"What about it?"
"Like the Great Wall of China, I'll bet!" Pete panted. "A whole bunch of spikes and broken glass cemented in, all along the top of it!"
Alice peered out the door. "Why, it is, Dick! Just look! Why is that? Is this a bad neighborhood?" She turned to Joe for an answer.
"Might have been, 30 or 40 years ago," Joe said. "Rich Japanese built walls like that to protect their valuables back when there wasn't much police protection. Not so discouraging as a moat filled with alligators, of course, but it does make a person think twice about climbing over."
"I see," said Alice. "And how's the police protection these days?"
Joe shrugged. This was a poor time to give his personal opinion of the Japanese police. "Better, I guess. The Prime Minister's house is quite a bit newer, and it doesn't have spikes on the wall."
"What Prime Minister?" Dick asked.
"The Prime Minister of Japan," Ginger spoke up. "His 'town house' is located just across the intersection."
Patty came running back to the living room from her indoor explorations, squealing happily. "Mother! You've just got to see this darling bathroom! It has the cutest little bath tub." And she went off again, dragging Alice by the hand.
Joe winked at Ginger. In a moment, both Patty and Alice returned, and Alice was all but doubled over with laughter.
"Oh, Dick," she gasped, "it's just horrid! The bath tub's about five feet deep and two feet across; you can't even sit in it, much less lie down! Like a shower that fills up around you!"
"Hey, that sounds like fun!"
"You'd need a ladder to get in and out," Alice continued, holding her jaw to keep from laughing. "But Patty thinks it's wonderful, so I guess I do, too!"
"I like it here," Patty bubbled enthusiastically. "Can we live here, Dad? Please?"
Joe was $150 happier than Patty when Dick, after a final exchange of glances with Alice, agreed. But he knew better than to expect they'd all live happily ever after, anywhere in Japan. Not this crew.
3
"Mmmm," Joe said, smacking his lips.
"Hmmm," Major Pointer said. "Hey, I work here too —or soon will."
"This is Major Pointer," Joe said, introducing him to Sally.
"Then you get a kiss, too," Sally said, pulling Dick's head down by its ears to her level, and planting a kiss in the middle of his bald head.
"I think I'm going to like working here," Dick said. "Do we start every morning off this way, or just Tuesdays?"
"Hardly," Sally laughed, her blue eyes sparkling. "Only new bosses on their first day at work, and heroes the first chance I get."
"Heroes?" Dick asked.
"Didn't Joe tell you? Ben told me all about it yesterday, how Joe flew right down the runway at Nanning, taking pictures, and made a ChiCom fighter crash into a missile site!"
Dick looked respectfully at Joe, who was blushing. "I read about Peiping's charges in the paper, but my sponsor here never let on he was the culprit. I was wondering what people around here did for excitement on weekends. Now I know!"
"This is Sally," Joe said, trying to divert attention from himself by completing the unfinished introductions. "Her Dad's the Ambassador."
"How do we rate that?"
"We had to find someone who could get a top secret clearance on short notice when our last gal got . . . had to quit," Joe explained, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Jack Rogers, who pretended not to be listening. "Sally was fresh out of college, available, and her background was pretty easy to investigate."
"What happened is she got pregnant," Sally said gaily. "Too much overtime, I guess." She turned to Joe and said accusingly, "and no more loose talk about how available my background is. They rewrote that part of my position-description, remember?"
Joe blushed again.
Ben Hart stepped up and introduced himself. "I've been acting Section Chief since your predecessor left. Colonel Campbell will be wanting to meet you when Joe's through introducing you around."
"This is Lieutenant Selfridge," Joe said, continuing. "And Lieutenant Gibson, and Lieutenant Rogers. The others are out just now."
"Welcome aboard, Major," Rogers said with exaggerated cheeriness. "And welcome back, hero."
"Wish you could have joined us down south," Joe said, groping for a squelch. "Hope your cold's better."
"Hart. Selfridge. Gibson. Rogers," Dick said, pointing his finger at each and repeating their names, apparently oblivious to the undertones of Joe's and Jack's interchange. "I'll try to keep all the names straight. And, Sally —I'll remember that."
"I'll remember it too, Major Pointer," Sally cooed. "It was fun!"
It was Dick's turn to blush.
Joe pointed to an organizational chart on the wall. "Colonel Campbell will give it to you again, I'm sure," he said to Dick, "but let me real quick run through our chain of command." Dick nodded, and Joe continued. "Start at the top with Defense Intelligence Agency in D.C. It has nine overseas detachments, if you count Canal Zone as overseas: London, Ankara, the big one at Weisbaden, Liberia, and—in the Pacific—small detachments at Bangkok, Taipei, Manila, and our big one, Detachment Five here in Tokyo, commanded by Colonel Bullock. We also have a sub-unit in Korea.
"Det Five is divided mainly into two divisions—political and military intelligence. We're in military division, of course, which is divided into three branches—technical intelligence, tactical intelligence, and collection. We're in collection . . . specifically, Airborne Tactical and Technical Collection. It's abbreviated—brace yourself—Air Tac and Tech Collect. Airtackentekky-lek."
"That's a real mouthful," Dick acknowledged. "And that's the branch that Colonel Campbell is the chief of?"
"Hai," Joe said. "We're the flying part of the outfit, but there's more to it than that. Mission planning, briefings—you'll sit in on one after while—and we pitch in on some of the pre-analysis, too. That's why our office is here in town at Kanto Village with the rest of the DIA Detachment, instead of out at Koyota with the airplanes."
"What planes do you have? Just the RC and the RS?"
"Plus one chopper, which we don't talk much about. We keep it here at Kanto—we have a heliport here. It's for locating clandestine transmitters right around home. Mostly we use the RC—we call it the Bloat—and the RS, the Bat. The Bloat's for routine reconnaissance along coasts and borders, when we just want to lumber along and collect stuff by the ton. Anytime we have to penetrate, we use the Bat, so we can get in fast and get out fast. It's pretty much automated. Theoretically, it can take off on command, fly a mission, and recover—using computer-programmed flight plan and automatic landing system. Trouble is, it never comes back. Robots can't dodge missiles. We lost six in a row before we gave up and started using people again. Word of caution: its very existence is tippy-top; the home folk don't know about it."
"I'll just bet!"
"No, really," Joe said seriously. "I don't think they know, or the Socialists or Commies would be raising hell in the Diet. They wouldn't sit still for two minutes. Well," he concluded, looking at his watch, "the old man's probably waiting to meet you. He'll fill you in on the rest. I can run you out to Koyota to peek at the planes this afternoon, if you'd like. Or if you'd rather, you could come along while I take