CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Our major concern at that point was time. We had a lot to do, and we weren't sure how long we had to do it. Furthermore, it would be foolhardy to assume everything was going to proceed smoothly. That apprehension was, in fact, soon to be thoroughly vindicated.
First, it wasn't all that simple to track down Tam. We finally discovered she'd already left the Robotics Lab and was back at the Tsukuba Hotel lunching with Matsugami and some of his senior staff. Returning there, however, did provide a perfect opportunity to grab our bags. Ken dragged her from the lunch with a phony excuse, and minutes later we were checked out, solving at least one logistics problem. Unfortunately, it also tipped off Matsugami and anybody else who might be interested that we were departing.
Next were the details of arranging for the chopper. While we were driving around trying to locate Tamara, Ken was busy on his car phone pulling strings to commandeer one of the two MITI helicopters. After three calls he managed to locate one at their auxiliary pad, currently being refueled and serviced. I listened to him lean on the service people, doing his diplomatic but firm deputy minister routine. End of long story: it would be on its way shortly, arriving in about an hour and a half.
Good, we thought. Plenty of time to handle the transmission of the still-unseen documents in Noda's silver case. In the car we brought Tam fully up to date on the extraordinary circumstances by which it had fallen into our possession, including its potential for use as leverage against Noda. Then we headed for the Teleconferencing Center, where we planned to open the thing, scan the contents with a reader, and bounce the pages to New York via satellite. Ken revealed the ministry had a high-security channel it used to communicate with the New York offices of JETRO, the Japan External Trade Organization over on Sixth Avenue, MITI's public relations arm. He declared we would just link up with that office and have them patch us through to the DNI computer. Nothing to it.
Which was correct, theoretically. When we marched in, Ken again flaunting his deputy minister walk-on priority, the white-shirted staff bowed to the floor, led us to the hard-copy scanner, turned it on, and diplomatically excused themselves, closing the security door. The place was ours.
Don't know why, but until that moment none of us had really wanted to know what was in Noda's case. Maybe a part of me still didn't, even then. Whatever the reason, however, none of us had bothered to take it out of Ken's briefcase for examination. Turned out that was a mistake.
He settled his satchel onto the desk, clicked it open, and out came the box for our first real look. As he wiped off the smoke, my initial reaction was to be dazzled. It was magnificent, a silversmith's masterpiece, engraved with all manner of mythological beast and fowl. A work of art in every sense. Never seen anything remotely like it.
The problem was, it wasn't merely locked. It was soldered shut. The silver lid had literally been welded on, leaving it essentially a solid piece. Noda, it turned out, left nothing to chance. Only a silversmith could crack the seal and divulge the contents. So we still had no idea what was inside, and worse, we'd managed to fritter away a valuable half hour coming to that fruitless discovery. Now what?