Project Daedalus

by Thomas Hoover

  Chapter Twelve

  Monday 11:32 p.m.

  "When did you receive this?" Tanzan Mino glanced over the cable message once again, then looked up. Although the time was near midnight, the aide had found him still behind his black slate desk. The lights in his penthouse office were turned low, muting the already dull earth tones of the walls. Neko paced across the expanse fronting the wide picture window, flicking her tail and anticipating her evening dinner of water buffalo tartare.

  "Fifteen minutes ago, Mino-sama." He eyed the leopard nervously. "It was logged in on the eleventh floor, over the secure telex. I was reluctant to bother you at this late hour."

  "When you live to my age, you no longer have the patience for sleep. There is so much to do and so little time. Two or three hours are all I allow myself now." He tossed the paper onto his desk, then rose, strolled to the darkened window and, gently pushing Neko aside, gazed down. Below, the neon-lighted streets of Tokyo's Ueno district blazed. "In a way this news is welcome. Perhaps the money is no longer in the hands of an incompetent. I have always preferred doing business with a professional."

  "You would consider dealing with him?" The subordinate, in dark suit and crisp white shirt, tried to mask the surprise in his voice. The oyabun had never let himself be blackmailed.

  "You seem startled." He smiled, then walked over and extracted a raw steak from the cooler in the corner. Neko dropped to her haunches as he tossed it to her. "Don't be. I've spent a lifetime in negotiation."

  That much, his subordinate knew, was true. Tanzan Mino had seen more deals than most men would in a hundred lifetimes. The most important ones had been the back-room kind. For thirty-five years, he'd funneled vast chunks of laundered cash to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's leading politicians, and as a result, he enjoyed final say over all its major decisions, dictating the choice of cabinet ministers, even prime ministers. He was the undisputed godfather of Japan's kuroi kiri, "black mist," the unseen world of political deal making.

  The subordinate also admired Tanzan Mino's discretion. After his ascension to kingpin of the LDP, U.S. interests had funneled over $12 million in cash bribes through him to Japan's most powerful political figures, much of it handled by the Lockheed Corporation. In return, that corporation received over $1 billion in sales to Japan's government and civilian airlines, while the CIA got to sleep easy, knowing America's interests were receiving the close attention of Japan's decision makers. But then, when newspapers finally broke the story that Lockheed's American money had reached the highest levels of the LDP, Tanzan Mino arranged for a rival kuromaku, Yoshio Kodama, to take the fall. As befitted a true professional, he escaped without a hint of scandal.

  It was a deft move that brought him much prestige among those in the circles of power. Besides, with a Yakuza income in the billions, he certainly needed none of the Lockheed money himself. His perennial concern, as everyone also knew, was what to do with all his cash. By the late fifties, Mino Industries Group already owned real estate, shipping lines, construction companies, trucking concerns, newspapers, baseball teams, film companies, even banks. Eventually, when Japan couldn't absorb any more investment, he'd expanded abroad, opening luxurious offices in other Southeast Asian cities, including new digs in Manila's Makati, the Wall Street of Asia, in Hong Kong, in Singapore (a favorite Yakuza town for recruiting prostitutes), in

  Taipei, and on and on. But still, there was the money. And more money . . .

  Kenji Nogami's predecessor had finally suggested the perfect solution to Tanzan Mino's cash dilemma. The safest, most welcome haven for Mino Industries' excess money was just across the Pacific, on the island of Hawaii, where his investments could be protected by the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. In the early sixties he opened a branch of his shadow investment company, Shoshu Kagai, in Honolulu, and today he was, through dummy corporations, the largest landowner in the state.

  Having long since solidified his ties with former militarists and prominent rightists in the Japanese business community, Tanzan Mino turned abroad in the early seventies, offering deals and support to Pacific Rim strongmen such as Chiang Kai-shek, Syngman Rhee, Ferdinand Marcos.

  All of it, however, had merely been preparation for this, his final objective. He was about to reclaim Japanese territory lost in the war, open Soviet Asia for Japan, and pillage the world's leading space program-all in one synergistic strike. Best of all, he was going to do it using foreign, gaijin money.

  Any Yakuza understood well the truth of that classic banking precept: If a man owes you a hundred dollars, you have power over him; if he owes you a million dollars, he has power over you. Tanzan Mino, his subordinate knew, had no intention of handing over half a trillion dollars of Yakuza capital to the Soviet Union, Japan's long-time military adversary. Only a fool would risk that kind of financial exposure, and Tanzan Mino was no fool.

