by A. J Tata
CHAPTER 26
As the plane taxied along the Palau International Airport runway, Matt’s thoughts reflected back to his foggy day with Meredith. He honestly couldn’t recall much about their conversation, though much of it had occurred poolside, where he remembered falling asleep. How he had gotten the room, or even to the room, was anyone’s guess.
He was facing the rear of the airplane and seated across from Assistant Secretary of Defense Rathburn. The U.S. Air Force Gulfstream 5 jet ambled along the runway and lifted slowly off the ground, then banked hard to the right, turning from south to west to northwest as it climbed to altitude.
Matt had actually been mistaken for security by one of the female officers belonging to the advisory committee that Meredith had mentioned. She had handed him a bag to carry as she ascended the steps to the aircraft. Once he saw she was inside the airplane, Matt walked over to a local, who was toying with the auxiliary power unit for the Gulfstream, and said, “On behalf of the President of the United States, please accept this as a small token of appreciation for all that you do for us.”
The man smiled back at him with what teeth he had left in his mouth, took the shopping bag, and nodded. For all Matt knew he had just given the man a bagful of thongs, which he was sure would be put to good use. He smiled at the image of returning to Palau and all of the ground maintenance crew wearing thongs around their heads like surgical masks.
Secretary Rathburn and Matt sat on opposite sides of a foldout table in the forward cabin. The female delegation was in the aft cabin, which was separated by a pocket door. Rathburn placed a small personal digital assistant into his briefcase, leaned back, and slid the door shut, saying, “Bunch of women,” as if he disagreed with their presence. Matt got the distinct opposite impression as he observed the few minutes of interaction between Rathburn and one woman in particular. His ever-churning mind began to wonder if Meredith’s simmering rage wasn’t jealousy as opposed to professional displeasure.
“Meredith told me your story. Fascinating,” Rath-burn said.
Matt couldn’t see what was so fascinating about a dead American and chaos in Mindanao, so he didn’t take the bait and remained silent.
After a moment Rathburn continued staring at him and said, “She also told me you were a tough nut. I’m assuming her assessment is based on reading your dossier as opposed to personal knowledge.”
Matt didn’t exactly like where the conversation was headed. He believed he was going to get an update on the Shimpu, the situation in Mindanao, and the float plane that had both carried him to safety and deposited him in the lap of a mystery.
“A little of both, I guess,” he said in reply to Rath-burn’s comment, which elicited a raised eyebrow from the political appointee.
“Why don’t you tell me what you saw in Minda-nao, Matt?”
“Sir, I quite frankly thought I was getting an update from you,” Matt replied. “I gave a big dump of information to Meredith, and now I’m your hostage on an airplane headed to Manila. What do we know about Mindanao?”
“We can always open the door and let you out, you know.” Rathburn smiled. Matt looked through the gray morning at the dark ocean ten kilometers below and said, “Give me a parachute and I’m out of here.”
Rathburn paused and said, “We’re not sure what’s happening in Mindanao. We got the report of the two Philippine C-130s shot down and were unaware that any Americans were on either of them until we got your confirmation from the Agency. I think this was a bit of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.”
“How do you mean?”
“There weren’t supposed to be any Americans in Mindanao,” Rathburn said flatly, and left it at that. Something registered in Matt’s mind that Rathburn was wrestling with something, perhaps a decision he had to make. Or one he had already made.
“Well, as long as we’re on this bus to Abilene in Iraq, what difference does it make?” Matt posed the rhetorical question to flesh out his own instincts that Rathburn was doing mental gymnastics, to determine in which camp he might reside, if any. Maybe it was just the fact that Rathburn was sitting here with his manicured fingernails, well-coiffed hair, pinpoint cotton shirt, and silk tie while across from him sat Matt in his nondescript dark shirt and olive cargo pants, muscles pushing at the seams of his sleeves, four days of growth on his face, and a bullet wound in his shoulder. Personally, he felt Saddam needed to go, but was struggling with his own failure to kill Al Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan when he had them in his sights. Every time I’m close, I’m moved.
Some might be intimidated by the fact that Matt’s reputation within the Agency was legendary, and Rathburn paid homage to Matt’s repute by saying, “Pretty ballsy move going into Pakistan last December. Many of us were cheering you on.”
Many of us?Why not everyone? Matt wondered.
“I’ve got a saying,” Matt commented. “When you’re right, don’t worry about it.”
“Your conscience is indeed clear, but you’re rightness landed you in the Philippines. What do you make of that?”
“I go where they send me. But I still don’t understand why they stopped me,” Matt said, looking over his wounded shoulder through the oval window. The ocean passed silently beneath them.
“Ever think it might be this Iraq thing? We are, as you say, on a runaway train,” Rathburn said.
“I said bus to Abilene,” Matt corrected. To Matt, words meant exactly what they were intended to mean. There were no slip-ups, and there were no coincidences, especially with a man of Rathburn’s relative import. He had said “runaway train.” Was that an unintended look into Rathburn’s psyche and what he truly believed? Matt’s “bus to Abilene” comment was a reference to the group-think mentality that takes hold when gathering momentum effortlessly silences dissent.
