Fortunes of War

by Stephen Coonts

  In Washington, D.C., the president of the United States was getting ready for bed. He was going to bed alone, as usual, because his wife was at a soiree somewhere in Georgetown, playing the First Lady role to the hilt. The president was chewing two anti-acid tablets when he picked up the ringing telephone and mumbled, “Uumpf.”

  “Mr. President, the emperor of Japan was assassinated in the Imperial Palace about two hours ago. The report is that he was beheaded.”

  The voice was that of Jack Innes, national security adviser. He would have been called about this matter by the duty officers in the White House situation room. “Who did it?”

  “Apparently a junior officer in the military and three enlisted men. They got into the palace by posing as telephone repairmen. Lopped off the emperor’s head with a four-hundred-year-old samurai sword. Then they committed suicide.”

  “All of them?”

  “All four. The officer stabbed himself in the gut; then someone shot him in the head. The three enlisted apparently shot themselves.”

  “Jesus I”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right-wing group?”

  “Apparently they were followers of some right-wing cult, Mishima something. They left a letter written in blood, full of bullshit about Japan’s destiny and national glory.”

  “Have we received any answer from the emperor to my letter?” the president asked. “Not to my knowledge, sir. I’ll check with the Tokyo embassy and the State Department.”

  “Do we even know if he received it?”

  “It was delivered to the Japanese government by our ambassador. That is all we know for certain.”

  “We are fast running out of options.”

  “We should know more in the morning, Mr. President.”

  “When you know more, wake me up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  President David Herbert Hood cradled the instrument and lay down on his bed. He was very tired. It seemed that he was always in that condition these days. So Naruhito was dead. Murdered. And the letter had accomplished nothing. The president, Jack Innes, and the secretary of state had sweated for three days over the wording in that letter. After careful consideration, they had decided not to mention the fact that the United States had a secret military protocol with Russia promising military aid if Russia’s borders were ever violated. The protocol was three years old, negotiated and signed as an inducement to Russia’s fledgling democratic government to speed up the pace of nuclear disarmament. Even he, David Herbert Hood, had personally told the Russian president that the secret protocol was a solemn promise: “Russian territory is as sacred as the boundaries of the United States.”

  Well, a promise is a promise, but whether the promise would be honored was a different matter entirely. The president got out of bed and went to the window. He stood there looking at the lights of Washington. After a bit, he sank into a chair and rubbed his head. He had spent the last twenty years in politics and he had seen his share of unexpected disasters. Most of the time, he had learned, the best thing to do was nothing at all. Yes, nothing was usually best. The Japanese had another crisis on their hands, and the Japanese were going to have to solve it. He should get some sleep. The news from the far side of the Pacific had been getting steadily worse for years. Democracy in Russia had been a mixed blessing. Freed at last from Communist tyranny and mismanagement, the Russians soon found they lacked the ability to create a stable government. Corruption and bribery were endemic everywhere, in every occupation and walk of life. A dying man couldn’t see a doctor without bribing the receptionist. Apparently, the only people doing well in the post-Communist era were the criminals. Ethnic minorities all over Russia had seized this moment to demand self-government, their own enclaves. If the Russian government didn’t get a grip soon, a new dictator was inevitable. In the United States, the public didn’t want to hear bad news from overseas. The recent crisis in the Mideast had doubled the price of oil, here and around the world, a harbinger of shortages to come. Still, America had oil, so it didn’t suffer as badly as Japan did. And the oil was flowing again. All in all, life in America was very, very good. And David Herbert Hood had the extreme good fortune to be riding the crest of the wave, presiding at the world’s greatest party. His popularity was at a historic high; the nation was prosperous and at peace … He would go into the history books with a smile on his face, children would read his biography in grade school for the next century, at least, and … Japan was about to invade Siberia. The president stared gloomily at the lights out there in the night. He had this feeling that, for some reason just beyond the edge of the light, mankind had been enjoying a rare interlude of prosperity and peace. They certainly hadn’t earned it. The emperor … murdered. My God! The man was the benign symbol of all that was best in the Japanese culture. And they cut off his head!

  Captain Jiro Kimura sat on the small balcony of his flat, staring between apartment and office buildings at Mount Fuji and drinking a beer. Although he was looking at Fuji, in his mind’s eye he saw Pikes Peak, stark, craggy, looming high into the blue Colorado sky. “The Peak of Pike,” his fellow cadets had called it, back when they were students at the U.s. Air Force Academy. It was in his second or third year that three of his friends convinced themselves, and him, that they should run up the mountain. And back down. They tried it the second weekend in September, a Pikes Peak marathon, thirteen miles up and thirteen down. Jiro Kimura smiled at the memory. What studs they had been back then, whippet-lean, tough as sole leather, ready to conquer the world!

  They actually made it to the top of the mountain and back down. Still, the last few miles going up, the pace was not what anyone would call a run. Not above twelve thousand feet!

