High Flight

by David Hagberg

  Kiyoda squatted to rise with the periscope, and he smiled inwardly. With this boat and this crew he was invincible.

  “Port wing lookout has a periscope directly off our quarter,” Lieutenant Commander Ryder said.

  Captain Hanrahan stepped over to that side of the bridge and raised his binoculars.

  “Bridge, sonar. The target has leveled off at six-zero feet, inbound relative bearing two-seven-zero, range two thousand yards.” The comms had been put on loudspeaker.

  “I have the periscope wake abaft our beam,” Hanrahan said. “Secure from active sonar. Listen for tube flooding noises.”

  “Bridge, sonar, he’s opening his doors!” the chief sonarman reported excitedly. “I’m getting four transients. He’s definitely opening his doors.”

  “Stand by to launch ASROC tubes one through four on my command,” Hanrahan ordered calmly. He watched the wake the Samisho’s periscope made in the rising seas. “Have the choppers converge and prepare to launch on my command. Tell the Orion driver what we’re doing, and get me Seventh HQ on the secure phone.”

  “Thanks for coming up on the double, Don,” Admiral Ryland said. “We’re in trouble, and I want your input.”

  “I’d say we are at that, sir.” Captain Donald Moody, Jr., Chief of Seventh Fleet Intelligence, took his place next to Ryland at the situation board. “Mike’s going to have to back off, and do it now. We don’t want to get into a shooting match, even by mistake, with the MSDF.”

  “If the sub-driver fires first, Mike will have to defend himself.”

  “If he gets in the Samisho’s way, Admiral,” Moody said without hesitation. The intelligence chief had worked for the CIA and National Security Agency as well as naval intelligence. He knew the business backward and forward. Which meant he knew when to tell it exactly like it was no matter the fallout.

  “That particular submarine has no business at our back door in the East China Sea. Not after its performance in the Tatar Strait.”

  “Are you willing to kill that boat in order to stop it from getting past the Thorn?”

  “You know as well as I do, Don, that it’ll come,” Ryland said. “Either here and now, or later farther south where he’ll be in a position to pose a greater threat. The man is crazy.”

  “We’re talking about our allies, Admiral,” Moody said.

  “Don’t I know it,” Ryland admitted darkly. “I’m getting no answer from MSDF Fleet Headquarters. Admiral Shimakaze is not available for my call. The Samisho may not be operating under direct MSDF orders, but at least it has tacit approval.”

  “We’ll never be able to prove that. And now’s not the time for us to be taking a stand out here. Christ, Admiral, you know what Washington would do to us. Especially after what happened last week.”

  “The Thorn is my boat, my crew. Means I’m responsible until I’m ordered off the job.”

  “You’re paying me for intelligence estimates and advice. If the Samisho wants to bull its way into the East China Sea, let it go. It’ll take at least forty-eight hours, maybe longer, for that submarine to get into a position dangerous to us. But that gives us the time to make it an issue with MSDF command and bounce it back to the Pentagon, or at the very least bring up more assets from Okinawa. But goddammit, Admiral, these are Japanese home waters. And they have the right to come and go as they please.”

  Ryland’s XO, Captain Tom Byrne, had been on the phone with MSDF headquarters. He hung up and shook his head. “Admiral Higashi is in conference,” he said. Higashi was CINC of the MSDF Submarine Fleet.

  “Don thinks Mike Hanrahan should back off,” Ryland said.

  Byrne eyed the intelligence officer and nodded slowly. “I agree with him, sir. It would give us a little breathing room. Time to press the issue.”

  “There’s always Subic Bay to consider,” Moody said.

  “I am,” Ryland said. “Once they’re back on the Philippines and well established we’d have our hands full out here.” No matter what the Thorn did we were going to come out the losers. If Hanrahan engaged the submarine and sank or damaged it, the Japanese government would be all over the U.S. Navy. These were Japanese home waters. If the Samisho got lucky and sent a U.S. destroyer to the bottom, Japan would apologize for another dreadful mistake and offer to make reparations to the families of the victims. And if he ordered Mike Hanrahan to step aside, the MSDF would have won a moral victory over the U.S. Navy, which was coming under increasing pressure to get its bases off Japanese soil and its ships out of Japanese waters.

