Clive Cussler - Dragon

He stared at her and smiled thinly. “So you intend to promote legislation to close all your markets to Japanese goods.”

“In light of what I’ve seen and experienced in the past few days,” said Loren, “do you blame me?”

“We Japanese have planned far into the future for just such a possibility. Our economy will survive because we have already invested heavily in the European and Asian markets. Soon we will no longer need the United States consumer. The closing of your market is merely another unfair tactic of you Americans.”

Loren laughed. “What do you know about fair trade practices?” Then she got down to serious business. “No foreigners can come into Japan to sell their products without being hassled to death by your trade barriers, stonewalled by your graft-ridden distribution system, and undermined by your home competition. All the while insisting that no outsider understands your culture.”

“Your behavior, Congresswoman Smith, is obviously motivated by racist anti-Japanese sentiments. We feel no guilt over expanding our international market shares. We started with nothing after the war. And what we have built, you want to take away.”

“Take what away? Your self-proclaimed right to rule the economic world?” Loren could just detect a hint of growing frustration in Suma’s eyes. “Instead of picking you up from the ashes and helping you build an enormously successful economy, perhaps we should have treated you the way you treated Manchuria, Korea, and China during your years of occupation.”

“Many of the postwar economic successes of those countries were due to Japanese guidance.”

Loren shook her head in wonderment at his refusal to acknowledge historical facts. “At least the Germans have demonstrated regret for the atrocities of the Nazis, but you people act as though your butchery of millions of people throughout Asia and the Pacific never happened.”

“We have freed our minds of those years,” said Suma. “The negative events were unfortunate, but we were at war.”

“Yes, but you made the war. No one attacked Japan.”

“It lies in the past. We think only of the future. Time will prove who has the superior culture,” he said with contempt. “Like all the other Western nations since ancient Greece, you will fall by decay from within.”

“Perhaps,” said Loren with a soft smile, “but then eventually, so will you.”

62

PENNER ROSE FROM a chair, turned, and faced the surviving members of the MAIT team who were seated in an office inside one of the commercial aircraft hangars. He tapped ashes from his pipe in a bucket of sand beside a desk and nodded at two men, one sitting, the other standing along the rear wall.

“I’m going to turn the briefing over to Clyde Ingram, the gentleman in the loud Hawaiian shirt. Clyde is blessed with the fancy title of Director of Science and Technical Data Interpretation. He’ll explain his discovery. Then Curtis Meeker, an old friend from my Secret Service days and Deputy Director of Advanced Technical Operations, will explain what’s circulating in his warped mind.”

Ingram walked over to an easel with a blanket thrown over it. He stared from blue eyes through expensive designer glasses attached to cord that dangled around the nape of his neck. His hair was a neatly combed brown, and he lived inside a medium-sized body whose upper works was covered by a black aloha shirt that looked as if it had been worn in a Ferrari driven around Honolulu by Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum.

He threw the blanket off the easel and gestured a casual thumb toward a large photograph of what appeared to be an old aircraft. “What you see here is a World War Two B-Twenty-nine Superfortress resting thirty-six miles from Soseki Island on the seabed, three hundred and twenty meters, or for those of you who have trouble converting to metrics, a little over a thousand feet below the surface.”

“The picture is so clear,” said Stacy. “Was it taken from a submersible?”

“The aircraft was originally picked up by our Pyramider Eleven reconnaissance satellite during an orbit over Soseki Island.”

“You can get a picture that sharp on the bottom of the sea from an orbiting satellite?” she asked in disbelief.

“We can.”

Giordino was sitting in the rear of the room, his feet propped on the chair in front of him. “How does the thing work?”

“I won’t offer you an in-depth description, because it would take hours, but let’s just say it works by using pulsating sound waves that interact with very low frequency radar to create a geophysical image of underwater objects and landscapes.”

Pitt stretched to relieve tense muscles. “What happens after the image is received?”

“The Pyramider feeds the image, little more than a smudge, to a tracking data relay satellite that relays it to White Sands, New Mexico, for computer amplification and enhancement. The image is then passed on to the National Security Agency, where it is analyzed by both humans and computers. In this particular case, our interest was aroused, and we called for an SR-Ninety Casper to obtain a more detailed picture.”

Stacy raised a hand. “Does Casper use the same imagery system as the Pyramider?”

Ingram shrugged in regret. “Sorry, all I can reveal without getting into trouble is that Casper obtains real-time imaging recorded on analog tape. You might say that comparing the Pyramider and Casper systems is like comparing a flashlight beam to a laser. One covers a large spread, while the other pinpoints a small spot.”

Mancuso tilted his head and stared at the blown-up photograph curiously. “So what’s the significance of the old sunken bomber? What possible connection can it have with the Kaiten Project?”

Ingram flicked a glance at Mancuso and then tapped a pencil on the photo. “This aircraft, what’s left of it, is going to destroy Soseki Island and the Dragon Center.”

Nobody believed him, not for an instant. They all stared at him as though he was a con man selling a cure-all elixir to a bunch of rubes at a carnival.

Giordino broke the silence. “A mere trifle to raise the plane and repair it for a bombing run.”

Dr. Nogami forced a smile. “It’d take considerably more than a fifty-year-old bomb to make a dent in the Dragon Center.”

Ingram smiled back at Nogami. “Believe me, the bomb inside this B-Twenty-nine has the punch to do the job.”

“The plot thickens.” Pitt nodded glumly. “I smell a snow job coming on.

Ingram did a neat sidestep. “That part of the briefing will come from my partner in crime, Curtis Meeker.”

Pitt’s sardonic stare went from Ingram to Meeker. “You two and Ray Jordan and Don Kern must all play in the same sandbox.”

“We have occasion to mix it up now and then,” Meeker replied without smiling.

Ingram turned again to the easel, removed the photograph, and propped it on a chair, revealing a close-up photo of a little devil painted on the side of the aircraft’s bow.

“ Dennings’ Demons ,” he said, tapping a pencil on the faded letters beneath the little devil. “Commanded by Major Charles Dennings. Please note the little demon is standing on a gold brick marked twenty-four karat. The crew enjoyed referring to themselves as goldbrickers after they were reprimanded for tearing apart a beer hall during training in California.”

“Obviously my kind of guys,” said Giordino.

“Unknown, forgotten, and buried deep in Langley files, until a few days ago when Curtis and I dug out the facts, was the story of a very courageous group of men who set out on a very secret mission to drop an atom bomb on Japan—”

“They what!” Weatherhill was incredulous, but no more so than the others.