Текст книги "Dragon"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

Even then, as the energy shock and raging wall of swirling silt washed over the DSMV, shuttering all visibility, Pitt felt only jubilation. Any fear of failure was swept aside with the explosion. Relying blindly on the sonar probes, he drove through the maelstrom of sediment on a juggernauting course into the unknown. He was running on a long ledge that ran midway down the long slope, but his progress was only a few kilometers faster than it had been on the steeper grades. Adhesion between the tractor belts and the mud was only marginally improved. Any attempt to drive the great mechanical monster in a straight line became impossible. It skidded all over the slope like a truck on an icy road.

Pitt fully realized his life hung by an unraveling thread, and that he was in a losing race to escape the path of the coming landslide. The chance of his being overtaken was a bet no self-respecting bookmaker would turn down. All fear was detached, there was only his stubborn determination to survive.

On the surface, unseen in the darkness, the plume of spray rose to 200 meters and fell back. But deep in the fault zone below the bottom of the trench, the shock waves forced a vertical slippage of the earth’s crust. Shock followed shock as the crustal fracture rose and fell and widened, creating a high-magnitude earthquake.

The many layers of sediment laid down for millions of years shifted back and forth, pulling the heavy lava of Soseki Island downward as though it was a rock in quicksand. Cushioned by the soft, yielding sediment, the great mass of the island seemed to be immune to the initial shock waves during the first minutes of the quake. But then it began to sink into the sea, the water rising up the palisade walls.

Soseki Island continued to fall until the underlying layers of silt compressed, and the floating rock mass slowed its descent and gradually settled on a new level. Now the waves no longer crashed against the base of the cliffs, but broke over the jagged edges and lapped into the trees beyond.

Seconds after the explosion and the ensuing seismic blows, an enormous section of the eastern trench wall shuddered and bulged menacingly. Then with a great thundering roar, hundreds of millions of tons of mud slid away and plunged to the bottom of the trench. An incredible pressure wave of energy was generated that rushed toward the surface, forming a mountainous wall of water below the surface.

The indestructible tsunami was born.

Only a meter in height on the open surface of the sea, it quickly accelerated to a speed of 500 kilometers an hour and rolled westward. Irresistible, terrifying in its destructive power—there is no more destructive force on earth. And only twenty kilometers away, the sinking Soseki Island stood directly in its path.

The stage was set for disaster.

The death of the Dragon Center was imminent.

Tsuboi, Yoshishu, and their people were still in the defense control room tracking the southerly course of the crippled C-5 Galaxy.

“Two missile strikes, and it’s still flying,” Yoshishu said in wonder.

“It may crash yet—” Tsuboi suddenly broke off as he sensed rather than heard the distant rumble as Mother’s Breath exploded. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

“Yes, very faintly, like the faraway sound of thunder,” said Koyama without turning from the radar display. “Probably from a lightning storm echoing down the ventilators.”

“You feel it too?”

“I feel a slight vibration,” replied Yoshishu.

Kurojima shrugged indifferently. The Japanese are no strangers to earth movement. Every year more than a thousand seismic quakes are recorded on the main islands, and a week never passes when Japan’s citizens do not notice the ground tremble. “An earth tremor. We sit near a seismic fault. We get them all the time. Nothing to worry about. The island is solid rock, and the Dragon Center was engineered to be earthquake resistant.”

The loose objects in the room rattled faintly as the bomb’s dying energy passed through the center. Then the shock wave from the shift in the suboceanic fault slammed into the island like a gigantic battering ram. The entire Dragon Center seemed to shake and sway in all directions. Everyone’s face registered surprise, then the surprise gave way to anxiety, then the anxiety to fear.

“This is a bad one,” Tsuboi said nervously.

“We’ve never felt one this intense,” Kurojima uttered in shock as he pushed his back and outstretched arms against a wall for support.

Yoshishu was standing quite still as if angered by what was happening. “You must get me out of here,” he demanded.

“We are safer here than in the tunnel,” Koyama shouted above the growing tumult.

Those who were not holding on to something were thrown to the floor as the shock wave tore beneath the lava rock, undulating the deep sediment below. The control center was jolted more savagely now as the island shifted back and forth during its descent into the mud. Equipment that wasn’t bolted down began to topple over.

Tsuboi pushed himself into a corner and stared numbly at Kurojima. “It feels like we’re falling.”