  Which was why he had arranged to tap into the most free-wheeling capital pool of them all: Eurodollars. The money would be raised in London from thousands of anonymous investors through a standard bait-and-switch, then passed through Tokyo banks. No one, least of all the stupid Soviets, would have the slightest idea what was going on. The scenario was brilliant: Japanese financial, industrial, and technological muscle used in concert to realize the ultimate strategic global coup. His lieutenants were unanimous in their admiration.

  "The man's name is Vance?" Tanzan Mino asked. "Hai, Mino-sama. Michael Vance. We ran his name through the computer on the eleventh floor, and the printout showed that he once was with the CIA. The open file ended almost exactly eight years ago, however, and all information subsequent to that-"

  "Vance? CIA?" He felt a sharp pain in his chest, a wrench.

  "Hai, Mino-sama. The file says he was involved in some difficulties that arose over a clandestine funding arrangement, but the rest of our data here are restricted, to be accessed only by your-"

  "Opening his file will not be necessary." Tanzan Mino's voice boomed from the shadows.

  "As you wish." The kobun bowed to the silhouette of his back, still puzzled. "In any case, we have reason to believe he is connected to the NSA cryptographer," he continued nervously, disturbed by the oyabun's change of mood,"the woman we have-"

  "What?" He snapped back from his reverie, his voice still part of the shadows from the window.

  "We suspect that the terms he wants to discuss, in exchange for the funds, may involve her in some way. When our people questioned her in Greece, she claimed that a man named Vance had a duplicate copy of the protocol. At the time we had no idea-"

  "And now you think this is the same man?" His steely eyes narrowed again.

  "Hai, so deshoo. It does lend credibility to his claim he has access to the funds. If he is involved in both our problems-"

  "He has been involved in my 'problems' before." At last, he thought. This was going to be more poetic than he'd realized.

  "If he knows where the protocol is, then-"

  "Then he thinks he is dealing from a position of strength," Tanzan Mino allowed himself a tiny smile. "I would like to contact him directly, through the secure facilities at Westminster Union."

  "Hai, Mino-sama," the man bowed again. "I can so inform Nogami-san in London."

  Below, in the blazing streets of Ueno, the traffic continued to flow. Time. Time was slipping away.

  "Authorize it." He turned back, his silver hair backlighted from the window. "Once we have him . . . perhaps both problems can be solved at once." And, he told himself, I can finally settle an account that has been outstanding far too long. "But I want this solved. Now. No more delays and bungling."

  The sharpness in his voice momentarily startled Neko, who growled her readiness for another steak, then dropped into a defensive crouch.

  "Hai, Mino-sama." A sharp, crisp bow. "I will transmit your wishes to Nogami-san immediately."

  "What news do we have of the woman?"

  "We know she is in London. Our people there have located the hotel where s
he is staying."

  "Then don't waste any more time. Already two attempts by my London oyabun to recover the protocol have been mishandled. He sacrificed three men; two of them were like sons to me. Now I'm beginning to think Vance was responsible."

  "We still do not know what happened in Greece." The dark-eyed kobun watched with relief as Neko returned her attention to the window, tail switching. "Authorities there advise that all our men were found shot, one in Crete and two at Delphi. They have an investigation underway, but they only will say that different weapons were used in each case."

  "They will be avenged." Tanzan Mino flexed his knuckles together thoughtfully, feeling his resolve strengthen. "I am sending four kobun to London tonight. My personal Boeing is being fueled and readied as we speak. Tell them I will radio initial instructions after they are in flight. Further orders will be channeled through the Docklands office."

  "But the man . . . Vance? If the woman is part of the 'deal' he wants in order to forward the funds, then-"

  "That is all." His dark eyes had grown strangely opaque.

  "As soon as I've completed my 'arrangement' with him, they will kill her."

  Tuesday 2:00 p.m.

  The meeting was in the North Quadrant of the Hokkaido facility, in the senior staff briefing room. The project kurirovat, Ivan Semenovich Lemontov, was at the head of the table as co-moderator. Flanked on his left was Petr Ivanovich Gladkov, the youthful director of aeronautics; Felix Vasilevich Budnikov, robust director of flight control systems; and Andrei Petrovich Androv, director of propulsion systems. On Lemontov's right was the other comoderator, the Japanese project director, Taro Ikeda.

  Seated across the metal table, facing them all, was Yuri Andreevich Androv.

  "We will begin today's agenda by reviewing Monday morning's test flight," Ikeda began, speaking in Russian. He was chairing the meeting as though by mutual consent. Soviet booster technology and aerodynamic know-how might be what made the project go, but when all was said and done, it was the money that talked. And the project financing was Japanese. "The pilot's report will be our first item."

