Critical Mass

Chapter 14

A thick haze had settled over the Washington area as night fell, lending the city a mysterious air that Kelley Fuller found intimidating. She paid off her cab in front of an eight-story apartment building near Howard University Hospital, and hefting her single overnight bag, hurried into the lobby and impatiently punched the elevator call button.

She was a thin woman in her mid-thirties with long, dark hair, delicately proportioned Oriental features and a soft, yellow cast to her skin. She wore a white blouse, dark skirt and high heels, not exactly traveling clothes, but she’d been in a hurry.

The elevator was on the sixth floor, and as she waited for it to descend to the lobby, she put down her bag, went back to the glass doors and looked outside.

No one had followed her so far as she could tell. But she was certain that it would only be a matter of time before they came for her like they had Jim Shirley.

She closed her eyes tightly for just a moment, Shirley’s screams echoing in her head.

She’d seen everything from where she’d hidden in the shadows in front of the hotel, and when Dunee had calmly walked past, she’d been frozen, unable to take her eyes off the horrible spectacle below for more than a split instant.

Shirley had screamed for such a long time, but no one even attempted to help him or stop the two delivery men who’d simply gotten back into their truck and driven off. By the time someone brought a fire extinguisher from the hotel it was all over, Shirley’s body burned to an unrecognizable charred mass where it had fallen to the left.

She had run, and had kept running without sleep for the past forty-eight hours, hoping that once she reached Washington everything would be better, that she would be safely among friends. But now that she was here, she wasn’t so sure that anyplace would be safe for her ever again.

She’d gotten a clear, if brief, look at Dunee’s face as he’d passed. He’d been smiling.

Behind him, a man was being burned alive, his screams inhuman, and Dunee seemed to be enjoying himself.

The elevator dinged, but Kelley lingered at the glass doors for a moment longer, wondering if she’d done the right thing coming back. But she was so frightened she couldn’t go on. Not after what she’d witnessed. She needed to talk to someone. She needed to be among people she knew and trusted. She needed to be told what to do next.

Kelley had telephoned from the airport, and Lana Toy was waiting in the corridor as the elevator opened on the fifth floor, a look of puzzled concern on her small, round Oriental features. They’d been friends for a number of years, working together as translators for the State Department.

“What happened to you?” she demanded, taking Kelley by the arm and leading her back to her apartment.

“You didn’t tell anybody I’m back, did you?”

“No, but what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Tokyo. What happened?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Kelley said. “But I might have to stay with you for a little while, if that’s okay.”

“Of course it is. But are you in some sort of trouble?”

“Just lock the door, Lana, and get me a drink,” Kelley said. She put down her bag and went to the window where she carefully parted the curtain and looked down at the street.

The cab was gone, and as she watched, a city bus passed, but there was no other traffic.

No movement. But God, she could almost feel that someone was down there, watching from the darkness, and she shivered.

Jim Shirley’s screams would stay with her for the rest of her life. One of the reasons she’d not been able to sleep for the past two days was because she’d been on the run. But the other, even darker reason was because she was afraid to sleep. Afraid what her nightmares would be. She knew that she was going to relive the 75

experience. She was frightened that she might relive it from another point of view, from someone else’s perspective.

Lana Toy, a bottle of vodka in one hand and two glasses in the other, came back from the kitchen. She stopped short. “You are in trouble,” she said, her face serious.

“I’m going to need your help, Lana. But I don’t want you to ask me any questions.

Please. It’s for your own sake.”

The other woman nodded her reluctant agreement, then came the rest of the way into the small but nicely furnished living room and set the bottle and glasses on the coffee table.

“I need to use your phone.”

“Sure,” Lana Toy said, pouring the drinks as Kelley went to the phone and dialed a number.

It was answered on the first ring, by a man who simply repeated the number.

“This is Yaeko Hataya,” Kelley said softly. “I’m here in Washington.”

“We’ve been worried. Can we come for you?”

“No,” Kelley said sharply. She glanced at Lana Toy, who was watching her. “I’ll call back in… five minutes.”

“Are you safe?”

“For the moment,” Kelley said. “Five minutes.” She hung up. “Now I’ll take that drink,”

she told her friend.

Phil Carrara was one of four men in the small third-floor briefing room listening to Sargent Anders, the director of Technical Services, explain what they had learned from Tokyo. Actually, he thought, they had nothing concrete yet, and the way things were going they might never find Shirley’s killers or their actual motives.

Within three hours of the attack a team of four forensics people from Technical Services had been sent over, along with two of the best covert operations muscle currently in house and not on some field assignment somewhere.

During the thirteen-plus hours it took to get to Japan (they’d gone via commercial carrier to attract less attention) Tokyo Station had all but closed down. The Japanese were extremely sensitive about spies in their midst.

Shirley’s cover had been as a special economic affairs adviser to the ambassador, the actual day-to-day work of which fell naturally to his staff. The Japanese CIA and Federal Police accepted this ruse so long as there was no trouble. With this incident, everyone over there was keeping a low profile, and would continue to do so for at least the next few days.

The other three men with Carrara were his Assistant Deputy Director of Operations, Ned Tyllia, the Chief of the Far East Desk, Nicholas Wuori, and the Chief of Operations Covert Action Staff, Don Ziegler.

“The delivery truck has been found abandoned in a parking area near the Ikebukuro train station in northeast Tokyo. About five miles, as the crow flies, north of the Roppongi Prince,” Anders was saying.

It was something new. Carrara sat forward. “Who discovered the truck, Sargent, certainly not one of our people?”

“No, sir, it was Tokyo Police. The call came from a local koban after one of their officers stumbled across the truck. Its license tag had been removed.

A mistake on their part, I’d say. Naturally we monitored the call, as we do all police and military calls, and once the truck had been picked up and brought to the impound yard, one of my people got in for a quick look.”

Anders looked more like a bookkeeper than a cop, which is what he’d been with the New York City Police Department for eleven years before coming to the CIA. He was a precise little man, who sometimes affected a British accent because he thought it made him sound like James Bond. (Ian Fleming had been and still was the most widely read author by CIA employees.)

“Did we get anything?”

“Unknown yet, but there’s the possibility. According to eyewitnesses, the two bad guys wore hard hats and paper air filters. We recovered two used filters and one plastic hard hat from the truck. The items are enroute to our lab in Yokosuka where we should be able to come up with a DNA profile from hair out of the hat and from saliva off the filters. Won’t give us a name or names, but we’ll have something to match if they’re eventually bagged.”

“Fingerprints, anything like that?” Carrara asked.

“No time, it was a quick in-out. But we managed to get a sample of the gasoline they used. It was normal unleaded, but it was laced with hydrochloric acid. Ten percent.”

Everyone was shaken.

“Even if the fire hadn’t killed Jim, the fumes would have burned out his lungs,” Anders said.

“Determined bastards,” Tyllia commented.

“And ruthless,” Anders agreed.

The telephone at Carrara’s elbow buzzed softly and he picked it up. “Carrara.”

“This is Tony. Kelley Fuller just called.”

Carrara raised his hand for Anders to hold up. “Where is she?”

“Apparently here in Washington. But she used her workname, and she sounded strung out, though she says she’s safe. She’ll call back at 8:32.”

Carrara glanced up at the wall clock. Four minutes. “Did you get a trace?”

“I brought it up, but she was too fast. I’ll get her when she calls back. I offered to send someone for her, sir, but she refused.”

“We’ll keep her at arm’s length for the moment. I don’t want her contaminated.”

“Yes, sir,” the communications man downstairs said, and Carrara hung up.

The Resource and Evaluation Committee for most deep-cover operations in which a blind asset (an agent unknown to the local station) was used included the men in this room along with the Director of Central Intelligence and his deputy, and sometimes the Deputy Director of Intelligence and his assistant.

“Kelley Fuller has surfaced,” Carrara told the others.

“Where?” Wuori, the Far East Desk chief, asked sharply. He’d known Kelley since she was a little girl growing up in Honolulu, his home town.

“Here in Washington. She’s made initial contact and her next call comes in a few minutes.” Carrara picked up the phone and punched the number for the DCI’s locator service. It was Saturday. Murphy had left his office at noon.

“She’s on the run, then. Must have seen something.”

“Presumably,” Carrara said, waiting for his call to be patched through.

“How’d she sound? What’d Tony say?” For a time Wuori had been like a father to Kelley.

It hurt now that she was in Washington, apparently in trouble, and had not called him.

“Shook up, but safe.” Carrara’s call was going through. It rang, and Murphy’s bodyguard answered gruffly.

“Yes.”

“This is a yellow light for the general.”

A moment later Murphy was on the line. “Murphy.”

“She’s surfaced here in Washington,” Carrara said without preamble. Murphy would recognize his voice, and there was no doubt who he was talking about. “She’ll be calling again in a couple of minutes.”

“Is she all right?”

“Tony said she sounded strung out, but she was safe.”

“Any sign that she’s been compromised in Tokyo?”

“We’ve seen or heard nothing,” Carrara said, knowing what was coming next.

“Then send her back, Phil. The bastards hit Jim, there’s no telling if they’ll be content to stop at that.”

“It’s a warning…“

“You’re damned right it is,” Murphy growled. “Considering the billions in foreign trade that’s at stake, you and I both know they won’t stop.”

“I’ll meet her tonight.”

“Don’t queer it by being spotted with her,” Murphy said. The instruction stung a little because Carrara was enough of a professional to know as much.

“Sure thing.”

“Listen, Phil, there’s more than just money at stake here. Tokyo Station, among its other troubles, leaks like a sieve. Everytime we sneeze, the Japanese have the handkerchief out even before we start.”

“But this is something new.” Carrara said. Murphy disagreed.

“You’re wrong. Murder is one of the oldest of crimes. Read your Bible.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carrara hung up, thought for a moment, then looked at the others. “If she’s not blown her cover by running, we’re to send her back.”