“The island must be settling,” Kurojima cried in fright.

What the horrified men in the Dragon Center did not know, could not have known, was that the titanic bulk of the tsunami was only two minutes behind the shock waves.

With Pitt on manual drive, Big Ben slugged tortuously through the mud, sliding ever closer toward the floor of the trench. The tractor belts constantly lost their hold, sending the DSMV sideways down the grade until their leading edges piled up the silt, dug in, and regained their grip.

Pitt felt like a blind man driving the tractor in a blind world, with only a few dials and gauges and a screen with little colored words to guide him. He weighed his chances, sizing up the outside situation as it was revealed by the sonar-laser scanner, and came to the conclusion that so long as he was still mired in sediment his only escape was by a miracle. According to the calculations by the geophysicists, he had not traveled nearly far enough to escape the predicted reaches of the landslide.

Everything depended on finding firm ground or rock structure that was stable and would resist tearing away from the wall of the trench. Even then, his toughest hurdle was the trench itself. He was on the wrong side. To reach the safety of the Japanese shore, he would have to drive the great vehicle down into the bottom and up the opposite slope.

He did not see, his scanner could not tell him, that there was no hard ground or shallow slopes for the DSMV to claw its way up to flat terrain. If anything, the great fracture in the seabed deepened and curved southeast, offering no chance of escape for over eight hundred kilometers. And too late, his scanner revealed the mighty seismic landslide flaring out across the eastern bank of the trench, much as sand spreads when falling through an hourglass, and closing on him at an incredible rate of speed.

Big Ben was still battling through the soft ooze when the avalanche caught up to it. Pitt felt the ground slipping away under the vehicle and knew he’d lost the race. The sound of it came like the roar of a cataract in a tiled room. He saw death’s finger reaching out to touch him. He just had time to tense his body before a great wall of mud engulfed the DSMV and swept it end over end into the black void far below, concealing it under a burial shroud of featureless ooze.

The sea looked as if it had gone insane as the mighty bulk of the tsunami towered into the night, forming a raging frenzy of destruction. It sped out of the darkness, rising ever higher as it came in contact with the island’s shoals, the sheer magnitude of its power beyond human belief.

As its front slowed from friction at meeting the rising bottom, the water in its rear piled up, lifting with fantastic speed to the height of an eight-story building. Blacker than the night itself, its crest bursting like fireworks with the fire of phosphorescence, its roar slashing across the sea like a sonic boom, the mammoth nightmare reared up like a mountain summit and flung itself against the defenseless island’s already sunken palisades.

The stupendous wall of death and devastation crushed and swept away every tree, every stick of organic growth, and the resort buildings above the island like toothpicks in a tornado. Nothing made by man or nature resisted the catastrophic force longer than an eye blink in time. Trillions of liters of water obliterated everything in their path. The island was pushed under even further as if by a giant hand.

Much of the tsunami’s astronomical power was sapped from the onslaught against the land mass. A counter surge was created in a kind of backlash that sent the major force of the wave back into the vastness of the ocean. What energy was left of the westward thrust passed on and struck Japan’s main island of Honshu, the wave having dropped to a one-meter coastal surge that caused some damage to several fishing ports but no deaths.

In its wake the tsunami born of Mother’s Breath left Soseki Island and its Dragon Center drowned under a turbulent sea, never to rise above the surface again.

From deep under the island the aftershocks went on. They sounded like the rumblings of heavy gunfire. At the same time, countless tons of black water gushed through the air vents and elevator shaft, pressured by the enormous weight from above. Rivers spurted from fractures opened in the concrete roof and by widening fissures in the overhead lava rock from the stress forces brought on by the sinking island.

The entire Dragon Center was suddenly filled with the noise of water cascading from above. And behind that noise was the heavier, deeper thunder of water exploding into the rooms and corridors of the upper levels. Impelled by fantastic pressure, the flood plunged into the heart of the complex, shoving a great blast of air ahead of it.

All was confusion and panic now. The full realization by the hundreds of workers that they all faced certain death came with sickening suddenness. Nothing could save them, there was no place to run to escape the inundation. The tunnel had been split apart as the island shifted downward, sending the sea pouring through the tube toward Edo City at the other end.