  Although that weekend had been almost twelve years ago, Jiro could recall the faces of those boys as if it were yesterday. He could see Frank Truax’s shy, toothy grin; Joe Layfield’s freckles and jug ears; Ben Franklin Garcia’s white teeth flashing in his handsome brown face. Garcia had died six years ago in an F-16 crash, somewhere in Nevada. They said his engine flamed out and, rather than ejecting, he tried to stretch a glide. That sure sounded like Ben Garcia, “the pride of Pecos, Texas,” as they called him back then. He had been tough and smart, with something to prove, something Jiro Kimura could never quite put a finger on. Well, Ben was gone now, gone to wherever it is God sends those driven men when they finally fall to earth. Truax was somewhere in the states flying C-141’s, and Layfield was getting a master’s degree in finance. And Jiro Kimura was flying Japan’s top-secret fighter plane, the new Zero. His wife, Shizuko, came out onto the balcony with another beer. “Colonel Cassidy will be here soon,” she said, a gentle reminder that he might wish to dress in something besides a T-shirt and shorts. Jiro smiled his thanks. Bob Cassidy. He had been a major back then, a young fighter pilot at the Academy for a tour. He had been commander of Giro’s cadet squadron. He took a liking to the Japanese youngster, who had nowhere to go for weekends or holidays, so he took him home. Cassidy was married then, to Sweet Sabrina, as he always called her.

  Never just Sabrina, always with the adjective before her name, and always with a smile. Sweet Sabrina … with the long brown hair and a ready smile … She and the boy died in a car wreck two years after Jiro graduated. Cassidy never remarried. He should have married again, Jiro Kimura told himself, and he involuntarily glanced through the open door at Shizuko, busy within. Perhaps Cassidy had never found another woman who measured up to Sweet Sabrina. Perhaps … Ah, if only he could go back. If only he could go back and relive those days, go back to the patio in Cassidy’s yard with Truax and Garcia and Layfield, with Sweet Sabrina serving cold beer to boys not yet twenty-one while Bob Cassidy pretended not to notice, someone tuning the radio to the station called “The Peak” because it played all the top hits. Just one day … that wouldn’t be asking too much. A hot day, in the high eighties or low nineties, so the sweat on your skin would evaporate as fast as it appeared, a hot, high, dry day, with that Colorad
o sun warming your face and a faint scent of juniper in the air and the shady side of Pikes Peak purple in the afternoon. Jiro missed those days. He missed those people. Or most of them, anyway. He certainly didn’t miss Major Tarleton, the physics professor, whose two uncles had died in the western Pacific, “fighting the Japs.” That was the way he’d phrased it, wasn’t it, while staring at Jiro as if he had personally ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor? There had been others, too, officers and enlisted, who went out of their way to let him know they didn’t appreciate the fact that a Japanese soldier was training at the U.s. Air Force Academy. Tarleton had been more than prejudiced — he had tried to ruin Jiro’s academic career, gave him a failing grade for quiz after quiz, even though every answer was correct. Afraid, alone, Jiro endured in silence. Then Tarleton accused him of cheating on an exam. An ice-cold Bob Cassidy called the young cadet into his office, grilled him until he had it all. The following Monday morning, Tarleton was gone, and Jiro heard no more about the alleged honor code violation. Cassidy was like that. He would risk everything to save one scared kid. Jiro Kimura took another drag at the beer and stared with unseeing eyes at the snowcapped cone of Fuji. Maybe what he missed was America. He wiped the tears from his eyes. They had never asked who his father was, what he did, how much money he had. Not once. They took him for who he was, what he was. And they made him one of them. Cassidy was a colonel now, the Air Force liaison officer at the U.s. embassy in Tokyo. He was still trim, still grinned, although maybe not as readily as he used to when Sweet Sabrina was alive. He worked too hard now. Jiro was sure of that. Good colonels work a lot more than captains, and Cassidy was a good one. In fact, he was one of the best. Back then some of the guys had called him “Hopalong” behind his back. Or “Butch.” They had to explain the references to Giro. He never did understand exactly how nicknames were derived or bestowed, although he did acquire the American taste for them. Still, for him, Cassidy was always Cassidy. Or Bob. How American! “Use my first name. That shows that you like me.”

  Jiro was in the bedroom changing clothes when he heard the knock on the door and the sounds of Shizuko greeting Cassidy. “Oh, Colonel, so good to see you.” Shizuko’s English was not so good, but Cassidy had never had too much trouble understanding it. “Have you heard the news? About the emperor?” Cassidy’s voice was hard, very concerned. “What news?” He could hear the worry in Shizuko’s voice. “He was assassinated. They just announced it.” Shizuko said something that Jiro didn’t hear, then several seconds later he heard the sound of the television announcer. He quickly finished dressing and hurried into the living room. It was a small room, about a third the size of the one Cassidy used to have in Colorado Springs. Jiro shook his head, annoyed that that irrelevant thought should distract him at a time like this. He said hello to Cassidy, who gave a tiny bow while remaining intent on the television. “Sit, Colonel. Bob. Please.”

