“What other option do we have?” Theo asked. “We’re flying blind as it is. People gave their lives to rescue that little girl. We can’t just drop her anywhere.”
Kano asked Emily if they had a way to contact his mother.
“It might be as simple as placing a phone call,” Crichton said. “We can patch one through Sasebo.”
Once Emily had translated for him, Kano said, “I believe my mother would choose to take such a risk.”
* * *
“The problem is figuring out where in Japan it’s safe to return the princess to,” Michael said, on another one of his brief stops back home.
Andie and Yuki had stayed up most of the night to celebrate the good news he’d managed to find the time to leak to them from work in the middle of the night. It came as a cryptic phone message: “Our girl plucked a chrysanthemum blossom.” They wept for joy and screamed at the very wonder of it all, and now fatigue had set in.
“The answer is simple,” Andie said. “Reunite the princess with her family.”
“If only it were that simple. The Crown Prince went into hiding after the attack, and forces loyal to the new regime have been scouring the countryside for him.”
“Surely you must have some idea where he is.” Yuki said.
“I have an idea where I’d be, if I were in his shoes. I’d be on Hokkaido somewhere, because public support for the coup is weaker there. I might hide in the mountains around…”
“Asahikawa. It’s a popular tourist area, but it’s probably deserted now. We used to go there when I was a child… and it has its own airport.”
“That’s not a bad guess, but it’s not just about finding the Crown Prince. We need the reunion to take place in front of cameras. If it’s splashed all over the news, that may spell the end of the coup… and Asahikawa may be too isolated for that purpose.”
“Monbetsu? It’s a port town, big enough to have local TV news…”
“We thought of that, too. It’s risky. The Jietai constantly patrols the northern channel because of the proximity to Sakhalin.”
“What’s left, then? Hakodate?”
“I wish we’d had you with us last night. It took us hours to figure that out, and you got there in three minutes. Hakodate is the right size, and it’s so close to Misawa Air Force Base that going there would be unexpected. That’s what we recommended to the DCI, but with all the noise surrounding this business, it’s not clear our recommendation will be heard.”
“What’s SECNAV think?” Andie asked.
“Tom seems to have come to his senses, after he got burned by the Chinese, he’s open to all suggestions. He thinks we should let the Admiral decide, since he’s on scene.”
“Ted Hannifin?”
“No, Admiral Crichton. He runs the Pacific Fleet, and he can respond to developments faster than we can. But we still have no way to communicate with the Crown Prince.”
“Oh, that should be the easiest part,” Yuki said. “I bet his people are looking for a way to get a message out.”
“You know what this will all come down to, don’t you?” Andie said. “Some back-channel no intelligence service would think to use, like the mother of a chance acquaintance.”
“I don’t think the Crown Prince has chance acquaintances.”
“Maybe not, but I’m pretty sure the Crown Princess does. She wasn’t raised under the watchful eyes of the Imperial Household Agency, and you already know someone she communicates with.”
Working out the details with Kano’s mother turned out to be easy enough, once the Admiral indicated that she was willing to serve as a go-between. She would get a message to Ozawa, though she would probably not confirm that the Crown Prince really was on Hokkaido, even if she knew.
* * *
“It’s in our laps,” Crichton said. “SECNAV says we’ll have to make the decision on our end. There’s no time to wait for further clearances. We have an advantage as long as the Chinese don’t know we’ve eliminated Diao. Once his father finds out, he’ll probably move to attack any planes we send north, which means we need to act fast.”
“There’s way too much riding on this,” Theo said. “We lack key bits of intell to make a good decision. If we get it wrong, the best case is that the entire region is realigned, and probably antagonistic to western interests.”
“… and the worst case is a shooting war that we’re sure to get sucked into.”
“I don’t know how those generalities are going to help us,” Kim said. “Admiral, we can control some of the risks.”
“How?”
“First of all, a feint. We make like we’re going to Tokyo, maybe even seek clearance to land at Hamamatsu with our main squadron.”
