"Hope we're not about to get kamikazes with a checkbook. Thoughts like that could make a man real nervous." Henderson rose and strolled to the fireplace. He examined his reflection in the large mirror over the fireplace, then set down his glass on the mantelpiece and turned back. "You know, Walton, I think I'm starting to lose my touch. I don't believe anything I hear and only half of what I see." He sighed. "Been one hell of a day."
"Pretty standard Friday, far as I could tell."'
"Well, a damned strange thing happened this afternoon."
"Some woman turn you down? Maybe you ought to start working out, Henderson, trim that little spare tire creeping in around the waistline."
"Still no complaints in that department, friend. No, this actually goes back a ways, to a few months ago down in Washington, when I bumped into a long-haired professor coming out of a committee session. Guy I mentioned a minute ago."
"The linkup between computers and weapons?"
"Him. We got to BS'ing in the men's room, and it turned out he was some computer hotshot from Stanford. He'd been testifying, I think, and he was still wound up. Probably I got to hear all the stuff he'd prepared and nobody'd asked."
"Defense semiconductor dependency. Claimed that if we keep on the way we're going, relying more and more on foreigners for advanced chip technology, we may as well kiss the farm good-bye. I had a little time to kill, so I invited him to have a drink. He good as chewed my ear off. Finally had to fake a dinner date to get loose. Man had a bug six feet up his ass about the U.S. buying half the latest chips for our hot-dog military hardware from Japan. Next war we fight, says he, we'll be buying high-tech weapons systems from the Far East. Problem with that is, anybody else could buy them too. And we'd get replacement parts whenever MITI feels like getting around to it. Today I happened to remember him, so I decided to give him a call, ask him if he still saw things the same wav."
"No answer at his office, but since I had his home number, I decided to give that a try. Best I can tell, a lot of academics goof off half the time anyway."
"Some police detective answered, wanting to know who I was, what the hell I wanted, whole nine yards. Shook me up, don't mind telling you."