36

Outside Portland, Oregon
USA

Try it again,” Jon Smith said, leaning a little farther under the hood of the rusting AMC Gremlin.

Randi twisted the key and the engine turned over, but it wouldn’t catch.

The wind picked up, tearing colorful leaves from the trees lining the empty rural road and depositing them in the dead motor. Smith brushed them off the air cleaner cover and began unscrewing the wing nut that held it in place.

“What’s wrong with it?” Randi said, leaning out the open window.

“It’s a forty-year-old piece of shit is what’s wrong with it. Couldn’t you steal a better car?”

Randi had gotten in the habit of taking cars from airport long-term parking when she needed something untraceable. She always got them back before the owners returned to find their vehicle detailed and full of premium gas.

“Fujiyama said that if I showed up in anything modern, he’d walk.”

Smith let out a frustrated breath and dug around in the carburetor with a stick. Eric Fujiyama had agreed to talk to them, but under conditions that even a paranoid schizophrenic would consider excessive. They couldn’t just talk on the phone or get together at a Portland restaurant with a decent microbrew selection. No, they had to drive an ancient car with shovels in the back to the middle of nowhere. And what about those shovels? Smith seemed to be the only person who was concerned that the host of their clandestine meeting in the woods requested that they bring tools suitable for digging graves.

“Kick it again.”

This time the starter sounded a little sick but the engine caught. After replacing the air filter, Smith slammed the hood and ran around to the passenger seat.

“Whatever you do, don’t stall it.”

Randi scowled and pulled out with her eyes on a map taped to the dash. According to the highlighted route, their turn was just ahead. She eased right onto a rutted dirt road, the geriatric suspension protesting loudly enough to overcome the Steely Dan flowing from hidden speakers. Smith tried again to silence the stereo but the volume knob was broken and the eight track resisted every attempt at ejection.

“Slow down, Randi.”

“What are you talking about? We could walk faster than this.”

“And that’s what we’re going to be doing if you break what’s left of this thing’s axles.”

“What’s up your ass today?”

He flipped her off and turned toward the window to watch the trees creeping by. What was up his ass was that being crammed into this car had reinserted the dagger in his shoulder blade. But it was more than that. He’d been lucky enough to inherit a nearly ideal set of genes from two extremely athletic parents and had spent his life honing those natural gifts with a workout regimen that would make a Navy SEAL squirm. Feeling like Superman was his natural state and he was damn well ready to go back to it.

It took another twenty excruciating minutes, but they finally dead-ended into a small clearing. Smith slid a Sig Sauer from between the seats and scanned the shadows in the surrounding forest while Randi did the same. Fujiyama had insisted on no phones, GPS, or radios. So there wasn’t going to be any backup should things go south.

“Does this seem inordinately stupid to you?” Smith said as they stepped out and crouched on either side of the vehicle.

“Come on, Jon. You love this stuff. You’re just in a snit today.”

He frowned and examined the clearing through the sights of his gun. Nothing but wilderness. Of course, that didn’t mean anything. With the complexity of the terrain and the dense foliage, there could be an army out there and they wouldn’t know it until the shooting started.

Instead of shots, though, an engine became audible on the road they’d come up. He and Randi both took cover in the trees and watched in silence as an Asian man in his late thirties pulled up in an open CJ5.

Eric Fujiyama released his seat belt and leaped out, doing a full turn in the middle of the clearing. “Randi! Where are you?”

Smith looked over at her and shrugged. The man was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with no indication of a weapon.

“I’m here,” Randi said, stepping out of the trees and walking casually toward Fujiyama with her gun tucked into the back of her pants.

“Hey,” he said, nodding toward the Gremlin. “You can follow instructions. Good.”

“Well, I can follow some instructions.”

Smith appeared from the trees with his Sig Sauer hanging loosely from his hand. Fujiyama froze for a moment and turned to run but Randi grabbed him by the collar.

“Relax, Eric. We’re just here to talk.”

“Who the hell is he? I told you to come alone!”

“I know. And I apologize. He insisted on tagging along.”

Smith took a seat on the bumper of the jeep and gave Fujiyama a disarming smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Eric.”

He didn’t seem particularly happy about the change in the meeting’s dynamic, but understood that there wasn’t a lot he could do about it at this point.

“So, let me guess. Masao Takahashi is suddenly starting to look a little crazy and Laurel and Hardy can’t figure out why. Now the CIA’s worried and you need the help of the guy you fired because you thought he had a tinfoil hat in his desk drawer.”

