"What was the pitch?"
"Defense semiconductor dependency. Claimed that if we keep on the way we're going, relying more and more on foreigners for advanced chip technology, we may as well kiss the farm good-bye. I had a little time to kill, so I invited him to have a drink. He good as chewed my ear off. Finally had to fake a dinner date to get loose. Man had a bug six feet up his ass about the U.S. buying half the latest chips for our hot-dog military hardware from Japan. Next war we fight, says he, we'll be buying high-tech weapons systems from the Far East. Problem with that is, anybody else could buy them too. And we'd get replacement parts whenever MITI feels like getting around to it. Today I happened to remember him, so I decided to give him a call, ask him if he still saw things the same wav."
"And?"
"No answer at his office, but since I had his home number, I decided to give that a try. Best I can tell, a lot of academics goof off half the time anyway."
"You get him?"
"Some police detective answered, wanting to know who I was, what the hell I wanted, whole nine yards. Shook me up, don't mind telling you."
"So what'd your pal do? Rob a bank?"
"I was about to start wondering. Finally, though, I got to ask some questions of my own, but it was a little hard to swallow the story. What I mean is, I don't necessarily buy what I heard."
"Which was?"
"Well, seems he was supposed to meet with the Senate's internal security committee this morning. Wife says she put him on the red-eye to Washington last night around ten. He was carrying some document he said he wanted to hand deliver. Something about it had him scared shitless." Henderson paused. "Tell you, this is the kind of guy who takes security seriously. When he’s worried, we all better be worried."