Tsuboi’s ears rang from the air pressure. A great roaring sound came from outside and he recognized it as a wall of water ramming its way toward the defense control room. He had no time to react. In that instant, a sudden torrent of water burst into the room. There was no time to run, to even shout. In his final moments he saw his mentor, the evil old archcriminal Yoshishu, shot away from the column he was clinging to like a fly from the spurt of a garden hose. With a faint cry he disappeared in a rush of water.

Rage dominated all of Tsuboi’s other emotions. He felt no fear of pain or death, only a rage directed against the elements for denying him the leadership of the new empire. With Suma and Yoshishu gone, it would have all belonged to him. But it was only the fleeting hallucination of a dying man.

Tsuboi felt himself being sucked out and swept into the flow of water rushing through the corridor. His ears stabbed with agony from the pressure. His lungs were squeezed to the bursting point. And then he was thrust against a wall, his body crushed.

Only eight minutes had elapsed since Mother’s Breath had exploded, no more. The destruction of the Dragon Center was terrifyingly complete. The Kaiten Project no longer existed, and the island the ancients knew as Ajima was now only a mound beneath the sea.

73

FOR THE PRESIDENT and the vastly relieved advisers on his National Security Council, the news of the total elimination of the Dragon Center was greeted with tired smiles and a quiet round of applause. They were all too exhausted for any display of unrestrained celebration. Martin Brogan, the CIA chief, compared it to waiting all night at the hospital for his wife’s first baby.

The President came down to the Situation Room to personally congratulate Ray Jordan and Don Kern. He was in a jubilant mood, and fairly beamed like an airport beacon.

“Your people did one hell of a job,” said the President, pumping Jordan’s hand. “The nation is in your debt.”

“The MAIT team deserves the honors,” said Kern. “They truly pulled off the impossible.”

“But not without sacrifice,” Jordan murmured softly. “Jim Hanamura, Marv Showalter, and Dirk Pitt—it was a costly operation.”

“No word on Pitt?” asked the President.

Kern shook his head. “There seems to be little doubt that he and his Deep Sea Mining Vehicle were swept away by the seismic landslide and buried.”

“Any sign of him from the Pyramider?”

“During the satellite’s first pass after the explosion and upheaval, there was so much turbulence the cameras couldn’t detect any image of the vehicle.”

“Maybe you can spot him on the next pass,” the President said hopefully. “If there is even the slightest chance he may still be alive, I want a full-scale rescue mission mounted to save him. We owe Pitt our butts, and I’m not about to walk away from him.”

“We’ll see to it,” Jordan promised. But already his mind was turning to other projects.

“What news of Admiral Sandecker?”

“His surveillance aircraft was struck by missiles launched from the Dragon Center. The pilot managed to make a safe wheels-up landing at Naha Air Field on Okinawa. From initial reports, the plane was shot up pretty badly and lost all communications.”

“Casualties?”

“None,” answered Kern. “It was a wonder they survived with little more to show than a few cuts and bruises.”

The President nodded thoughtfully. “At least we know now why they broke off contact.”

Secretary of State Douglas Oates stepped forward. “More good news, Mr. President,” he said, smiling. “The combined Soviet and European search teams have uncovered almost all of the bomb cars hidden in their territories.”

“We have MAIT team to thank for stealing the locations,” explained Kern.

“Unfortunately, it didn’t help much on our end,” said Jordan.

Kern nodded. “The United States was the main threat to the Kaiten Project, not the European alliance or the Eastern Bloc countries.”

The President looked at Jordan. “Have any more been found within our borders?”

“Six.” The Central Intelligence Director grinned slightly. “Now that we have some breathing space, we should track down the rest without further risk to national security.”

“Tsuboi and Yoshishu?”

“Believed drowned.”

The President looked pleased, and he felt it. He turned and faced everyone in the room. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “on behalf of a grateful American people, who will never know how narrowly you saved them from disaster, I thank you.”

The crisis was over, but already another had erupted. Later that afternoon, fighting broke out along the border of Iran and Turkey, and the first reports came in of a Cuban military Mig-25 shooting down a United States commercial airliner filled with tourists returning from Jamaica.

The search for one man quickly became lost in the shuffle. The imaging technology on board the Pyramider satellite was shifted toward world events of more importance. Nearly four weeks would pass before the satellite’s eyes were turned back to the sea off Japan.

But no trace of Big Ben was found.

Part 5 

Obituary

74

November 19, 1993 

The Washington Post

I

T WAS ANNOUNCED

today that Dirk Pitt, Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, is missing and presumed dead after an accident in the sea off Japan.

