It was yet another of those impossibly complicated problems, this time made worse by both countries handling it in the most destructive way possible. Nationalism was on the rise in Asia, and every day it seemed to grow in pitch. Politicians who until recently had been calling for calm were now seeing the writing on the wall and allowing themselves to be swept up in the fervor. The question was, where would it end?

“Did you know that almost half of Chinese television shows revolve around the killing of enormous numbers of Japanese?” Castilla asked.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Seven hundred million people just last season, Fred. That’s what? Six times the population of the whole country? I think the CIA told me it pencils out to twenty-two Japanese people per second, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. You take that kind of hate, add a faltering economy, an oversize military-industrial complex, and some rocks sticking out of the ocean, and you’ve written the recipe for disaster.”

“What did Takahashi do?”

Masao Takahashi was the chief of staff in command of Japan’s defense forces. A brilliant military man but not exactly a dove.

“About the television shows? I doubt he watches them.”

Klein frowned. “I was referring to the attack radar, Sam.”

“To his credit, nothing. The Izumo went to battle stations and then backed the hell away.”

“He defused the situation, then? I’m honestly surprised. Maybe he’s getting a little perspective in his old age.”

“Yeah. Just enough perspective that now I have to worry that the son of a bitch is thinking about getting into politics. You know he’s one of the richest men in Japan, right?”

Klein nodded. “Technology, energy, defense contracting, gaming, and I don’t even know what else. His family’s built quite an empire since the war.”

“And make no mistake, he’s the patriarch. People will tell you that his siblings run the companies, but take it from me, they don’t take a piss without asking Masao first.”

Klein leaned back and looked at his old friend thoughtfully. The United States was not a country accustomed to being caught up in the current, but this might be one of those rare occasions. Tensions between Japan and China went back to well before America was even a twinkle in Thomas Jefferson’s eye.

“So now we’ve got two of the world’s largest economies staring at each other over the brink,” Castilla continued. “China’s got the second-largest military in the world, including nukes. Japan technically doesn’t have an army but has the fifth-largest defense budget on the planet and a quarter million active-duty soldiers.”