The Samurai Strategy Part 65

Casual handling was unheard of. You never stepped over a sword, you never treated it with insouciance or irreverence. It was an extension of your character. A samurai regarded his _katana_ as the symbol of his caste: a weapon, yes, but also a constant reminder of who he was, his obligations as well as his rights.

Which was why I needed the prize of my collection in hand when we entered our final battle with Dai Nippon. I wanted to face Matsuo Noda with cla.s.sic dignity, with the j.a.panese honor he had scorned, to let him know he had a worthy opponent, one who understood the meaning of _bushido_. I also wanted in that process to stick those DNI guards'

Uzis up their a.s.s. I'd be needing a _katana_.

Our meeting with Henderson was Monday night. Tuesday morning we all buckled down and began working around the clock, each of us handling a separate area, Tam called in some favors with the head of the NYU computer center and adapted an off-the-shelf program for stock transactions to suit our unique requirements. She then booked time and scheduled a few debugging runs. In the meantime Henderson was taking care of our banking preparations, opening a string of accounts, mostly offsh.o.r.e where we could move with comparative anonymity. Also, we all got together at his place a couple of times and blocked out exactly what we wanted to unload first, names and dates.

While Tam and Henderson were setting up the financial end, the electronics were my responsibility. I was on the phone all day Tuesday knocking heads with Artie Wilson, an old friend who operated a maritime radio business down on the island of St. Thomas. Together we a.s.sembled a piece of gear needed to address one of the essential telemetry elements, and Wednesday night he took his boat over to St. Croix to install it.

I think I've already mentioned the marvelous Caribbean beach house that had practically fallen into my and Joanna's hands a few years back. It also sported, as do a lot of island places, a TV satellite dish, and it so happens this one was ma.s.sive, a twenty-footer. Now, what is not commonly appreciated is that those concave parabolas can be used to broadcast as well as receive.

Artie and a couple of his cronies worked all Wednesday night and got it rigged the way I wanted it, including a deadeye bead on the commercial satellite currently being used by DNI for proprietary communications with Noda's Kyoto office. I figured it like this: if "Captain Midnight"

could override Home Box Office's satellite network using a receiving station in Florida and broadcast a Bronx cheer to Time-Life, we could by G.o.d knock out DNI's high-security channel for an hour or so. Artie would be on standby Friday, ready to flip the switch.

Noda was apparently still in j.a.pan, presumably busy throwing obstacles in MITI's path, or maybe searching for the remains of his silver case.

Let him. We were about to start handling his communications with the DNI office for him, via a setup of our own devising.

One nice thing about global electronics is that if you get a network far-flung enough, n.o.body can trace anything--which was what we were counting on. After we'd killed Noda's primary communications system, we intended to subst.i.tute some j.a.panese hardware we'd had installed at Henderson's--together with a little help from a mutual friend in Shearson Lehman's Tokyo office. The arrangement was complicated, but it looked workable on paper. Thing was, though, we'd have to get it right the first time. No dry runs.

All of which tended to make me uneasy. You don't leave anything to chance when you're playing our kind of game; you need to have a backup.

This feeling brought to mind an admonition in an old sixteenth-century text on swordsmanship, the Heiho Kaden Sho, something to the effect that "you should surprise your opponent once, and then surprise him again." So, strictly on my own, I went about a bit of _bushido_ lawyering, using that power of attorney Noda gave me back when we started out to set up a fallback position in case Tam's scheme somehow failed. This twist, however, I decided to keep under wraps. n.o.body needed to be diverted just then worrying about worst-case scenarios.

That's what corporate counsels are for.

It was the most hectic week of our lives, but by three P.M. Friday we were ready, a.s.sembled at Henderson's place and poised for battle. Using his new hardware, we got on line to Shearson's Tokyo office, Bill cashing in a decade of stock tips with a longtime acquaintance. We then fed him the MITI ID codes we'd picked up from Ken during that ill-fated episode at the Tsukuba Teleconferencing Center, and he used these to patch back through to their New York JETRO offices. Finally we got St.

