The Secret Window Whence the World Looks Small and Very Dear

Christopher Hernandez de Puerto Peñasco: First Lieutenant, Air Force.

Born: October 7, 2007, Puerto Peñasco, Sonora Han (age 25)

Military Occupational Specialty: キF-1R (Fighter Pilot– Ki-16C)

Alma Mater: Sacramento Air Force Academy (BS Geology, minor Mathematics)

Caste: Samurai (non-heir scion of landholding clan)

Religious Class: Adherent of State Religion(s) (Catholic, Shinto, and/or Buddhist)

Languages: Spanish (SoCal), English (NorCal), Japanese

Lt. Hernandez has outwardly expressed a single-minded devotion to the art of fighter warfare, and has certainly displayed aptitude in it well above par, with five confirmed and two probable air-to-air kills earned largely against Cuban MiG-29 and A20 fighters. He is, however, a much better-rounded warrior-scholar than he might give himself credit for, exemplary of the sort of learning and training all samurai should strive for. Though his degree in Geology was largely selected as an expedient route into a cockpit, he took the time and effort to earn a minor in Mathematics, in his own words, “for shits and giggles,” and became Sacramento’s star fencer, setting school records in saber and kendo. He is presently the only airman in his MOS to hold a Rifle Excellence Badge, and will no doubt do the Air Force credit in the upcoming Branch Weapons fencing tournament. Despite these accomplishments, he is not especially given to boasting (at least by the standards of fighter pilots) and is ever willing to acknowledge a weakness. Learning by doing, outside-the-box problem-solving, and adapting to unfamiliar circumstances are second-nature to him, and I can think of none better to pilot the Shogunate’s Duelist.

–Dossier submitted by Major Domingo Adachi, California Shogunate Air Force, to Lord General Robert Earp, Daimyo of Tucson, Director of Security. December 20th, 2032.

After a couple days, General Earp called Chris back, informing him that the Cuban rebels did not have any P-28 tanks with intact fission cores, but would send one over if it fell into their hands. He also reminded Chris to be careful with what information he passed to Jen.

As he said this and hung up, Jen glanced at Chris from across the Project Lepanto cafeteria, smiling. He smiled back, but could feel that it didn’t extend all the way up his face. She brought a bowl of beef udon over and sat down across from him.

For her part, Jen was more at ease around Chris now than she had ever been. She had cut contact with George Jensen entirely, and intended now to put her informant days behind her. When the Treaty of Budapest had been signed, she had thought Utah had a chance at independence and democracy, if only the United States would champion it, but with every day that passed, it seemed less likely the Americans were going to try for it, and she found herself wanting them to less and less. She was… not so much shifting ideologies from a liberal to a monarchist, as losing interest in political ideology altogether. Growing out of it, she liked to imagine. She had gotten to know Chris, and Earp, and Alicia, and they were good people. She was on their side, no longer with or against the system that had set them in positions of privilege and power. They were using that power for good, and she wanted to help them do it.

“Jen?”

“Yes, Chris?”

“I hope this question isn’t prying too much, but… do you have any history that might look bad, if the Gendarmes dug it up in the espionage case?”

The possibility they had found out about what she’d gotten up to in college had crossed her mind, but hearing Chris suggest it put her into a cold sweat. “I, uh… I was something of a liberal as a student. A Yank-lover, even. Nothing that would connect me to Colombia, though.”

He shrugged and moved on to smaller talk, but the rest of her workday, the thought kept coming to Jen that it might not be a good idea to see this project through after all, that tonight might be a good time to hop in her car or book a redeye flight and make a break for the States. In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to work through an activist cell rather than go to CIA directly, but that would’ve carried its own risks. She was still mulling the prospect over when she pulled out the Project Lepanto gate at the end of the day.

“That’s the car those MSI shits were tailing yesterday.” Joseph Cooper said. “On her ass, and don’t worry too much about getting spotted. These Smithians have some of the sloppiest damned fieldcraft I’ve ever seen.”

“Shit, Joe,” his counterpart from the local American consulate said, pitching a cigarette out the window and pulling their car out of an alleyway, “you’re about the most foul-mouthed Mormon I’ve ever met.”

“I’m better about that, when I’m not trying to pluck my best informant from between commies trying to haul her off to some labor camp or fucked-up brainwashing experiment on one side, and samurai sons of bitches coming for her head on the other.”

They followed her cherry-red 2026 Toyota Corona in their black 2020 Chevrolet Suburban– perhaps a little unusual on the Shogunate’s roads for being an American model, but a love of big cars seemed endemic to all of North America, and the CIA agents dodged aggressive drivers in Hiluxes and Outbacks as they closed in on Jen’s apartment complex. Aside from Joe and the San Francisco agent– Ed, was his name– the back seat held a diplomatic courier sent out from the American embassy in Shinkyo, and with him was a plastic footlocker with airholes, large enough to hold an adult woman in the fetal position and marked:

DIPLOMATIC BAG

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

across the lid. Why the embassy already had such a container on hand was anyone’s guess.

As they saw her pull into an apartment complex, Cooper also noted a police car parked within sight of the entrance, the Oakland Ashigaru in the passenger seat eyeing Jen’s car as he spoke into his radio.

“Shit. Ed, come in from the side entrance. Bag boy, keep eyes on that car, note where she enters the building.”

