Page 139 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

“Mitomo’s daughter?” Juan asked.

“Yes. And fast-forward to this.” Eric’s fingers flew across his keyboard. A Japanese marriage certificate, a faded color wedding photo, and a local Japanese newspaper clipping appeared. The Cray supercomputer had translated all of it.

“Mitomo’s daughter marries a man named Tomoyuki Hashimoto. He was a Japanese aerospace engineer. He was a salary man, and an alcoholic according to his medical records.” Eric pulled up a coroner’s report. “Committed suicide in 1994 after he was fired from the F-2 fighter program.” Eric tossed in a photo of the jet plane.

“The Viper Zero,” Murph said. “An F-16 derivative. Made by Mitsubishi.”

Cabrillo was always amazed at Murph’s encyclopedic knowledge of all things weapons related, even systems from before his time.

“And the key word is ‘Mitsubishi,’ ” Eric said.

“As in Mitsubishi Zero, the famous Japanese fighter plane of World War II?” Max asked.

“No. Mitsubishi as in the J8MI Shusui.”

“Japan’s first jet fighter,” Murph said. “A German Komet knockoff.”

“What’s this got to do with the Vendor?”

“One of the lead engineers for the J8MI was Hiroshi Hashimoto, Tomoyuki’s father.”

“I can see where this is going,” Juan said. “And I’m getting a sick feeling.”

“You’re stomach is on point, Chairman. A wartime medical researcher and a wartime aircraft designer combine their gene pools to create the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, their grandson, the Vendor.”

“We still don’t have a name.”

“Oh, but we do.” Eric zoomed in on another Japanese document. “This is thekoseki—the family register of the Hashimoto family.” Stone then circled a handwritten name in faultless kanji script. “That’s the name of Tomoyuki’s only son, Shigeru Hashimoto, aka the Vendor.”

“What do we know about him?”

“He was a weapons designer for Japan’s largest defense contractors before joining the Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency, Japan’s version of DARPA. A brilliant visionary. Pushed hard against the conventions. But you know what they say in Japan? ‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered.’ It’s not clear whether he was fired or quit. What is clear is that he disappeared shortly thereafter and presumed a suicide, like his father.”

“A fatal presumption,” Max said. “In more ways than one.”

“So we have a name and a face. Where can we find him?”

“I hit all kinds of dead ends. After his presumed suicide, he disappears from any records. So I decided to go back to the source material and dig around. I don’t have any proof of anything, but sometimes circumstantial evidence is enough to convict.”

“You got that fromMurder, She Wrote, didn’t you?” Murph said.

“Guilty as charged.”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Juan said. A lack of sleep and a growing sense of urgency had shortened his fuse.

“Two things. First, it turns out Grandpa Mitomo was involved with a program called Operation Black Chrysanthemum.”

“Never heard of it,” Juan said. “There was an Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. It was a plan to use a seaplane from an I-400 Japanese submarine to attack San Diego with biological weapons from the air.”

“Bingo. This was a parallel program. Only Black Chrysanthemum wasn’t aimed at San Diego. It was aimed at Guam.”

Max frowned. “Why Guam?”

“Guam was the base for B-17s and B-29s bombing Japan. Japanesefighters couldn’t stop the American bombers, so the military hatched a plan to neutralize it with neurological agents.”

“What happened to the operation?” Max asked.

“Just like with Cherry Blossoms. Both submarines were sunk before they reached their targets.”