When SCAP's era of reconstruction wound down, he thoughtfully offered his services to the CIA, volunteering to help them crush any new Japanese political movements that smacked of leftism. It was love at first sight, and soon Tanzan Mino was fronting for the Company, putting to good use his _Mino-gumi _Yakuza as strikebreakers. With Tanzan Mino as _kuromaku_, the Yakuza and the American CIA had run postwar Japan during the early years, keeping it safe for capitalism.

Then as prosperity returned, new areas of expansion beckoned. When goods could again be bought openly, the black market, long a Yakuza mainstay, began to wither away. But he had converted this into an opportunity, stepping in to fill the new Japanese consumer's need for cash by opening storefront loan services known as _sarakin_. Although his Yakuza charged interest rates as high as 70 percent, the average Japanese could walk into a side-street office and minutes later walk out with several thousand dollars, no questions asked.

Unlike banks, he didn't bother with credit checks--he had well-proven collection techniques--and before long his _sarakin _were handling more consumer loans than all Japan's banks combined. His success was such that foreign bankers wanting to gain a foothold in Japan soon started coming to him. Bank of America, Bankers Trust, Chase Manhattan, American Express Bank--all began placing capital wholesale through the Yakuza's _sarakin_.

When the CIA bankrolled the Corsican mob as strikebreakers in Marseilles in the fifties, they were merely financing heroin labs for the French Connection, but when they and America's leading banks hired on with Tanzan Mino's Yakuza, they were furthering the career of the man destined to become the world's richest right-winger. The CIA arrangement had lasted until a midlevel field consultant blew the whistle.

The score for that had yet to be settled.

He shrugged away the thought with a glimmer of anger and turned to study the column of green figures on the computer screen atop his desk, mentally running a total. The numbers, at least, pleased him.

Capitalization for the first year was ready to be issued; the dummy corporations were in place, their paperwork impeccable. None of the financing packages was likely to raise eyebrows. The plan was as flawless as human ability could make it.

As the pale light of dusk crept through the blinds, laying faint shadows across his silver hair, he reached over with a smile and touched the white stingray-skin binding on the sword's hilt. Yes, the plan was brilliant. A third world war, one of economics, had begun, but none of the other combatants fully realized it.

The European trading nations of 1992 were banding together, also bringing in the new capitalists of Eastern Europe, to create a trade monolith. At the same time Japan had, through strategic planning, achieved its own Pacific trade bloc, finally realizing its aim during the war, a Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere. Now only one final target remained: the new consumers of the Soviet Union, who represented the world's largest untapped market for goods, technology, investment.

The Europeans, the Americans, all the capitalists, were fighting for that prize, but Tanzan Mino was within a whisker of seizing it for Japan and Mino Industries. The Soviets would have no choice.

He reached down to stroke Neko, the snow leopard who slept beside his desk, and reflected on the scenario. The Soviets had bought into it with eyes open. The plan was turning out to be absurdly easy.

At the moment all he needed was the cleanly laundered payoff money. The political risks, the financial risks, everything had to be covered. The powers in the Liberal Democratic Party feared going out on a limb for such a risky strategic objective. They required encouragement. And certain prominent Japanese bankers, who would have to assist in the scenario, also needed inducement. But the money had to be cash and totally untraceable. No more Recruit-style fiascos.

Where was it?

He pushed that worry aside momentarily as he studied the gleaming model of the _Daedalus_, poised like a Greek statue in the center of his office. To think that the Soviets would agree not only to the hard financial and territorial terms he had demanded, but actually were willing to help Mino Industries develop the most advanced airplane the world had ever seen. Their plight was fully as desperate as he'd assumed. It was a game where he won everything.

Yes, the _Daedalus _was as important as all the rest combined. It would leapfrog Japan to the undisputed ranks of the major powers, erasing forever the distinction between civilian and military technology.

Still, though, there were problems. Always problems. First, the news he had just received: The laundered funds still had not been delivered.

Then there was the matter of the NSA cryptographer who had been given an intercepted copy of the protocol. Three men had been lost attempting to retrieve it, but she remained at large. That was unacceptable. It had to be reclaimed, no matter the cost, lest there be a premature exposure of the plan. Timing was everything.

Added to that was the puzzling matter of the Soviet test pilot, on whom the fate of the entire project hinged. He'd begun making outrageous demands, insisting on moving up the first hypersonic flight to Friday.

Why? He'd once spent time in the United States as an exchange pilot.

Could he be fully trusted?

Tanzan Mino had finally, reluctantly, approved the schedule change, though his instincts told him to beware. His instincts rarely failed, but it was better not to appear too inflexible too soon. At this stage the test pilot had become the crucial component of the project.

Sometimes you had to bend to get what you wanted, and instincts be damned.

As if all that were not enough, he'd just heard an unsettling rumble out of London concerning Kenji Nogami, a _Mino-gumi kobun _for thirty years, a man he'd made rich.

