Bushido. You must always make your opponent do battle on your own terms. And today money and technology were Japan's most powerful weapons. Why not use them strategically, the CEO had argued. The time had come to engage other unsuspecting nations with concentrated strength, in a forcible move to achieve Japan's long-term objectives. The Way of the Warrior.
Taro Ikeda surveyed his office, his personal command center. The space was appointed like the headquarters of a field marshalclass="underline" a deep metallic gray with video screens along one wall permitting him continuously to monitor activities in every sector of the facility. And across the top of his black slate desk was marshalled a line of gray telephones with scramblers, each a secure direct line to the offices of one of the project's prime contractors.
The first was to Nagoya, to the head office of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Theirs was the initial contract let by the CEO after the project financing was in place. Indeed, Mitsubishi's Nagoya Aircraft Works was the ideal choice to manufacture the air-breathing turboramjets-scramjets for the vehicle. That conglomerate had produced over fifty thousand aircraft engines during the great Pacific war, and, more recently, their new Komaki North plant was responsible for the powerful oxygen-hydrogen engines that composed the first stage of the giant H-2 booster. The phone on his desk connected him directly to the office of Yoshio Matsunami, Mitsubishi's general manager for space systems. The massive scramjets for this project had been manufactured in Nagoya under a veil of total secrecy, then static-tested at their aeropropulsion test facility and individually shipped here to Hokkaido in unmarked railcars.
Another line connected him to the head office of Nissan's aeronautical and space division in Tokyo, already in charge of all solid rocket boosters for the Japan Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science. The CEO had hired their senior propulsion engineers to resolve problems connected with air-breathing combustion of liquid hydrogen.
The third connection was to Hitachi City, sixty miles from Tokyo. Hitachi, Limited manufactured the booster cases for the new H-2 vehicle, and their extensive experience with composite alloys at high-temperatures made them the obvious choice to create the hypersonic airframe.
There were other lines as well. The vehicle's inertial- guidance system and flight controls — both based on advanced Soviet designs — had been produced at Japan's National Aerospace Laboratory. Preliminary wind-tunnel tests had been assigned to the Kakuda Propulsion Center, whose rocket-engine development facilities were already being used to support NASDA's program in oxygen-hydrogen thruster R&D.
The last high-security line connected him directly to Tsukuba Space Center at Tsukuba Science City, forty miles from Tokyo, the nerve center for all Japanese manned space-flight research. Their clean-rooms and deep-space tracking facilities were comparable to any in the world, and their Fujitsu SX-10 supercomputer — which, with 128 processors for parallel processing, performed nine billion calculations per second — could provide realtime simulation of a complete hypersonic flight profile.
Feeling impatient now to begin the day, Taro Ikeda settled back and reached for the phones. Each contractor would give him a quick morning update, and then he would outline any further component tests or retrofitting as required. In truth, these exchanges had long since become scarcely more than rituals, since the project was all but completed. The major components had already been designed, delivered, and assembled. The contractors had been paid, the reports and evidence of their participation declared top secret and locked away from any possible prying eyes. All traces of the project had been safely secured.
There was, he reminded himself, only one major problem remaining. As part of the initial scenario, the Soviets had agreed to provide a laundered payment of one hundred million American dollars, to be used for Tanzan Mino's "incidental expenses" in the Liberal Democratic Party hierarchy. To avoid another Recruit-bribe fiasco like the one that brought down the prime minister in 1989, the money had to be scrupulously clean and totally untraceable.
But the funds had not arrived.
How the Soviets had secured the hard currency required outside of regular government channels, he could not imagine. There were even reports the money had been secretly "embezzled" from certain slipshod ministries. That it was, in fact, hot money.
But if those funds didn't come through within eight days, fully laundered, the project would have to be put on hold, as a matter of strategy, and precaution. The treaty could not be placed before the Diet unless passage was assured. Promises had to be kept.
What had happened to the money? Whatever it was, he thought with a worried sigh, the CEO had better solve it and soon. If he didn't, the whole project might have to be put on hold until next year's session of the Diet, and their secrecy would probably be impossible to maintain for another whole year. A disaster.
He had just completed the last call when he noticed a flashing alert on the main computer terminal, advising him that the morning's hypersonic test in Number One was scheduled to begin at 0800 hours. He grunted and typed in an acknowledgment. In his view it was a waste of time, overkill. The SX-10's simulation had already taken them further than they needed to go. But, all right, humor the Soviet team. It would only require a morning.
His contractor briefings now out of the way, he transferred all communication channels to the computer modems that lined the walls, then rose and walked back to the small alcove at the rear of his office. He paused a moment to calm his thoughts, then slid aside the shoji screens to reveal what was, for him, the most important room in the facility.
Here in the North Quadrant the CEO had constructed a traditional teahouse, tatami-floored with walls and ceiling of soft, fresh cedar and pine. In this refuge Taro Ikeda performed an essential morning ritual, the brief meditation that quieted his spirit. He knew well the famous adage of swordsmanship, that the true master lives with his mind in a natural state.
The challenge ahead would require all the discipline of a samurai warrior, the Way of Zen. And the first rule, the very first, was your mind must be empty, natural, unattached, in order to succeed.
As he seated himself on the reed surface of the tatami, zazen-style, he methodically began clearing his mind. The moment was sacred.
But then, drifting through unasked, came an admonition of the great Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. "Intelligence is everything. You must know your opponent's plan even before he knows it himself."
It was true. The security for this project had been airtight, except for one minor breach. Someone in the Tokyo office had stupidly transmitted the final protocol over an unsecured satellite channel. It had been intercepted by Soviet intelligence.
Fortunately, the Russian blunderers had been unable to decipher the encryption. But someone — either in the KGB or the GRU — had been so desperate he had secretly enlisted the assistance of the U.S. National Security Agency's top cryptographer. It was a brilliant move, because NSA's supercomputers might eventually be able to break the code.
When Tanzan Mino learned of the breach, he had given orders that the NSA expert be neutralized, quickly, and the protocol retrieved. If it became public knowledge prematurely, the entire scenario could be destroyed. Now, happily, the NSA individual had been identified. The rest would be easy. An unfortunate price to pay, but a simple solution.
With that thought to comfort him, he gazed at the polished natural woods of the teahouse and let his mind drift into perfect repose.