"Shit," said Tam. "When will we ever get a break?"
"Looks like we've got two choices," Ken announced ruefully, gazing down at the intractable chunk of metal in his hands. "We can do what we probably should have done in the first place: simply stash this for the moment and let Noda think we know what's in it. Or we can drive into Tokyo and locate somebody there who can open it, then transmit from MITI headquarters downtown."
Neither of these plans seemed particularly inspired. The first gave us nothing but presumptions for leverage, and the second could take hours. Noda, we all realized, was not a man who dallied.
"Actually"—Tam spoke up—"there's a third option. Surely Noda's going to find out sooner or later we came here to the
Center. Believe me, he always learns everything eventually. So why not transmit something else now, anything, and then after you get the case open you can send the real data?"
"You mean, give him circumstantial cause to assume we've got the goods on him?" Sounded good to me. "Buying ourselves more time?"
"Right. It'll take him awhile to find out exactly what was transmitted. All he'll know for certain is that we sent something. In the meantime Ken can go on to Tokyo and proceed with plan B: open the case there and transmit the real contents."
He looked skeptical. "That might deceive everybody for a while, but not for long. There're too many links in the chain between here and DNI's New York office."
"But sending something now will gain time. It has to. Then you can go on to Tokyo and do what you need to from there. Tomorrow."
"Maybe." He still wasn't totally convinced. "But all right—rather than waste time arguing, let's just go ahead and do it. No harm in any instance."