In the years since then, he'd always regretted not turning right around and walking out. But he'd been drunk, he'd been horny, and he'd been in Mexico.
And now he wondered if he'd been set up. He doubted it, given the years that had passed since with nothing happening, but when the mysterious David showed him those photos, he'd wondered.
Foster shook off his concerns as he worked both sides of the supposed simulation. He had to accept that he was on the inside now. He was what he had always aspired to be – a player – and he was getting ready to move to the big leagues. He looked out the window of his office at the Sim-Center, at all the men and women in military uniform "playing" their parts, and shook his head. They were fools, ignorant of the way the world really worked.
There was another aspect of this that told him he was already at another level. The intelligence he was forwarding to the team in isolation was not only top of the line from the NSA, CIA, and other alphabet soup organizations in the United States government, but some of it was coming from agencies that worked for foreign governments. He assumed that the NSA had tapped into these sources somehow and was coopting them.
Foster ran through the message traffic being generated on Okinawa. Most of it was mundane, the normal stuff that was to be expected from a team in isolation, and it mirrored what his computer was generating for the staff in the simulation. There were some minor differences, however. For example, the team was asking for two Squad Automatic Weapons, while the simulation had not anticipated such a request. Foster pulled that message out of the flow and sent it on to the appropriate facility on Okinawa, giving it the proper authorization from Westcom headquarters. He did the same with the request for sniper rifles and the equipment for the HAHO jump. It was almost a ballet of data, he thought, and he was into it, playing both sides with the expertise he had built up over the years. Those being tasked did as ordered, as far as supporting the mission, while those giving the orders as part of the simulation didn't know that some of the orders were actually being implemented.
Foster paused as he noted a message directed to an address he didn't recognize. He checked his database and found out it was being sent to ARPERCEN: Army Personnel Center, headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia. The message seemed innocuous enough: a request from Captain Lee Tai to be considered for an ROTC teaching slot in her next assignment. Not exactly an earth-shattering message, and one that could easily have been lost in the volume of traffic.
But it was wrong because it had nothing to do with the mission. The written instructions he'd received on the laptop had been explicit: any unusual message traffic was to be diverted to a certain address to be reviewed. He was sure there was nothing wrong with Captain Tai's request, but after his most recent encounter, he was now a big believer in following Royce's rules. Foster stopped the message and did as instructed.
As General Slocum took the podium at the front of the Sim-Center, Foster paused in his work and turned on the intercom so he could hear what the general had to say.
"People, listen up," the general began.
"Apparently, the big wigs in Washington think they know how to run this operation better than we do. They've denied our request for more air power, but they have given the go-ahead for the reconnaissance element to go in tonight. Regardless of how you feel about that, I want you to support this with your best effort."
Slocum paused and looked about the room.
"Is that clear?"
The reply was a thunderous, "Yes, sir."
In the control room, Foster shook his head. It was as if they were still in college, playing on the team. He had left the team behind a long time ago.
"What is this Yamashita's gold thing you mentioned?" Vaughn asked Tai. The two of them were in the corridor outside the main isolation room, packing their rucksacks for the upcoming mission. Vaughn could tell that Tai had been on airborne missions before, because she was going through the same process he was: packing and repacking, each time leaving something out to lighten and tighten the load. You took a whole different view about what you packed when you had to carry it on your back.
For example, they were carrying a week's worth of food – just in case – even though they planned to be on the ground for only a few days. But they were cutting down the meal packages, taking out unnecessary and "heavy" items such as extra plastic spoons. To an outsider it would seem ridiculous, but it was almost a ritual of mission preparation in Special Operations. Of course, a week's worth of food for a mission was only seven meals. On the other hand, they both were going heavy on items such as ammunition.
Tai looked up from her gear, which was laid out on a poncho liner.
"General Tomoyuki Yamashita was the commander of Japanese forces in the Philippines during the Second World War. It's been well-documented that the Japanese conducted a systematic pillage of the countries they conquered during the war. They took all the riches they could get their hands on, particularly gold – the accumulated wealth of twelve Asian countries. Not only gold, but other treasures, such as pieces of art.
"There were special teams accompanying Japanese forces in the early days of the war, when the Rising Sun spread around the western Pacific Rim. They were tasked with emptying banks, treasuries, art galleries, museums, palaces – even pawnshops and private homes – of anything of value. It was a special branch of the Kempetai – the Japanese military intelligence service."
Vaughn didn't find that very surprising. He'd been to Kuwait during the first Gulf war and seen what the Iraqis had done there. Plundering was an age-old companion of military conquest. Sometimes it was done officially, and often unofficially. He knew the Nazis had done it in Europe and Russia during the Second World War, so it didn't take a great leap of logic to figure the Japanese had done it too.
"There's a lot that's not known about the entire thing," Tai continued, "but there are some facts. The overall plundering project was called kin no yuri, which means Golden Lily, named after a poem written by the Emperor Hirohito."
She snorted.
"That's one war criminal who got to skate. He professed ignorance of Golden Lily after the war and said it didn't exist. Yet his brother, Prince Chichibu, was in charge of the project. You don't think they chatted about it over a meal? Of course, Hirohito also expressed ignorance about the rape of Nanking. Seems everyone always gets memory failure or they weren't really in charge when bad things that occurred under their watch are brought up."
"I don't get it," Vaughn said as he refolded his Gore-Tex waterproof jacket and stuffed it once more in an outside pocket on his rucksack, trying to have it take up fewer square inches of room.
"Why do you think this treasure ended up in the Philippines and not Japan? Seems like the emperor would have wanted those riches close at hand."
"Because the U.S. Navy instituted a submarine blockade of Japan very early in the war," Tai explained.
"Many ships heading back to the homeland were sunk, and Chichibu didn't want to take the risk of losing the treasure. It was easier – and more secure – to send the ships carrying the loot to the Philippines. The Americans were leery of sinking ships in that area because some of them carried American POWs. In fact, a couple of POW ships were accidentally sunk late in the war, with great loss of friendly life."