Dragon (Dirk Pitt 10)

Kamatori bowed to his waist. "I'm sure your katana is still swifter than mine."

"I knew your father when he was fencing master at the university," said Tsuboi. "I was his worst pupil.

He suggested I buy a cannon and take up elephant shooting."

Suma took Yoshishu by the arm and led him to a chair. Japan's once most feared man walked slow and stiffly, but his face wore a granite smile and his eyes missed nothing.

He settled into a straightbacked chair and looked up at Suma and came directly to the point of his visit. "What is the state of the Kaiten Project?"

"We have eighteen bomb vehicles on the high seas. They are the last. Four are destined for the United States. Five for the Soviet Union, and the rest divided up among Europe and the Pacific nations."

"The time until they're concealed near targets?"

"No later than three weeks. By then our command center will come on-line with its defense-detection and detonation systems."

Yoshishu looked at Suma in surprise. "The untimely explosion on board the Divine Star did not set back the project?"

"Fortunately I planned for a possible ship loss due to storm, collision, or other maritime accident. I held six warheads in reserve. The three that were lost in the explosion I replaced. After installation in the autos, they were shipped to Veracruz, Mexico. From there they will be driven across the Texas border into the U.S. to their target areas."

"The remainder are safely deposited, I hope."

"On a surplus tanker anchored fifty miles off a desolate shore of Hokkaido."

"Do we know what caused the detonation on board the Divine Star?"

"We're at a loss to explain the premature explosion," answered Suma. "Every conceivable safeguard was in place. One of the autos must have become thrown about in rough seas and damaged the warhead container. Radiation then leaked and spread throughout the cargo decks. The crew panicked and abandoned ship. A Norwegian ship discovered the derelict and sent over a boarding party. Shortly after, the Divine Star mysteriously blew up."

"And the escaped crew?"

"No trace. They vanished during the storm.

"What is the total number of cars in the system?" asked Yoshishu.

Suma stepped to his desk and pushed a button on a small handheld control box. The far wall rose into the ceiling, revealing a large transparent screen. He pressed another command into the box and a holographic image of the global earth appeared in pulsating neonlike colors. Then he programmed the detonation sites that burst into tiny points of gold light at strategic locations around nearly twenty countries. Only then did Suma answer Yoshishu's question.

"One hundred and thirty in fifteen countries.

Yoshishu sat silent, staring at the little beams as they flashed around the room with the rotation of the globe like reflections on a mirrored ball above a dance floor.

The Soviet Union had more light clusters than any other nation, suggesting a greater threat to Japan than her trade rivals in Europe and the United States. Strangely, no military installations or major cities were targeted. All of the lights appeared to emanate from barren or lightly populated areas, making the Kaiten menace all the more mysterious as an extortion tool.

"Your father's spirit is proud of you," Yoshishu said in quiet awe. "Thanks to your genius we can take our rightful place as a world power of the first magnitude. The twenty-first century belongs to Nippon.

America and Russia are finished."

Suma was pleased. "The Kaiten Project could not have been created and built without your support, my dear old friend, and certainly not without the financial wizardry of Ichiro Tsuboi."

"You are most kind," said Tsuboi with a bow. "The Machiavellian intrigue of arranging secret funding to build a clandestine nuclear weapons plant came as a great challenge."

"Soviet and Western intelligence know we have the capacity," Kamatori said, bringing a realistic bent into the conversation.

"If they didn't know before the explosion," added Suma, "they do now."

"The Americans have suspected us for several years," said Suma. "But they have been unable to penetrate our security rings and confirm the exact location of our facility."

"Lucky for us the fools keep searching horizontal instead of vertical." Yoshishu's voice was ironic. "But we must face the very real possibility that sooner or later the CIA or KGB will track the site."

"Probably sooner," said Kamatori. "One of our undercover agents has informed me that a few days after the Divine Star explosion, the Americans launched an all-out covert operation to investigate our involvement. They've already been sniffing around one of Murmoto's automotive distributors."