"Then you have nothing to tell me. We are all wasting time," Vera declared finally, rising.

"Michael will keep his end of the bargain, don't worry. Moving money is his specialty."

"So I'm told. But if he does not return the embezzled funds by the end of the week . . ."

"If he said he'll handle it, he'll handle it." Eva handed her the fur coat that had been tossed across their rumpled bed. It was real sable, the genuine article. She used to have one too. "Now if you don't mind .

"As we agreed, I have arranged for an . . . individual from our embassy to be here outside your door around the clock. The first shift came this morning with me and is here now."

"Inconspicuous?"

"He is wearing a tradesman's uniform."

"How about the lobby?"

"I have also arranged for one of our people to be there as well. We haven't informed the hotel staff, for obvious reasons, so we will rotate our people downstairs to avoid suspicion."

"Is that the best you can do?"

"It's the best I intend to do." Her voice was cold. "Getting even this much for you was not easy. None of this is happening officially. I had to pull strings."

"It's appreciated."

"I'll know the extent of your appreciation when the embezzled funds are returned."

"Naturally," Eva said, and opened the door. As promised, there was indeed an overweight Russian security man standing there, wearing an ill-fitting telephone repairman's coveralls. His looks wouldn't have deceived anybody, but maybe that was the point.

She waited till Vera Karanova disappeared into the elevator and then she turned back, flashing a thin smile at her new bodyguard. He didn't look very competent, but he was probably better than nothing.

Probably. Unless he wasn't there to protect them, unless he was there to make sure they didn't check out and disappear.

Okay, back to work.

She closed the door and locked it. Then she took a deep breath, clicked on the Zenith, and called up the active file.

The part of the protocol she'd translated this morning had begun expanding on the elements of the pending deal. The Soviets were agreeing to open their space program completely to the Japanese, effectively making it a joint venture. In return, Mino Industries and the Japanese government would join with the USSR to create a new trade bloc comprising all the Asian economic dynamos that currently were allies of the United States.

Russia shared some islands, along with its space expertise, and in return it got bottomless financing--and a trading axis with Japan that would, eventually, totally undermine America's hegemony in the Pacific.

The new economic alliance, an Orwellian Eastasia, would have the USSR as one superpower cornerstone, Japan the other.

_. . . 7. Within sixty days of the formal delivery of the prototype, the USSR will provide representatives of Mino Industries Group with full and unrestricted access to all facilities at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The space program of the USSR will be integrated with that of Japan--all personnel, equipment, and launch facilities being operated thereafter as a single, unified entity. Future costs of the combined space program will be borne equally by Japan and the USSR. Japanese satellites and Japanese astronauts subsequently will be launched from either the Baikonur Cosmodrome or the Tanegeshima Space Center as schedules mandate.

8. Although the level of Japanese-Soviet trade is currently twice that between the United States and the Soviet Union, it accounts for only 1.5 percent of total Japanese overseas trade. Through joint ventures arranged by Mino Industries Group, this amount will be increased over the ensuing five-year period to a sum representing not less than ten percent of all Japanese foreign trade. All tariff barriers between the USSR and Japan will be phased out over the same five-year period.

9. As part of an Asian trade and diplomatic initiative, the USSR will join with Mino Industries Croup to begin governmental and private steps toward establishing a Pacific Basin tariff-free trade zone encompassing the USSR, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indonesia. All offices, contracts, and trade agreements currently held by Mino Industries Croup will henceforth be reopened to encompass the representatives and interests of the USSR. . . .

_

It boggled Eva's mind. The alliance might be partly military, but the Japanese and the Soviets were no fools. They realized full well that the real battleground of the next century would be an economic struggle, with the ultimate aim of every country being to surpass the United States.

She stared at the blue screen, mesmerized. This secret protocol was a detailed battle plan whereby the Soviets and the Japanese provided each other exactly what they'd need to emerge as the dominant superpowers of the twenty-first century. Synergism in high-tech, control of space, a trade bloc, a defense alliance--all of it was there.

But governments weren't that smart. They usually had to be dragged into doing what was sensible strategically. Which meant that this whole scenario had to be the brainchild of some private genius. Only one man in Japan, according to Michael, had the money and clout to put a deal like this together. His name was Tanzan Mino. A Yakuza godfather.

Incredible!

What other bombshells did the protocol hold? she wondered. What was left?

The answer to that last remaining question was the prototype. It had to be the weapon to end all weapons.

Great. But did the Soviets really know what they were getting into?

The euphoria of the night before was rapidly dissipating. There were too many chances for the plan to slip up. Mike always figured he could play these things close on the wind, tempt fate, but he hadn't always been lucky. Sometimes his luck ran out, and somehow she had a feeling this was about to be one of those times.

Tuesday 1:28 P.M.

