But if those funds didn't come through within eight days, fully laundered, the project would have to be put on hold, as a matter of strategy, and precaution. The treaty could not be placed before the Diet unless passage was assured. Promises had to be kept.
What had happened to the money? Whatever it was, he thought with a worried sigh, the CEO had better solve it and soon. If he didn't, the whole project might have to be put on hold until next year's session of the Diet, and their secrecy would probably be impossible to maintain for another whole year. A disaster.
He had just completed the last call when he noticed a flashing alert on the main computer terminal, advising him that the morning's hypersonic test in Number One was scheduled to begin at 0800 hours. He grunted and typed in an acknowledgment. In his view it was a waste of time, overkill. The SX-10's simulation had already taken them further than they needed to go. But, all right, humor the Soviet team. It would only require a morning.
His contractor briefings now out of the way, he transferred all communication channels to the computer modems that lined the walls, then rose and walked back to the small alcove at the rear of his office. He paused a moment to calm his thoughts, then slid aside the shoji screens to reveal what was, for him, the most important room in the facility.
Here in the North Quadrant the CEO had constructed a traditional teahouse, tatami-floored with walls and ceiling of soft, fresh cedar and pine. In this refuge Taro Ikeda performed an essential morning ritual, the brief meditation that quieted his spirit. He knew well the famous adage of swordsmanship, that the true master lives with his mind in a natural state.
The challenge ahead would require all the discipline of a samurai warrior, the Way of Zen. And the first rule, the very first, was your mind must be empty, natural, unattached, in order to succeed.
As he seated himself on the reed surface of the tatami,
zazen-style, he methodically began clearing his mind. The moment was sacred.
But then, drifting through unasked, came an admonition of the great Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. "Intelligence is everything. You must know your opponent's plan even before he knows it himself."
It was true. The security for this project had been airtight, except for one minor breach. Someone in the Tokyo office had stupidly transmitted the final protocol over an unsecured satellite channel. It had been intercepted by Soviet intelligence.