"I fought in a war where the other side made the rules," Durling observed. "It didn't work out very well."

"Which leads me to a question," Jack said.

"Ask it."

"How far can we go?"

The President considered. "That's too open-ended."

"The enemy command authority is usually a legitimate target of war, but heretofore those people have been in uniform."

"You mean going after the zaibatsu?"

"Yes, sir. Our best information is that they're the ones giving the orders. But they're civilians, and going directly after them could seem like assassination."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Jack." The President stood to leave, having said what he'd come in to say.

"Fair enough." A slightly wider purview, Ryan thought. That could mean many things. Mainly it meant that he had the opportunity to run with the ball, but all alone, unprotected. Well, Jack thought, you've done that before.

"What have we done?" Koga asked. "What have we allowed them to do?"

"It's so easy for them," responded a political aide of long standing. He didn't have to say who them was. "We cannot ourselves assert our power, and divided, it's just so easy for them to push us in any direction they want…and over time—" The man shrugged.

"And over time the policy of our country has been decided by twenty or thirty men elected by no one but their own corporate boardrooms. But this far?" Koga asked. "But this far?"

"We are where we are. Would you prefer that we deny it?" the man asked.

"And who protects the people now?" the former—that word was bitter indeed—Prime Minister asked, leading with his chin and knowing it.

"Goto, of course."

"We cannot permit that. You know what he follows." Koga's counselor nodded, and would have smiled but for the gravity of the moment. "Tell me," Mogataru Koga asked. "What is honor? What does it dictate now?"

"Our duty, Prime Minister, is to the people," replied a man whose friendship with the politician went back to Tokyo University. Then he remembered a quote from a Westerner—Cicero, he thought. "The good of the people is the highest law."

And that said it all, Koga thought. He wondered if treason always began that way. It was something he'd sleep on, except that he knew that he wouldn't sleep at all that night. This morning, Koga thought with a grunt, checking his watch.

"We're sure that it has to be standard-gauge track?"

"You can resection the photos we have yourself," Betsy Fleming told him. They were back in the Pentagon headquarters of the National Reconnaissance Office. "The transporter-car our people saw is standard gauge."

"Disinformation, maybe?" the NRO analyst asked.