“So, let me guess. Masao Takahashi is suddenly starting to look a little crazy and Laurel and Hardy can’t figure out why. Now the CIA’s worried and you need the help of the guy you fired because you thought he had a tinfoil hat in his desk drawer.”

“I didn’t fire you,” Randi clarified. “I’d never even heard of you until a few days ago.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

Smith laid his gun down on the bumper and pushed it to a less intimidating distance. “You nailed it on the head, Eric. Takahashi seems to be almost anxious to start trading blows with an eight-hundred-pound gorilla. And sure, we’re obligated to help out, but Japan’s still going to get the shit kicked out of it. What’s his angle?”

“What’s his angle,” Fujiyama repeated with a smirk. “Did you know that Japan, a country with no official military, has the fifth-largest defense budget in the world?”

“I did know that, actually.”

“What you don’t know is that the published figure is probably less than half of their actual expenditures. It’s one of the reasons their recession lasted so much longer than anyone predicted.”

“That would put it pretty close to equal with China,” Randi pointed out. “Doesn’t seem like they’re getting value for their money.”

“No it doesn’t, does it? The Japanese are famous for their efficiency and yet they manage to spend over a hundred billion dollars a year on defense and not have much to show for it.” His voice took on a sarcastic edge. “Who would have thought?”

“So you’re saying that they do have the weapons,” Smith said. “We just aren’t aware of it.”

“Seems like we’d notice all those ships and tanks,” Randi said, baiting him. Based on what they knew about the nanotech, it was obvious where Fujiyama was headed with this.

“The Japanese don’t have the option of building an old-school military. There’s the cultural push-pull inside the country relating to what happened in World War Two, the constitution MacArthur wrote for them, the possibility that it would create an Asian arms race—”

“And they don’t have the population base or natural resources to support it,” Smith said, finishing his sentence.

“Ding! Give that man a cigar! So they had to create something new.”

“What about the battleship they put to sea?” Randi said. “That was pretty standard stuff.”

“The one that’s on the bottom of the ocean now? It was just a diversion. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Takahashi sank that thing himself.”

Smith opened his mouth to question him on that point, but the young analyst seemed to be warming up to his subject. Better to just let him talk.