Pacino looked at the chart and the plan, trying to find the flaw, and determined that if there were one, it was the failure of the president to order a preemptive strike against the Japanese air forces, submarines and satellites.

But that was the shape of Warner’s comfort level. Pacino just hoped that her comfort zone would be big enough to allow his force to prevail.

MM 13 YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, YOKOSUKA, JAPAN

JAPANESE MARITIME SELF DEFENSE FORCE SUBMARINE WINGED SERPENT, SS-810

Adm. Akagi Tanaka was led down the length of pier 23 by the senior rating, past the ships of the Destiny II class tied up along either side of the concrete path, to berth 5. The Winged Serpent was tied fast to pier 23 by eight-doubled-up lines. A gangway extended from the concrete pier to the top surface of its hull.

The ship was stubby and broad, its fin reaching high into the sky its hull vanishing astern into the waters of the slip, the X-tail of its rudder protruding above the stagnant water. Akagi Tanaka looked up at the towering fin, the windows set into its surface from the interior control space. He tried to suppress his feelings of awe, the ones he invariably felt on entering his son’s submarine. It was important not to reveal feelings of awe or deference when dealing with Toshumi. Not that a father should withhold these emotions, and for a different son or his own son at a different time Akagi would have been effusive in his praise and enjoyment of his son’s command, but Toshumi was not one who could accept praise from his father. It was as if his son needed harshness and confrontation from his father.

It would always be between them, this separation born of Orou’s, Akagi’s wife’s, death, for which Toshumi blamed his father.

Akagi walked across the gangway, returned the salute of the sentry, and ducked into the door in the side of the fin. Inside was an area crowded with a ladder and cables and valves and pipes, smelling of lubrication oil. He put his foot down on the first rung of the ladder and began to lower himself into the hole in the ship. The enclosure of the hatch enveloped him, the light above receding as he came down the ladder until he landed on the deck four meters below. He looked at the passageway, trimmed in Indonesian tigerwood, which led aft to the control room and forward to the staterooms of the captain and first officer.

On either side of the passageway was a door, one labeled computer room, the other radio. A steep stairway led below. The rating continued forward, knocked on the door labeled captain’s stateroom. A muffled voice called for them to enter. The rating opened the door and stood aside.

Akagi found himself in his son’s stateroom, the walls bare, the room empty of papers or charts. It looked as if it had been emptied out so that one crew could turn the ship over to another. In fact, it reminded him of the staterooms on the Destiny I class just before they would be turned over to the purchasing crew. The rooms had been tidy but empty of personal effects.

That his son’s room was so bare and cold was alarming to Akagi. It was as if young Tanaka’s stateroom was as cold as his heart.

Toshumi gestured to a seat at the conference-sized table. He did not stand, but looked up from his handheld computer display.

“It is good to see you again, father,” Toshumi said.

“And you, son.”

Toshumi’s expression remained neutral, his eyes focused on his father’s, the gray irises darker in the unnatural light of the stateroom’s fluorescent lights.

“You said you had business with me, father.”

Akagi found his briefcase and pulled out a computer the size of an envelope. He muttered to it, the displays flashing in response to his voice commands. He scanned the notes on the screen, then looked up at his son.

“Yours is the first vessel in the flotilla to be briefed.

You are the senior commander of this flotilla.”

“Since the other flotilla is made of Destiny Ills, will you be briefing them too, or is your computer doing that for you?”

Akagi concentrated on the display before him, the steel in his son’s voice noted but unacknowledged.