“Right, and in the meantime, we send the princess up north in something inconspicuous, like a C-2A Greyhound.”
“It’s risky,” Theo said.
“But it just might work. We can minimize risk with a fighter escort.”
“It’ll have to be discreet or it may tip our hand, too.”
“We have six EA-18G’s in theater,” Kim said. “We use them to jam electronic signals. That’ll protect against SAM’s. But we need to set things in motion soon.”
“I agree,” Theo said. “Speed is our ally in this. If we wait to have the perfect plan, we only give the coup plotters more time to solidify their position.”
“If we send Kano and the Jietai north now in a C-2A to give them time to lock down Hakodate, we can have the princess and her retinue arrive thirty minutes later on another one.” Kim paused to work out some calculations on a map. “We’ll have to send them wide east to avoid any threats in the East China Sea, which means a six-hour flight from our current position at a cruising speed of two hundred fifty knots. Meanwhile, the F-18’s push supersonic up and down the Tokyo corridor, you know, make a lot of noise and indicate an intention to land at Hamamatsu…”
“I get it,” Theo said. “The whole time, they’re actually riding shotgun for Kano and the Princess.”
Crichton paced the room, occasionally running a hand through a thinning hairline. After a moment or two, Kim cleared his throat. “Sir, we can make…”
“You’ve already sold me, Captain. Contact Hargrove on the Nimitz and make it happen.” Crichton stood up and ushered his officers out, but Theo lingered behind.
“I have to ask, sir…”
“If it’s about Lieutenant Tenno, there’s nothing I can do.”
“It’s just that, without her, there’s no way…”
“You don’t have to convince me, Mr. Leone. If things turn out as we hope over the next day or so, the debt we all will owe her is… well, it’s huge. But she can’t receive any recognition for it, even if she were willing.”
“You mean what she said about giving the Jietai all the credit?”
“It’s more than that. The stunt she pulled, taking on Diao, it was foolish, and it got people killed.”
“In the heat of battle, sir, decisions are never perfect.”
“You’ll have to convince her of that.”
Eventually, Theo conceded the impossibility of arranging any sort of commendation for Emily, and the Admiral managed to guide him out of the wardroom. All that remained for his morning was to figure out what to do with just over forty surviving Chinese soldiers, most of whom had already indicated that they’d rather not return home.
* * *
When a royal personage makes a request, you don’t turn it down lightly, even if she’s only three feet tall. That’s why Emily found herself in the helicopter carrying Princess Toshi to the USS Nimitz, along with Tsukino and a few of Kano’s men. From there, a fixed-wing turboprop would take her on a lumbering, roundabout journey to Hakodate Airport. Emily would not be on that plane, though she had yet to determine the best way to break this news to the princess.
For most of the twenty-minute flight, Toshi sat next to Emily, holding her hand or resting her head in her lap – she’d have climbed on if not for the bandag
es. What did the princess care about the puzzlement of her bodyguard? Tsukino looked like he could hardly keep from laughing at the scene, or perhaps at the complete inversion of values he’d cherished for so long. Emily tried to imagine what he might be thinking. Here she was, an outsider, and not only did the little princess prize her attentions above all others, but….
“You were right about Diao,” he said.
Emily raised her eyes to meet his. “Right about what?”
“He was scarcely human. You tried to warn me that day in the hangar deck.” He gestured to his bandaged wrist. “How were you able to defeat him?”
“I got lucky. He was not able to keep his cool around me.”
“That’s not what I heard. They said you practically sacrificed yourself. He nearly killed you.”
Weary of this topic, Emily tried to turn the conversation to something else, while she stroked Toshi’s hair. “I hear you will leave the Jietai. Is that true?”
“Yes, Tenno-san. I no longer feel at home there.”
“Will you enter the priesthood?
“That is what my family wishes.”
“But not you?”
Tsukino let out a long breath and examined his shoes with some care. “These last few weeks, I’ve come to see… much more clearly than ever before, how entirely our lives must be shaped by forces outside ourselves.” He paused to think for a moment, and met her eyes again. “It is a fortunate person whose desires are in accord with those forces.”