“Same difference. I’m concerned about something you told Meredith,” Rathburn said. “Something about Japanese soldiers on Mindanao. Can you tell me more?”
Had the situation been reversed, with Matt as the senior defense official, he would have asked first about Ron Peterson, then about the Special Forces team and the young Filipino, then about the Shimpu or the abduction of the Japanese man. Sure, the presence of Japanese soldiers on Mindanao was curious, but a man had to have his priorities.
And he presumed Rathburn did.
“They were guarding something. It was a facility with civilians. It’s something they are trying to hide. I told it all to Meredith,” Matt said.
“Why would the Japanese government have soldiers in Mindanao?” Matt wasn’t sure if Rathburn was asking him or talking to himself, so he remained silent for a moment.
Indeed why? And more importantly, why was that Rathburn’s primary concern?
CHAPTER 27
Silence usually begets someone else’s opening his or her mouth, and Rathburn did not disappoint Matt when he said, “You know, Ambassador Kaitachi came over the other day to talk to the secretary. Something about China-Taiwan. Wants us to put some eyes up there.”
As he was thinking, Matt swirled his Diet Coke, which had been delivered by a young airman.
“Doesn’t really make sense.”
“I know.”
Rathburn was a tall, handsome man with a shock of grey hair on either side of his balding head. His beak nose and marble eyes gave him the appearance of a hawk. He was generally respected in the defense community. And he leveled those hawkish eyes on Matt.
“Ever hear of Bridges to Babylon?”
Matt shrugged. He faintly recalled a movie, he thought. “Film?”
“Stones. Where have you been? Their last album of the nineties,” Rathburn chided.
Confused, Matt hunched his shoulders, and said, “So?”
“We’re on that bridge now, and it’s a one-way road to Iraq. China-Taiwan won’t get any traction.”
“We could always back up,” Matt said.
“Ever try to back your way out of a traffic jam?”
“This isn’t I-395, sir. It isn’t that hard,” Matt said.
Rathburn stared at him for a long moment, as if he was considering saying something. Matt noticed his countenance actually become softer, less tense, the way a patient might look before finally talking about that one issue to his therapist. Matt thought he might actually hear the man say something he meant.
Just as quickly, though, Rathburn’s face tightened again as he instead asked, “What do you know about Japan?”
Back to Japan again. Matt wondered why. “Not really my specialty. Philippines, Korea, China, and missing Predators; those are my fields.” Matt took a sip of his Coke and ate some peanuts, consciously not bringing up Afghanistan and Pakistan again.
“We’re on this airplane together for the next few hours. We’ll land at about eight in the morning. My sleep cycle is all screwed up, and you seem like a knowledgeable guy. So, humor me and tell me what you know about Japan,” Rathburn said with an edge in his voice.
“On one condition. Can you guarantee me that my report on Mindanao has been filed and someone is working that intelligence?”
“Guaranteed,” Rathburn said, slapping his palm on the table.
Matt racked his brain and lined up some points to make for the man, searching for a logic flow.
“Okay, Japan. Like a country report that might lead to clues as to why they have soldiers in Mindanao?”
Rathburn nodded.
Matt ran a hand down his face, stalling for time, but finally started talking. “Okay, not sure if this is what you want, but, I’ll free-associate. Stop me if it’s not what you’re looking for.”
Rathburn nodded again, and assured him, “Don’t worry, I will. I don’t suffer fools or bullshit, which is why you’re still sitting here with me and not in that viper’s nest back there.” He pointed over his shoulder at the aft cabin, where the faint cackle of feminine laughter could be heard.
Matt smiled thinly and said, “Well, for example, Japan has what we call a population inversion. They have more old people than young people, and the gap is growing. Meanwhile, they’ve got this economy that needs X number of people to keep it running. Today, their unemployment rate is just over one percent. So, we’ve got a labor shortage in the world’s fastest-growing economy. What are they going to do, farm out their jobs and markets to other countries that need the work? Takishi did just that last year with the China agreement.”
“Why not? We do it with Mexico and China?” Rathburn said. The political appointee hid his sudden alarm that Matt knew his friend’s name. How does he know who Takishi is?
“Yes, sir, we do it because it makes short-term economic sense in our almost purely capitalist system. To the Japanese, who have more of a state-directed capitalism and a circular vision of life instead of the Western linear view, to seek labor outside of the country would be anathema; which makes Takishi’s move so … interesting. For them it is like exporting their success while devaluing their own net worth. You’re right, in many cases the U.S. has done exactly that with the call centers in India and Pakistan, for example.”
Rathburn nodded.
“So then, add that to the fact that we have gotten protectionist and practically reduced their markets by 10 percent in the last year. The European Community has done the same thing, and they’ve only started. Nearly 60 percent of Japanese exports head either to the EC countries or the U.S. Chop that number in half and Japan loses one-third of its trade. We’ve already decided that they can’t sustain their economy with current labor projections. So that’s two strikes against their economy already. Remember, the Japanese have staked their entire future on their economic prowess. So in a sense, their security environment revolves first around the economy, then goes to the basics of the vulnerability of their geographic positioning.”