Acclaimed for his exploits on land and under the sea that include his discoveries of the pre-Columbian Byzantine shipwreck Serapis off Greenland, the incredible cache from the Library of Alexandria, and the La Dorada treasure in Cuba, among others, Pitt also directed the raising of the Titanic.

The son of Senator George Pitt of California and his wife, Susan, Pitt was born and raised in Newport Beach, California. He attended the Air Force Academy, where he played quarterback on the Falcon football team, and graduated twelfth in his class. Becoming a pilot, Pitt remained in active service for ten years, rising to the rank of major. He then became permanently attached to NUMA at the request of Admiral James Sandecker.

The admiral said briefly yesterday that Dirk Pitt was an extremely resourceful and audacious man. During the course of his career, he had saved many lives, including those of Sandecker himself and the President during an incident in the Gulf of Mexico. Pitt never lacked for ingenuity or creativity. No project was too difficult for him to accomplish.

He was not a man you can forget.

Sandecker sat on the running board of the Stutz in Pitt’s hangar and stared sadly at the obituary in the newspaper. “He did so much, it seems an injustice to condense his life to so few words.”

Giordino, his face expressionless, walked around the Messerschmitt Me-262A-la Luftwaffe jet fighter. True to his word, Gert Halder had looked the other way when Pitt and Giordino had smuggled the aircraft out of the bunker, hauled it on a truck under canvas, and arranged for it to be hoisted on board a Danish cargo ship bound for the States. Only two days earlier the ship had arrived in Baltimore, where Giordino had waited to transport the aircraft to Pitt’s hangar in Washington. Now it sat on its tricycle landing gear amid the other classic machinery of Pitt’s collection.

“Dirk should have been here to see this,” Giordino said heavily. He ran his hand across the nose of the mottled green fuselage with its light gray underbelly and stared at the muzzles of the four thirty-millimeter cannon that poked from the forward cowl. “He’d have loved to get his hands on it.”

It was a moment neither of them had foreseen, could never imagine. Sandecker felt as though he’d lost a son, Giordino a brother.

Giordino stopped and stared up at the apartment above the classic autos and aircraft. “I should have been in the DSMV with him.”

Sandecker looked up. “Then you would be missing and maybe dead too.”

“I’ll always regret not being with him,” Giordino said vaguely.

“Dirk died in the sea. It’s the way he’d have wanted it.”

“He might be standing here now if one of Big Ben’s manipulators had been fitted with a scoop instead of cutting tools,” Giordino persisted.

Sandecker gave a weary shake of his head. “Allowing your imagination to run riot won’t bring him back.”

Giordino’s eyes lifted to Pitt’s living quarters. “I keep thinking all I have to do is yell for him, and he’ll come down.”

“The same thought has crossed my mind,” Sandecker admitted.

Suddenly the door of the apartment opened, and they momentarily stiffened, then relaxed as Toshie emerged carrying a tray with cups and a teapot. With incredible supple grace, she delicately wound down the iron circular stairway and glided toward Sandecker and Giordino.

Sandecker wrinkled his brows in puzzlement. “A mystery to me how you sweet-talked Jordan into having her committed into your custody.”

“No mystery.” Giordino grinned. “A trade-off. He made her a present to me in return for keeping my mouth shut about the Kaiten Project.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t encase your feet in cement and throw you in the Potomac.”

“I was bluffing.”

“Ray Jordan is no dummy,” Sandecker said dryly. “He knew that.”

“Okay, so she was a gift for services rendered.”

Toshie set the tray on the running board of the Stutz next to the admiral. “Tea, gentlemen?”

“Yes, thank you,” Sandecker said, rising to his feet.

Toshie smoothly settled to her knees and performed a brief tea ceremony before passing the steaming cups. Then she rose and admiringly stared at the Messerschmitt.

“What a beautiful airplane,” she murmured, overlooking the grime, the flattened tires, and the faded paint.

“I’m going to restore it to its original state,” said Giordino quietly, mentally picturing the dingy aircraft as it looked when new. “As a favor to Dirk.”

“You talk like he’s going to be resurrected,” Sandecker said tightly.

“He’s not dead,” Giordino muttered flatly. Tough though he was, his eyes grew moist.

“May I help?” asked Toshie.

Giordino self-consciously wiped his eyes and looked at her curiously. “I’m sorry, pretty lady, help me what?”

“Repair the airplane.”