Emily nodded, but said nothing. If only Tsukino knew how much the two of them shared from that perspective. Her mind traversed the world she knew and found much to marvel at. How little had she expected to meet someone like Hsu Qi, that strange woman who had seen so deeply into her soul, and who had known her father. The island she shared with her brother, a haven from reprisals by the junta in Myanmar, it also tugged at Emily’s consciousness. She’d heard the voices urging her to return there, to let herself die there and be buried among the trees, her bones dissolving into the volcanic soil, while the atoms that once formed her personality would find their way into the foliage and the grass. If she thought it might give her shelter from the ghosts that crowded in on her at unguarded moments, she would obey them.
Hsu Qi referred to her as a moon-child, and the thought offered some consolation. She found comfort in the shadows, and in the dark of night, and Amaterasu-omikami’s interest in her had always felt intrusive. When the disk of the moon spoke to her that night, she knew to heed it… him.
The helicopter put down on one side of the deck of the Nimitz, and men in yellow jerseys guided them over to a C2-A at one end. Emily stopped at the tailgate of the cargo plane, and crouched down to embrace the princess.
“It is time to be brave again, your Highness. If all goes well, your mother will be waiting for you at the other end.”
Toshi squeezed her neck, not wanting to let go.
“Go with my friend, Moon-san,” she whispered into Toshi’s ear. “He will take good care of you.”
Tsukino bent over to lift her into his arms, and turned to allow the princess to wave goodbye. A few moments later, the turboprop roared across the deck as Emily watched from the side of the Phrog.
Chapter 29
The House of Cards
Riding in the personal jet that her new office seemed to mandate, Gyoshin realized that she was beginning to feel comfortable with the trappings of supreme power. Glancing around the cabin at her retainers – four bodyguards, a personal assistant, and the young man who managed her digital communications, and who always carried a large satchel and a backpack full of electronic gear – she saw how sorry she would be to have to give them up.
The tablet she held in her lap absent-mindedly streamed the latest news. Public unrest in the major cities had been increasing over the past two days, just when Jin-san had promised it would settle down. Around the main government buildings, it took the remarkable form of people lined up in orderly rows chanting. Nothing hectic, nothing feverish, but the size of the gatherings was alarming. This was the way of the older generation. Elsewhere, in the commercial districts of Tokyo and Osaka, young people protested much more raucously, as well as in the central train stations of Kyoto and Nagoya, Yokohama, Kumamoto and Nagasaki, and even further north, around the port cities of Niigata and Akita. Violence and rioting had been minimal so far, but if it didn’t subside soon, Jin-san would insist on sending troops into the cities, and Gyoshin knew this would erode their credibility even further.
A moment of nausea overtook her, and she rested her head against the window, her eyes closed to the clouds slipping past in the distance. Was this airsickness, or something worse? Pinpricks of light flickered under her eyelids, growing brighter and more colorful, until they resolved themselves into a familiar image. Her cousin’s feet in a pair of scuffed Mary-Jane’s hovered just inches from her nose.
“Wait for me, Taka,” she cried in a child’s voice, her fingers scraped raw probing for hand-holds in the castle wall.
“You’ve got to keep up, Go-Go.” Takako giggled down at her, before scampering even higher, too high now to fall safely.
Gyoshin followed Takako’s voice, her fingers finding the gaps her fear had concealed from her a moment earlier. Sitting on a ledge, she clutched her cousin’s hand and hurled sibling mockery on her brother below, until another thought shook her with the force of inevitability. “Great, how do we get down?”
“Who wants to go down?” Her cousin kissed her cheek and pointed to the top. “We’re going higher.”
The young tech assistant, Eiichi-san, cleared his throat and reached forward to pass her the handset of the satphone she now relied on for important communications. “It is Soga-sama,” he said, and then slid back into his seat.