“For God’s sake, Phil, we’d be signing her death warrant,” Wuori argued.

“We have no evidence that whoever hit Jim was also after her, have we?” Carrara asked.

Anders shook his head.

The phone at Carrara’s elbow buzzed.

“We’ll do what we can to insure her safety, but she goes back,” Carrara said, and he picked up the phone.

“She’s in an apartment on the north side, leased by Lana Toy,” Tony said. “A friend of hers.”

“Right,” Carrara said. “Put her on.” A moment later the incoming call was transferred to the briefing room. “Is that you?” he asked.

“Phil?” Kelley Fuller asked, her voice small and shaky.

“Yes, it is, but listen to me, don’t use names now. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, listen carefully. I want you to stay right where you are for one hour, let’s say until 9:30 sharp. Then I want you to leave the apartment and take the first right.”

“On foot?”

“Yes. I’ll pick you up as soon as I’m sure it’s safe. Do you have that?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I’ll see you in a bit.”

Kelley Fuller had put a light sweater over her shoulders, and Carrara spotted her walking alone north on Second Street toward McMillan Park and the reservoir. He passed her, and swung around the block to come up from behind her again.

So far as he was able to tell, no one was watching her. It had been a few years since he’d been in the field, but some skills were never lost.

He pulled over to the curb before the corner, reached across and opened the passenger door as she was passing. “It’s me,” he called out.

She came immediately over to the car, and got in. “I saw you pass the first time,” she said.

Carrara pulled away, and turned the corner on W Street toward the hospital. “Do you think you were spotted in Tokyo?” he asked.

“It was horrible, Phil. He never had a chance. By the time he knew what was happening it was too late.”

“Were you spotted?”

“If they were watching him they had to know we were seeing each other,” she said.

She was very frightened. It was obvious by the way she held herself and by the shakiness in her voice.

“They were pros, Kelley. If they’d thought you were significant, they would have killed you before you had a chance to run.”

“What are you telling me, Phil?”

“We want you to go back to Tokyo, to your job at the embassy.”

Kelley reared back, a horrified expression coming to her face.

“The problem is not going to go away,” Carrara said. “It was a warning to us, and one that’ll probably be repeated. He was playing on their turf, and evidently he got out of hand.”

“Me next.”

“Not you. But there’s a good chance they’ll go after Ed, if they believe he was involved with Shirley’s… extracurricular activities.” Edward Mowry had been the assistant chief of Tokyo Station. For the moment he was acting COS, his cover now the same as Shirley’s had been, as special economic affairs adviser to the ambassador.

“Then we have to warn him.”

“We’d lose everything we worked for, Kelley. Think it out.” Carrara had fought the entire project, but it had the personal blessing of the entire seventh floor: Murphy, Danielle and Ryan-the unholy trinity.

“He’s a sitting duck,” Kelley cried in anguish.

“I sent a team over to watch out for him, but they’re going to stick out like sore thumbs.”

“What can I do?”

“Keep your eyes and ears open, just as you have been doing. You’re still the unknown quantity.”

Kelley looked at him with disgust. “I can’t believe you’re saying that to me. Now, of all times.”

Carrara concentrated on his driving for the moment. No one in operations had liked what they’d sent Kelley to do. Some of them had daughters nearly her age. But she had been recruited for the project without much persuasion. It was being called PLUTUS… after the god of wealth, and greed.

“I want you to keep your eyes and ears open, just as you have been doing.”

“You want me to go to bed with Mowry to find out if he’s been bought by the Japanese,” she shouted.

“I want you to watch him.”

“I didn’t see anything that would have helped Jim.”

“Yes you did, we just didn’t listen. You spotted Dunee and warned us, but we took too long to find out that the real Armand Dunee was not the man who made contact with Jim.”

Kelley closed her eyes. “At first I thought it would be interesting,” she said. “Necessary.

But I’m in over my head here.”

“We all are.”

She reopened her eyes. “It’s only money, Phil. We’re only talking about balancing foreign trade, or buying out Rockefeller Center, or MCA, or Disney World. Nothing earth-shattering.”

“That’s what we were talking about. But now we’re discussing murder. A horribly brutal murder, with the possibility that there’s more to come.”

“Not me,” Kelley cried.

“We want you to go back to Tokyo, back to your work with the USIA. If you spot something-anything, no matter what it is-that looks wrong, let us know immediately.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll pull you out.”

“What if I’m the target?”

“You won’t be.”

“What if I am?” Kelley insisted, her voice rising with anger.

“Then we’d have to protect you…“

“Like you protected Jim Shirley,” she said disparagingly.

“If they want to kill you, they won’t stop trying simply because you return to Hawaii, or here to us,” Carrara said harshly, hating himself for what he was doing to the woman. Yet he didn’t think that she was anyone’s prime target. Whoever was gunning for the Company’s Tokyo operation wouldn’t be interested in a USIA translator and sometime companion of the chief of station. They were after bigger fish than she.

Jim Shirley had been a good man, though over the past few years his loyalties had gotten slightly muddled. He didn’t deserve to die that way. And Carrara was going to do everything within his considerable power to catch his murderers.

Chapter 15

The lights of Monaco were brilliant against a black velvet backdrop as Ernst Spranger, a tall, ruggedly built, handsome man, pointed the bow of the powerful speedboat toward the ship just visible in silhouette on the horizon to the south. The night was gentle and warm, the sea almost flat calm.

Spranger was impeccably dressed in evening clothes, as was the beautiful woman seated beside him, indifferently humming the melody from the opera they’d just left. Like the others who’d come at Spranger’s command three years ago, Liese Egk had worked for the East German STASI as an assassin, a job at which she was an expert. She was a complete sociopath, totally without conscience. Combined with her intelligence, training and aristocratic good looks, she was lethal.

“I think I will miss Boorsch,” Spranger said, not bothering to raise his voice over the roar of the engines.

Liese was looking at him, a contemptuous expression forcing her full, sensuous lips into a pout. “He was a good shot with the Stinger, but he was an idiot. He would have caused us considerable trouble.”

Spranger couldn’t hear her voice, but he got most of what she’d said. They spoke in German, which was much easier to lip-read than English because of its regular pronunciations.

“Maybe you will cause us trouble in the end,” he told her, and she laughed.

“Then you better watch your back.” She glanced toward the ship on the horizon. “At least we’re not going out as failures.”

“No,” Spranger said to himself. Yet he still wasn’t clear in his mind exactly what had happened at Orly. The Airbus was down, everyone aboard dead, including Jean-Luc DuVerlie. But something had gone wrong at the last moment.

Bruno Lessing, who’d remained in front of the terminal for just such a contingency, reported that Boorsch had shown up in a big hurry, and moments later he’d been followed by a thickly built man dressed in what had appeared to be a British-cut tweed sportcoat.

Directly after both men had entered the terminal a French police helicopter had touched down, and Lessing had of necessity driven back into Paris.

The police were understandable. But who the hell was the man in the tweed jacket?

And why had they been summoned again, unless it was bad news? It was possible, he thought, that somehow British intelligence had gotten onto them, though it was unlikely unless the CIA had asked for help.

But there was no reason for such a thing to have occurred. If the Americans had requested help from anyone it would have been from the Swiss, who still hadn’t discovered the first engineer’s body.

DuVerlie had come as a surprise. And except for the fact that they’d already gotten what they’d needed from ModTec, no one wanted the Swiss or the Americans to suspect they had.

Question was, how much had the Swiss engineer told the CIA, and exactly why was it they were returning to Lausanne?

Puzzles within puzzles. But it was a part of the business that Spranger had one way or the other lived with for all of his life. His father before him had been an agent (though not a particularly good one) for the RSHA-the Nazi intelligence service-before and during the war.

Spranger and his mother had hidden themselves in Switzerland for eight years before returning to West Germany. Within one year she was dead, and he had slipped into East Germany offering his services to the STASI. The Russians, not as squeamish about former Nazis as they led the world to believe, accepted the young man with open arms, and his real training had begun.

He slowed the speedboat as they approached the 243-foot cruiser Grande Dame out of Monaco. Tht sleek, white-hulled pleasure vessel lay still in the water, all her lights ablaze, her portside boarding ladder down. There were no movements, the only sounds from the ship’s generators. Except for the lights the ship could have been abandoned, or everyone aboard dead. It had been the same each time they’d been called for a rendezvous.

Spranger maneuvered the speedboat close, then chopped the engines, so they would drift the last few feet. He tied a line to a cleat on the platform and helped Liese up, scrambling onto the boarding ladder directly behind her.

Reaching the main deck they went aft and entered the spacious, well-furnished main salon. Music was playing softly and champagne had been laid out for them, as usual.

A white coated Italian waiter appeared. “Accogliere cordial-mente, signore e signorina,” he said pleasantly. “Champagne tonight?”

Spranger nodded.

Outside, the speedboat was started and left, and seconds later the Grande Dame’s engines came to life and they began to move.

“Please,” the little waiter motioned for them to take a seat.

The telephone next to Spranger rang once. Putting his champagne down, he lit a cigarette then sat down and picked up the phone. “Yes?” he said English.

“Tell us about the gentleman in the tweed coat at the airport.” the Japanese voice said in clear English.

“I don’t know for certain,” Spranger answered, surprised that they knew about him.

It meant they must have had one of their own people watching the airport. “My guess would be that he is an intelligence officer. British or American.”

“What is being done about him?”

“Nothing. I don’t consider him a threat at this point. Although Boorsch will be identified and probably traced back to us, we can handle the inquiries. And your position with us is very well insulated.”

“What about Switzerland?”

“We have the parts.”

“I see,” the Japanese man said after a brief hesitation. “And why have you not delivered them?”

Spranger had been expecting the question. He’d hoped it would not have come so soon, but he wasn’t going to hedge. “The parts are in a safe place, where they shall remain until we have gathered everything you contracted for. Only then will we make delivery.”

