Thirteen time zones away.
Washington.
June 29th, 1:42 a.m.
In the Old Executive Office Building on the west side of the White House, a few scattered windows were still lit.
After the long-distance call was cut off, the man sitting behind the desk still had his hand on the receiver.
He sat like that for a moment, as if judging what the final roar of the engine on the phone meant, before putting the receiver back on the landline and picking up the Tokyo briefing pressed under the corner of the desk.
The overhead lights in the office were not turned on.
The two desk lamps were enough to illuminate the documents, and the curtains were all drawn.
Photos of the attack site, weapon models preliminarily confirmed by the Japanese police, the investigation progress sent back by channels in Japan, and the various movements that had suddenly appeared in Tokyo's political circles over the past two days were all mixed together on the desk.
Several pages of them had been marked with a fountain pen, circling a few words.
Important personnel protection, police-corporate cooperation, information sharing, and related legislation.
Each word taken alone was nothing special, but when they appeared simultaneously within forty-eight hours after Saionji Satsuki faced an assassination attempt, the meaning was different.
The person sitting on the other side of the office had also been looking at these materials.
He had not avoided it since the call went through, with a dark felt hat resting on his legs, quietly listening to Coleman's almost pathetic plea for help.
Until the person behind the desk turned to the next page, did he speak:
"He cannot get away anymore, can he?"
The person behind the desk kept his head down.
"Why do you say that?"
"You heard it just now too. Once Saionji gets serious, it is no joke."
At this, the other person paused.
"As long as Coleman is still in Tokyo and this net continues to tighten, finding him is only a matter of time."
The person behind the desk flipped over the report in his hands.
"Maybe."
This answer made the person sitting opposite chuckle.
"Since you think so too, why did you tell him just now that a route would be arranged?"
"Because he needs to believe someone will come to save him."
The person behind the desk finally raised his head.
"Coleman has been in this line of work for many years. If he still thinks he is only temporarily trapped, he will continue to do things according to what he learned in the past, stay quiet, try not to leave traces, and wait for the next route."
"But what if he is certain he has been abandoned?"
He put the file back on the desk.
"Then what he considers first will no longer be how to get out alive, but how to prepare a way out for himself. I do not like letting someone who knows too much improvise when they are desperate."
The person opposite understood.
"So that line 'I will not give up on you' was just to put his mind at ease?"
"No, I really do not plan to give up."
The person behind the desk frowned and glanced at him.
"Tokyo has not truly turned into a prison yet. As long as someone is willing to take money, as long as there are cargo ships leaving port and trucks leaving the city, there will always be loopholes. I will have people keep looking."
Saying this, he pulled out Coleman's file again and glanced at it.
"Besides, if he cannot even survive this level of manhunt, then my evaluation of him all these years has been too high."
The person sitting opposite just smiled like that, looking at the person behind the desk.
He lowered his head and touched the brim of his hat, as if organizing his next words, before looking back at the Japanese materials on the desk after a moment.
"Actually, I should be thanking Tokyo instead right now."
"Thanking them for what?"
"Thanking them for demonstrating to me what I have been trying to explain for the past few months."
The person behind the desk already knew what he was about to say, and his face lacked interest.
"Are you going to promote your 'Mega-Corporation Theory' again?"
But the other party continued:
"Coleman is not a green newcomer. He has worked in Asia for more than twenty years, knows how to evade the police, how to handle false identities, and knows where normal investigation systems leave gaps. In the Tokyo of the past, he probably would not be in Tokyo tonight."
"And what about now?"
"The government seals off legal exports, enterprises seal off commercial channels, and Saionji's own people are responsible for plugging the places the government cannot see."
"Any single hotel, car rental company, transportation enterprise, or dock taken alone could not truly trap him, but after all these things operate in the same direction simultaneously, he cannot even find a room to sleep in peace."
Hearing this, the person behind the desk raised his eyes and glanced at the other party.
"You are not planning to attribute what the Metropolitan Police Department has done over the past two days to Saionji's capabilities, are you?"
"No, no, please do not treat me like an unreasonable child, sir."
The other party still maintained that calm smile.
"But that is precisely the problem. The Metropolitan Police Department is still the Metropolitan Police Department, and Saionji is still a private enterprise, but these two sets of things are beginning to complement each other because of the same goal."
He picked up the briefing on Japan's domestic political trends on the desk.
"Now people are discussing important personnel protection, discussing letting enterprises and the police establish more stable information-exchange channels, and some lawmakers feel that private institutions undertaking key economic functions should be given more security authority."
"Before June 27th, many things could only rely on Saionji's own connections to be done; after June 27th, the Japanese government might start actively turning some of them into policy."
He put the materials down.
"That is why I say, after this failed assassination, Saionji will only be more dangerous than before."
The man behind the desk was silent for a moment.
"You think that girl will use this matter to expand her power."
"If she did not do that, I would instead suspect whether the past reports about her were written incorrectly."
This sentence finally made the person behind the desk show a very faint smile.
"You were not wrong about that point."
"Then the question comes back."
The other party sat forward a bit.
"If Japan allows Saionji to continue developing along this direction, how is the United States prepared to respond?"
After hearing this, the man behind the desk directly put his fountain pen aside.
"You have circled back to that Mega-Corporation Theory of yours."