Gyoshin looked at the device in her hand, and let it slip into her lap. She would need a moment to shake the reverie out of her mind. “If only Taka could see me,” she thought. “Have I climbed high enough?” She couldn’t decide if her cousin would laugh her to shame, or help her plot Jin-san’s assassination. Taka would know what to do next. A voice buzzed from her lap and brought her back to the dreary moment.
“Gyoshin-san, did all go well with Colonel Hosokawa?” There was much to admire in the cold tone Jin-san had adopted over the last few days. It was an improvement over the insincere warmth she had become so familiar with.
“Yes. He knows what we expect of him.”
“Good, we may need him. American fighter squadrons have breached Tokyo airspace in the last two hours. The commander at Hamamatsu tells me we cannot get a missile-lock on them.”
“Has there been any communication?”
“No, the ambassador is unavailable, and the American admiral is not currently in residence at Sasebo.”
“That is worrisome.” Gyoshin weighed the significance of the American ambasador’s silence. Given his volubility over the previous two days, and in light of the newly aggressive posture of their Air Force, for him to be aloof now suggested a shift in tactics. Were they looking to manufacture an excuse for military intervention?
“I have directed the southern air bases to be on heightened alert. The next step is to declare a no-fly zone over Okinawa.”
“They are merely testing our resolve, Jin-san. They mean to provoke an over-reaction. Patience will serve us well in such cases.” Gyoshin knew this was not advice her co-conspirator would be able to follow easily, and she derived no little pleasure from this thought. “Have you heard yet from General Diao, or his son?”
“No. It is distressing that there is no news of his troops having taken Beijing yet. His operation depended on speed, and if he is bogged down in a long struggle, he will fail.”
“If we have not heard from Captain Diao by now, I think we should assume he is either dead, or has betrayed us.”
“Betrayed us how?” The tremor in Jin-san’s voice was audible even over the digital connection. This was a contingency she had not prepared for.
“He may have kept the princess alive, to use against us later.”
“You mean he may intend to produce her later to undermine our public support, is that it?”
“It is a possibility worth considering.” In fact, Gyoshin’s confidence in this possibility made it more akin to a likelihood in her mind. This had been a weak point in the original plan – General Diao would have wanted to preserve some leverage over his new allies. She had hoped the Crown Prince’s family would have been killed in the initial attack or in the subsequent pursuit, thereby sealing off this risk. But they had underestimated the resolve of Ozawa and his men both at that moment and later. It could prove to be a fatal error, and there was nothing to be done about it now. What a terrible result – Gyoshin had to blame herself for it – to have risked so much to gain the supreme authority in her country, only to render it a vassal state to their ancient rivals.
After an uncomfortable silence, Jin-san returned to a familiar difficulty. “We need to enforce order in the streets. Our support will bounce back as soon as business returns to normal.”
“Are you going to quote Napoleon to me again?”
“But he was right… a ‘whiff of grapeshot’ did calm down the crowds.”
“Violence against the public will hurt our cause, especially if it goes on for very long.”
“Then we set an example, in one of the smaller cities. Achieve order in, say, Nagano, and the other cities will fall in line.”
In the end, Gyoshin didn’t wish to oppose Jin-san every time she urged some sort of crackdown. It was necessary to achieve order, and the sooner this happened, the sooner the rule of law could be restored. At some level, perhaps it was also true that she was beginning to appreciate the sense of noble entitlement her grandfather had always displayed. From her current height, ordinary people seemed to be just that, creatures of a day.
After handing the phone back to Eiichi-san, she took a moment to contemplate her fellow passengers. A young man with tech-skills enjoyed a certain freedom to imagine his future more openly than a low-level civil servant, like Rinko-san. Gyoshin had plucked her from a list of similar drones with interchangeable skills to be her personal assistant. In effect, she had launched her on a new career arc that would either be the making of the girl, or her unmaking. No one would hold the bodyguards accountable for the actions of the new regime – if their careers in the Defense Ministry suffered any sort of eclipse in the aftermath, they’d find work as mercenaries, no doubt for considerably more money.
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