  “Get Hanrahan on the scrambler,” Ryland said. “Tell him to back off and allow the Samisho through the strait.”

  “Yes, sir,” Byrne said.

  “Tell him that I want him to stick on that sub wherever she goes, whatever she does, and I don’t care what he has to do to accomplish that mission. Clear?”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral,” Byrne replied crisply. He picked up the encrypted phone at the same moment Hanrahan’s call from the Thorn came in.

  “Bring me up to date,” SUR Director Aleksandr Karyagin said. “Our Tokyo Station cannot be so weak that after all this time nothing has been learned.”

  “Mintori Assurance is definitely behind the attack on Guerin,” General Polunin replied. He’d been called upstairs to have lunch with the director. From the Lubyanka’s ninth-floor dining room he could see that this morning’s snowstorm had increased in intensity. Coming in from Mar’ina Roshcha traffic had been snarled up, and he’d been late, but not so late he didn’t have time to prepare for the director’s summons. “There is some question about the Dulles accident, however. From what Abunai is giving us, Mintori was just as surprised and shocked as Guerin was.”

  “The timing seems odd.”

  “Yes, sir, considering all that has been happening recently. It would have done them no good to engineer such an accident now. They would stand to lose much more than they could gain.”

  “How does Abunai see that?” Karyagin asked. “How do you see it, General?”

  Once again the director had put him on the spot. “Basically Mintori, like too many other corporations within that zaibatsu, is an information-driven industry whose sole purpose for existence is to make money. It does this by minimizing its risks and exposure. In order to do that, and still get on with the business of manufacturing, or research and development—or in the case of the Kobe banking zaibatsu, provide developmental capital—it actively gathers intelligence. As a whole the Japanese have been engaging in industrial espionage since before the Great War,” Polunin added. “The entire nation must continue to manufacture at ever-increasing levels or die. Which means they must know what their market competitors are doing and devise strategies to either better them, or destroy them.”

  “The ultimate capitalists,” Karyagin said dryly.

  “Every Japanese businessperson who meets with a foreigner is a spy for his country. Whatever information is gathered goes back to the individual companies, which in turn share significant details with their individual zaibatsus, which in a final turn share with the government. Specifically the Ministry for International Trade and Industry—MITI. It’s as close as we can get to identifying any centralized Japanese intelligence agency, and of course its primary involvement is business.”

  “I will suffer your lengthy explanations, General, because I am no expert on Japan. But get on with it.”

  “Simply put, Mr. Director, Abunai believes that Mintori does not have enough information to make its final move against Guerin at this time.”

  Karyagin raised an eyebrow. “Abunai is a network of people, or one individual?”

  Polunin had anticipated the question. There was no reason for the SUR director not to know that information; it was just that all good intelligence organizations understood the guiding principle of “need to know.” There was no reason, until now, for the director to be told the specifics. Polunin took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it across the table. The director read what it contained and
looked up.

  “I see,” he said. He handed the slip back and Polunin pocketed it.

  “The sinking of the Menshinsky shook the Japanese government as much or more than it did us.”

  “Tell that at the Kremlin.”

  “It shook the Japanese government, Mr. Director,” Polunin made his point again. “But Abunai believes that Mintori—specifically its director, Sokichi Kamiya, and the director of the Kobe Bank zaibatsu, Hiroshi Kobayashi—may have had previous contact with the captain of the submarine, the Samisho. His name is Seiji Kiyoda, and he comes from a very old, very venerable family. He has apparently fashioned himself and his crew after Yukio Mishima’s Shield Society.”

  “They are using this submarine commander as a tool?”

  “A similar incident seems to be developing between this submarine and an American destroyer in the Tokara Strait at the entrance to the East China Sea.”

  Karyagin sat forward. “Have shots been fired?”