“Why?”

“Insurance,” Spranger said bluntly. He looked over at Liese. She was watching him, a faint smile on her lips.

“Against what?” the man asked.

“You.”

“Do you consider us a threat to your well-being? We are, after all, allies once again.”

“Allies, but not friends,” Spranger said. “Is there anything else?”

“We could replace you, if you refuse to cooperate.”

“No one else could do the job.”

The man laughed. “I believe we could find someone capable. A person such as Miss Egk, for example.”

“She could do the job,” Spranger said, once again surprised. “Unless I killed her first. Then you might never get your little toys.”

Liese’s smile broadened. She was seated on a low couch across the salon from him.

As he watched, she crossed her long, lovely legs.

“Do we still have a contract?” Spranger asked after a moment.

“Yes, of course. But I am worried about the man in the tweed coat, and I believe you should be worried as well. Look into it.”

“If you think it’s important.”

“I do.”

“I will have to divert some resources. It will cost you…“

“Money is no object. I have already made that quite clear.”

“Very well,” Spranger said.

“How soon do you expect to be in a position to fulfill the terms of our agreement?”

“Soon.”

“How soon? Days? Weeks? Months?”

“Soon,” Spranger repeated, and he hung up.

Chapter 16

On Sunday morning Swissair quietly reinstituted its flight 145 to Geneva, and though Orly had reopened almost immediately, passenger traffic on all airlines was sharply down.

McGarvey had spent most of Saturday in the clippings library of Le Figaro, France’s leading daily newspaper, looking for background information on the STASI and what had become of its top officers. But he’d not found much beyond a series of articles published last week in which a French journalist reported that there were still thousands of KGB men and officers operating throughout what had once been East Germany, and that only the East German secret service itself had actually been dismantled by the mobs.

Early this morning he had checked out of the Latin Quarter hotel where he’d holed up out of Tom Lynch’s way, and took a cab out to Orly.

Mati was dead. That irrevocable fact began to settle over him like a dark, malevolent cloud as his taxi came within sight of the airport. In his mind’s eye he could see the big plume of smoke rising into the morning sky. And he could see the Stinger’s contrail. No one aboard the Airbus had so much as one chance in a million of survival.

The destruction had been so complete that authorities were admitting they might never be able to properly identify even half the bodies.

Poor Mati. She could never have envisioned that her life would end that way. Or that her death would be so misused.

“Frankly, the sooner you are out of France the better I will feel,” Marquand had told him bluntly.

“Are you so sure I’m interested?” McGarvey asked.

The French intelligence officer nodded. “Had you continued to Paris after one-four-five was destroyed, I would have not been so certain. But your own actions have betrayed you, as they do all of us in the end.”

Mati had come from Lausanne. The CIA had been sending its people at least as far as Geneva. And Marquand told him that the organization of ex-STASI officers (if such an organization existed) maintained its bank accounts in Bern and Zurich. All roads, it seemed, led to Switzerland.

“Show your face in Lausanne, and if you are spotted by Boorsch’s friends they will assume that you are investigating them. They will come for you, then, no matter where you go or what you do.”

Even Marquand had known about poor Mati. Everyone had, and somehow she was being used as the key, or as a lever to pry him loose from… what?

He was out of the business. He’d told them that a dozen times. He had nothing left to give. He was, like the Cold War, an anachronism. A man whose time had passed.

An idea that no longer fit. An ism that had become too dangerous in what was being called the “new world order.”

McGarvey paid off his driver and went directly through the terminal to the Swissair boarding area. He’d made his reservations yesterday at the airline’s downtown office under his real name, giving the opposition, if there was any, time enough to react.

Tom Lynch was waiting for him across from the gate, and he pulled McGarvey into the cocktail lounge that was half-filled with travelers. They got a table where they could watch the boarding.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the Paris chief of station asked. “We’ve turned this town upside down looking for you.”

“I’m going to Lausanne,” McGarvey answered, watching Lynch’s eyes. The COS was an organization man. He put the Agency before personal feelings.

“The Swiss will kick you out,” Lynch said, betraying nothing.

“I’m going to pay my respects, Tom. Any other reason I’d be going there?”

“I don’t know. But Murphy is screaming bloody murder for you. He’ll have your head on a platter if you don’t show up in Washington.”

“He doesn’t have the authority.”

Lynch looked at him with a smirk. “You’ve been around long enough to know better than that, McGarvey. The man has a long reach.”

McGarvey leaned forward. They were calling his flight. “So do I, Tom.”

“Are you threatening me?” Lynch demanded.

“I had a friend aboard that flight. I’m going to Lausanne, as I said, to pay my respects.

Afterward I’ll go to Washington to see Murphy. I was leaving Paris in any event.”

“Yes, I know. We’ve been to your apartment. Your concierge said you gave it up. She also said the police had been there.”

McGarvey waited.

“Marquand is suddenly unavailable. Did you happen to see him, by chance?”

McGarvey nodded. “He told me to get out of Paris.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That I was leaving this morning.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

McGarvey’s flight was called again.

“I didn’t tell him much, Tom, other than about my relationship with one of the passengers.”

“And about me? About our little talk?”

“No.”

“It would be too bad if I found out differently.”

“What about the pair you sent to Geneva? Care to comment?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lynch said with a straight face.

“That shooter wasn’t gunning for Marta. My guess is that he was after your people.”

“What’ll I tell the general?”

“Tell him that I’ll drop by in the next couple of days,” McGarvey said getting to his feet. “Soon as I’m finished with my business in… Lausanne.”

The COS flinched, but the reaction was too slight to draw any conclusions from. McGarvey suspected, however, that the general would know he was on his way to Switzerland probably before his flight cleared the Paris Terminal Control Area.

Had Mati not been aboard flight 145, McGarvey knew he could have turned his back on the situation. But Marquand, the man’s cynicism notwithstanding, had read him correctly: McGarvey’s actions had betrayed him.

McGarvey’s flight touched down just before 10:00 a.m. at Geneva’s busy Cointrin Airport, and he was among the first passengers to deplane and pass through customs. No one bothered to check his bag, in which he had hidden his disassembled pistol in his toiletries kit. Passengers traveling under U.S. documents were almost never checked.

It was a long-standing tradition in Switzerland, probably because of the billions of American dollars on deposit in Swiss banks.

It would not take very long, however, before his name on the passenger manifest rang some alarm bells and the Federal Police would begin looking for him. Before that he definitely wanted to show his face. And Lausanne was as good as any city to show it in.

He rented a Ford Taurus from the Hertz counter and within the hour he had cleared Geneva and was heading the thirty-five miles on N1 along the north shore of Lake Geneva, the morning bright and warm.

It had been a long time since he’d last been here, and coming back like this was dredging up a lot of memories, some pleasant, and others not quite so pleasant. And now his daughter Elizabeth was in country, attending school outside of Bern. He wanted to see her, or at least telephone, but if he was being watched she would be endangered.

“The business has ruined our lives,” Kathleen had told him at the divorce hearing eight years ago. “I’ve got to get out, Kirk, before it completely swallows Elizabeth and me.”

By that time the CIA had already fired him, and he’d had every intention of getting out. But he’d not protested the divorce, and it hadn’t been too long afterward that Trotter had come to Lausanne looking for him, asking him for help. “We can’t do it without you, Kirk,” he’d said. “Believe me, if there’d been another way, we would have taken it.”

And so it had began, again, for him. And, he supposed, it would never stop until he got a bullet in his head.

He pulled into a wayside park along the lake shore between Nyon and Rolle, about halfway to Lausanne, shortly before noon and reassembled his Walther PPK. Apparently no one had followed him from Paris, though he suspected Marquand’s people would be somewhere nearby. Nor were the Swiss on his tail yet. At least not outwardly.

But, if the French intelligence officer had been correct in his assessment of the ex-STASI organization, they might have already spotted him. He did not want to become a sitting duck for some fanatic still fighting the Cold War.

If someone shot at him, he was definitely going to shoot back. If, on the other hand, the Swiss Police caught up with him first, they would deport him immediately whether or not he was armed.

Lausanne was a city of some quarter-million people, and the traffic was horrendous, partly because of the narrowness of the streets, and partly because at all times it seemed that the city was being torn down and rebuilt.

McGarvey locked his bag in the trunk and had the Lausanne-Prince Hotel valet downtown park his car, before heading the two blocks over to the Place Saint-Francois on foot.

He stopped at the news kiosk and bought a newspaper and the latest copy of Stern, the German newsmagazine. A photograph of the downed Airbus was on the cover.

Across the square his old bookstore, International Booksellers, still occupied the same two-story yellow brick building. Marta had told him that his former Swiss partner, Dortmund Fuelm, to whom he’d sold the store, still ran the place. Fuelm had been one of the Federal Police watchdogs assigned to him, but when McGarvey had left, Fuelm had retired, and stayed on at the store.

No one had followed him from Geneva, and no one in the busy square seemed to be paying him or the bookstore any special attention, so, folding the newspaper and magazine and stuffing them under his arm, McGarvey crossed with traffic and went inside.

Fuelm, an old man, stooped and white-haired, was at the back of the small shop, speaking with two men about an expensive ^rt book. He looked up, spotted McGarvey and did a double take, his eyes growing wide.

He hurried over. “Gott in Himmel, I can scarcely believe my senses,” he cried, and he and McGarvey embraced.

“You look fit, my old friend,” McGarvey said.

“And you do as well,” the old man replied, the smile fading from his face. “I just learned last night about our little Mati.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Kirk.

We all are. She was so full of life.”

“It’s why I came back. I thought perhaps I might speak with her parents, maybe her friends. She was in Paris to see me, you know.”

Fuelm nodded. “Yes, I know, Kirk. And believe me, I wish that you could stay in Switzerland, but it’s just not possible.”

McGarvey stepped back, careful to keep his hands away from his jacket.

