We understand you have Russia and the Chinas to contend with. But we have, as I say, our concerns. The Japanese Self Defense Force will send a small force to guard the missiles. We must agree before you ever use them, and a Japanese team will fire the missiles for you if—”

Len allowed himself to laugh, although he saw nothing amusing. These people were serious.

“Sir, our only objective is to insure that Greater Manchuria not threaten Japan.”

“My answer is that you go back to your embassy. Mr. Lee, see these gentlemen to their car.”

“Wait, please, Honorable Mr. President Len. I request that you let me make a call to Tokyo. I have a satellite phone cell that will put me in video contact from here, if you will but allow it. Let me but put this matter to Tokyo.”

Len began to shake his head, but an old saying by Daniele Vare, an Italian diplomat, came to mind: “Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.”

“Ambassador Nakamoto, you may make your call. I will be in my office chambers. When you are ready to talk again, pick up the phone in the corner and I will be back.”

The rocky coastline approached rapidly and the missile climbed to forty meters in anticipation of a small cliff.

The cliff approached at 600 kilometers per hour. At one instant the missile was flying over the sea, the next it was navigating over the rocky terrain of the Greater Manchurian wilderness. The missile continued on, following its programmed trajectory, dodging small mountains and trees and outcroppings of rocks, the land flying toward the video view at a dizzying speed.

Every few minutes the missile transmitted a burst communication to the Galaxy satellite, the transmission composed of video images of the previous five minutes along with missile-status parameters. The transmission was triple encrypted, meaningless tones to a hostile receiver, the first encryption by the computer onboard, the second encryption done by varying the transmission frequency across the spectrum in planned jumps so that a receiver could pick up the entire transmission only if he knew what frequency to skip to. And the frequency skips took place at random times, essentially making for a third encryption. The final precaution was the randomminute transmission intervals, so that a receiving station could not detect the telemetry during the outages between transmissions. The random transmission intervals were done so that a listener would not detect a transmission pattern and be waiting for a burst communication every five minutes, which would be too regular. The integrated system was highly stealthy and amounted to a full data exchange under conditions that normally would dictate radio silence.

The missile flew on, the afternoon sun beginning to sink in the sky. By sunset, the mission would be long over.

CHANGASHAN, GREATER MANCHURIA

Back in his office Len looked at Lee Chun Wah.

“What are the Japanese doing? Their offer seems almost deliberately insulting. They want my missiles. A Japanese team to make sure I don’t play with my own toys, so to speak. And now they’re on the phone. What are they thinking?”

“Only they know for sure. A not uncommon phenomenon for them.”

“Any way of accessing the video cameras in the conference room? Getting an early read?”

“Afraid not, sir. We can get the disk in from the computer once the session is over, but we can’t tap into the room now.”

“Make a note — I want those cameras tied into my personal closed loop video. We may need to do this in the future.”

“Yes, sir.”

The phone rang. Lee Chun Wah picked it up.

“They are ready sir. And Nakamoto sounded shaken.”

“Ambassador Nakamoto. What has Tokyo told you?”

Nakamoto looked up from the table to the standing form of Len Pei Poom. Len’s directness seemed to be contagious. “Honorable Mr. President, Tokyo has decided to protect our nation. We must be rid of your threatening missiles.” Nakamoto pointed to the display of a notebook computer on the table. The display showed land flying toward the video eye, trees and hills passing by at a tremendous speed. “With a nominal five minute delay, this is the view out the targeting camera of one of the missiles we have launched at your Tamga facility. It will be arriving at the facility in approximately two minutes. We have one last chance to stop the missiles.

Will you agree to sign a nonaggression pact with Japan, and agree to put Japanese Self Defense Force troops in command of your missiles?” ‘We. And now, if there is nothing else, we will get you back to your embassy,” Len said.

“You consider this a bluff?”

“I do.”

“I will prove you are tragically mistaken. Mr. President.”

Len noticed he was no longer the “Honorable Mr. President,” but he was too angry to deal with it. What he desired was to reach over and snap Nakamoto’s neck.