Giordino and Sandecker exchanged blank glances. “You’re a mechanic?” asked Giordino.

“I helped my father build and maintain his fishing boat. He was very proud when I mended his ailing engine.

Giordino’s face lit up. “A match made in heaven.” He paused and stared at the drab dress Toshie was given when she was released from Jordan’s custody. “Before you and I start to tear this baby apart, I’m going to take you to the best boutiques in Washington and buy you a new wardrobe.”

Toshie’s eyes widened. “You have much, much money like Mr. Suma?”

“No,” Giordino moaned sorrowfully, “only lots of credit cards.”

Loren smiled and waved over the lunch crowd as the maître d’ of Washington’s chic restaurant Twenty-One Federal led Stacy through the blond wood and marble dining room to her table. Stacy had her hair tied back in a large scarf and was more informally dressed in an oatmeal cashmere turtleneck sweater under a gray wool shawl with matching pants.

Loren wore a plaid wool checked jacket over a khaki blouse with a taupe wool faille skirt. Unlike most women, who would have remained seated, she rose and offered her hand to Stacy. “I’m glad you could come.”

Stacy smiled warmly and took Loren’s hand. “I’ve always wanted to eat here. I’m grateful for the opportunity.”

“Will you join me in a drink?”

“That cold wind outside stings. I think I’d like a manhattan straight up to take the chill off.”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t wait. I already went through a martini.”

“Then you’d better have another to fight the cold when we leave.” Stacy laughed pleasantly.

Their waiter took the order and went off toward the elegant bar.

Loren replaced her napkin in her lap. “I didn’t have a proper chance to thank you on Wake Island, we were all so rushed about.”

“Dirk is the one we all owe.”

Loren turned away. She thought she had cried herself out after hearing the news of Pitt’s death, but she still felt the tears behind her eyes.

Stacy’s smile faded, and she looked at Loren with sympathy. “I’m very sorry about Dirk. I know you two were very close.”

“We had our ups and downs over the years, but we never strayed very far from each other.”

“Was marriage ever considered?” asked Stacy.

Loren gave a brief shake of her head. “The subject never came up. Dirk wasn’t the kind of man who could be possessed. His mistress was the sea, and I had my career in Congress.”

“You were lucky. His smile was devastating, and those green eyes—God, they’d make any woman melt.”

Suddenly Loren was nervous. “You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I have to know.” She hesitated as if afraid to continue and fidgeted with a spoon.

Stacy met Loren’s eyes evenly. “The answer is no,” she lied. “I came to his place late one night, but it was on orders from Ray Jordan to give Dirk instructions. Nothing happened. I left twenty minutes later. From that moment until we parted on Wake Island it was strictly business.”

“I know this must sound silly. Dirk and I often went our own ways when it came to seeing other men and women, but I wanted to be sure I was the only one near the end.”

“You were more deeply in love with him than you thought, weren’t you?”

Loren gave a little nod. “Yes, I realized it too late.”

“There will be others,” Stacy said in an attempt to be cheerful.

“But none to take his place.”

The waiter returned with their drinks. Stacy held up her glass. “To Dirk Pitt, a damned good man.”

They touched glasses.

“A damned good man,” Loren repeated, as the tears fell. “Yes… he was that.”

75

IN THE DINING ROOM of a safe house somewhere in the Maryland countryside, Jordan sat at a table having lunch with Hideki Suma. “Is there anything I can do to make your stay more comfortable?” asked Jordan.

Suma paused, savoring the delicate flavor of a noodle soup with duck and scallions accented by radish and gold caviar. He spoke without looking up. “There is one favor.”

“Yes?”

Suma nodded at the security agent standing guard by the door and at his partner who served the meal. “Your friends will not allow me to meet the chef. He is very good. I wish to offer him my compliments.”

“She apprenticed at one of New York’s finest Japanese restaurants. Her name is Natalie, and she now works with the government on special assignments. And no, I’m sorry but you cannot be introduced.”

Jordan examined Suma’s face. There was no hostility in it, no frustration at being isolated in heavily guarded confinement—nothing but a supreme complacency. For a man who had been subtly drugged and then forced to endure long hours of interrogation over four weeks, he showed almost no sign of it. The eyes were still as hard as onyx under the shock of graying hair. But that was as it should have been. Through post-hypnotic suggestion from Jordan’s expert interrogators, Suma did not recall, nor did he realize he had provided a team of curious engineers and scientists a wealth of technical data. His mind was probed and scrutinized as neatly as by professional thieves, who after searching a house left everything as they found it.