“I didn’t fire you,” Randi clarified. “I’d never even heard of you until a few days ago.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

Smith laid his gun down on the bumper and pushed it to a less intimidating distance. “You nailed it on the head, Eric. Takahashi seems to be almost anxious to start trading blows with an eight-hundred-pound gorilla. And sure, we’re obligated to help out, but Japan’s still going to get the shit kicked out of it. What’s his angle?”

“What’s his angle,” Fujiyama repeated with a smirk. “Did you know that Japan, a country with no official military, has the fifth-largest defense budget in the world?”

“I did know that, actually.”

“What you don’t know is that the published figure is probably less than half of their actual expenditures. It’s one of the reasons their recession lasted so much longer than anyone predicted.”

“That would put it pretty close to equal with China,” Randi pointed out. “Doesn’t seem like they’re getting value for their money.”

“No it doesn’t, does it? The Japanese are famous for their efficiency and yet they manage to spend over a hundred billion dollars a year on defense and not have much to show for it.” His voice took on a sarcastic edge. “Who would have thought?”

“So you’re saying that they do have the weapons,” Smith said. “We just aren’t aware of it.”

“Seems like we’d notice all those ships and tanks,” Randi said, baiting him. Based on what they knew about the nanotech, it was obvious where Fujiyama was headed with this.

“The Japanese don’t have the option of building an old-school military. There’s the cultural push-pull inside the country relating to what happened in World War Two, the constitution MacArthur wrote for them, the possibility that it would create an Asian arms race—”

“And they don’t have the population base or natural resources to support it,” Smith said, finishing his sentence.

“Ding! Give that man a cigar! So they had to create something new.”

“What about the battleship they put to sea?” Randi said. “That was pretty standard stuff.”

“The one that’s on the bottom of the ocean now? It was just a diversion. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Takahashi sank that thing himself.”

Smith opened his mouth to question him on that point, but the young analyst seemed to be warming up to his subject. Better to just let him talk.

“Look, do you remember back in the day when all the cool technology came out of Japan? Betamax, DVDs, video games, portable music players…”

“Sure,” Randi said.

“What happened?” Fujiyama asked rhetorically. “Suddenly, right around the time Takahashi went to work as an aide to the former head of the Japanese defense forces, that innovation started to fade and America took over. Where did all those brilliant people go? The CIA seems to think they just went up in smoke.”

“But you don’t,” Randi said. “You think Takahashi got hold of them and paid them to develop a next-generation arsenal.”

Smith kept his face passive, but his mind was trying to churn through what he was hearing. The pieces were starting to fall into place. And the picture they created was terrifying.

“Let’s talk Akito Maki,” Fujiyama continued.

“Who?” Randi said.

“He’s was a young chemical engineer who in the early nineties was on his way to increasing the stored energy in a given amount of rocket fuel by an order of magnitude. Then he went to work for one of the Takahashi family’s companies and doesn’t seem to have produced anything salable. Or Genjiro Ueda, a materials engineer who was combining carbon fiber and ceramics into incredibly tough materials. He went to work for a private contractor and makes an excellent living not producing anything. Then there’s granddaddy of them all: Hideki Ito.”

Smith glanced at Randi at the mention of the familiar name. To her credit, her expression didn’t even flicker.

“Ito’s one of the fathers of nanotech. Decades ago he was doing really interesting things with it and then he went to work for himself and no one really ever heard from him again. And that’s only a few of the programmers, biologists, engineers, and nuclear physicists who’ve just kind of faded into Japan’s woodwork over the last three decades.”

“Do you have any evidence to back up what you’re telling us?” Smith asked.

Fujiyama stared at him, looking a bit uncertain. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision and motioned with his head to a tall, tree-covered knoll to the east. “A bunch of files buried up there in a safe I designed myself.”

“Files?” Randi said. “You mean, paper? Why wouldn’t you just keep it on an encrypted disk?”

Fujiyama laughed. “Did you wonder why I wouldn’t let you contact me over e-mail? Why I said no modern cars or electronics?”

“You think the Japanese are using them?”

“Are you kidding? I guarantee it. They say they really don’t have much of an intelligence network, but Takahashi recognized how important computers would become when we were still churning out slide rules. What modern car or electronic device doesn’t contain something either designed by or made by the Japanese? You know all this large-scale hacking that we blame on the Chinese?”

“You’re saying that it’s actually the Japanese intelligence network?”