  Cassidy knew some Japanese, apparently enough to follow the television announcer without too much difficulty. Shizuko hid her face in her hands. “Perhaps this isn’t a good evening …” Cassidy began, but Jiro waved him into silence. They sat on the mats in front of the television as the last of the afternoon light faded from the sky. It was completely dark when Jiro turned off the set and Shizuko went into the small Pullman-style kitchen to make dinner. Cassidy was about six feet tall, a wiry man with a runner’s build. Tonight he wore civilian clothes, dark slacks and a beige short-sleeve shirt. He had blue eyes, thinning sandy-colored hair, and a couple of chipped teeth, which had been that way for years. A cheap watch on his left wrist was his only jewelry. “Beer?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good to see you, Bob.” Kimura spoke like an American, Cassidy thought, with fluent, unaccented English. “When I heard the news on the radio, I almost turned around and went home,” Cassidy told his host. “Thought you and Shizuko might want some privacy. But I figured that these get-together times are so hard to arrange that …”

  “Yeah. I needed to talk to you. This assassination is not good.” Jiro Kimura thought for several seconds, then shook his head. “Not good. Japan is on a strange, dangerous road.”

  Cassidy looked around the apartment, accepted the offered beer. Kimura turned on a radio, played with the dial until he got music, then resumed his seat just across from his guest. “They are preparing to move the planes to forward bases,” Jiro said. “We are packing everything, crating all the support gear, all the special tools, spare engines, parts, tires, everything.”

  “You mean bases outside of Japan?”

  “Yes.”

  Robert Cassidy sat in silence, digesting Kimura’s comment. Finally, he sipped his beer, then waited expectantly for his host to decide what else he wanted to say. For some reason, at that moment he recalled Jiro as he had first known him, a lost, miserable doolie at the U.s. Air Force Academy. A more forlorn kid, Cassidy had never met. Of course, the Japanese had sent their very best to the United States as an exchange student. Jiro finished second in his class, with a 3.98 grade point average — in aeronautical engineering. The first person in the class was a black girl from Georgia with a 180 IQ. After graduation, she didn’t spend a day in uniform; she went on to get a Ph.d. in physics on the Air Force’s dime. The last Cassidy heard, she was doing fusion research at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

  Jiro became a first-rate fighter pilot — for Japan. Now he was flying an airplane that had been developed in the utmost secrecy. Until Ki-mura mentioned the new Zero to him six months ago, Cassidy had not known of the plane. Judging by the startled reaction his report caused in Washington when he sent it in, no one there knew about it, either. Since then he had received a blizzard of requests from Washington for further information on the new plane, and he had had just two further conversations with Jiro. The first occurred when he invited the Kimuras to dinner in Tokyo. Jiro didn’t mention his job during the course of the evening. Cassidy couldn’t bring himself to ask a question. It was obvious that Jiro had wrestled with his conscience long and hard before he violated the Japanese security regs the first time. Cassidy decided that the next move was up to Jiro. If he wanted to tell the U.s. government Japanese secrets, Cassidy would convey the information. But he would not ask. Last month he and Jiro had attended a baseball game together. In the isolation of a nearly empty upper deck of the stadium, Jiro discussed in general terms the dimensions of the Japanese military buildup that had been under way for at least five years. Some of that information Cassidy knew from other sources; some was new. He merely listened, asked questions only to clarify, then wrote a detailed report that evening when he got home. That afternoon Jiro had been short on specifics. Whatever internal battle Jiro was fighting then was apparently over now. Tonight he met Cassidy’s gaze. “The new Zero is the most advanced fighter on earth. Very maneuverable, stealthy, good range, speed, easy to fly. Very sophisticated radar and computer, GPS”—THIS was the global positioning system—“all the goodies. And it has Athena.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” Cassidy said. “Athena is, or was, the American project code name for some very advanced stealth technology, an active ECM protection system. Somehow Japan acquired the technology, which had almost died in the United States due to a lack of development funds.”

  Cassidy nodded. American spending on research and development of military technology had slowed to a trickle since the end of the Cold War. Jiro continued. “Athena arrived here just when the government was looking to spend serious money on developing a military tech edge.

  They latched onto Athena and made it the centerpiece of the new Zero.”

  “Explain to me how it works.”

  When Jiro didn’t immediately reply, Cassidy added, “You know you don’t have to tell me anything, Jiro. I didn’t ask you for anything.”

  “I know! I want to tell you, Bob.” Jiro Kimura searched for words. He stood and went out on the balcony. Cassidy followed. “I was born in this country. I live here. But America is also my home. Do you unde
rstand?”

  “I think so.”

  “I have two homes, two peoples. I will tell you what I can, and you must pass it on in great secrecy. If the Japanese find out I have even spoken of these matters, I will be in serious trouble.”

  “Up to your ass in it, kiddo. I understand.”

  “The world is too small for loyalties based on race. Or nationality.”

  “That is sort of an advanced idea, but I’ll grant you—“

  “Just don’t think less of me because I need to tell you these things. I don’t ever want to fight against Americans.”

  He was facing Cassidy now, looking straight into his eyes. “Do you see how it is, Bob?”