Thomas Hoover - Project Daedalus

"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 she is staying."