  Yuri nodded and glanced at the notes on the table before him. Make this quick, he told himself.

  "I'm happy to report that, once again, the handling characteristics of the vehicle correlated closely with our up-and-away simulation in the Fujitsu SX-10. On takeoff the vehicle rotated very nicely into a lift-off attitude of six point five degrees. My target attitude was seven point five degrees, and once I'd captured that I accelerated out to seven hundred knots, then climbed to forty-nine thousand feet for the first series of maneuver blocks-the roll maneuvers, pitch maneuvers, and yaw maneuvers-intended to verify handling characteristics and control activity at high altitude. As on all other flights, the directional stability was excellent, with a very large restoring moment. In the yaw maneuvers, one rudder kick gave me an overshoot but the vehicle immediately steadied. And the pitch maneuvers again showed that her actuating system enhances stability very fast. In fact, all maneuvers matched our simulations within acceptable limits. I also did some banks up to fifty degrees to get the stick force as I pulled back. The turn performance matched specifications, with very little control activity required. I also carried out some bank-to- bank maneuvers, to get the roll rates; the block included quarter stick, half stick, and three-quarter stick. Very stable. The augmented controls did not move out, that is, move around a lot."

  He paused for breath, stealing a glance at the room. Just bury them in data overload, he thought. Don't give them time to ask questions.

  Before anyone could speak, he pressed on. "I also took the vehicle through the prescribed block of throttle maneuvers. Remember that in ramjet mode the engines are fan-controlled, with all controls in the initial stage. As scheduled, I pulled all the throttles to idle and then took them all the way up to rated thrust. And as always, they were very responsive and didn't have to hunt for their setting."

  "Good," Ikeda said, "but the main reason-"

  "Exactly. As scheduled, at 0210 hours I terminated JP-7 feed to the portside outboard trident, causing an unstart. With asymmetric thrust, I expected adverse yaw, as in the roll maneuver, but the control system stabilized it immediately. I also assumed there'd be some sideslip, so I put rudder in, but then I realized handling was going to be feet on the floor. This vehicle is a dream." He paused to smile. "Anyway, I then initiated restart at 0219 hours." He shoved forward the documents piled by his side. "These charts indicate that rpm achieved ninety percent nominal within eleven seconds. All the-"

  "I've already reviewed those," Ikeda interrupted, not looking down. "We are pleased with the results of your maneuver blocks, Major Androv, and also the vehicle's turboramjet restart characteristics." He cleared his throat. "However, there was another maneuver last night that does not please us."

  Here it comes, Yuri thought. The fucker wants to know what happened. Get your story ready.

  "As you are undoubtedly aware," Ikeda continued, "the Japanese space program has an advanced spacecraft tracking center at Tsukuba Science City, with two Facom M-380-R primary computers. The center is linked to a tracking antenna at Katsura, near Tokyo, as well as to one at the Masuda station, near our spacecraft launch pads on Tanegeshima." He glared at the younger Androv. "You are cognizant of that, are you not?"

  "I am." He met Ikeda's gaze.

  "We engage those tracking stations for your test flights because of the altitudes involved. When Daedalus is airborne, all their other assignments are temporarily shunted to our deep-space tracking facility on Okinawa, in the south." He paused again, as though to control his anger. "In other words, we have arranged it so that the stations at Katsura and Masuda are dedicated to your flights whenever you take her aloft. You are aware of that as well?"

  "Of course." Yuri started to smile, but stopped himself.

  "Then we are puzzled, Major Androv. How do you explain the following events? At 0230 hours you shut down your air-traffic-control transponder. That was proper, since you were scheduled to switch to classified frequencies. But you did not report immediately on those frequencies, as specified in the mission flight plan. For approximately twelve minutes we had no navigational information from you whatsoever. Also, radio and computer linkages were interrupted."

  "An inadvertent mistake," Yuri said, shifting.

  "We thought so at first. In fact, both our tracking stations automatically performed a computerized frequency scan, thinking you'd switched to the wrong channels by accident, but you had not. You deliberately terminated all communications. We want to know why."