“He’s armed,” Fuelm told the two men who’d put down the art book.

“We wish for no trouble, Herr McGarvey,” one of the men said. They both looked like professional boxers.

“I didn’t come expecting trouble,” McGarvey said.

One of the Federal cops took the pistol from McGarvey’s belt at the small of his back. Fuelm had felt it during their embrace.

“Then why are you armed, Kirk?” Fuelm asked.

“Old habits.”

Fuelm nodded sadly. “You must leave Switzerland immediately. These gentlemen will escort you back to Cointrin. Where do you wish to go? Back to Paris?”

“Washington.”

“Very well.”

“I left a rental car at the Lausanne-Prince. My bag is in the trunk.”

“The car has already been taken care of, Kirk. And your bag is on its way to the airport.”

McGarvey smiled. “You Swiss can’t be faulted for lack of efficiency.

“No,” Fuelm said. “And I’ll pass along your condolences to Mati’s people. She often spoke of you to them, and they always wanted to meet you. Her father especially.”

“I’m sure they’re good people.” “Yes, they are,” Fiielm said.

He and McGarvey shook hands. “Take care, Dortmund.” Fiielm leaned in close and lowered his voice. “Find the monsters who did this to our little Mati, Kirk. Find them, and kill them!”

Chapter 17

McGarvey thought about Otto Rencke all the way across the Atlantic from London, and by the time his Northwest flight touched down a few minutes before eight at Washington’s Dulles International Airport, he’d decided to use the man.

No one was waiting for him at customs or in the Arrivals Hall, which was surprising.

He thought that the Swiss would have sent word that he was coming in, just as an interagency courtesy.

There was little doubt in his mind that Murphy wanted him involved in the Swissair business, just as the French did. But before he made any decision he needed more information than he expected the DCI would be willing to give him.

He’d thought a lot about that between Geneva and London, and then on the long flight across the Atlantic, and he had come to the conclusion that if he could find Rencke and convince the man to help, he would go through the back door. With any luck he would learn what he had to know for his own safety before anyone out at Langley knew what was happening.

Although he was getting no sense that anyone was behind him, or that anyone was watching, he thought it would happen sooner or later. “Trouble has a way of finding you,” he’d been told more than once. And it was true.

He took a cab to the Marriott Key Bridge Motel and after it was gone he took another cab across the river to Union Station, where he took still another cab to the Holiday Inn Georgetown where he registered under the name of Tom Patton, paying with some of the cash he’d changed at the airport. For the moment, at least, he wanted anonymity here in Washington.

As of a couple of years ago, Rencke lived with his computers and a dozen cats in an ancient brick house that had once been the quarters for the caretaker of Holy Rood Cemetery. Then he had been a computer systems consultant on a freelance basis for the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. His particular talent was an almost superhuman ability to visualize entire complex systems, including supercomputers, satellite links, data encryption devices, and all the peripheral equipment and connections that linked them, and make them user friendly.

But at thirty-nine he was already a has-been from a dozen different jobs and callings.

Trained as a Jesuit priest, he’d been, at twenty, one of the youngest professors of mathematics ever to teach at Georgetown University. But he liked women too much, so in 1974 he’d been fired from his job and defrocked all in the same day.

From there he’d enlisted in the army, as a computer specialist, but he’d been given a bad conduct discharge nine months later, because he also liked boys if there were no girls immediately available.

For a year he’d dropped out of sight, but then had shown up on the CIA’s payroll, his Jesuit and Army records apparently wiped completely clean, so that he passed the vetting process with ease.

McGarvey had run into the man on several occasions at Langley, where Rencke had taken charge of the Agency’s archives section, bringing it into the computer age.

They’d worked together again in Germany, and once in South America where Rencke had come to straighten out the station’s electronic equipment.

In his spare time, Rencke had updated the Company’s entire communications system, standardized their spy satellite input and analysis systems (so that CIA machines could crosstalk, thus sharing information, with NSA equipment), and devised a field officer’s briefing system whereby pertinent, up-to-date information could be funneled directly to the officer on assignment when and as he needed it.

His past had caught up with him a few years ago, and like McGarvey, he’d become a pariah across the river.

It was after ten by the time McGarvey had reassembled his pistol (the Swiss had returned it to him on condition he show them how he’d gotten it through Cointrin’s X-ray equipment) and he walked across the street into the cemetery. The evening was dark, the sky overcast and the air extremely humid. A light fog had formed from the river, muffling sounds and forming halos around the streetlights. It was a Sunday night; nothing much was moving in Washington.

The small, two-story house at the rear of the cemetery looked to be in reasonable condition, but deserted. There were no curtains or blinds in any of the windows, except one large bay window on the ground floor, nor was there a car in the carport, or a lawnmower, or paint cans, or anything else that would indicate Rencke was still in residence.

McGarvey stood in the shadows across a narrow lane watching the front of the house for any signs of life. As he remembered, Rencke had been a night person, preferring to sleep during the day. Of course there was no reason to believe that he was still here, or that something else in his past hadn’t caught up with him and landed him in jail. But there also was no reason to believe he wasn’t still here.

“Boo,” someone said softly behind him.

McGarvey, startled, reached for his pistol, but then relaxed and turned around. It was Rencke; he’d recognized the voice, even in that one word.

The computer whiz looked like a twenty-year-old kid, with long, out-of-control frizzy red hair, wild eyebrows, and a gaunt, almost ascetic frame. He was dressed in Nikes, ragged blue jeans and a Moscow State University sweatshirt, its sleeves cut off at the shoulders. He was grinning.

“So, Mac, what’re you doing wandering about in a cemetery in the middle of the night?”

Rencke asked. “Let me guess. You’re looking for bad guys. You’re working freelance, still. And you’ve come to ask for my help. Is that about it?”

McGarvey had to smile. “You could have gotten yourself shot, you stupid bastard.”

Rencke’s head bobbed as if it were on springs. “Your control is better than that.

I’m not stupid. And I’m not a bastard. Oh, well, I figure one out of three isn’t so bad under the circumstances.”

“I am here to ask for help, but what were you doing sneaking around in the cemetery at this hour? I thought you’d be at your computers.”

“I had a Twinkie attack.” Rencke wasn’t carrying a bag. He grinned sheepishly. “Couldn’t wait, so I ate them already. Bad me.”

“I need to get into Langley archives, and maybe an operational file or two,” McGarvey said. “Possible?”

Again Rencke’s head bobbed up and down. “Anything is possible, Mac. Weren’t you taught that in school? Come on, let’s see how tough they’ve made it these days.” He winked.

“Of course it depends on whether they’ve discovered my screen door.”

“Screen door?” McGarvey asked, as he followed Rencke across to the house and inside.

The front door wasn’t locked.

“We can put a screen door into a computer program… most of them leak like a sieve, you’d be surprised… but no one’s figured out how to successfully install a screen door in a submarine. Especially a Los Angeles class boat. Right? Right?”

Rencke was almost bursting with suppressed humor and enthusiasm.

“So you’ve kept up with me,” McGarvey said. He’d been involved with an incident over a hijacked Los Angeles class sub a couple years ago. “Why?”

Rencke led them into the living room, packing paper taped up over the bay windows.

Soft lights automatically came on, as did a half-dozen monitor screens. He stopped and turned back to McGarvey.

“Do you want me to tell you something, Mac?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer.

“Okay. I find you endlessly fascinating. You’re like a computer, only I can’t figure out the CPU. I haven’t even got your clock speed yet. So I keep watching. It’s better than the Dodgers used to be.”

“The man’s name is Karl Boorsch. He was the shooter at Orly on Friday. Did you hear about it?”

“The Swissair flight. It was in all the newspapers. I’m not a hermit here.”

“He’s ex-STASI, I recognized him, and the SDECE made him as well. They suggested that he might be working for a well-funded organization of ex-STASI officers on the run from the new German government.”

“Just like the Odessa,” Rencke said. “The organization of former Nazi SS officers, you know. Big thing in the fifties and sixties. They mostly all died off, though.”

“There were a couple of Agency types aboard that flight. Probably Boorsch’s target.”

Rencke’s head was bobbing. “You want to know about this STASI outfit. You want to know who funds it. You want to know who they are, where they’re hiding these days, and who their leaders are.” He took a deep breath. “And, you want to peek at operations to see what they had cooked up. That about it, Mac?”

McGarvey nodded. “The general wants to see me, and I wanted to be prepared before I went over there. I don’t like surprises.”

“I see what you mean,” Rencke said knitting his eyebrows. His complexion was very pale, his lips red. “Surprises are fun unless they start shooting at you.” He dropped into a chair in front of a terminal and pulled up a telephone line.

“Can you help?”

“Go away,” Rencke said, his voice already distant. “Come again another day.” The Central Intelligence Agency’s logo, a shield topped by an eagle’s head, appeared on the screen. “Bring some Twinkies when you come back. A lot of Twinkies.”

Chapter 18

“I hate pigeons. They shit over everything and yet the city protects them.”

Tom Lynch looked up from where he was seated on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg as a heavily built, swarthy man approached and sat down next to him. It was a few minutes after nine in the morning, the day already pleasant. It was Monday so there weren’t any children around.

“Squab.”

“Nothing but an overpriced dead pigeon,” Phillipe Marquand said. He’d brought a small paper bag of cracked corn and he tossed out a handful for the birds who immediately flocked around.

“I thought Frenchmen were all gourmands.”

“I’m a Corsican,” Marquand flared. “And I didn’t come here to discuss food.”

“I didn’t think you had,” Lynch said mildly. He didn’t like the SDECE colonel, but this was a friendly country in which the CIA had to walk with care. His instructions from Langley were to meet with the man, but give him nothing. The official line was that our people were making a routine trip to Switzerland, and that the terrorist attack had been nothing more than just that… a random act of violence.

The U.S. State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force was working hand-in-hand with the French, which was as far as the White House wanted it to go for the moment.