He turned his attention back to the computer screen and studied the numbers once more. However, he could not concentrate.

The problems. He felt his anger rise, unbidden. He was too old for problems. Surmounting human incompetence was a young man's game. He had, he told himself, struggled enough for a dozen men. And now, having dedicated himself to fashioning Japan's twenty-first century ascen- dancy, he no longer really cared about money. No, what mattered now was the triumph of the Japanese people, the emperor, the Yamato spirit.

His countrymen, he had always believed, shared a noble heritage with another race, one distant in time and place but brothers still. Both the modern Japanese and the ancient Greeks had pursued a mission to refine the civilizations around them, offering a powerful vision of human possibilities. They both were unique peoples chosen by the gods.

He wanted, more than anything, for the entire world to at last understand that.

With a sigh he turned and gave Neko a loving pat on her spotted muzzle, then touched the buzzer on his desk. Time to start solving the problems.

Monday 1:03 P.M.

"Michael, I'm terribly glad you could make it." Kenji Nogami smiled and reached for his pint of amber-colored lager. His tailoring was Savile Row via Bond Street, his accent Cambridge, his background well concealed. In a business where appearances counted for much, he had all the careful touches that separated the players from the pretenders-- cheeks sleek from a daily workout at his club, eyes penetrating and always alert, hair graying at the temples. Today he stood out like a beacon in the mob of chatting brokers and jobbers in the paneled gloom of the pub, his aloof bearing and dark pinstripe suit proclaiming INSIDER as clearly as neon. A Japanese to the core, he still looked as though he had belonged there for a hundred years.

"By the way, congratulations on the takeover." Vance caught the pint of ale sliding across the beer-soaked mahogany, then lifted it. "I hear you scared hell out of the big players here in the City. Here's to going straight. Hope it doesn't take all the fun out of life."

"It had to happen eventually, Michael." He nodded with innocent guile and raised his glass tankard in return. "Cheers."

"To your health and wealth." Vance joined him in a sip. It was warm and bitter, the way he liked it. "No more intrigue."

"Well . . . He winked and drank again, blowing back the foam. "We bankers still thrive on intrigue, old man. And secrecy. Otherwise somebody else would start making the money."

The young brokers laughing, smoking, and drinking in the pub all looked as though they made buckets of money. Outside, the ocher-trimmed Doric columns of the refurbished Leadenhall Market looked down on the lunchtime crowds of the financial district, almost all men in white shirts and dark suits, the modern uniform of the money changer.

"Trouble with secrets, though"--Vance settled his mug onto the wet bar and looked up--"is that eventually the word gets out."

Nogami studied him. "Are you hinting at something? Something I should know?"

"Maybe I'm just thinking out loud. But what if a guy like me came across some proprietary information, sort of by accident, and consequently an old friend of ours back home in Tokyo was very unhappy?"

"If that 'friend' is who I think you mean, he's not someone either of us wants to see unhappy, do we?" He sipped solemnly at his beer.

"Speak for yourself," Vance replied, and drank again. "But to continue, what if this hypothetical guy had decided to try and simplify the situation, get news back to Tokyo about a way to solve everybody's problem? Then he'd need an information conduit. One that's tried and true."

Nogami reached for a tray of peanuts, took a small handful and shook them in his fist before popping one into his mouth. He chewed for a second, then smiled. "One way might be to have a drink with an old, shall we say, acquaintance, in hopes he might be able to help with some communication."

"Sounds like we're making headway here." He paused. "Say this hypothetical guy wants to talk a deal."

"What sort of deal?" Nogami chewed on more peanuts, his eyes noncommittal.

"For instance, if Tokyo'll lay off, he'll see what he can do about some laundered funds our friend's been waiting for. He's in a position to make it happen. But if they keep on with the muscle, the deal's off. In other words, no play, no pay."

"Supposing I know the individual in Tokyo you mean, as things stand now you've quite possibly come to the wrong man." He sighed. "This isn't the old days, my friend. I'm not wired in like I used to be. Times have changed, thank God. I'm out. I run an honest merchant bank, at least as honest as you can in this new day and age. And I like it that way."

"Ken, don't start the runaround." Vance tried to keep his tone easy.

"You're not talking to some bank examiner now. In Japan connections last forever. We both know that."

"You were never more correct." Nogami examined his lager. "Obligations remain, even though influence wanes. Which is, in fact, one of the reasons I wanted to see you today. Michael, if I do you this favor, could you perhaps do one for me in return?"

"Is it legit?"

"I suppose that depends," he laughed. "Look, of course I'd be more than happy to send a secure telex, if that's all you want. Heaven knows I owe you that much." He paused to sip from his mug. "But I'll sound rather a fool if I don't know the first thing about the situation.

Can't you at least give me some idea?"

"Tokyo'll understand. And the less you know, the better for everybody."

"All right. But my position right now is . . . well, I may not be able to help as much as I'd like."