“Look, do you remember back in the day when all the cool technology came out of Japan? Betamax, DVDs, video games, portable music players…”

“Sure,” Randi said.

“What happened?” Fujiyama asked rhetorically. “Suddenly, right around the time Takahashi went to work as an aide to the former head of the Japanese defense forces, that innovation started to fade and America took over. Where did all those brilliant people go? The CIA seems to think they just went up in smoke.”

“But you don’t,” Randi said. “You think Takahashi got hold of them and paid them to develop a next-generation arsenal.”

Smith kept his face passive, but his mind was trying to churn through what he was hearing. The pieces were starting to fall into place. And the picture they created was terrifying.

“Let’s talk Akito Maki,” Fujiyama continued.

“Who?” Randi said.

“He’s was a young chemical engineer who in the early nineties was on his way to increasing the stored energy in a given amount of rocket fuel by an order of magnitude. Then he went to work for one of the Takahashi family’s companies and doesn’t seem to have produced anything salable. Or Genjiro Ueda, a materials engineer who was combining carbon fiber and ceramics into incredibly tough materials. He went to work for a private contractor and makes an excellent living not producing anything. Then there’s granddaddy of them all: Hideki Ito.”

Smith glanced at Randi at the mention of the familiar name. To her credit, her expression didn’t even flicker.

“Ito’s one of the fathers of nanotech. Decades ago he was doing really interesting things with it and then he went to work for himself and no one really ever heard from him again. And that’s only a few of the programmers, biologists, engineers, and nuclear physicists who’ve just kind of faded into Japan’s woodwork over the last three decades.”

“Do you have any evidence to back up what you’re telling us?” Smith asked.

Fujiyama stared at him, looking a bit uncertain. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision and motioned with his head to a tall, tree-covered knoll to the east. “A bunch of files buried up there in a safe I designed myself.”

“Files?” Randi said. “You mean, paper? Why wouldn’t you just keep it on an encrypted disk?”

Fujiyama laughed. “Did you wonder why I wouldn’t let you contact me over e-mail? Why I said no modern cars or electronics?”

“You think the Japanese are using them?”

“Are you kidding? I guarantee it. They say they really don’t have much of an intelligence network, but Takahashi recognized how important computers would become when we were still churning out slide rules. What modern car or electronic device doesn’t contain something either designed by or made by the Japanese? You know all this large-scale hacking that we blame on the Chinese?”