“The Swiss kicked McGarvey out yesterday, did you know that?” Marquand asked. “We tracked him through London as far as Dulles, but then lost him. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is now?”

“No,” Lynch said. “Should I?”

“I would think that someone would want to ask him a few questions about Friday.”

“I understand you and he spoke.”

Marquand nodded.

“Is that why you knew he’d gone to Switzerland? It was an old flame of his aboard that flight. He’d known her from Lausanne. Said he was going to pay his respects.”

“He is apparently a generous man, your McGarvey. But it was not the only reason he went to Switzerland.”

“No?” Lynch said quietly.

“He was showing his face, hoping that the friends of Karl Boorsch might show themselves.”

“Should I know this name?”

“He’s the man who shot down one-four-five,” Marquand said. “Former East German STASI hitman. Belongs to an organization of ex-STASI thugs who’ve gone freelance.”

The information given so freely was breathtaking, but Lynch managed to maintain his control. “Have you any other names?”

“Not for now. But obviously Boorsch and his people want to stop your inquiries in Switzerland. Would you care to share anything with me?”

“Not at this moment,” Lynch said looking the Frenchman straight in the eye.

Marquand’s jaw tightened. “There were Frenchmen aboard that flight. Vacationers, most of them. Some with their families. In one case it was the mother and father, twin five-year-old girls, and the old grandmother. They will be buried in a common grave, what bits of their bodies were found, that is.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, we all are. But it was no random act of terrorism, as you would like us all to believe.”

Lynch started to object but Marquand held him off.

“Two of your people were escorting a Swiss citizen to Geneva. It is our belief that the STASI group wanted them stopped. We simply want to know why. What are you investigating?”

“I can’t say, Phillipe,” Lynch replied carefully, realizing by even telling the SDECE colonel that much he was giving away more than Langley had wanted him to give away.

Marquand nodded. “I told McGarvey this…“

“He is a civilian.”

“But a special man. I also told him that we believe the ex-STASI group is well financed, maintaining its bank in Switzerland. Did you know this?”

Lynch held his silence, but he was seething inside. McGarvey should have told him about his meeting with Marquand. But he had lied.

“What we didn’t know … or I should say suspect … is who has provided the bulk of their financing.” Marquand looked away. “In the old days we might have suspected the Soviet Union. Perhaps the PLO, they sometimes fund outside groups. But it was none of these.”

“No?” Lynch said.

Marquand turned back. “No,” he said. “Our sources in Switzerland tell us that the currency paid into those accounts was in the form of yen. Japanese money. Now, what do you think about that?”

Seventy-five yards away, a man dressed in a French police uniform stood at an open window on the second floor of the School of Mines main building. He’d followed Marquand from Action Service Headquarters off the Boulevard Mortier, and it was only by happenstance that he spotted Lynch seated alone on the park bench in time to get into position.

He’d put it together that Marquand had come here to meet with the American CIA chief of station, and he knew that whatever those two men had to say would be of extreme importance.

He had missed the opening chitchat, but not the meat of their conversation. Lowering the four-inch parabolic antenna, which he’d carried in a leather haversack, he watched as Lynch walked off.

Spranger would pay well for this information, especially because it was the worst of all news.

Chapter 19

The Director of Central Intelligence’s chauffeured Cadillac limousine headed down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House a few minutes before 9:30 a.m. As usual, Monday morning traffic was heavy, but the day promised to be beautiful.

Murphy was in a puzzled, almost pensive mood. For the first time in his long government service career he was running up against a situation for which he had no clear answers.

They could provide the President with the data-speculations, actually, because that’s all they really had to this point-but it would be up to him to make the decisions.

In the transition period between the Cold War and what the politicians were now starting to call the “new world order,” there was no predicting what could and would happen.

“Look at the war with Iraq and the subsequent fallout in the Gulf region,” he’d told a gathering of U.S. military intelligence chiefs at the Pentagon. “There was no way in which we as an intelligence-gathering service could have foreseen even in broad strokes what came to pass.

“We can provide the raw data. We can provide spot analysis. And we can even point out what we believe are the current trends. But when the leadership of a foreign power we’re monitoring doesn’t even know where it is going, there is no chance for us to provide any realtime recommendations.”

The unspoken crux of the situation, however, as all of them that day knew, was that their customers-the leaders who made use of the intelligence information they were provided-wanted the realtime advice.

As the President would today, he thought. Only this time there were no answers, not even any clear speculation.

Murphy’s limo was passed through the White House gate to the West Portico, where he was ushered immediately upstairs to the Oval Office, his bodyguard waiting downstairs.

It was precisely 9:30. The President rose when Murphy came in and went around to the serving cart. He poured two cups of coffee and handed one to his DCI.

“You know, whenever you come in here with that look on your face, Roland, I automatically brace for the worst,” the President said. He was a tall man whose face showed the strain of the office. But his eyes were penetratingly sharp, and he seldom if ever missed a beat. His staff had to keep up with his schedule, not the other way around.

“You haven’t had the messenger shot yet,” Murphy said, setting down his coffee cup.

He took a leather-covered folder from his briefcase and handed it to the President.

“This is the latest from Paris.”

“Have a seat,” the President said, putting down his coffee and sitting in his rocking chair. Murphy settled onto the leather couch across the coffee table.

“My chief of Paris Station met this morning with a colonel in the SDECE’s Action Service, and was given some information. What I would call startling information.”

“You’ve not pussyfooted before, General, don’t start now,” the President said, not yet opening the report. “Spell it out for me.”

“The terrorist attack on the Swissair flight out of Orly on Friday may have some deeper, more ominous significance than we first suspected. The French intelligence service has identified the attacker as a man by the name of Karl Boorsch. An officer in the old East German intelligence service. We have him in our files as missing, and presumed still at large somewhere in Europe.”

“You don’t think he went to the Soviet Union?”

“No, sir,” Murphy said. “But he wasn’t working alone. The French found a walkie-talkie of an unusually advanced design in the van Boorsch used to penetrate Orly security.”

“Go on.”

“We haven’t been able to figure out exactly how it works yet, but we know that it encrypts the signal, compresses it into an incredibly brief duration, and sends it out. Virtually undetectable by any equipment we currently have in the field.”

“Who built it?”

Murphy shook his head. “There are no manufacturing plates or marks anywhere on the device.”

“German?”

“Possibly. But it means that Boorsch had help.” “Which tends to verify the Swiss engineer’s story,” the President said.

“The French believe that an organization of ex-STASI members has been formed, presumably somewhere in Europe, perhaps even Switzerland, which tends to confirm the reports we’ve been hearing.”

“Just what we need.” The President shook his head and looked away for a moment. His presidency had been a successful one to date, but definitely anything but quiet.

Someone in the media had begun calling him “America’s crisis president,” and the moniker seemed to be catching on.

“Apparently they’re organized well enough to maintain at least two bank accounts; one in Zurich, and the other in Bern.”

“What do they think they’re trying to do? Retake East Germany? What’s their purpose?”

“It’s unknown at this point, Mr. President,” Murphy said, “Where are they getting their money? Who is supplying it?” “Also unknown,” Murphy said, girding himself.

“But the French Action Service officer told my Chief of Station that they had identified the currency in which payments had been made into at least one of the STASI organization’s accounts.”

The President’s left eyebrow rose. “Is this fact significant?” Murphy sighed. “Well, Mr. President, if it is, I think we’re in big trouble.”

“As I said, spell it out.”

“The payments were made in yen. Japanese yen.” “It’s a stable currency,” the President said. “I’m told that there’s a small but growing movement to suspend trade on the international marketplace in dollars. The yen might be the next logical choice.”

“Japan may be the country of origin for the payments into the STASI accounts.”

“Could also be a ploy to throw off the investigation.” “I don’t believe so, Mr. President, although it’s a possibility.” “Because, Roland, God help us if what I think you’re suggesting has even the slightest grain of truth.”

Murphy said nothing, allowing the President to come to the same conclusions he’d come to earlier.

“If this group of ex-STASI officers is the same group who went after the engineers at ModTec, and from what you’re telling me it looks as if that’s the case, and if they’re being funded by the Japanese, possibly the government …“

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but there’s no evidence to that effect.” “If that’s the case, Roland, then it could mean that the Japanese are in the market for nuclear weapons technology.”

Murphy sighed deeply and sat back. “I simply don’t know.”

The President had another thought. It was clear from his expression that he was still on the same path Murphy had gone down.

“Could this walkie-talkie the French found have been designed and manufactured by a Japanese company?”

“It’s possible.”

“Is it likely?” the President pressed.

“I can’t answer that, sir,” Murphy said. There was more to come.

The President’s eyes narrowed. “What was Jim Shirley involved with when he was assassinated in Tokyo?”

“He was meeting with a man who claimed to be a Belgian banking adviser to a consortium of businesses in Japan. But he was an imposter, and there is no such consortium.”

“Coincidence?”

“On the surface one would have to say no. But only on the surface. There is absolutely no solid connection between Japan and this STASI group. Nor has there been the slightest hint that the Japanese, that anyone in Japan, has the slightest interest in nuclear weapons technology.”

“Give me a reading on this, Roland,” the President said.

Murphy shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I can’t do that.”

“What is being done?”

“We’re investigating ModTec to see if anyone else has been approached, and to see if the technology has already changed hands. We’re also looking into the French assertion that the STASI accounts exist and that they’ve received Japanese currency payments.”

“And in Japan?”

“We’re investigating Jim Shirley’s murder, of course. But beyond that… I’ll need your authorization. Considering the pending trade agreement between our countries, if it were to come out that the CIA is spying against Japan it would go badly.”

“You have my authorization, Roland,” the President said. He sat forward. “Let me make myself perfectly clear. You are to take this investigation to its logical conclusion.

No matter what resources you have to use to do it, and no matter which nation you’re led to scrutinize.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I want results, Roland. Soon.”

