All was quiet now on the seawall. Tanaka could visualize the Three-class submarine being nose-loaded with weapons. The loading building functioned as a caisson, sealing around the bow of the sub and draining out the water to leave the entire nose-cone area accessible for bow-in torpedo loading. Except the weapons being loaded into the unmanned computer submarine were not torpedoes, but Hiroshima missiles. For the land-attack mission that his Winged Serpent should have had.

After a sleepless night, part of it spent in the rain at his mother’s memorial, he showered, dressed in a fresh uniform and called for his driver. Within hours he was back at the pier. Before he walked down its length, he stopped and stared at the scenario unfolding under the harsh lamps of the floodlights in the middle of the night.

Moored to the neighboring pier was the Three-class ship that had been loaded with the radioactive missiles the day before. The ship that was formerly called Divine Firmament had been renamed Curtain of Flames — presumably to inspire fear. In Tanaka it only inspired rage.

TOKYO, JAPAN

KASUMIGASEKI DISTRICT

JAPANESE DEFENSE AGENCY HEADQUARTERS

The black Lexus limousine rolled to a halt before the headquarters building, its powerful engine purring quietly at idle. Immediately a uniformed guard in a shining helmet with white gloves opened the rear door and snapped to attention in a rigid salute. A dozen other military guards holding rifles stood lined up on either side of a heavy gate set into the stone wall surrounding the building. Prime Minister Hosaka Kurita stepped out of the large car, past the guards, and through the gate, never acknowledging their existence. A step behind him Asagumo MacHiie, the Minister of Information, walked and tried to keep up with Kurita. The prime minister was twenty years MacHiie’s senior, but seemed to have the physical strength of a man ten years younger than MacHiie. Both men were dressed in expensive and conservative dark charcoal gray suits, starched white handmade shirts, and crimson ties, each with a tiny intricately detailed Japanese flag set in the red field. Their leather shoes were Japanese made, each pair worth the equivalent of a month’s rent for a luxury Tokyo flat.

Prime Minister Hosaka Kurita was nearing sixty years old but had a tangible vitality to him. He could energize a room. His hair was mostly gray with only hints of its former black. Kurita was the grandson of the Imperial Japanese Army general who had commanded the invasion and occupation force in Indonesia. Kurita’s father, Noboru Kurita, had worked for MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, during the heady years of Japan’s rise from the ashes of World War II to world preeminence in manufacturing and trade. The elder Kurita had become a deputy minister for semiconductors and was responsible for the successful Japanese penetration of American electronics markets. He was the architect of the Japanese takeover attempt of AT&T, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, and General Motors. Noboru had died of a stroke at his desk, laboring over the acquisition deal that should have made IBM a Japanese-owned company.

Hosaka Kurita had mourned Noboru’s passing, his bond with his father so strong that even now, nearly fifteen years later, he would occasionally mention to Asagumo MacHiie, his minister of information, that he could still feel the spirit of his father with him, struggling by his side, watching over him, demanding performance from him.

Fortunately for Noboru Kurita, he had not lived to see the trade war with the US and Europe, and the eventual closing of Western markets to Japan. Kurita would never forget the day the US president had signed the Fair Trade Bill into law that made anything with Japanese content* over 10 percent illegal to be imported or sold in the US and made Japanese ownership of corporations illegal, even repatriating — or expropriating — all real estate sold to Japanese owners. The nations of the European Union passed similar laws, some even harsher than America’s. That month Japan turned into a poor nation, the cash river from the West drying up. That had all been four hard years ago, two years before Hosaka Kurita came to power.