Kyoto Kushito, at the age of only 27, was one of Japan’s richest men. He was the grandson of Hitoshi Kushito, a World War II Japanese hero.
Hitoshi, meaning even tempered, was an Army officer during World War II and left a war legacy like that of Rambo. He was a take no prisoners kind of soldier, a ruthless sort who would shoot his own soldiers if they ran or whimpered like cowards while under attack. At only 5’4” in stature, Hitoshi had the short-guy complex, and he proved to be much more formidable than he appeared.
Kyoto never met Grandpa Hitoshi; because the Major General was evaporated into nothingness when Little Boy, 8,900 pounds of pure hell and the world’s first atomic weapon used in war, was dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The massive 15-kiloton bomb had an explosive force of 30,000,000 pounds of TNT. Thirty million pounds of dynamite imposes unbelievable damage, not just from the blast, but from the heat and radiation that follow.
Major General Hitoshi Kushito exited the Army Headquarters in Hiroshima at 8:14 A.M. that sunny morning in 1945 and headed down the dark, brick walking path that would lead him to his chauffeur-driven sedan, the chauffeur leaning against the front, left fender, having a smoke.
Looking up at the sound in the sky above, Hitoshi could barely see the airplane, it was at such an altitude. He saw enough to recognize the B-29 Superfortress, but he could not recognize the name that adorned the giant plane. If he had seen the Enola Gay namesake painted on the plane, it would not have mattered.
The bright flash came as General Kushito still examined the sky, a brightness many times that of the sun, and blinded him instantly, even before the sound of the explosion reached the fine cilia of his inner ear. He screamed out in pain, but no one heard. By that time, the fireball consumed Grandpa Hitoshi. The chauffeur who had been leaning on the black sedan was now having a smoke of a different kind.
In a flash, 66,000 people were killed and two miles of complete destruction was forthcoming in less than thirty seconds. One frail Japanese lady standing by the front wall of a grocery store a mile from the blast, vaporized, leaving her distinct shadow burned into the building’s wall, resembling the negative from a photograph of long ago. Another 60,000 didn’t die but wished they had, severely burned over large parts of their bodies, flesh falling off in chunks.
Within two years of the blast, an estimated 140,000 people were dead as a result of Little Boy, a single bomb measuring only ten feet in length. The 8,900 pound atomic bomb exploding almost 1,900 feet above the surface of the Earth destroyed virtually everything standing within a two-mile radius, instantly killing everyone within the radius and millions of animals.
Over the next few decades to come, most Japanese forgave the Americans, realizing their own rulers of tyranny and conquest had received their just desserts.
That was not the case with Kyoto Kushito, grandson of the vaporized Major General and folk hero of Japan. Kyoto was not a folk hero; and in spite of his immense wealth, Kyoto kept a low profile. He had plans for the future.
Now at age 57 Kyoto Kushito was founder and director of The Foundation, a virtually unknown and shadowy, world-wide terror think-tank, based somewhere around Hiroshima, or so it was believed. Kyoto Kushito was anything but even tempered like Grandpa. He had an obsession to do to the United States what they had done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, and also to Grandpa Kushito and his chain-smoking chauffeur.
Within The Foundation was a virtually unknown group whose motto was a spinoff of the American Baby Boomers, the Baby Bombers. They consisted of a small but influential group of very wealthy Japanese men. Funded to the hilt, they had a plan of revenge and intended to use the Islamic world of terror as their vehicle of delivery.
While the Baby Boomer generation in America was born just after the war, another generation of children was being born in Japan. The new generation of Japanese begat a second post-war generation. Unlike the first, the second generation was not nearly so forgiving and forgot nothing.
The Baby Boomers did not suffer and lived the good life, while the new generation in Japan was born into a life of misery, birth defects, poverty, disease and radiation poisoning.
The simmering, festering hatred that Kyoto felt for the United States had now become manifest in the form of Euros, Yen, and Denarii, as well as the rapidly declining dollar. The accumulated wealth of the Baby Bombers would have been the envy of many countries, had other countries known of their existence.
Over the years, things changed. The Japanese recovered from their humiliation and rebuilt their devastated country; only this country’s strength was economic rather than military. Kyoto was not a scientist or engineer but a shrewd businessman. The last thirty years had made him one of the richest men in the world. With investments in the automobile and truck industry and several water desalinization plants around the globe, Kyoto’s vast wealth accumulated.
Kyoto also owned an interest in Finhydronic Mini Subs located in Finland. The two-man submarines were used to monitor the destruction of sea life caused by deep ocean oil drilling, and they could dive to 3,000 feet for as long as two hours.
The mini submarines would have been a blessing to Kyoto, had he believed in God and blessings. He didn’t. But he did believe in his remarkable brainpower, and he was full of pride but never boastful. The use of the mini subs in the transportation of the briefcase nukes to Dmitry in Chechnya, then to Europe, and finally, Mexico, was just this side of Einstein genius.
Since the fall of the former Soviet Union, thanks primarily to U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his Star Wars defense scheme, Kyoto purchased weapons of mass destruction from the Ukraine and Russia, every opportunity he could. He was enthralled with chemicals, poisonous gases and biological agents and purchased ricin, smallpox, warfarin, Ebola, and Hantavirus in quantity. The best news though, according to Dmitry and Yousef, was that God apparently was willing, Insha’Allah.
The Foundation now had a substantial nuclear closet. Most of it was no longer in the closet but distributed to central locations in Europe, Mexico and Russia. The Mexican police were easy to bribe, especially the border police; and most had no love for the United States. They believed that the United States stole Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California from Mexico, so the more bad things that could happen up north was fine with them.