Croix on the phone, holding.

"Time to synchronize everybody's watches." Tam was wearing her usual designer jeans, a blue silk shirt, and had her DNI flight bag freshly packed for the long days ahead.

"That thing says 3:28:37." Henderson was watching one of his monitors behind the bar, now blinking off the seconds.

"Then let's all get ready to set at 3:29," said Tam.

Which we did.

"Okay, time to roll." I punched the speakerphone. The line to St. Croix was still open.

"Ready, Artie?"

"Say the word, my man," the voice from the box came back. "We got the watts."

"You on frequency?"

"Loud and clear. Sound like they runnin' some kind of coded transmission. Don't read."

"Double-check, Artie. We can't mess up. You're on 26RF- 37558JX-10, right?"

"Yo, my man. Who doin' this?" He bristled. "Think I can't hit nothing 'less it got hair round it?"

"Just nervous up here, okay? Settle down. At three-thirty, exactly twenty-seven seconds from now, go to transmit."

"No problem."

"Stay on channel, Artie. Don't wipe out The Old Ttme Gospel Hour or something. We're about to be in enough trouble as it

is."

"You the one 'bout to be up to yo' a.s.s in bad news, frien'. Me, I just some oyster-shuckin' jive n.i.g.g.e.r don't know s.h.i.t."

. . . Except, I found myself thinking, how to make a monkey out of the U.S. Coast Guard and DEA and G.o.d knows who else for ten years. Artie was the best.

Disconcertingly, I might also add, Artie Wilson had demanded cash in advance for our job, which didn't exactly reflect a high degree of confidence in the endeavor. However, there was no way we could test what we planned to do. This was it.

"You've got fifteen seconds."

"One hand on the switch, boss, other on my--"

"Artie, stay focused--"

"Thing is, jus' hope I remember which one to yank."

"The big one."

"That's what you think, white boy . . . zero. Blast off . . . yooeee, they gone." Pause, then: "Yep, we pumpin'."

"Got it?"

"Just hit that little birdy with enough RF to light up San Juan. They eatin' garbage. They decoder up in Apple town's gotta be goin' apes.h.i.t.

They can't be readin' no telex, no nothing."

"Okay, keep it cranking." I turned to Tam. "You're on."

"We're already patched through, on hold."

"All the way through Tokyo and back?" It was still a bit dazzling.

"We're going to look just like an auxiliary MITI transmission. All I have to do is put in the DNI code, then request the connection over to Third Avenue."

She tapped away on Henderson's keyboard, sending the ID through Shearson's communications center in Tokyo, then back through JETRO on Sixth Avenue, from whence it was routed into the communications room at DNI's Third Avenue offices. Since she was using the standard DNI transmission format, we would look authentic. Right now, with their primary satellite channel gone, the JETRO link should be DNI's only high-security connection to the outside world. She began the transmission, in j.a.panese _kana_.

Attention: Eyes only; J. N. Tanaka. Special instructions regarding operations. Please confirm routine satellite communications channel currently inoperative.

Moments later the message came back: Confirm communications malfunction.

Then Tam: Due to technical difficulties with transmitter, weekend operations terminated. Staff advise alert number, message J9.

That last was DNI's special setup that caused the computer to automatically dial the home number for all members of the staff, giving special instructions. Message J9 told everybody not to come in until further communication. G.o.d, was DNI efficient! The mainframe just kept dialing each number till somebody picked up. It even talked to answering machines. We figured that would head off most of the next crew. All we needed was a window of a few minutes between the goings and comings.

Then a message came back. As Tam began translating for us, though, a strange look was spreading across her face.

Operations already suspended as of 2:57 NY time per security-link instructions. Staff leave of absence. Is this confirmation? Repeat. Is this confirmation?