Carrara came up as soon as Murphy returned from the White House. The DDO has harried.

He’d been on the job, or at least in the building, for more than seventy-two hours.

Ever since 145 had been shot down.

“We’ve got the green light to step up the investigation in Tokyo,” Murphy said.

“How far can we go?” Carrara asked.

“All the way, Phil. You’ve got carte blanche on this one.”

“If we’re caught there’ll be a lot of political trouble, not only from the Japanese, but from the Swiss as well.”

“This is your operation…“ Murphy said, but Carrara interrupted, which in itself was a mark of his tiredness.

“Yes, it is, sir. But I just wanted to make sure that everyone understands exactly what we’re up against. Lynch thinks that the Action Service is playing us both ends against the middle, and although Kelley Fuller is going back over, she’s going to be hard to control.”

Murphy was impatient.

“What I’m getting at, Mr. Director, is that so far as I see it, either operation could blow up in our faces.”

“We’ll take the risk,” Murphy said. “Now, where the hell is McGarvey? Is he here in Washington or isn’t he?”

“He came through Dulles last night, but then he disappeared.”

“Find him,” the DCI ordered.

“We’re watching his ex-wife’s house. He’ll show up there sooner or later.”

“Good. The minute he does, I want him up here.”

Chapter 20

Otto Rencke thought in colors. He had been doing so for seven years, ever since he’d stumbled across a series of tensor calculus transformations concerning bubble memories that he could not visualize.

He’d hit on the notion of thinking of his calculations in a real-world fashion, coming up at length with the question of how to explain color to a person who’d been born blind.

With mathematics, of course. And he’d devised the system, which turned out to be his bubble memory transformations. If it worked in one direction, there was no reason to think it couldn’t work in the other.

Lavender, for example, was among the simplest of all. In his mind’s eye he could visualize an entire multidimensional array of complex calculations that described a many-tiered and interlocking series of traps leading into the CIA’s computer system.

Someone had found and negated his old screen door program, which would have allowed him fairly easy access, replacing it with a complex system of fail-safes. Enter the program from the outside, or in an improper manner, and the incoming circuit would be seized, traced to its source, and an alarm automatically issued … all without the intruder knowing he’d been discovered.

A few minutes after ten in the morning, Rencke suddenly smiled. On his main monitor, which glowed lavender, the CIA’s logo appeared in the upper left hand corner, beneath which the agency’s computer asked him:

WELCOME TO ARCHIVES DO YOU WISH TO SEE A MENU?

He jumped up and went into the kitchen where a half-dozen cats swarmed around him, meowing insistently. “Yes, my little darlings, I hear you,” he cried. “Patience.

The color is lavender and you dears must have patience.”

Opening several cans of cat food and distributing them around the kitchen floor, he took a nearly full half-gallon carton of skim milk back into the living room, drinking from it as he went, milk spilling down his front and soaking his sweatshirt.

But he didn’t give a damn.

“The sonsabitches thought they could fuck me,” he shouted, dancing around the lavender screen. “But they were wrong. Hoo, boy, they were wrong!”

McGarvey paid off his cabby and stood for a moment or two at the end of the long driveway leading up to his ex-wife’s house in Chevy Chase. The country club was across the street, and in the distance he heard someone shout: “Fore!”

The house was an expensive two-story colonial set well back on a half acre of manicured lawn. A half-dozen white pillars supported a broad overhang protecting a long front veranda.

Whatever Kathleen was or was not, he thought, starting up the walk, she was a classy woman. They’d been divorced for eight years now, after a twelve-year marriage, and it was often difficult for McGarvey to remember clearly what their life together had been like, but it had been stylish.

Stormy at the end, though, in those days when he was gone more than he was at home.

She’d guessed, in an offhanded way, that he actually worked for the CIA, that he was, in her words, a macho James Bond spy. But she’d fortunately never guessed the true extent of what he did, the fact that he had killed people in the line of his assignments.

But she’d always maintained a lovely, proper home (she had come into their marriage not wealthy, but certainly independent), and in public she presented a self-assured, dignified image. Not aloof, or snobbish, simply well put together.

It had come to a showdown: He’d had to choose either her, or his career. He’d just returned from Santiago where’d he’d taken out a Chilean general who would have probably taken over the country by coup. But his orders had been changed in midstream. The general was not to be killed. Even though the change in orders reached McGarvey too late, he’d been fired from the CIA.

On that night, not knowing what had happened, Kathleen had issued him the ultimatum.

Even though her demand that he quit the business had been a moot point at that moment, he’d turned her down.

“We cannot have a marriage in which one of us dictates the other’s life,” he told her.

“You’re right,” she said, and he’d turned around and walked out, not even bothering to unpack his bag from his trip.

He’d been younger then, more sure of himself, more arrogant, and yet in some respects more frightened that something out of his past would be coming after him now that he no longer had

the backing of the Agency.

What he hadn’t counted on was the loneliness, and the missing his daughter, who when he had left was eleven years old.

Kathleen answered the door almost immediately. She was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt, her feet bare, her hair pinned up in back, and no makeup, yet she looked like a model out of a fashion magazine. Her neck was long and delicate, her features precise yet not hard. But it was her eyes that most people noticed first.

They were large beneath highly arched eyebrows, and were a startling, almost unreal shade of green.

She smiled. “Hello, Kirk. When did you get back?”

“Last night. But it was too late to call.”

She stepped back. “Come in,” she said.

He followed her through the house to the large kitchen overlooking the swimming pool.

The sliding glass doors were open, the odor of chlorine sharp.

“Sorry about the awful smell, but the poolman was just here,” she said. “Coffee?”

“Sure,” McGarvey said, sitting at the counter. “What have you heard from Liz lately?”

“Elizabeth,” Kathleen corrected automatically. “Everything is fine. She loves school, but she misses home a little. That I got between the lines.”

“Does she need anything?”

“No,” Kathleen said, bringing their coffee over. “She called Saturday. Said everyone at school was talking about the Swissair flight that was shot down…“ She stopped in mid-sentence.

“Everybody in Paris was talking about it too,” McGarvey said, sidestepping Kathleen’s next question. “There’ll always be crazies out there.”

“The news said that the terrorist had been cornered by an unidentified American.”

“So I heard.”

Kathleen was staring at him. “Are you home for good this time?” she asked stiffly.

“Almost.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Almost?” she asked. “Almost, as in, not yet?”

“There’s something I have to take care of first…“

“No,” Kathleen said simply.

“I’m sorry, Katy, but it’s important.”

Kathleen reared back. “My name is Kathleen,” she screeched. “Not Katy.”

The doorbell rang.

“I want you to leave,” she said. “Now! I want you out of my house, and I don’t ever want to see you back here!”

The doorbell rang again.

“All right,” she screamed. She spun on her heel and stormed back out to the stairhall.

McGarvey got up and went to the kitchen door as Kathleen opened the front door, and he just caught a glimpse of two men dressed in light slacks and sportcoats standing on the veranda.

Kathleen said something that he couldn’t quite catch.

McGarvey ducked back. They definitely were Company. The Agency would have to know that he would show up here sooner or later. They’d merely misjudged their timing, but not by very much. Whatever Murphy wanted, it had to be important to go to these lengths.

In the old days, Kathleen had always kept the car keys on a hook by the garage door.

It was tidy, she said, and the keys would never be misplaced.

He hurried silently across the kitchen and into the laundry room. A set of car keys was hanging on a hook next to the door into the garage. Snatching them, he slipped into the garage and got behind the wheel of Kathleen’s 460 SL. With one hand he started the car, while with the other he hit the garage door opener.

As the service door slowly rumbled open, he watched the door from the laundry room.

It was snatched open a couple of seconds later, and McGarvey got a brief glimpse of a man in a sport coat. He dropped the gearshift into drive and slammed the gas pedal to the floor, the low-slung car shooting out of the garage, just clearing the still-opening main door by no more than two inches.

At the bottom of the driveway, he turned east, the opposite direction that the plain gray government Chevrolet was facing, and was around the corner at the end of the block before the two men who’d come after him even had a chance to cross the street.

The Agency knew for sure now that he was in Washington, and that he was on the run from them. They would be pulling out all the stops to find him. Nobody said no to the general.

McGarvey parked the Mercedes near Union Station, leaving the keys under the floor mat, then walked a half-dozen blocks down to Constitution Avenue where he caught a cab, ordering the driver to take him back to Georgetown. The police would find the car and would return it to Kathleen.

“I want you to stop at a grocery store, or corner market on the way,” McGarvey said.

“Sir?” “I need to pick up some Twinkies.”

Chapter 21

McGarvey had a fairly high degree of confidence that Rencke’s intrusion into the CIA’s computer system would not be detected. Nevertheless he approached the house in Holy Rood Cemetery with precautions, passing twice from different directions to make certain the place wasn’t being watched.

There were a few people visiting graves, and a grounds-keeper was mowing the lawn near the Whitehaven Parkway entrance, but no one seemed interested in the house.

Nor had there been anyone stationed at the entrance so far as McGarvey had been able to determine.

He crossed the gravel driveway, mounted the three steps to the porch and knocked on the front door. Without waiting for Rencke to answer it, he let himself in.

The house was very still. The odors of Rencke’s cats mingled in the air with the odors of electronics equipment. But nothing moved. It was as if the place had been abandoned.

He’d brought a bag of Twinkies for Rencke. Laying them on the hall table, he took out his Walther, eased the safety catch on the off position, and moved silently to the archway into the living room.

Nothing seemed out of place except that only one computer monitor seemed to be working.

Everything else had apparently been shut off. The one screen that was lit showed nothing but the color lavender.

Turning back into the stairhall, McGarvey stopped and cocked an ear to listen. Still there were no sounds from anywhere in the house.

It was possible that Rencke’s computer hacking had been detected and he’d been arrested, but McGarvey doubted it.