Asanuma Ryoma, Japanese-born, a Colombian citizen since shortly after he fell in love with the works of Marx, Sorel, Gramsci, and the more obscure Mao whom the Empire had martyred, and for nearly a decade an MSI sleeper in the California Gendarmerie, heard the radio call go out. A perimeter sprang from vehicles all around the complex, mostly unmarked, and the arrest team filed slowly out of an armored car parked on the other side of the building from the main entrance. Counterterrorist unit. Seemed a bit excessive, but what did he know about espionage cases? He shot a pre-typed text message off to Alejandrez and his backup, checked the plastic explosives he’d planted under his own patrol car, walked over to the counterterrorist car, and knocked on the driver’s door.

Going into this assignment, he had requested a submachine gun– on the basis he didn’t want to accidentally shoot through a wall with a full-power rifle in a densely-populated area– then had quietly pocketed a suppressor and a box of subsonic ammunition for the extra-short AUG he had been issued in the Shogunate’s standard .41 Tucson Special pistol cartridge. When the driver opened the door, recognizing him through the bulletproof window, Ryoma popped him and the Gendarme in the passenger seat without a soul noticing.

When Alejandrez saw Asanuma’s text, he and the two Colombian agents who had broken off from other assignments in the Shogunate to join him took up positions behind a corner in an apartment complex hallway, near a staircase. Each wore a thin hoodie or unbuttoned outer shirt, befitting the Bay Area spring weather, but more importantly concealing a FAM-89 machine pistol– a Colombian modernization of the Soviet Stetchkin. In short order, their mark walked around the corner, and he ran up to her, flashing a fake ID.

“Miss Higuchi, I’m Frankie Alexander, CIA.” he said in his well-practiced impersonation of a Texas drawl. “We found you at the absolute last instant, Gendarmes are moving in to arrest you as we speak. Please come with us, right now.”

Jen nodded, startled by the man jumping out at her from around the corner, but not about to hesitate. While she wished she had the option to just keep working for the Shogunate like she had never been an informant, she knew her choice now was between fleeing to America or going before a judge on charges of treason, which always carried a sentence of death. By firing squad, if she was lucky, but they had far more barbaric means, as well. She chose the former.

“God bless America, Mr. Alexander. Lead the way.”

They had just started guiding her down the hallway, opposite the way she had come in, when the door she had entered the building through flew open. Two men in business suits ran in, tailed by one in a high-visibility vest carrying a large footlocker.

“Jen Higuchi!” the slimmest of the three yelled, with a nasally Illinois accent, “I’m Joe Cooper, CIA. You’re in danger, step away from those men and we’ll get you to safety.”

“You!” Frankie snarled, “you’re that hobo who’s been hanging around my apartment in Salt Lake!” He went for his FAM-89, while Joe and Ed drew their Smith & Wesson 9mms.

Jen dove for the floor, but one of Frankie’s cohorts grabbed her by the wrist, and she was half-led, half-dragged back as the hallway erupted into gunfire. The ceiling panels above the CIA agents’ heads erupted with broken PVC as hastily-aimed automatic fire shredded them, and Frankie and the third man of his team– whom Jen was beginning to suspect were actually MSI, as they shouted to each other in Spanish with an accent that didn’t quite sound Mexican– both stumbled as the Americans returned fire. The other man laid limp on the ground, but Frankie leaned against a wall, gritted his teeth against the pain of a bloodied outer thigh, and finished dumping his magazine. The Americans dove as one through the ajar door of the complex’s gym to their left, and the glass window set in the door they had entered the building through scattered onto the sidewalk outside.

Frankie reloaded as he caught up with Jen and his surviving teammate, moving in a sort of limping power-walk. “You’re better dead than in their hands, girl, don’t try anything.”

Coming down the way the Colombians had intercepted her from, Jen heard shouts of “Gendarmerie! Put your weapons down!”, then a metal cylinder rolled into the middle of the T-junction. Frankie and his comrade shielded their eyes, but the more heavyset of the two CIA suits peeked out the doorway at just the wrong moment. Her own hand was up half-blocking her vision when the flashbang went off, but it still stunned her thoroughly, and she only vaguely perceived more gunfire as she was dragged out a doorway and hefted onto a cold metal surface.

Joe Cooper grabbed the stunned Ed and pulled him into the gym, then jerked the door shut and let its electronic lock click into place. He positioned himself between Ed and the room’s one security camera. “Get that box open.”

The courier popped the latches.

“Into the box.” Joe urged, helping Ed in, “We’ve all three got diplomatic immunity, but you’ve got operations of your own here that might get screwed up if they declare you persona non grata.”

The second after the latches clicked shut, a masked Gendarme peeked in the narrow window on the door, and tested the lock. Joe and the courier faced him, their hands in the air and Cooper’s gun back in its concealed waistband holster.

Then an explosion rocked the building, and the Gendarme stepped away in a hurry. Cooper slid out the door, beckoning the courier to follow, and he rolled the footlocker along on a pair of attached wheels. When they got out to the parking lot, the perimeter was still intact, at least on this side, and Cooper approached a confused, panic-stricken Gendarme, hands where the officer could see them. He considered flashing diplomatic papers and just walking past the perimeter, but no, they would probably figure out he had been here, guess that he was CIA, and have him booted from the Shogunate in any case. Better that he set himself up as the liaison, if their countries now needed to coordinate their operations against the Colombians.

“Joseph Cooper, diplomatic counselor from the United States. I need to get in touch with my country’s ambassador and one of your country’s intelligence people, the highest I can get, right the hell now. Don’t mind my courier, he needs to report back, it would be against the rules to detain him anyway. Can you help me?”