By April of the following year, Yukinaga was fully absorbed in a project that had been designated “Plan D,” working day and night in an office building in the Harajuku district, one floor of which he and his colleagues had taken over. The heart and soul of Plan D was Tadokoro.
Yukinaga was filled with misgivings. Suppose all this turned out to be nothing more than a wild fantasy of Tadokoro’s? He had taken a leave of absence from the university at a time that was especially critical for him. His superiors were just beginning to recognize his achievements, and if he behaved himself, he had a good chance of advancing to a full professorship the following year. But now he had let himself become entangled in a bizarre affair that defied rational analysis. How was he going to explain things to his academic patrons?
Kazunari Nakata, a friend from college days and one of the world’s foremost authorities on informational science, frowned with concentration as he studied the reports. “No matter how you look at it, it’s an absurd kind of game—like trying to grab hold of a cloud,” he said with a groan. “The qualifiers are extremely complex. Why, even a PERT might not be able to handle them. What we have to do is think in terms of some sort of new softwear. The problem is that the government is going to give us money only on a stage-by-stage basis and not once during the intermediate stages are we going to come up with unequivocal evidence that this is actually going to take place. Can we persuade the government, then, despite this intrinsic uncertainty, to commit itself fully at some point, realizing full well that this will entail the expenditure of a fantastic amount of money? And then there’s the whole business about secrecy!”
“It might even happen that new legislation is necessary,” said Kunieda, a young man from the Prime Minister’s Office. ‘In that case, secrecy would be out of the question.”
Yukinaga, naive as he was in such matters, had at first favored the open implementation of Plan D, but Kunieda and Nakata had persuaded him otherwise. According to Tadokoro’s rough calculations, the earliest possible date was two years off; the most remote, fifty years. The phenomena in question were still extremely vague and impossible to interpret clearly. Should the evidence, however, begin to point toward an actual occurrence and that, if not in two years, at least in the next few years, then the formulation of a government program to deal with it would have to be done in secret in order to avoid public turmoil. Nor would secrecy be any less necessary in the area of foreign relations should the dreadful crisis come to pass. The news would have to leak out eventually, of course, and it would therefore be a question of how much the government would be able to accomplish before then.
Nakata’s responsibility lay in coordinating the workings of Plan D. The group as yet numbered no more than five, and they were young, ranging from the late thirties to forty years of age. Besides Yukinaga, Nakata, and Kunieda, there was Yamazaki, of the Intelligence Section of the Cabinet, and Yasugawa, the youngest of the group, who had been taken from an architect’s office to handle the accounts.
“About the money aspect,” said Yasugawa, “it seems to me that we’ve already gone beyond the budget given us. And soon we’ll need still more people and an incredible amount of equipment.”
“Let’s just leave worries of that nature to the Prime Minister and his friends,” said Nakata. “No matter how much we thrash it around, we’re not going to get anywhere with that problem. So let’s get down to work with whatever means we have avail able and get some results. The rest is out of our hands.”
The meeting broke up, and Kunieda and Yukinaga were left to themselves as the others went downstairs for coffee. Yukinaga envied Nakata his cheerful confidence. He stared moodily at the magnetized map of Japan on the wall. Large red arrows had been attached to the southeastern section of the Archipelago, which was mottled with a variety of colors, and to the Japan Trench. The start of Tadokoro’s plan.
Suddenly Yukinaga realized that the board was shaking gently from side to side. “Another tremor,” he muttered.
“The old gentleman, Watari, has let go a part of his art collection, I hear,” said Kunieda absently as he puffed on a cigarette.
“And that’s how we got part of our money?”
“I think so. They say that some of his pieces are classified as National Treasures.”
That shriveled-up old man in the wheelchair—what was his game anyway? Yukinaga wondered. Kunieda came from the same village as he, and it was most likely the old man’s influence that had put Kunieda into the Prime Minister’s Office. A city boy himself, Yukinaga could not fathom the nature of that village solidarity whose deep roots remained firm even to the present. At any rate, Kunieda seemed to have maintained con tact with the old man at all times, and it had been through Kunieda, to whom Yukinaga had confided the nature of Tadokoro’s “concern,” that Watari had come into the affair. Yukinaga had known nothing of this relationship, nor had he even heard of the old man, though after Kunieda had explained things to him, he had a vague recollection that he had seen the name somewhere years before.
Immediately after the earthquake meeting, he had been in vited to come to see the old man with Kunieda. He had been astounded at the fierce spiritual strength that lay hidden behind Watari’s withered appearance and at the keenness of the mind that posed such laconic, concise questions. Watari’s manner was never anything but gentle, the very image of the good old man, but Yukinaga had gone away that day thoroughly awed. With his own eyes he had seen Watari summon the Prime Minister to his residence in Chigasaki and with a few words persuade him that Plan D should become a reality. And then there were the mysterious individuals and the hard-eyed young men, the latter obviously bodyguards, who surrounded the old man. There was also a beautiful young woman, mysterious enough in her own way. This was the stuff of legends, Yukinaga thought, a world whose depths he could not fathom, and he could not help feeling that something sinister lurked in the background.
“The old fellow—aside from this project, I wonder what goes on inside his mind,” said Kunieda, snuffing out his cigarette.
“I was going to ask you that,” said Yukinaga.
“I don’t know much about him either. We’re from the same town, it’s true, but if you tried to follow up any lead about him as a native son, you’d quickly come to a dead end. But it’s quite certain that his forte has been to work behind the scenes in two major worlds: politics and finance. He spans the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras, and he has a knowledge of their dark side that he carries with him into the present. Certainly, according to our way of thinking, he’s done some evil deeds, I suppose. But at times it seems that unless some villain with immense power comes along, nothing at all can be accomplished.”
“If you had lived for a century, what the devil would you think of things, I wonder?” said Yukinaga. “And more than just living, if you had exercised authority all that time, what would be going on in your mind? What would you want to do?”
“I have no idea,” said Kunieda, getting up. “I’m sure only that it’s because of his power that Plan D has actually gotten under way.”
Kunieda went downstairs, leaving Yukinaga to his thoughts.