“Otto?” he called out.

There was no answer. He went to the foot of the stairs and stopped again to listen.

Had there been a movement on the second floor?

“It’s me. It’s Mac.”

A toilet flushed, and Rencke, still wearing the same clothes from last night, appeared at the head of the stairs.

“Did you bring my Twinkies?” He asked, yawning as he came down.

McGarvey smiled and nodded. The man was incredible. “I brought them,” he said, putting away his gun. “The house was quiet, I thought something was wrong.”

“What were you intending on doing, shooting my cats?” Rencke asked. “They’re outside.

Now, my Twinkies, I’m starving.”

McGarvey gave Rencke the bag and followed him back to the kitchen. Unwashed dishes were piled in the sink, and a pot of something had been allowed to cook down to a charred mass on the stove. The burner had been turned off, but the pan had been left as is. Empty cat food cans littered the floor, and in a back hallway, several litter boxes were full to overflowing.

Rencke got a carton of milk from the refrigerator. “Did you see it?”

“What?”

“My beautiful lavender. Or are you color-blind?”

“I saw it,” McGarvey said. “Did you get in?”

“Just like raping a willing virgin,” Rencke said, brushing past McGarvey and heading back to the front of the house. “With ease. With ease.”

“What did you find out?” McGarvey asked, following him.

Rencke plunked down in front of the lavender terminal. “It’s a scary world out there, Mac. And it’s getting scarier, if you know what I mean.”

He opened a package of Twinkies, ate them both and then drank nearly half the milk, some of it spilling down his front. No crumbs or milk, however, got anywhere near the equipment.

“Some Company hotshot evidently found my rear-entry program and replaced it with a fairly sophisticated system of interlocks. They’re finally starting to use their heads over there. A day late and in this case a dollar short, but they’re thinking.”

Rencke drank some more milk. “I don’t think there are more than three people in the world besides me who could have gotten in like I did.”

“Were you detected?”

“No,” Rencke said. “At least I don’t think so. But this is hot stuff, Mac. I mean short of Russian tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, the hottest.”

“Did you make printouts?”

Rencke was eating another Twinkie. He nodded. “But when I was done I shredded the lot,” he said, his mouth full. “I didn’t want that kind of shit lying around here.

I’d rather have a hundred ks of blow with a sign on it on my front porch.”

McGarvey had pulled up a chair. “Tell me what you found out.”

“First I want something from you.”

“Name it.”

“You said Karl Boorsch was the rocket man at Orly last week. What were you doing there? What was your relationship with him and this STASI group?”

McGarvey told Rencke everything, including his history with Marta and the Swiss Federal Police, Colonel Marquand’s information, and about the pair who’d showed up at Kathleen’s house this morning.

“You’re certain they were Company muscle?” Rencke asked.

“It was a Company car. I have no reason at this point to suspect they were anything but Murphy’s people.”

“You would have been leaving your ex in a hell of a jam otherwise,” Rencke said thoughtfully.

McGarvey had had the same thought.

“You weren’t followed here? By anyone?”

“No.”

Rencke looked at the lavender screen. “They’re busy over there this morning, so it’s too dangerous to get back in. If you want to wait until tonight, I’ll show you what I came up with. But if you’re in a hurry-and I think you should be in one hell of a hurry-you’ll have to rely on my memory as well as my veracity.”

“I trust you, or else I wouldn’t have come here in the first place,” McGarvey said.

“What are your intentions? You said you’d meet with Murphy.”

“It might depend on what you’ve come up with. Marta was a good friend.”

Rencke was silent for a long moment or two. McGarvey thought he could hear the cats mewing at the door.

“I dipped into your file while I was at it,” Rencke said. “You’ve been up against the best, and survived, though not without injury. A couple of times you almost bought it.”

McGarvey said nothing.

“This one is bigger, or at least I think it could be. Maybe more important. But you’d be up against a highly trained and well-motivated group. Not just one Russian hitman.”

“Then there is a group of ex-STASI field officers?”

“They’re called K-l, but what the significance of that is, or even if it’s true, isn’t clear. You have to remember that all I’m giving you is what came out of CIA archives, and out of one Operations file. Any of that could be in error. You know the drill.”

“Do you know where they’re headquartered?”

“There’ve been rumors that they went to ground somewhere in the south of France.

Provence. Maybe even Monaco. But no one down there is talking, even to the SDECE.”

“If the Action Service involves itself that might change. Anything on the leadership?”

“There were about three dozen names on the possibles list, which I think is nothing more than a list of STASI goons still missing. Boorsch was on the list, and so was General Ernst Spranger.”

“The butcher of the Horst Wessel,” McGarvey said. He’d been number three in the STASI, in charge of Department Viktor, modeled after the KGB’s assassination, kidnapping and sabotage section. His intelligence was outdone only by his ruthlessness.

“You know the name?”

McGarvey nodded. “If he’s on the loose he’ll be the one in charge. And in fact it was probably Spranger who formed the group. But what about their finances? They couldn’t have gotten much out of East Germany. There wasn’t much there to get at the end.”

“We’ll come back to that. First, do you know why Boorsch shot that airliner out of the sky?”

“It had to do with a couple of CIA case officers aboard. But the Paris COS wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

“Don Cladstrup and Bob Roningen,” Rencke said. “They were on their way to Lausanne with a Swiss national by the name of Jean-Luc DuVerlie. Do any of those names tickle your funnybone?”

“Roningen was a weapons expert at the Farm, I think,” McGarvey replied. “But who was DuVerlie?”

“An engineer with the Swiss firm of ModTec.”

There was something in Rencke’s eyes. Something, suddenly, in his voice. McGarvey sat forward.

“What is it, Otto?”

“Do you know what ModTec is into? Among other things.”

“No.”

“In order to construct a nuclear weapon these days you only need three high-tech elements. The rest of the components are of the hardware store variety. You need a critical mass of weapons-grade fuel-plutonium or enriched uranium, for instance.

You need an initiator, which is nothing more than a tiny source of high energy particles to get the chain reaction going. Sort of like the lighted match tossed into a pile of firewood. And you need a number of electronic triggering devices to ignite the dynamite or whatever other explosive you use to force the plutonium together. ModTec builds the triggers, and DuVerlie was one of the trigger engineers.”

“Spranger’s group went after the triggers, is that what you’re telling me?”

“Evidently. Which our Deputy Director of Intelligence Tommy Doyle believes is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s his theory that K-1 is after the whole enchilada. A working nuclear weapon … or the parts to build one.”

“Did they get the triggers?”

“Unknown.”

“How about the other components… the initiator and the fuel?”

“Unknown.”

“What else?”

“There were two new entries in the file, generated in the Paris Station. Tom Lynch was the signatory, and his source was your Action Service Colonel Marquand.”

“About finances. Marquand told me that the SDECE believed the STASI group maintained bank accounts in at least two Swiss cities, Bern and Zurich.”

Rencke nodded. “The currency paid into at least one of those accounts was in yen.”

“Japan?” McGarvey said, stunned.

“The source was unknown, but the currency was Japanese. Makes for some interesting speculation, doesn’t it.”

“Jesus, I guess,” McGarvey said sitting back. “What else?”

“That’s it except for one little item concerning you. Seems as if you knew Karl Boorsch.”

McGarvey nodded. “We had a run-in a few years ago.”

“Did you recognize him at the airport?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t report it. That may have generated some suspicion. You have some enemies at Langley, among them the Company’s general counsel.”

“Ryan.”

“Right,” Rencke said. “Listen, Mac, I may be reading between the lines, but I think they might be on a witch-hunt out there, and you may be one of their primary targets.”

“I can take care of myself. But I want you to destroy your enter and search program.

If someone gets wind of the fact that you’ve been…“

“Dallying in the valley they’ll put me in jail and throw away the key.” Rencke smiled.

“Before they did that I’d unleash Ralph.”

“Ralph?”

“He’s a super-virus. Wouldn’t be a computer program or memory load in the entire defense-intelligence community left intact. And I don’t even need my computer to activate it. I only need access to a telephone.” Rencke was grinning maliciously.

“They won’t fuck with me and get away with it.”

It was after one in the afternoon when McGarvey showed up at the main gate to the CIA’s headquarters at Langley. He’d rented a car from Hertz, and he waited behind the wheel while one of the civilian contract guards notified Phil Carrara that he had a guest. The reaction was almost immediate.

The guard came back out, a tense expression on his face. “Do you have any identification, Mr. McGarvey?”

McGarvey handed out his passport, and the guard took it back inside. Two other guards came out, but they remained across the road, watching him.

A half minute later the first guard came out and returned McGarvey’s passport, as well as a visitor’s pass for the car and a plastic lapel pass.

“Drive straight up under the entry canopy, sir. Mr. Carrara is coming down.”

“Thanks,” McGarvey said, and he drove the quarter mile up through the woods and out into the broad clearing where the headquarters building stood.

It’d been a while since he’d been here last, and the old wounds, both mental as well as physical, gave him a twinge. He’d given a lot of himself to this place, or to its ideal, yet he never had been able to clearly answer his own question: Why?

In the old days he’d convinced himself that it was a matter of honor, but in the last days he’d come to realize that he had no real idea what that word meant.

Carrara was waiting at the main entrance when McGarvey parked his car in the visitors spot. “Do you pull this crap just to thumb your nose at the establishment?” the DDO

asked angrily.

McGarvey had to smile. “Somebody has to do it, Phil. Otherwise you people would begin to take yourselves too seriously.”

Chapter 22

McGarvey had to sign in at the main desk and be searched with a metal detector before he was allowed to go up on the elevator with Carrara. He’d disassembled his Walther and hidden it among his toiletries back at the hotel. He didn’t think the pistol would be confiscated today, but he hadn’t wanted to take any chances. He figured he’d be needing it soon.

“Your ex-wife is upset with us, and you,” Carrara said on the way up.