"Sato-sama, _ohayo gozaimasu_." Kenji Nogami rose, then bowed low as Jiro Sato and his dark-suited bodyguard were ushered into the Westminster Union Bank's upstairs dining room. The walls were ice gray, with a gold-leafed Momoyama screen depicting a fierce eagle perched on a pine branch mounted on one side. On the other was a modern oil painting, an impressionistic rendering of the rising sun of the Japanese flag. Both were symbols intended to impress Nogami's City guests with Japan's new financial power.

"_Ohayo_." Jiro Sato nodded lightly in return, signifying his superior rank. In the floor-to-ceiling mirror at the far end of the room his light-grey hair had turned to blue steel in the subdued lighting. It now matched the hardness of his eyes.

Jiro Sato, born in Osaka sixty years ago, was the _Mino- gumi's _London _oyabun_, the man in charge. He had lean cheeks and wore a pin-striped suit and dark sunglasses that further camouflaged his already expressionless eyes. His dark felt hat almost looked like a bowler.

Although that traditional City headwear was no longer de rigueur in London's financial district, had it been, he most certainly would have worn one. Blending in was what he was all about.

Nogami waited until his guest had settled into one of the molded birch chairs at the end of the long oak table, then he seated himself and clapped for sake. The banker's personal chef, a licensed artisan he had stolen from Tokyo's exclusive Edo Club, was already preparing raw _fugu_, the sometimes-lethal blowfish, to be served with scorching _wasabi_ on rare Shino ware. It was a Japanese power lunch.

Jiro Sato's career and that of Kenji Nogami had been entwined for thirty years. They had always been in charge of Tanzan Mino's financial matters, had never worked at street level. No tattoos, no missing finger digits. They were part of the brains, not the brawn, of the _Mino-gumi_.

Although they both knew that a certain bond issue of a hundred billion Eurodollars was the purpose of the luncheon, they gave no hint as their traditional small talk began with saucers of sake and a learned discussion of the Momoyama screen on the wall, thought to have been commissioned by the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi at the end of the sixteenth century. From there their chat expanded to the glories of Momoyama art, then the "nightingale" floors of Shogun Hideyoshi's Kyoto palace--beveled boards designed to announce silent intruders--and finally to Hideyoshi's betrayal at the hands of Ieyasu Tokugawa. The oblique topics were standard, the Japanese way of beginning a business meeting.

Jiro Sato's official position was CEO of the London-based Nippon Shipbuilding Company. In that role he supervised the _Mino-gumi's_ London interests with an iron hand, as was expected by those who served him, and by his superiors in Tokyo. Nippon Shipbuilding built no ships, nor had it for twenty years. Instead it laundered Tanzan Mino's hot money. Funds flashed daily over the satellite link from Tokyo, and investments ranged from real estate to British gilts to the most arcane products of the financial markets.

Money laundering was but the latest enterprise of the Yakuza, an ancient brotherhood rooted in over three hundred years of Japanese history. The _kana _symbols for the syllables Ya-Ku-Za were the same as those for the numbers eight, nine, and three--a total of twenty, which was a losing number in Japanese gaming. The losers: that was what the Japanese underworld, with ironic humility, had chosen to call itself.

In earlier centuries the Yakuza were carnival operators, gamblers, fast-moving purveyors of questionable wares. They also took it upon themselves to be a kind of private militia, protecting a defenseless citizenry from the predations of aristocratic warlords. They were, in their own minds at least, Robin Hoods who championed the common man, while also, not incidentally, catering to his penchant for entertainment, excitement, and sin.

These days the Yakuza considered themselves the last heirs of the samurai, but they still supplied escapism, be it in the form of nightclubs, gambling, or amphetamines. And in so doing they had grown fabulously rich. Jiro Sato's job in London was to reinvest and clean a portion of that wealth.

Nippon Shipbuilding was headquartered in an eight- story building in the new Docklands redevelopment, yet another expensive architectural nonentity in that multi-billion-dollar new city on the banks of the Thames downriver from the financial district. It was, in many ways, the perfect location for a Yakuza beachhead. Unlike the older parts of London, Docklands was ready-made for the parvenu, since everything there was new and anonymous, yet it stood only minutes away from the City--the best of both worlds. The London operation was going well, and with the recent construction of their new Docklands financial complex, at a cost of fifty million pounds sterling, matters were on a solid footing.

Jiro Sato's relations with Kenji Nogami had, until today, been conducted within the strict social dictates of Yakuza etiquette. As the London _oyabun_, he had, in fact, bent the rules in journeying into the City for their meeting today. Convention required that Nogami should have come to him. However, a recent turn of events necessitated a new concern with discretion. A muckraking series in the Telegraph two months before had accused the Nippon Shipbuilding Company of being an organized-crime front. Consequently he now had to take pains not to connect his own operations with the workings of Westminster Union. It was better all around if Kenji Nogami were not seen entering the Docklands office by some snooping newspaper hack. Nogami was a useful asset who needed to be kept above press speculation.

Also, Jiro Sato was beginning to wonder if the banker would actually have come. Kenji Nogami was rapidly losing touch with the old ways.