  “Not yet. We have a RORSAT due to pass over the region within the hour. If we get a break in the weather we might see something. Short of that, infrared sensors will at least tell us if there has recently been a battle.”

  “Why, General? If what Abunai tells us is valid, if Mintori and Kobe are targeting Guerin, why engineer attacks on our navy and on the Americans? To what end?”

  “We cannot answer that yet, Mr. Director. But it’s my guess that these naval confrontations may be an effort at misdirection that somehow may help them in their run on Guerin. There is some logic in the idea, especially if it is considered against the Japanese Prime Minister’s free trade proposal. But there is another, much darker possibility that would reduce the naval attacks and the bid for Guerin to individual elements of a larger plan.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “A brief, very intense little war for economic control of the Western Pacific basin. The Japanese desperately need guaranteed supplies of oil and minerals from the region, and a constantly growing market for their manufactured goods. The same things the new American economy is scrambling for.”

  “Subic Bay comes to mind,” Karyagin suggested.

  “I’m sure it’s foremost in many Americans’ minds. As are the growing anti-American sentiments in Tokyo and Yokosuka—home base to the U.S. Seventh Fleet and home port of the Samisho.”

  “The Japanese are a sophisticated people. It would be suicide for them. They are America’s allies. As you said of Mintori’s timing, Japan would have everything to lose and nothing to gain.”

  “A view widely held, Mr. Director,” Polunin replied, masking an inward smile. The bastard didn’t know his way around as well as he thought he did. “MITI is almost certainly spying on the United States, and Abunai believes that a top MITI operative may have been sent to Washington to specifically target Guerin for information.”

  “Is this surprising?”

  “In itself, no, Mr. Director. But this operative was observed meeting with Mr. McGarvey on at least one occasion. Interesting, wouldn’t you say, in light of what he told us?”

  “Are you saying that Guerin’s offer to build an assembly factory here is false?”

  “I don’t know. In my gut I think the offer is legitimate. But I don’t think McGarvey is. In fact it’s very likely that he is working on direct orders from the CIA, something Guerin’s chief executives might not know. He may even have somehow maneuvered the airplane company into offering us the factory.”

  “Make your point.”

  Polunin sat back and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. It was time for caution, very big issues were at stake. Career-breaking or career-making issues. Unlike a lot of people on his staff, Polunin did not pine for the old regime. But he did miss its stability. Russia and the entire world had become politically liquid. It was very much like the Weimar Republic days of Germany. Worldwide, the setup seemed chillingly similar.

  “McGarvey offers us a billion dollar factory if we will help him spy in Japan. He’s killing two birds with one stone. First he puts us in a position where any retaliation against the Japanese for sinking the Menshinsky would be difficult if not impossible, and second gets us to share intelligence data. Something in both cases that Washington may want very desperately. They are in trouble in Japan, and they’ll take all the help they can, because if the United States and Japan do go to war over the Western Pacific rim, the United States will lose.”

  “Preposterous.”

  “No, Mr. Director, it’s likely. Within hours after the first shots are fired, Washington would call an immediate halt to all hostilities. Japan is, after all, its ally and major trading partner. Washington will demand they talk and not shoot. At the end of the … peace conference, if you will … the Japanese will get what they want. The Western Pacific basin is vital for Japan’s survival, but not for America’s.”

  “Keeping us out of it would not help them.”

  “On the contrary. If we move against Japan, it will give them the legitimate excuse to mobilize, with if not the full approval of the U.S., at least with its understanding.”

  “Because of one submarine.”

  “No, Mr. Director, because of two very powerful and important zaibatsus that may be maneuvering an unwilling Japanese government into the confrontation.”

  “Then we must help McGarvey. But you say the man has met with the Japanese spy.”

  “How better to find out what a government’s intentions are than to find out what its spies are up to?”

  “Has this information been passed to McGarvey yet?” Karyagin asked.

  “No.”

  “What are you recommending, General?”

