Along the sound-proof walls were gilt-framed photographs of a Japanese executive jogging with Jimmy Carter in Tokyo, golfing with Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, receiving an accolade from Linus Pauling in San Francisco, dining with Henry Kissinger in Paris. He was the same man now sitting behind the massive slate desk.
"You believe he was an American?" Tanzan Mino, president and CEO of the Daedalus Corporation, a paper creation of the Mino Industries Group, adjusted his pale silk tie and examined the subordinate now standing before him. He had just turned seventy-three, but the energy in his youthful frame made him seem at least a decade younger, perhaps two.
"Hai, Mino-sama." The other man, in a dark suit, bowed. "We have reason to believe the Russian has… they were seen exchanging an envelope."
"And your people failed to intercept either of them?"
The man bowed again, more deeply. "An attempt was made, but unfortunately the Soviet escaped, and the American… my people were unsure what action to take. We do know the funds have not been deposited as scheduled."
Tanzan Mino sighed and brushed at his silver temples. His dark eyes seemed to penetrate whatever they settled upon, and the uncomfortable vice-president now standing in front of him was receiving their full ire.
Back in the old days, when he directed the Mino-gumi clan's operations at street level, finger joints were severed for this kind of incompetence. But now, now the organization had modernized; he operated in a world beholden to computers and financial printouts. It was a new age, one he secretly loathed.
He'd been worried from the start that difficulties might arise. The idiocy of Japan's modern financial regulations had driven him to launder the payoffs thoroughly. In the old days, when he was Washington's man, controlling the Liberal Democratic Party, no meddling tax agency would have dared audit any of his shadow companies. But after a bastard maverick named Vance — with the CIA, no less! — had blown the whistle on his and the Company's clandestine understanding…
He had arranged the initial financing for the project, as well as the political accommodations, with letters of credit, promissory notes, and his word. And, eventually, if need be, the full financing could be raised by partial liquidation of his massive real estate holdings in Hawaii.
But the near-term expenses — and the necessary payoffs in the LDP — that was different. In Japanese kosaihi, the "money politics" of gifts and outright bribes, secrecy was everything. He remembered how he'd had to arrange for the mighty Yoshio Kodama, a powerbroker who had once shared his virtual ownership of the Japanese Diet and the Japanese press, to accept responsibility for the CIA-Lockheed bribe affair. It was a close call. That had involved a mere twelve million of American cash to Japanese politicians, but it had changed the rules forever. These days— particularly after the Recruit debacle had disgraced the LDP yet again — money had to be laundered and totally untraceable.
Promises had been made, schedules signed off, the veil of total secrecy kept intact. Everything was arranged. The Soviets, incompetents that they were, had no inkling of the larger plan.
Now it all came down to the funds. He needed the money at once.
He turned in his chair, pressed a gray button on his desk, and watched the window blinds disappear into their frame. Neko rose from her languorous pose, stretched her spotted white fur, and gazed down. This was the panoramic view she loved almost as much as he did, for her perhaps it was the memory of a snowy Himalayan crest; for him it was the sprawl of Tokyo, the elegant peak of Mount Fuji to the west, the bustling port of Yokohama to the south. From this vantage atop the powerful financial world of Japan, Tanzan Mino wanted two final triumphs to crown his career. He wanted to see Japan become the twenty-first century's leader in space, and he wanted his country finally to realize its historic wartime objective: economic domination of the continent of Asia, from Siberia to Malaysia, with freedom forever from the specter of energy and resource dependence. The plan now in motion would achieve both.
He revolved again in his chair, ignored the subordinate standing before his desk, and studied the model. It was a perfect replica, one-hundredth the actual size, of the spaceplane that would revolutionize the future, the symbol that would soon signify his country's transcendence in the high-tech age to come.
Then his gaze shifted.
"You were 'unsure what action to take'?" He leaned back, touching his fingertips together, and sadness entered his voice. "You know, there was a time when I thought Japan might still one day recapture the spirit we have lost, the spirit of bushido. In centuries gone by, a samurai never had to ask himself 'what action to take.' He acted intuitively. Instinctively. Do you understand?"
"Hai, wakarimasu." The man bowed stiffly.
"I am prepared to funnel trillions of yen into this project before it is over. Legitimate, clean funds. So the sum now in question is almost inconsequential. However, it is the bait we need to set the trap, and it must be handled exactly as I have specified."
"Hai, Mino-sama." Again he bowed.
"The next time you stand before me, I want to hear that the laundered Soviet funds have been deposited in the Shokin Gaigoku Bank as agreed. You have one week." He slowly turned back to the window. "Now, must I tell you what you have to do?" The man bowed low one last time. He knew exactly.
Chapter Three
"Michael! And Eva! Again, after so long. Pos iste! What a surprise!" The old Greek's sunburned face widened into a smile, his gray mustache opening above his last good teeth. "Parakalo, you must come in for a glass of raki and some of Adriana's meze. She would never forgive me."
They'd dropped by the hotel, then come here. Although Zeno's small taverna was in the center of Iraklion, its facade was still country style, covered with an arbor. A bare electric bulb hung incongruously in the middle of the porch, penetrating the dull glow of dusk now settling over the square called Platia Eleftherias, where the evening's volta was just beginning. Once the chaste promenade of eligible young women, it was now a deafening flock of motorscooters, with girls in tight jeans riding on their backs. And the watchful mothers of old were conspicuously absent. Times had indeed changed since his last time here.
"Zeno." Vance shook his hand, then accepted his warm embrace. As he was driving, he'd been wondering what the old Greek would think about the sudden reappearance of Eva. They hadn't been here together since that last trip, well over a decade ago. "Still pouring the meanest raki in this town?"
"But of course. Never that tequila you like, Michael." He chuckled with genuine pleasure, recalling that Vance could down his high-potency version of ouzo like a native. "Ah, you know, Michael, your father would never touch it. You, though…"
He beckoned them through the kafeneion's doorway, leading the way with a limp. The interior was dark, redolent of Greek cigarettes and retsina wine. Overwhelming it all were the smells of the kitchen — pungent olive oil and onions and garlic and herbs, black pepper and oregano. Although lighting was minimal, around the rickety wooden tables could be seen clusters of aging Greeks drinking coffee and raki and gossiping. The white clay walls resounded with the clacks of komboloi worry beads and tavli, Greek backgammon.