped to his feet and strode around the table. The two analysts had picked up the nicknames Laurel and Hardy at some point, and the monikers seemed even more fitting now than when she’d first run across them.
“Randi, Randi…” Carl Rainsburg said, taking her hand and kissing it. “What a pleasure it is to see you again…”
He was probably 6 feet 6 and no more than 170 pounds dripping wet. A sandy-haired Caucasian who had a master’s degree in Japanese literature from a school near Tokyo. His still-seated companion was of first-generation Japanese descent, a bit chubby, with an awful haircut and a habit of chewing his lower lip when he got nervous. At that moment, he was gnawing on it like he’d missed lunch.
“So smooth,” Randi said, retrieving her hand and finding a chair. Rainsburg rushed to pull it out for her before rejoining his companion on the other side of the table.
“Nice to see you, Ms. Russell,” Stephen Sato said, briefly interrupting his quest to ingest his lower lip.
“You, too. I appreciate both of you taking the time to meet with me. I’m guessing you’re pretty busy right now.”
“Not at all,” Rainsburg said. “It’s not every day we get to sit down with a beautiful legend like yourself.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ll have to excuse my colleague,” Sato said with a grin that came off a little slier than she’d have given him credit for. “We always have time for the people hanging it out there in the field—beautiful or not. What can we do for you, Ms. Russell?”
“I’m concerned about what’s going on in Asia.”
“You and everyone else on the planet,” Rainsburg said. “And take it from us, you should be. That’s a pretty serious staring contest they’ve got going on right now.”
“What I want to know is why. I understand what the Chinese are getting out of this, but what do the Japanese have to gain?”
Sato let out a loud breath. “How long do you have?”
“Give me the Reader’s Digest version.”
“It’s all about history,” Rainsburg started. “Thousands of years of it, culminating in some serious nastiness during World War Two. Let’s just say that the two countries despise each other. You know that—you’ve worked in China.”
She nodded. “But it seems like Masao Takahashi would be backing away from this thing like his ass was on fire. Why isn’t he? Am I wrong when I say that the Japanese military is no match for the Chinese?”
“Japanese self-defense forces,” Sato corrected. “Officially, the Japanese don’t have a military because of the constitution we wrote for them after the war. Having said that, they do have the fifth-biggest defense budget on the planet.”
“Still, she’s right that they’re no match for China,” Rainsburg interjected.
“Not even close. Don’t get me wrong now. Their people are well trained and they have some decent gear, but against the Chinese? No way. You’re talking about a quarter million troops with conventional weapons versus two and a quarter million troops with a nuclear arsenal behind them. Last time I checked, those ain’t good odds.”
“But,” Rainsburg said, “there’s a rub.”
“I know,” Randi said. “We have a treaty saying we’ll defend them.”
“Exactly. And that makes the whole situation a lot more complicated. The Japanese people are understandably tired of taking it on the chin for things that happened before most of them were born. They want respect and they want to stand on their own two feet.”
“But Takahashi courting a war and then letting us fight it for him isn’t Japan standing on its own two feet. It’s Japan stepping on ours.”
“You make an interesting point,” Sato said. “Takahashi’s a complicated guy. He’s nationalistic as hell, but he isn’t stupid. And frankly he doesn’t have any great love for the US. He blames us for his family having a hard time after the war. To be honest, Carl and I have been struggling to figure out what his endgame is here.”
“Could he be starting to lose it? He’s in his seventies, right? A little dementia, maybe?”
Sato shook his head. “No indication of that at all. Trust us when we tell you that Takahashi has an angle. Maybe he’s changed his mind about politicians and he’s looking to run for office. We haven’t been able to figure it out yet.”
Randi chose her next words carefully, not wanting to give away too much. “What if he thinks he can win?”
“What,” Rainsburg said. “By dragging us in? What would—”
He fell silent when Randi shook her head. “What if he thinks he can win without us?”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing again.
“Sorry,” Sato said, while Rainsburg continued to snicker. “Look, Takahashi’s a little nuts and there’s no question that his notion of Japanese superiority goes beyond disturbing. But that guy knows more about military strategy and history than most of our top generals combined. It doesn’t take a genius to look at the Asian chessboard and see that Japan doesn’t have any pieces.”
“So you’re saying that if he did believe that,” Randi offered as innocuously as possible, “there’s a chance that he would be right.”
“Believe what? That the Japanese defense forces could defeat China? Why would he?”
“I’m just throwing it out there,” Randi said. “What if, for the sake of argument, the Japanese defense forces have capabilities we’re not aware of?”
Rainsburg rolled his eyes. “Sounds like we should introduce her to Eric.”
“Who’s Eric?”
“Eric Fujiyama,” Rainsburg said. “He used to work here, but he let it get to him. You know how it is. We’re all conspiracy theorists, but Eric went a little too far.”
Sato pointed to his head. “Tinfoil-hat territory. He thinks Japan is in the process of taking over the universe.”
“Interesting,” Randi said. “Maybe you should.”
“Should what?”
“Introduce us.”
They looked at each other but this time without the laughter. Their sudden hesitance seemed to suggest there was more to this story, and Randi suspected she knew what it was.
“You still stay in touch with him, don’t you?”
Both men stared guiltily down at the table. Sato was the first to speak. “He’s a wacko, but he’s also really smart. The guy’s forgotten more about Japan than most people will ever know.”
“Maybe even us,” Rainsburg said.
“Okay,” Randi said. “Sounds like he might be my man. You got a number?”
They both grinned.
“What?”
“He doesn’t really like phones,” Sato said.
“Carrier pigeon?”
Rainsburg scribbled something down on a sticky note and held it out to her. “This is his PO box in Portland. Handwrite a letter and send it there.”
“Not certified or registered or anything,” Sato interjected. “Just give him an anonymous PO to get back to, put a stamp on it, and drop it in a public box. If he’s interested, you’ll hear from him in a few days.”
Randi looked down at the address.
Christ…