Red Shark

It was a scene that had been repeated countless times. After their violent lovemaking, she’d hurled accusations at him. Then taunts. It was Tracy who’d broken the fragile bond between them on the eve of his departure. With it broken, she could do whatever she pleased while he was away and not feel guilty.

He swung out of bed and went to the window. A motorcycle ripping at speed up Shore Drive made the glazing rattle. He shivered. Too many days at sea had forced him and Tracy apart. Too many days spent driving submarines into dangerous waters where one mistake could spell disaster for him and his crew: In the Yellow Sea the North Koreans and a botched SEAL insertion; in the Baltic a battle with Chechen terrorists who had stolen a Russian sub and planned to blow up its nuclear reactor in St. Petersburg.

The phone rang. He saw the time — not yet 6:00 a.m. — and hesitated. Then he snatched the phone off the night-stand. “Scott.”

It was a familiar voice, that of the chief of staff to Vice Admiral Carter Ellsworth, who was the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet submarine boss — ComSubLant — in Norfolk, Virginia. “Commander Scott, hold for Admiral Ellsworth.”

Scott braced for trouble.

Ellsworth came on the line. “Got your TV on, Scott?”

“No, Admiral, I don’t usually have it on while I’m sleeping.”

“Well, turn it on to CNN, then get back to me.”

“What’s going on?…”

“You ready to travel, Scott?”

“Travel, sir? Where to?”

“I think General Radford will want to see you.”

Scott groaned inwardly. “I’m on leave, Admiral; the Tampa’s on stand-down.”

“CNN. Get back to me.” Ellsworth rang off.

Scott looked at the dead receiver in his hand as if it smelled bad.

Major General Karl Radford, USAF (ret.), head of the Strategic Reconnaissance Office — the SRO. Scott knew that a summons from Radford always spelled trouble.

He aimed a wand at the Sony, and a CNN anchorman in Atlanta appeared over a crawler at the bottom of the screen announcing a special report.

The anchorman said, “To repeat, the North Korean Central News Agency, in response to yesterday morning’s bombings in Midtown Manhattan, which killed at least three hundred and twenty-seven people, including the North and South Korean special envoys, has issued a statement.

“A spokesman for the DPRK reported that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, has been arrested for treason and for having ordered the bombings in New York City. Marshal Kim Gwan Jin, head of the DPRK’s armed forces, has taken control of the country. Jin has issued a pointed warning to the United States and its allies in East Asia that any attempt to interfere in North Korean affairs, or to take any military action against the Jin government, will be, quote ‘…countered by the full force of the North Korean People’s Army and its arsenal of conventional and unconventional weapons,’ unquote.

“In Washington, the White House issued a statement….”

Scott turned off the TV and started packing.

From eighty stories aloft, evening rush-hour traffic flowing down the Ginza looked like a river of light. Iseda Tokugawa, dressed in a silk sea-green kimono, watched the river flow across Tokyo from his office at Meji Holdings. As he watched, he heard the female news reader on NHK TV say, “To restate our main news story, the North Korean Central News Agency, in its first response to yesterday morning’s bombings in Midtown Manhattan…”

So, the first phase had started. Exactly as described. And precisely on time.

Tokugawa entered the tokonoma — an alcove kept hidden behind a folding floral screen — and admired the scrolls and seasonal flower arrangements on display. He fussed with a favorite bonsai, snipping and pruning here and there. Satisfied with his handiwork, he turned his attention to the kamidana — the god-shelf that hung on one wall of the alcove.

A miniature Shinto shrine made of cypress sat on the shelf. Ostensibly the shrine housed the spirits of Tokugawa’s ancestors. He removed a small ceramic bottle of saki from a cupboard, filled a cup to the brim, then placed the cup on the shelf in front of the shrine as an offering. He stepped back, bowed his head, and clapped his hands twice. Tokugawa did this every day, morning and evening. Old habits were hard to shake.

Earlier that day he had concluded a two-hundred-billion-yen deal to supply computerized electrical switching equipment manufactured by one of Meji’s companies for use in Iran’s nuclear electric power grid. Now he communed with spirits. How to reconcile two such contradictory worlds, one ruled by hard-nosed pragmatism and a fat bottom line, the other by folk spirits and mythological beings represented by a simple wooden box on a shelf. Tokugawa had no satisfactory explanation for this dichotomy.