"I have never left it."
"You admit it quite straightforwardly."
"Because every single thing that happened tonight is proving it."
The person behind the desk picked up the document brought by the other party.
CSS.
The name composed of three letters was printed in the dead center of the cover, below which was a title that looked much more serious than the former — — "A Conception for the Integration of U.S. Strategic Industrial Capabilities."
He had already read the document twice.
What was truly bold inside was never any specific business.
Military electronics were nothing new.
Communication equipment, base logistics, overseas security, and even strategic transportation—the United States already had a large number of contractors doing them.
The problem was that the person in front of him wanted to buy these originally scattered capabilities into the same system, and then equip this system with his own capital and financing capabilities — —
Then, become a company that can provide a complete set of "war services."
"I still have the same question as before."
The person behind the desk put the document back.
"Assuming you really pull it off, who will control it in the end?"
The person opposite did not answer.
The person behind the desk continued:
"Today you tell the Pentagon that logistics costs can be cut through a large contractor; tomorrow you tell Congress that you can save factories about to be closed due to falling defense budgets."
"When another ten years pass, the military finds it cannot do without your transportation, the intelligence system cannot do without your communications, and overseas bases also need your people to maintain them, what will happen then?"
His tone was not intense; instead, because he spoke so calmly, it made the problem seem even more serious.
"You always say the United States needs an enterprise capable of integrating strategic capabilities. But once a company masters enough things that the country cannot live without, it will itself become a new political force."
"Of course the government can give it contracts."
"The question is, after it grows to a certain extent, will the government still have the ability not to give them?"
The person sitting opposite waited until he finished speaking.
"So what you are worried about is actually not that it cannot be done."
The man behind the desk frowned.
"What I am worried about is precisely that it can be done."
"Look at Saionji; it is already out of control. Can the Japanese government still manage it?"
"That makes it even simpler."
The smile on the other party's face grew a bit stronger.
"Since what you are really worried about is whether it will turn around and kidnap the government after its success, then write the things that control it into the system right from the start."
The man behind the desk looked at him.
"Easier said than done."
"Of course it is not easy."
The other party reached out and pulled the plan a bit closer to his side, flipping to the middle pages.
"The truly valuable parts of CSS in the future are inherently inseparable from the U.S. government."
"Security clearances, military technology, classified contracts, weapon export qualifications, overseas base access, and most importantly, long-term orders from the Pentagon — which of these was not given by Washington?"
"I can raise money from Wall Street, and I can buy factories, buy contractors, and buy engineers, but as long as the government revokes a few of the most critical qualifications among them, this company will immediately lose a considerable portion of its value."
Saying this, he tapped one of the pages with his finger.
"So what needs to be solved is never 'how to stop it from growing'. What truly should be done is to make it continue to rely on government authorization for a portion of its capabilities with every step it grows."
After hearing this, the man behind the desk still could not be said to have an approving expression.
"Sounds great. But what if ten years later, the situation is reversed?"
"What do you mean?"
"The military has already gotten used to letting you handle transportation, overseas bases are used to letting you maintain them, and part of the communication system is also in the hands of your enterprise. By that time, the government can of course cancel the contract, but what about the cost?"
He leaned back against the back of the chair.
"If canceling a company's contract would affect several theater commands at the same time, is the Department of Defense restraining it, or is it negotiating terms with it?"
This question made the other party quiet for a moment.
Afterwards, he chuckled.
"That just means our preceding institutional design was not done well enough."
"You say it so easily."
"Because any system has the possibility of failing."
The other party did not deny it.
"Banks can become too big to fail, and military enterprises can also become irreplaceable because of a certain weapon. But we will not abandon banks or military enterprises just because such risks exist."
"What truly needs to be done is to write the rules in before it becomes a problem."
He closed the document.
"Major acquisitions can be reviewed, stricter security supervision can be set for core departments, the sale of certain strategic assets can be restricted, and confidential businesses can also have security personnel stationed by the government long-term. The closer CSS leans toward the national security field, the deeper the national regulation it should be subjected to."
"At least this way, we know what we are raising right from the start."
After he finished speaking, his gaze fell on the Tokyo briefing on the desk.
"Japan's problem is precisely the opposite."
The man behind the desk also looked over following his gaze.
"The most dangerous part of Saionji has never just been that it has money."
The other party said.
"In the past, the Japanese government never imagined that a private financial conglomerate would eventually possess financial, communication, computing, logistics, medical, private security, and overseas logistics capabilities all at once, let alone that these things could continue to extend into strategic technology, government cooperation, and intelligence systems."
"By the time they truly realized what this combination meant, Saionji had already grown into what it is today."
He reached out and picked up the Tokyo briefing.
"Now it is even starting to reverse. When the Japanese government wants to improve its crisis handling capability, its first reaction has become how to cooperate with Saionji; the police need corporate channels, and enterprises need government authority. Once both sides begin to rely on each other, this relationship will only grow deeper and deeper."
"This is the part I want to avoid."
The other party put the briefing back on the desk.
"What I want to replicate is the efficiency generated after it concentrates scattered capabilities, rather than recreating a private kingdom that no one can control."
Hearing this, the man behind the desk stared at the other party for quite a while, and finally asked a question:
"Do you really think you can pull it off?"
"I think it is worth a try."