  "I was pretty busy in the cockpit just then. I guess-"

  "Yes, we assumed you would be, since you insisted on shutting down the navigational computers," Ikeda continued, his voice like the icy wind whistling across the island. "We find your next action particularly troubling. At that time we still had you on tracking radar, and we observed that as soon as the transponder was turned off, you altered your heading one hundred forty degrees . . . south, over the Japan Sea. Then you performed some unscheduled maneuver, perhaps a snap-roll, and immediately began a rapid descent. At that moment we lost you on the radar. With no radio contact, we feared it was a flame-out, that you'd crashed the vehicle. But then, at exactly 0242 hours you reappeared on the Katsura radar, ascending at thirty- eight thousand feet. At that time radio contact also was resumed." Ikeda paused, trying to maintain his composure. "What explanation do you have for this occurrence, and for what appeared to be an explicit radar-evasion maneuver?"

  "I don't know anything about the radar. I just wanted to check out handling characteristics under different conditions. It was only a minor add-on to the scheduled maneuvers, which is why I didn't-"

  "Which is why you didn't include it in your flight report." Ikeda's dark eyes bored into him. "Is that what you expect us to assume?"

  The Soviet team was exchanging nervous glances. They all knew Yuri Androv was sometimes what the Americans called a cowboy, but this una
uthorized hot-dogging sounded very irresponsible. None of them had heard about it until now.

  "An oversight. There was so much-"

  "Major Androv," Ikeda interrupted him, "you are on official leave from the Soviet Air Force. No one in this room has the military rank to discipline you. But I would like you to know that we view this infraction as a very grave circumstance."

  "You're right. It was stupid." Time to knuckle under, he thought. "Let me formally apologize to the project management, here and now. It was a grave lapse of judgment on my part."

  "Yuri Andreevich, I must say I'm astonished," the elder Androv finally spoke up. "I had no idea you would ever take it into your head to do something like this, to violate a formal test sequence."

  He smiled weakly. "I just . . . well, I always like to try and expand the envelope a little, see what a new bird's got in her."

  And, he told himself, I did. Just now. I found out two things. First, I can evade the bastards' tracking stations by switching off the transponder, then going "on the deck." I can defeat their network and disappear. I needed to find out if it could be done and now I have. Great! Ikeda's other little slip merely confirms what I'd begun to suspect. This fucking plane is designed to-

  "Major Androv, this unacceptable behavior must not be repeated." Ikeda's eyes were filled with anger and his tone carried an unmistakable edge of threat. "Do you understand? Never. This project has far too much at stake to jeopardize it by going outside stipulated procedure."

  "I understand." Yuri bowed his head.

  "Do you?" The project director's voice rose, uncharacteristically. "If any such reckless action is ever repeated, I warn you now that there will be consequences. Very grave consequences."

  Bet your ass there'll be consequences, Yuri thought. Because the next time I do it, I'm going to smoke out Mino Industries' whole game plan. There'll be consequences like you never dreamed of, you smooth-talking, scheming son of a bitch.

  Tuesday 8:46 p.m.

  "What does it tell you?" Yuri shaded his eyes from the glare of the hangar fluorescents and pointed, directing his father's gaze toward the dark gray of the fuselage above them. The old man squinted and looked up. "Can you see it? The underside is darker, and it's honeycombed. The air scoops, even the engine housings, everywhere. Very faint, but it's there."

  Andrei Androv stared a moment before he spoke. "Interesting. Odd I hadn't noticed it before. But I assume that's just part of the skin undersupport."

  "Wrong. Just beneath the titanium-composite exterior is some kind of carbon-ferrite material, deliberately extruded into honeycombing. But you almost can't see it in direct light." He placed his hand on his father's shoulder. "Now come on and let me show you something else."

  He led the elder Androv toward the truck-mounted stair, gleaming steel, that led up into the open hatch just aft of the wide wings.

  "Let's go up into the aft cargo bay. That's where it's exposed."

  The Japanese technicians and mechanics were scurrying about, paying them virtually no heed as they mounted the steel steps and then disappeared into the cavernous underbelly of the Daedalus. The interior of the bay was lighted along the perimeter with high-voltage sodium lamps.

  "Have you ever been inside here?" Yuri's voice echoed slightly as he asked the question, then waited. He already suspected the answer.

  "Of course. The propulsion staff all had a quick tour, several months ago. Back before-"

  "Just what I suspected. A quick walk-through. Now I want you to see something else. I'm going to perform an experiment on this 'aluminum' strut." He extracted a pocket knife and quickly opened it.

  "This frame looks like metal, right? But watch."

  He rammed the blade into the supporting I-beam that ran along the side of the cargo bay.

  "Yuri, what-"

  It had passed through almost as though the beam were made of Styrofoam.

  "It's not metal. It's a layered carbon-carbon composite. Just like the flaps. A damned expensive material, even for them. For the leading edges, maybe even all the exterior, it makes sense, because of the skin temperature in the hypersonic regime. But why in here? Inside? Why use it for these interior structural components?"

