Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [53]
A smile. "Yes, while we take most of the strategic risks. Offensive little people," the Minister added. Like those with whom Zhang had negotiated in Tokyo, the Minister and the Marshal, who continued to keep his peace, were veterans of the 8th Route Army. They too had memories of war—but not of war with America. He shrugged. "Well, we need them, don't we?"
"Their weapons are formidable," the Marshal noted. "But not their numbers."
"They know that," Zhang Han San told his hosts. "It is, as my main contact says, a convenient marriage of needs and requirements, but he hopes that it will develop, in his words, into a true and cordial relationship between peoples with a true—"
"Who will be on top?" the Marshal asked, smiling coarsely.
"They will, of course. He thinks," Zhang Han San added.
"In that case, since they are courting us, it is they who need to make the first overt moves," the Minister said, defining his country's policy in a way that would not offend his own superior, a small man with elfin eyes and the sort of determination to make a lion pause. He looked over at the Marshal, who nodded soberly. The man's capacity for alcohol, both of the others thought, was remarkable.
"As I expected," Zhang announced with a smile. "Indeed, as they expect, since they anticipate the greatest profit."
"They are entitled to their illusions."
"I admire your confidence," the NASA engineer observed from the viewers' gallery over the shop floor. He also admired their funding. The government had fronted the money for this industrial conglomerate to acquire the Soviet design and build it. Private industry sure had a lot of muscle here, didn't it?
"We think we have the trans-stage problem figured out. A faulty valve," the Japanese designer explained. "We used a Soviet design."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that we used their valve design for the trans-stage fuel tanks. It wasn't a good one. They tried to do everything there with extremely lightweight, but—"
The NASA representative blinked hard. "You mean to tell me that their whole production run of the missile was—"
A knowing look cut the American off. "Yes. At least a third of them would have failed. My people believe that the test missiles were specially engineered, but that the production models were, well, typically Russian."
"Hmph." The American's bags were already packed, and a car was waiting to take him to Narita International for the interminable flight to Chicago. He looked at the production floor of the plant. It was probably what General Dynamics had looked like back in the 19608, at the height of the Cold War. The boosters were lined up like sausages, fifteen of them in various stages of assembly, side by side, one after the other, while white-coated technicians performed their complicated tasks. "These ten look about done."
"They are," the factory manager assured him.
"When's your next test shot?"
"Next month. We've got our first three payloads ready," the designer replied.
"When you guys get into something, you don't fool around, do you?"
"It's simply more efficient to do it this way."
"So they're going to go out of here fully assembled?"
A nod. "That's right. We'll pressurize the fuel tanks with inert gas, of course, but one of the nice things about using this design is that they're designed to be moved as intact units. That way you save final-assembly time at the launch point."
"Move them out by truck?"
"No." The Japanese engineer shook his head. "By rail."
"What about the payloads?"
"They're being assembled elsewhere. That's proprietary, I'm afraid."
The other production line did not have foreign visitors. In fact it had few visitors at all despite the fact that it was located in the suburbs of Tokyo. The sign outside the building proclaimed it to be a research-and-development center for a major corporation, and those who lived nearby guessed that it was for computer chips or something similar. The power lines that went into it were not remarkable, since the most power-hungry units were the heating and air-conditioning units that sat in a small