  “Abunai is trying to penetrate Mintori or Kobe or both, but it is very difficult. I recommend that we give Tokyo Station all the support we can. But McGarvey is going to have to be watched very closely. I would like to determine if indeed he is working for the CIA, and what his exact mission might be.”

  “How would you go about that?”

  “By trying to penetrate his cover. If his work for Guerin is legitimate, he’ll bleed a little. If not he’ll sidestep it.”

  “But then he won’t cooperate with us.”

  “Yes he will, because he won’t know who is after him or why.”

  “He is an intelligent, capable man, General,” Karyagin warned. “Move with care. And do it quickly. The Kremlin is pressing very hard to retaliate for the Menshinsky.”

  The situation was exactly as Polunin thought it would be. With proper timing and luck, Karyagin would hang at the end of his own rope.

  “It wasn’t a very smart thing to do. It jeopardizes all of us,” Reid told Louis Zerkel.

  “It was the only thing he could do,” Mueller contradicted.

  “What are you talking about? Do you understand the consequences? Our lives are inside the FBI’s mainframe. One mistake on Louis’s part, one glitch in the system across the river, one careless flick of a key by some bored data-entry clerk, and we’re finished.”

  “It can’t happen that way, Mr. Reid,” Louis said. He sat at his computer terminal, the screen blank. “I’ve built in a virus against snoopers. There are only two ways for that information to be accessed. By me, if and when I decide to retrieve it. And also by me, if I don’t plug in the proper code twice a day. In that case the entire file will be plastered across nearly every terminal in the headquarters.”

  “You can get the information from him,” Reid said to Mueller.

  The German shook his head. “We wouldn’t know if he was telling the truth until it was too late.”

  “You two are forgetting something else,” Louis said.

  “No,” Mueller replied, a slight smile creasing the corners of his mouth. “We need you to build the repeaters, and to test the heat monitor to make sure everything will work. We also need you to somehow generate the signal in Tokyo so that InterTech in San Francisco will send out the firing pulses. I think it will take a genius to figure that out,
but I have no doubt that you are up to the task.”

  “Jesus,” Reid said.

  Mueller turned to him. “It’s life insurance for him. He is afraid that I will kill him the moment his usefulness is at an end.”

  “Damned right,” Zerkel said.

  Mueller looked at him. “But you have forgotten something in your haste, Louis. If someone were to go snooping within the FBI’s system, your virus would wipe out the material. I think Mr. Reid could come up with someone who would be willing to do a little snooping for us. What do you think about that?”

  It dawned on Louis in one fell swoop that the German was absolutely correct. He had been stupid, blinded by his own cleverness. Christ. Christ. It wasn’t fair. He turned back to his terminal and brought up the complicated entry system that would get him back into the FBI’s system, when the muzzle of a pistol was placed against his temple.

  “One keystroke and I will kill you,” Mueller said, his voice gentle, as if he were talking to a spooked animal.

  Zerkel’s fingers were poised over his keyboard as he thought it out. He hardly dared to breathe. “If you kill me now, your plan dies with me,” he said very carefully.

  “I will kill you only if you attempt to reveal our names and this location.”

  “I could do it later, while you’re out of the room.”

  “The moment I found out what you’d done, I would kill you, your brother, and Mr. Reid, and make my escape. I am very good at it.”

  Zerkel took great pains to keep his voice even, as if he were simply discussing the weather. “You’ll kill me at the end.”

  “We’ll construct a safeguard against that.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet, Louis. But between the three of us we will come to a mutual agreement.”

  It was always the sly ones, the crafty people who came out on top, not the intellectuals. Most often the men of true genius were left behind, trampled in the dust. It made no sense, nor was it fair. But Louis did understand that it was the way of things in the world. The usual way of things. But he wanted to finish this project. Now that he’d come this far, he wanted to see how it turned out. And he wanted to see about it in the journals and periodicals and especially in the analytical newsletters. He wanted to read the studies that would be done. The psychological profiles of the perpetrators, and especially of the genius who had figured out how to beat the system.