Barracuda: Final Bearing

“Uncle Dick, how you doing?”

“Same as always, Mikey. Glad you could come.”

“My aide mentioned Scenario Orange.” Pacino stated bluntly as they climbed into Donchez’s staff car for the ride to his office. “What’s going on with Japan?” “I knew that would get your attention,” Donchez said. “We’ll talk about it inside the building. It’s built against the possibility of eavesdropping. Security is better than the White House.” The limo drove through the dense forest of the complex, low brick buildings every few thousand feet giving the impression of a college campus, the resemblance broken by the fences, the security guards and the large antennae following the satellites overhead. “Speaking of the White House, sir, how is the new president?”

“She’s great, Mikey. I mean that. She can be tough, at times too tough, thinks she’s Margaret Thatcher, or maybe she thinks she has to look strong as the first elected female President in the history of the country. But I can work with that. Hell, it’s easier to back down an aggressive commander in chief than put backbone in a weak one.” The speech had come almost glibly, Pacino thought. The old man probably got asked that question all the time. The car stopped at the front entrance of building 527, Donchez’s new NSA headquarters. The floodlights were on, although it was not yet dark, showcasing the multiwinged building. From the front the protruding entrance wing was a truncated five-story pyramid done in brick and plate glass and copper sheathing, the copper just starting to turn an antique green. “The copper reminds me of the Academy,” Donchez said. “The rest is sort of modern without looking like a cookie-cutter office building.” Pacino looked at the low wide pyramid while following Donchez to the doors. The pyramid face was broken by a long row of plate glass set deep into a horizontal groove. The executive suites, Pacino figured. “Where the hell did you get budget coverage for this? And it should have taken two years to build and you go from concept to finished building in, what, ten months?” Donchez didn’t smile. “Black programs, Mikey. Ul-trasecret. We need the security — the electronic eavesdropping systems of our potential adversaries are getting too good, so we got the budget coverage in a hurry. But believe me, we’re getting more than our money’s worth here.

You’ll see.” Donchez’s office on the top floor was even more of a showplace than his Chief of Naval Operations suite at the Pentagon.

Along the wall were bookshelves filled with dusty volumes and some new books. The wall was covered with framed photographs, Donchez’s old submarines, one showing the icepack with a black submarine conning tower broken through the ice, Donchez standing in front of it wearing arctic gear and a baseball cap with scrambled eggs on the brim — the old Piranha from the 1970s. Model submarines in expensive cases were set in the four corners of the room. Opposite the windows a bar was set behind wood panels. Donchez threw out his cigar, pulled a new one from a humidor, walked to the bar and poured three fingers of Jack Daniel’s over ice cubes in the highball glass and waved Pacino to one of the leather chairs, putting the drink on a side table and taking the neighboring chair. “How are you, Mikey? I mean with the divorce at the same time you’re trying to get your arms around the Unified Sub Command?” Pacino knew he didn’t come up by helicopter to discuss his divorce or how he felt about his job. He was right. Donchez reached into the table between them and pulled out a small keypad, flashing his fingers across it. The room grew dark as the polarized glass of the windows turned the clear glass black. A panel in the high ceiling opened and a screen came down in front of them. The room lights dimmed as a projection television flashed the emblem of the National Security Administration. The image of the NSA dissolved to be replaced by a map of the north Pacific Rim. The banana-shaped islands of Japan were color-coded orange. The islands zoomed in while Donchez began with basics on Japan, facts about Prime Minister Hosaka Kurita, a brief history of Japan from the Shoguns to World War II through the trade problems of the late twentieth century to the isolation and trade wars of the twenty-first century’s first decade.