Since the electronic border fence had been started under one president and stopped in mid-progress by the next, after millions had been spent, illegal entry from Mexico remained simple with tunnels and remote paths everywhere. Kyoto had been surprised when the virtual fence was stopped, but it worked for him and his plan. He was intrigued that America kept the porous Mexican border so porous, and he figured it must be business. They just couldn’t be that stupid.
The Foundation inventory included more than one hundred briefcase nukes and mini-briefcase nukes (Kyoto referred to the mini-nukes as lunch box nukes). There were also several nuclear torpedoes, three low yield nuclear bombs from North Korea, and five multi-megaton nuclear bombs, purchased from Pakistan. The second war between Russia and Georgia had been a boon for the arms proliferation business and was apparently leading to a regional war.
Kyoto thought it odd that world news reports never talked about the missing briefcase nukes from Ukraine; and when they did, when it was a slow-news day, they spoke of only a few small one- kiloton bombs. News commentators and reporters seemed to think that briefcase nukes were just small bombs. However, there was no such thing as a small nuclear weapon; and the nuclear weapons targeting America would truly be the gifts that keep on giving. As far as the quantity of briefcase nukes shipped to the United States and Europe, in the similar words of a past U.S. President, it all depends on what the meaning of few is.
Most billionaires do not drive their own autos, that service provided by chauffeurs trained as bodyguards. Kyoto however stayed out of the limelight and drove his own white Toyota Avalon himself, the Toyota blending in with so many other cars crowding Tokyo’s highways. Most Japanese folk had never heard of him. That’s the way he liked it.
Kyoto turned north onto the Shuto Expressway, making his way to Narita International Airport, Japan’s largest. There he would meet Dmitry, the Chechnyan, in the first floor men’s room at the south end of terminal one, and there they would swap identical, black briefcases.
Dmitry’s flight arrived several minutes early, unusual in today’s world of flight delays. It seemed to Dmitry that planes were being grounded more-and-more due to volcanic ash. At first it had been the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, then Souffriére Hills in the Caribbean, followed by the Katla Volcano just to the east of Eyjafjallajökull; and now several were erupting along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
As Dmitry worked his way to terminal one, he was puzzled by all the recent eruptions; and he was sure they were responsible for the increased earthquake activity throughout Asia and Russia. He didn’t like to fly into Tokyo because he knew from his studies that Tokyo would one day fall, not from war, but from a monster earthquake. They were due. The whole Ring of Fire was due.
Today’s meeting was so important that Dmitry quelled his fears and made the flight, a meeting in which not a word would be spoken, nor would he actually see Kyoto Kushito. He had never seen or actually met the mysterious Japanese businessman, other than the silent encounters that they had before in the men’s room at terminal one.
“Anything to declare?”
“No, I have only my briefcase.” Dmitry answered the customs agent in Japanese and laid the black, leather briefcase on the counter for inspection.
The customs agent examined the briefcase’s contents, looked for bank checks or certificates of exchange, but he found none. He did not examine the sheaf of business forms that were neatly placed inside, other than a brief shuffle. That’s what they always did, according to Kyoto’s message to Dmitry before his first visit to Tokyo.
Dmitry walked with a care-free stride, well aware of the body language experts employed throughout the Narita International and entered the men’s room and began walking with a limp. He entered the single handicap stall, secured the door and took a seat. The restroom was moderately crowded; and Dmitry hoped the guy in the next stall would hurry and vacate, plus he sounded sick, which was making Dmitry nauseated.
A few minutes early, Dmitry thought of his last encounter with Yousef in the restaurant in Chechnya. The Chechen soldiers had entered the restaurant that day as he and Yousef were leaving; and poor Yousef turned white as a sheet but kept his composure, sort of. When Dmitry called the Lieutenant by name, Yousef relaxed a little.
“What are you doing here, Niki? You’re scaring my poor friend here to death.” Dmitry had known Nikita for two years, and they became drinking buddies at Chayka, hoping to maintain the only bar in the area since there was really nothing to do but drink.
“Dmitry, my friend. Starting early today I see?”
They guffawed, the way ex-Soviet men did. The soldiers relaxed and lowered their weapons. “We are having a training day, trying to learn how the average citizen will react during a terrorist event. You did not know?”
Dmitry did not know, and he knew most things that were going down with the police and military.
His thoughts drifted back to the moment as the guy next door exited the stall, the toilet flushing automatically due to motion detectors; and he found the bright lighting quite annoying. That only encouraged people to read the newspaper on the john, and bathrooms should have dim lighting.
Kyoto entered the adjacent stall, took his seat on the throne and coughed three times. Dmitry awaited the conclusion of the signal, a sneeze. Upon hearing the sneeze, it didn’t even sound fake, Dmitry slid his briefcase to the privacy barrier between the stalls, as did Kyoto. Quietly, the switch was made without anyone else hearing. Kyoto got up, the toilet flushed again and he exited.
Dmitry sat the briefcase on his lap and opened it to verify that the gold certificates were accounted for, and his head spun when he saw the gold. This was his biggest deal, ever. Yousef would be very happy, which would make Osama and Muhammed happy; and Dmitry just might retire and go into hiding. He noticed an envelope taped to the top inner panel. He opened it and read:
Meet me at 7:30 this evening at The Nadaman Restaurant. It is in the Shangri-La Hotel in Tokyo, 29th floor. I will be at the last table in the rear by the windows overlooking the gardens. Don’t be late.