"He's charging enough."

"Sir, it's worth it. The information he can give us will be worth billions in our trade negotiations, and billions in federal taxes as a result. Director, I used to be in the investment business, that's how I made my money. Investment opportunities like this come along about once every ten years. The Directorate of Operations wants to run with it. I agree. We'd have to be crazy to say "no" to this guy. His introductory package - well, you've had a chance to read it, right?"

The introductory package was the minutes of the last Japanese cabinet meeting, every word, grunt, and hiss. It was highly valuable for psychological analysis if nothing else. The nature of the exchange in the cabinet meetings could tell American analysts all sorts of things about how their government thought and reached decisions. That was data often inferred, but never confirmed.

"It was most enlightening, especially what they said about the President. I didn't forward that. No sense getting him annoyed at a time like this. Okay - the operation is approved, Jack. How do we run things like this?"

"The code-name we've selected is MUSHASHI. That's the name of a famous samurai dueling master, by the way. The operation will be called NIITAKA. We'll use Japanese names for the obvious reason." Jack decided to explain; though Cabot was bright, he was new to the intelligence trade "-in the event of compromise or a leak from our side, we want it to appear that our source is Japanese, not Russian. Those names stay in this building. For outsiders who get let into this, we use a different code-name. That one will be computer-generated, and it'll change on a monthly basis."

"And the real name of the agent?"

"Director, it's your choice. You have the right to know it. I deliberately have not told you to this point because I wanted you to see the whole picture first. Historically it's evenly split, some directors want to know, and about the same number do not. It's a principle of intelligence operations that the fewer the number of people who know things, the less likely that there will be any sort of leak. Admiral Greer used to say the First Law of Intelligence Operations is that the likelihood of an operation's being burned was proportional to the square of the people in on the details. Your call, sir."

Cabot nodded thoughtfully. He decided to temporize. "You liked Greer, didn't you?"

"Like a father, sir. After I lost Dad in the plane crash, well, the Admiral sort of adopted me." More like I adopted him, Ryan thought. "On MUSHASHI, you'll probably want to think it through."

"And if the White House asks to know the details?" Cabot asked next.

"Director, despite what MUSHASHI thinks, his employers will regard what he is doing as high treason, and that's a capital crime over there. Narmonov is a good guy and all that, but the Soviets have executed forty people that we know of for espionage. That included TOP HAT, JOURNEYMAN, and a guy named Tolkachev, all of whom were highly productive agents for us. We tried to do a trade in all three cases, but they were popped before negotiations had a chance to get underway. The appeals process in the Soviet Union is still somewhat abbreviated." Ryan explained. "The simple fact, sir, is that if this guy gets burned, he will probably be shot right in the head. That's why we take agent-identity so seriously. If we screw up, people die, glasnost notwithstanding. Most presidents understand that. One more thing."