He was probably 6 feet 6 and no more than 170 pounds dripping wet. A sandy-haired Caucasian who had a master’s degree in Japanese literature from a school near Tokyo. His still-seated companion was of first-generation Japanese descent, a bit chubby, with an awful haircut and a habit of chewing his lower lip when he got nervous. At that moment, he was gnawing on it like he’d missed lunch.

“So smooth,” Randi said, retrieving her hand and finding a chair. Rainsburg rushed to pull it out for her before rejoining his companion on the other side of the table.

“Nice to see you, Ms. Russell,” Stephen Sato said, briefly interrupting his quest to ingest his lower lip.

“You, too. I appreciate both of you taking the time to meet with me. I’m guessing you’re pretty busy right now.”

“Not at all,” Rainsburg said. “It’s not every day we get to sit down with a beautiful legend like yourself.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’ll have to excuse my colleague,” Sato said with a grin that came off a little slier than she’d have given him credit for. “We always have time for the people hanging it out there in the field—beautiful or not. What can we do for you, Ms. Russell?”

“I’m concerned about what’s going on in Asia.”

“You and everyone else on the planet,” Rainsburg said. “And take it from us, you should be. That’s a pretty serious staring contest they’ve got going on right now.”

“What I want to know is why. I understand what the Chinese are getting out of this, but what do the Japanese have to gain?”

Sato let out a loud breath. “How long do you have?”

“Give me the Reader’s Digest version.”

“It’s all about history,” Rainsburg started. “Thousands of years of it, culminating in some serious nastiness during World War Two. Let’s just say that the two countries despise each other. You know that—you’ve worked in China.”

She nodded. “But it seems like Masao Takahashi would be backing away from this thing like his ass was on fire. Why isn’t he? Am I wrong when I say that the Japanese military is no match for the Chinese?”

“Japanese self-defense forces,” Sato corrected. “Officially, the Japanese don’t have a military because of the constitution we wrote for them after the war. Having said that, they do have the fifth-biggest defense budget on the planet.”

“Still, she’s right that they’re no match for China,” Rainsburg interjected.

“Not even close. Don’t get me wrong now. Their people are well trained and they have some decent gear, but against the Chinese? No way. You’re talking about a quarter million troops with conventional weapons versus two and a quarter million troops with a nuclear arsenal behind them. Last time I checked, those ain’t good odds.”

“But,” Rainsburg said, “there’s a rub.”