“Of course it is! China is a mess—they still farm with donkeys, for Christ’s sake. And while they’re definitely starting to flex their muscles, they’re an inward-looking people by nature. Not the Japanese, though. They’re always peeking out from that little island of theirs at what their neighbors have that they can use.”

“Okay then,” Randi said. “Can we assume you asked us to bring the shovels because you’re agreeable to letting us make some copies?”

Again his expression turned uncertain, and again his reticence didn’t last long. “Yeah. I know your rep, Randi. But you didn’t get any of this from me, right?”

“Never heard of you,” she said, opening the hatch on the Gremlin and pulling out two of the three shovels inside. She handed one to Fujiyama, who immediately pointed at Smith. “What about him?”

“He’s going to hang back, watch the cars, and keep an eye on our six.”

She set off with Fujiyama hustling to keep up with her and Smith said a silent thanks. Normally, he’d think a knoll like that looked good for running a few laps. Today it looked like Mount Everest.

*  *  *

Randi knew she was going too hard up the steep grade but getting her blood pumping helped her think. She had one hand wrapped around a shovel and the other around a Beretta, but was still starting to wish she hadn’t let Smith off the hook. They were exposed as hell—no electronics, no backup, and in terrain that favored an ambush.

That wasn’t what scared her the most, though. What had her charging up the mountain at a pace few people could follow was the fact that the wild tale they’d just heard seemed completely plausible. She almost wanted to turn around and drive away. To never have to look at a stack of paper that told her World War III was winding up a few thousand miles to the east.

She couldn’t hear Fujiyama’s ragged breathing anymore and she slowed to let him catch up.

“Is it all the way at the top?” she asked as he dropped his shovel and bent at the waist to breathe. A weak nod.

“Why here?” she said, starting out again, this time at a slower pace.

“No reason,” he managed to get out. “That’s the point. No trail to lead here.”

It took another fifteen minutes to cover what she estimated at about five minutes’ worth of ground, but without him she wasn’t going to find much. When they finally crested the top, Fujiyama pulled out a compass and a measuring tape, starting to make calculations based on a jagged rock set into the ground next to a stump.

Randi watched in silence as he crawled around, making marks in the dirt and then setting his bearing from them to get to the next point. A GPS would have sped things up, but he obviously wasn’t interested in taking the risk that the device could be tracked.

It took about five minutes, but Fujiyama finally jammed a stick in the ground as a marker and went for his shovel.

“This is the spot?” Randi said, walking over to help.

“Yeah. It’s about four feet down, though, and I remember the ground not being all that soft.”

They each picked a side and started attacking the dirt. Unfortunately, he was right about the digging. Roots and grass had tangled the area since he’d buried his little treasure, slowing their progress.

The fall air wasn’t cool enough to counteract the sun coming directly overhead. Sweat dripped off Randi’s nose as she slammed the shovel repeatedly into the ground and tossed the dirt onto an ever-growing mound behind her.

Fujiyama was trying to keep up, but his side of the hole was barely enough to trip over, while she was down almost a foot and a half. As bad as the hike up had been, standing on top of this knoll under clear skies was making her feel even more exposed. Better to get this thing and get the hell out of Dodge.

She stuck the blade of the shovel in and jumped on the back of it, barely catching herself when she was suddenly thrown backward. It took a moment to figure out what had happened, but the fact that the blade was still in the dirt and the handle was still in her hand was a good clue.

“Damn it!” she said, throwing the broken handle aside.

“You can use mine,” the young analyst said hopefully.

“No, we need to get this done and get the hell out of here. There’s another shovel in the car. I’m going to run down and get it. Keep digging.”

“I’m getting really tired, Randi. Maybe—”

“Would you rather go back to the clearing and then have to climb up again?”

He looked down the steep slope. “No, but—”

“Then shut up and dig. You’re the one who buried the damn thing.”

Randi set off at a hard jog, leaping rocks and fallen logs as she retraced their steps toward the cars. She kept an eye on the shadows and the Beretta in her hand but at the pace she was going, there was no way to make out much detail. Sometimes fast was better than cautious.

Randi was about a quarter of the way down the hill when an unmistakable sound reached her. She bounced off a tree and turned just in time to see a pillar of flame rising from the top of the knoll. Burning debris, including charred pieces of Eric Fujiyama, arced across the blue sky.

She took a few steps uphill but then turned and started running toward Smith again. Whoever had planted that bomb would know they were there, and he wasn’t in any condition to defend himself alone.