  "Perhaps it was to economize on weight, I don't know." The old man wrinkled his already-wrinkled brow.

  "Wrong again. Now look up there." He directed his father's gaze to the ceiling of the bay. "Notice how the lining

  is sawtooth-shaped. I've seen this kind of design before. Weight's not the reason."

  "So what are you saying?" The old man's confusion was genuine.

  "You're out of touch with the real world." He smiled grimly. "Maybe you've been buried at Baikonur too long, with your head in string quartets and classical Greek. This carbon-carbon composite is used for all the structural elements. There's virtually no metal in this plane at all. And the shape of the fuselage, all those sweeping curves and streamlining. It's probably smart aerodynamic design, sure, but it serves another purpose too. This vehicle has been well thought out."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Don't you get it? Radar. The shape of the fuselage is deliberately designed to diffuse and deflect radar. And all that honeycombing on the underside is radar-absorbing. Then this in here. The carbon-carbon composites used for this airframe, and that saw-toothing up there, will just absorb what radar energy does get through." He turned back. "This vehicle is as radar-defeating as the U.S. Stealth bomber. Maybe more so. Some of our experimental planes use the same techniques."

  "But why? I don't understand. There's no reason."

  "You're right about that. There's no need for all this radar-evasive design, all these special materials. Unless . . ." He paused, then checked below to make sure that no technicians were within earshot. "Last night, when I took her down, I maintained the yaw at ninety degrees, making sure their tracking antenna at Katsura could only see the underside of the fuselage. And guess what. The real story slipped out there at the meeting. This plane just vanished off their radar screens. Disappeared. But now Ikeda knows I know."

  The elder Androv stared at him. For years people had told him his son was too smart to be a jet jockey. They were right. All these years he'd never given him enough credit. "I think I'm beginning to understand what you're saying. For a space platform to have-"

  "Exactly. The underside of this vehicle has an almost

  nonexistent radar signature. Probably about like a medium-sized bird. All you'd have to do is darken it some more and it's gone. Now what the hell's the purpose?"

  The elder Androv didn't respond immediately. He was still puzzling over the staff meeting. He'd never seen the project director so upset. Admittedly Yuri had violated procedures and violated them egregiously, but still . . . Ikeda's flare of anger was a side of the man not previously witnessed by anybody on the Soviet team.

  Also, he continued to wonder at their sudden rush to a hypersonic test flight. Pushing it ahead by months had created a lot of fast-track problems. Why was Mino Industries suddenly in such a hurry? And now, this mystery. Yuri was right. An air-breathing orbital platform for near-space research didn't need to evade radar. The world would be cheering it, not shooting at it. Very puzzling. And troubling.

  "Yuri, you've got a point. None of this makes any sense."

  "Damned right it doesn't. And there's more. You should see the ECM equipment on this thing, the electronic countermeasures for defeating hostile surveillance and defense systems. It's all state of the art."

  Andrei Androv's dark eyes clouded. "Why wasn't I informed of any of this?"

  "Your propulsion team, your aeronautics specialists, all your technical people have been given green eyeshades and assigned neat little compartments. Nobody's getting the whole picture. Besides, I don't know anybody here who's really on top of the latest classified Stealth technology."

  "Well, the truth is none of us has had time to think about it." The old man had never seemed older.

  "Let me tell you a secret." Yuri
lowered his voice to something approaching a whisper. "Lemontov has thought about it. Our little project kurirovat, that CPSU hack, thinks he's going to take this plane back home and copy the design to build a fleet of hypersonic-whatever you want to call these-invisible death machines, maybe. He hinted as much to me about four nights ago."

  "I absolutely won't hear of it." Andrei Androv's eyes were grim with determination.

  "My dear father," Yuri used the affectionate Russian diminutive, "you may not have a damned thing to say about it. I'm convinced Lemontov or whoever gives him his orders has every intention of trying to convert this vehicle into a weapons delivery system, and Mino Industries, I also now believe, has already built one. Right here. It's ready to go. But whichever way, space research is way down everybody's list. So the real question is, who's going to try and fuck who first?"

  "I guess the last person able to answer that question is me." The old man's eyes were despondent as he ran his fingers through his long mane of white hair.

  Yuri laughed and draped his arm around his father once again. "Well, nobody else around here seems to know either. Or care."

  "But what are we going to do?"

  "I've got a little plan cooking. I don't want to talk about it now, but let's just say I'm going to screw them all, count on it."