It had to be, Jordan mused, one of the few times American intelligence actually obtained foreign industrial secrets that could prove profitable.

“A sadness.” Suma shrugged. “I would have liked to hire her when I leave.”

“That won’t be possible,” Jordan said frankly.

Suma finished the soup and pushed the bowl aside. “You cannot continue holding me like a common criminal. I am not some peasant you arrested out of the gutter. I think you would be wise to release me without further delay.”

No hard demand, merely a veiled threat from a man who was not informed that his incredible power had vanished with his announced death throughout Japan. Ceremonies had been performed, and already his spirit was enshrined at Yasukuni. Suma had no idea that as far as the outside world was concerned, he no longer existed. Nor was he told of the deaths of Tsuboi and Yoshishu, and the destruction of the Dragon Center. For all he knew, the Kaiten Project’s bomb cars were still safely hidden.

“After what you attempted,” said Jordan coldly, “you’re lucky you’re not up before an international tribunal for crimes against humanity.”

“I have a divine right to protect Japan.” The quiet, authoritative voice came to Jordan as if it was coming from a pulpit.

Irritation flushed Jordan’s temples. “Besides being the most insular society on earth, Japan’s problem with the rest of the world is that your business leaders have no ethics, no principles of fair play in the Western sense. You and your fellow corporate executive officers believe in doing unto other nations as you would not allow others to do unto you.”

Suma picked up a teacup and drained it. “Japan is a highly honorable society. Our loyalties run very deep.”

“Sure, to yourselves, at the expense of outsiders, such as foreign nationals.”

“We see no difference between an economic war and a military war,” Suma replied pleasantly. “We look upon the industrial nations merely as competitors on a vast battlefield where there are no rules of conduct, no trade treaties that can be trusted.”

The lunacy, combined with the cold reality of the situation, suddenly seemed ridiculous to Jordan. He saw it was useless trying to make a dent in Suma. Perhaps the madman was right. America ultimately would become divided into separate nations governed by race. He brushed the uncomfortable thought from his mind and rose from the table.

“I must go,” he announced curtly.

Suma stared at him. “When can I return to Edo City?”

Jordan regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “Tomorrow.”

“I would like that,” said Suma. “Please see that one of my private planes will be waiting at Dulles Field.”

The guy had gall, Jordan thought. “I’ll make arrangements through your embassy.”

“Good day, Mr. Jordan.”

“Good day, Mr. Suma. I trust you will forgive me for any inconvenience you’ve suffered.”

Suma’s lips compressed in a thin menacing line and he squinted at Jordan through half-closed eyes. “No, Mr. Jordan, I do not forgive you. Please rest assured you will pay a stiff price for my captivity.” Then Suma seemingly dismissed Jordan and poured another cup of tea.

Kern was waiting as Jordan stepped past the armored doors separating the entry hall from the living room. “Have a nice lunch?”

“The food was good but the company was lousy. And you?”

“I listened in while eating in the kitchen. Natalie made me a hamburger.”

“Lucky you.”

“What about our friend?”

“I told him he would be released tomorrow.”

“I heard. Will he remember to pack?”

Jordan smiled. “The thought will be erased during tonight’s interrogation session.”

Kern nodded slowly. “How long do you think we can keep him going?”

“Until we know everything he knows, unlock every secret, every memory in his gray matter.”

“That could take a year or two.” So.

“And after we’ve sucked him dry?”

“What do you mean?”

“We can’t keep him hidden from the world forever. And we’d be cutting our own throats if we set him free and allowed him to return to Japan.”

Jordan stared at Kern without a flicker of change in his expression. “When Suma has no more left to give, Natalie will slip a little something extra into his noodle soup.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but in your Western idiom, my hands are tied.”

The President looked across the cabinet room conference table at the smiling little man with the short-trimmed white hair and defiant brown eyes. He seemed more a military commander of a tough infantry battalion than the political leader of Japan.

Prime Minister Junshiro, who had come to Washington on an official state visit, sat flanked by two of his ministers and five staff aides. The President sat opposite with only his interpreter by his side.

“I’m sorry too, Prime Minister, but if you think you’re simply going to sweep the tragedies of the past weeks under the rug, you’ve got another think coming.”