Dragon

“Astonishing,” Percy muttered admiringly. “Like flying through a generating plant. If only we’d had this contrivance back in forty-two. We could have ended both the European and Pacific theaters of war two years early.”

“Lucky for the Germans you didn’t have the bomb by nineteen forty-four,” Yaeger goaded Percy.

Percy gave him a stern stare for a moment and then turned his attention back to the image on the screen.

“See anything interesting?” Pitt put to him.

Percy tugged at his beard. “The transmission casing would make a good container.”

“No good. Can’t be in the engine or drivetrain. The car must be capable of being driven normally.

“That eliminates a gutted battery or radiator,” said Yaeger. “Maybe the shock absorbers.”

Percy gave a brief shake of his head. “Okay for a plastic explosive pipe bomb but too narrow a diameter for a nuclear device.”

They studied the cutaway image silently for the next few minutes as Yaeger’s keyboard skills took them on a journey through an automobile few people ever experience. Axle and bearing assemblies, brake system, starter motor, and alternator, all were probed and rejected.

“We’re down to the optional accessories,” said Yaeger.

Pitt yawned and stretched. Despite his concentration, he could hardly keep his eyes open. “Any chance of it being in the heating unit?”

“Configuration isn’t right,” replied Percy. “The windshield washer bottle?”

Yaeger shook his head. “Too obvious.”

Suddenly Pitt stiffened. “The air conditioner!” he burst out. “The compressor in the air conditioner.”

Yaeger quickly programmed the computer to illustrate an interior view. “The car can be driven, and no customs inspector would waste two hours dismantling the compressor to see why it didn’t put out cold air.”

“Remove the guts and you’ve got an ideal casing to hold a bomb,” Pitt said, examining the computer image. “What do you think, Percy?”

“The condenser coils could be altered to include a receiving unit to prime and detonate,” Percy confirmed. “A neat package, a very neat package. More than enough volume to house a device capable of blasting a large area. Nice work, gentlemen, I think we’ve solved the mystery.”

Pitt walked over to an unoccupied desk and picked up the phone. He dialed the safe-line number given out by Kern at the MAIT team briefing. When a voice answered on the other end, he said, “This is Mr. Stutz. Please tell Mr. Lincoln the problem lies in his car’s air conditioner. Goodbye.”

Percy gave Pitt a humorous look. “You really know how to stick it to people, don’t you?”

“I do what I can.”

Yaeger sat gazing at the interior of the compressor he’d enlarged on the display screen. “There’s a fly in the soup,” he said quietly.

“What?” asked Percy. “What is that?”

“So we piss Japan off and they punch out our lights. They can’t eliminate all of our defenses, especially our nuclear submarines. Our retaliation force would disintegrate their entire island chain. If you want my opinion, I think this thing is unfeasible and suicidal. It’s one big bluff.”

“There’s one small problem with your theory,” Percy said, smiling patiently at Yaeger. “The Japanese have outfoxed the best intelligence brains in the business and caught the world powers in their Achilles’ heel. From their viewpoint the consequences are not all that catastrophic. We contracted with the Japanese to help research the strategic defense system for the destruction of incoming missile warheads. While our leaders wrote it off as too costly and unworkable, they went ahead with their usual hightech proficiency and perfected a working system.”

“Are you saying they’re invulnerable?” asked Yaeger in a shocked voice.

Percy shook his head. “Not yet. But give them another two years and they’ll have a working in-place ‘Star Wars’ system, and we won’t.”

24

Behind closed doors in the Capitol building a select subcommittee was meeting to investigate and evaluate Japanese cultural and economic impact upon the United States. The fancy words were a nice way of saying that certain members of Congress were mad as hornets over what they perceived as a United States held hostage by the ever tightening screws of Japanese capital.

Ichiro Tsuboi, chief director of Kanoya Securities, the largest security company in the world, sat at a table below the long, curved counterlike desk in front of the congressional committee. He was flanked by four of his chief advisers, who irritated the committee members with their jabbering consultations before Tsuboi answered each question.

Tsuboi did not appear as a financial giant who led a securities company that had enough capital to swallow Paine Webber, Charles Schwab, Merrill Lynch, and the rest of Wall Street’s honored brokerage houses without so much as a burp. He had, in fact, already purchased heavy interest in several of them. His body was short and slender, and he had a face that some likened to that of a jolly proprietor of a geisha house.

Tsuboi’s looks were deceiving. He could easily hold his own against a protectionist Congress with fire in their eyes. His competitors in Japan and abroad hated and feared him with reasons bred from experience. Tsuboi was as ruthless as he was shrewd. His ca

He sat and politely fielded the questions of the select committee, smiling with maddening courtesy throughout the questioning, speaking as comfortably as if he was conversing with guests over a di

“For the esteemed members of Congress to pass legislation forcing Japanese companies to sell our majority rights in our United States businesses to your companies at a fraction of their value is nothing less than nationalization. American business credibility will be shattered around the world. There will be chaos. Banking systems will collapse along with international currencies. Industrial nations will be bankrupted. And for what purpose? In my humble opinion, Japanese investors are the best thing that ever happened to the American people.”

“There is no such legislation in the works,” snapped Senator Mike Diaz. “What I said was ‘Those of your companies operating and showing a profit on American soil should be subject to the same regulations and tax standards as ours.’ Your capital markets remain closed to us. Americans are restricted from buying real estate and ownership in your businesses, while Japanese interests are getting away with financial murder in this country, Mr. Tsuboi, and you damn well know it.”

The one man who was not intimidated by Tsuboi was New Mexico Democrat Michael Diaz, chairman of the committee, the driving force behind a movement to not only limit but roll back foreign investment in American government, business, and real estate, and if he had his way, raise trade embargoes on all imported Japanese products.

A widower in his late forties, Diaz was the only senator who lived full time in his office. He kept a small private bath and a side room with a bed, refrigerator, stove, and sink. Over the twenty-five years he had been called the hardest-working politician on the hill, his work patterns had remained unchanged. His wife had died of diabetes shortly after he was elected to his first term. They were childless, and since her death he never gave a thought to remarrying.

His hair was pure black and swept back in a high pompadour, the face round and brown with dark umber eyes and a mouth that easily flashed white perfect teeth. As an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam he had been shot down and wounded in the knee. Captured and carried to Hanoi, he spent two years as a POW. His jailers had never properly attended to his leg, and he limped, walking with the aid of a cane.