The plane ran into a brief period of turbulence. Matt looked up at the ceiling of the airplane, sensing the motion with his body. Convinced it was nothing unusual, he looked back at Rathburn and proceeded.
“Now we’ve almost got something to think about,” Matt said, grabbing the matchbook out of the glass ashtray on the table. The flimsy white cardboard book had the Department of Defense symbol on it, an eagle with its head turned and claws holding three arrows. He pushed up his shirtsleeves over his thick forearms and decided how to demon-strate his newfound logic.
“This represents the labor shortage,” he said sliding the matchstick across the table toward Rathburn. “This is the fall in trade from U.S. and EC protectionism.” He dropped both sticks into the ashtray.
“Now let’s talk energy policy. Japan has reduced its dependence on foreign oil much better than most other countries by pursuing alternative means of energy. They’ve got everything ranging from geothermal to windmills to nuclear power. They have big plans to build twenty or so more new nuclear plants, adding to the fifty they already have. But every time a shovel hits the ground, students and radicals are protesting and blocking construction. Imagine how we’d feel with sixty nuclear plants in California.”
“Not a bad idea.” Rathburn smiled, the first indication of connection.
“Agreed.” Matt smiled in return. “The point is that they have no oil or natural gas deposits, and they cannot expect their energy needs to keep pace with their economic expansion. So there’s another match. In fact, I’ll give that issue two matches,” he said, tossing a third and a fourth stick to the pile with a confident flick of the wrist.
“We’ve already mentioned that the U.S. is almost solely focused on the Middle East, reducing its security presence in the Pacific Rim. This has a proportional effect on Japan’s perception of its own security. The more we pull back,” he said emphatically, “the more insecure they feel. More sulfur.” He dropped a fifth match into the ashtray.
“Now we can count, if you want to, all of the intangible and esoteric stuff like the fact that they are a strictly closed Confucian society with almost a purely homogenous people. Confucianism operates on three levels. First, Confucian societies have a strong sense of identity with their heritage and ancestry. Second, Confucianism breeds a sense of exclusivity. That is, it produces the closed Japanese society that only someone born in Japan to a Japanese family can belong to. In essence, very racist. Third, Confucianism stresses that the family is the critical unit of a society and that government should simply be an extension of that family. This reinforces the exclusivity of the society and also produces a we-they type of mentality. That equals nationalism. Another match.
“They’ve been putting up with our bullshit since the end of World War II. Americans wrote their constitution and set up their government. We have a base or two on their land. While ninety nine percent of American troops are the best our nation has to offer, there’s always that one percent of bad apples who have committed crimes against the Japanese. I think there was a rape in Okinawa not too long ago. So, the wounded pride of having to kowtow to the Americans and the distorted perception created by the few bad apples calls for a seventh match.” It fell from his fingers, landing in the ashtray.
“Taiwan was formerly called Formosa before it was anted to China in the post–World War II settlement. It had belonged to the Japanese for fifty years before that. They bargained with the Russians for the Kuriles to their north. Imagine how they feel about something like Formosa to their south. Terri-torial claims,” he said bluntly, dramatically dropping an eighth match into the pile.
“So we’ve got a Japan poised for economic downturn, minus its former security umbrella, with no real threat from Russia, and with some territorial disputes. Its traditional enemies are challenging Japan on the economic level. Korea’s pursuit of markets is very aggressive, and China is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla about to rip free from its chains. Sir, economic competition is just another form of warfare, only on a lower level. Competition is competition. So, traditional enemies and an unwillingness to mediate historical differences calls for another match.”
Matt looked at Rathburn whose eyes were
fixed on his. He seemed uncomfortable, almost nervous.
“Then, there is the idea of Henka. It’s a Japanese process of accepting new, radically different positions. Simply put, it formalizes new decisions that are dramatic departures from old positions. It allows them to change their minds without having to explain why. It’s a Japanese social tradition. It allows them to completely shift social or personal direction without any forewarning. That accounts for the ease with which they moved from a militaristic society to a democratic one. Similarly, it accounts for the shift from a Samurai society to the Tokugawa era.”
Matt looked at Rathburn, and said, “Governments can ‘do’ Henka and people can ‘do’ Henka. The only constant in Henka is that it always serves the common Japanese good.”
He dropped the last match. The sticks crossed in the ashtray, looking like a pile of bones.
“So that is ten, I believe. The only question is, Will there be a spark? Or is it already smoldering and we just don’t see it,” he asked himself, thinking, then pulling a match out of the book and striking it. The flame burned eerily bright in the darkened cabin of the aircraft as he held the match above the ashtray.
“Do they seek to shed the implications that Western thought set their society on the correct path?”
“Thought you didn’t know anything?”
“I know some stuff,” Matt said.
“How does that square with Kaitachi’s Taiwan-China issue?”
“I don’t know, sir. Let me ask you, what do you make of all of this? And why did you ask me about Japan instead of my real areas of expertise?”
Rathburn looked away. “The ambassador’s visit just didn’t make sense to me.”
The plane droned along, and Matt dropped the lit match into the ashtray.
The matches ignited simultaneously, burning a fluorescent white, then fading to orange. Both men fixed their gaze on the flame.