“Can you blame her? It was a dumb move, sending your people out there like that.”

Carrara looked at him. “Were you so sure that they were ours?”

“The only people in the world who wear plaid sport coats and have short haircuts are your Technical Services legmen. And maybe the odd used-car salesman.”

“Tom Lynch said he was quite explicit when he passed the general’s orders along to you.”

“I’m not on the payroll, Phil. I don’t take orders from Murphy. Besides, I had a few things to do in Europe first. And I did come here under my own power.”

“Whered you go in such a hurry this morning?”

McGarvey ignored the question, and moments later the elevator opened on the seventh floor. McGarvey had to sign in again with security people, and this time he was subjected to a hands-on search as well as a metal detector walkthrough. Murphy’s personal bodyguard waited in the outer office, and he carefully scrutinized both McGarvey and Carrara when they were passed through by the general’s secretary.

Murphy’s office was huge, and very well appointed, with a large desk, bookcases, a leather couch and chairs, and a bank of television monitors and communications equipment. Large windows looked out over the beautiful rolling hills to the south.

Lawrence Danielle and Tom Doyle were seated across from Murphy, who was talking to someone on the phone. When Carrara came in with McGarvey he hung up.

“Welcome home,” he said.

“Thank you, General, but I don’t know yet if it’s good to be back. Or, how long I’ll be here.”

“There are a few things I’d like to discuss with you, and then we’ll offer you another assignment. If you’re willing, and if you’re up to it.”

“I thought as much,” McGarvey said.

Murphy motioned him and Carrara to take seats and he picked up his telephone and buzzed his secretary. “Ask Howard to step in for a moment, would you?” He hung up.

“I’m sorry about your two people aboard one-four-five,” McGarvey said.

Murphy nodded. “I understand your friend from Switzerland was also aboard. Quite an unhappy coincidence.”

“Just that. Nothing more.”

“Yes,” Murphy said. “We’ll see.”

Howard Ryan, the Company’s general counsel, came in and handed a thin file folder to Murphy. He avoided looking at McGarvey for the moment. Their animosity toward each other went back several years.

“Stick around, Howard. We might need a point of international law,” Murphy said.

He extracted a printed form from the file folder and handed it across to McGarvey.

It was a memo outlining the National Secrets Act and the penalties for divulging classified material to anyone not authorized. “Sign that and we can get started.”

McGarvey laid the memo back on Murphy’s desk. “If I decide to take the assignment, I’ll sign it.”

“You’ll sign it now, or we’ll have you in jail,” Ryan blurted.

McGarvey lanquidly turned to him. “On what charge, counselor?”

“Complicity in the murder of one hundred fifty-one crew and passengers aboard the Airbus, and a half-dozen assorted others on the ground.”

This was a setup, of course, to try to get him to inadvertently admit something.

Murphy and the others were not interfering for the moment. It had always been the same. He’d been a pariah here since Santiago, yet he’d been recalled time after time to help out. They hated themselves for their dependence on him, and consequently they despised and mistrusted him.

“How do you figure that?”

“You knew that we had people aboard that flight, and you knew that an ex-STASI officer by the name of Karl Boorsch was at the airport-you can’t deny that you were following him for one reason or another. And yet although you had every opportunity to give the warning, you failed to do so. Makes you a party to an act of terrorism.”

“I see,” McGarvey said.

“Well?” Ryan demanded.

“I deny the charge, although I admit I thought I recognized Boorsch, but only after I’d cornered him in the VIP lounge.”

Ryan started to protest, but Murphy held him off. “Why didn’t you tell Tom Lynch about Boorsch? It was important.”

“Because I wasn’t sure.”

“That you recognized him?” Ryan asked.

“I wasn’t sure about Tom Lynch or the entire Paris station, which has had problems ever since our embassy was destroyed last winter.”

“You were going to tell us about him this morning?” Murphy asked dryly.

“Yes,” McGarvey said. “As well as my talk with Phillipe Marquand. You’re familiar with that name?”

Murphy nodded.

“And the real reason you went first to Switzerland?” Carrara asked.

“That too,” McGarvey said. “Marquand told me that the STASI had formed a freelance group with bank accounts in Zurich and Bern. Boorsch was a member of the organization, and Marquand hoped that if I showed up in Switzerland the others might get nervous and come after me, exposing themselves.”

“What happened?”

“Absolutely nothing. I only got as far as Lausanne before the Swiss Federal Police arrested me and kicked me out of the country.”

Murphy and the others exchanged glances. “Howard?” the DCI asked the Agency counsel.

“What were you doing at Orly that morning?”

“Seeing an old friend off.”

“How’d you know we had people aboard that flight?”

“I didn’t, although I knew they were there at the airport. I spotted their car out front. I thought they might be following me again. It’s happened before.”

“And Boorsch?” Carrara asked.

“If you check my file downstairs you’ll see that he and I had a couple of near-misses a few years back.”

“Are you saying that Boorsch may have recognized you as well?” Doyle asked, speaking for the first time.

“Almost certainly.”

“Which means it’s possible that the others would know your face as well,” the Deputy Director of Intelligence said.

“That was Marquand’s thinking. The French, by the way, don’t feel as if we’re cooperating with them.”

Murphy seemed to have made a decision. He turned again to the Agency’s counsel. “Well?”

“Have him sign the memo before you proceed. But if you want my opinion, I say lock him up and throw away the key. He’s a dangerously outmoded relic, and has been for some time. If we go ahead and use him again, we’ll be just as guilty by association.”

Ryan got to this feet.

McGarvey looked up, made a gun out of his forefinger and thumb, pointed directly at the man and let the hammer fall.

Ryan shook his head, turned on his heel and left the DCI’s office.

Taking a ballpoint pen out of his jacket pocket, McGarvey signed the Secrets Act memo, then sat back in his chair. “I’m assuming you want me to go after this STASI organization, and you believe that I’ll have a better chance than you of digging them out because they’ll recognize me.”

“Something like that,” Murphy said. “Your starting point, of course, will be their bank accounts in Zurich and Bern.” He turned to Carrara. “We’ll have to get him back into the country. Do you foresee any problem?”

“I’ll manage that on my own,” McGarvey broke in. “If and when I need help I’ll ask.

But as soon as I get started I’ll answer only to Phil Carrara. Personally.”

Lawrence Danielle, who had sat silently through the entire discussion, suddenly looked to Murphy. “Do you think that’s wise, Roland?”

“What’s your point, McGarvey,” Murphy asked.

“No point,” McGarvey said. “It’s just the way it’s going to be.”

“Do you think there is a leak among one of us?” Danielle asked in his soft voice.

He was nearing retirement, and he looked and sounded tired, but he was still a power to be reckoned with.

“I don’t know. But when my life is on the line I’ve learned to keep very close tabs on exactly who knows what I’m doing and how I’m going about it.”

“Fair enough,” Murphy said after a slight hesitation.

“But before I start, or even agree to take this assignment, General, you’re going to have to answer a couple of my questions. If I think you’re lying to me, or not telling me the entire truth, I’ll back out.”

Murphy nodded.

“Two of your people were aboard one-four-five. The STASI wanted them eliminated.

Why? What were they involved with?”

“They were investigating the possibility that the East German group had targeted the Swiss firm of ModTec. One of their engineers, a man by the name of DuVerlie, claimed to have information about it. Phil will show you the file.”

“What were the STASI going for?”

“ModTec designs and builds a number of components for nuclear weapons,” Murphy said.

“The STASI may be after the technology, or perhaps even an entire bomb, is that what you’re saying?”

“We don’t know that yet,” Danielle cautioned.

“But it’s possible?” McGarvey insisted.

Murphy nodded. “Yes.”

“Were they successful at ModTec? Did they get what they wanted?”

“We don’t know,” Carrara said. “DuVerlie never had a chance to tell us.”

“Did you send someone else over there to find out?”

Carrara exchanged glances with Murphy before he answered. “Yes, we have a team investigating the company.”

“What about Tokyo,” McGarvey said, and the room suddenly went electric. He’d gotten their attention.

“What do you mean?” Murphy asked after a long moment.

“Marquand told me that payments into at least one of the STASI’s Swiss bank accounts were in Japanese yen. Is there a connection? Have you gotten any indications from Tokyo Station that the Japanese might be interested in acquiring nuclear weapons technology?”

“God forbid,” Danielle said. He was old enough to clearly remember Pearl Harbor and the days that had led up to it.

“Phil?” Murphy passed the question to Carrara.

“At this point there doesn’t seem to be any connection between the Japanese and the STASI group, other than the possibility certain payments may have been made into a Swiss bank account in yen. But that currency is strong just now. Wherever they got that funding from, either on their own or through a second party, using yen may have been simply a matter of expediency.”

They were lying, and it was so obvious from their faces and sudden change in attitudes that it was almost ludicrous. But he’d learned what he’d come to learn.

“I’ll stay clear of ModTec for the moment, and concentrate on the bank accounts.

They’ll want to protect their money. But if your people find out something, anything at all, I’ll expect to be told about it.”

“Agreed,” Murphy said.

“I’ll spend a day or two here in Washington, working with Phil and going through what files you can give me.”

“Whatever help we can provide you’ll have. But you must understand that you’re not on anyone’s payroll. If you run into real trouble, we’ll do what we can, but you will be denied.”

“It’s never been any different, General,” McGarvey said, getting to his feet. “Not even in the old days, when I actually was on the payroll.”

Chapter 23

Carrara was as helpful as he could be under the circumstances, but McGarvey believed that the man was working under constraints placed on him by Murphy, probably at Ryan’s insistence.

They spent the afternoon together in operations territory on the third floor, going through the Agency’s background information on the STASI. Ernst Spranger’s name came up at the head of the list of ex-STASI officers whose whereabouts were presently unknown, as did the speculation that the group may have been based somewhere in the south of France.

The information was only useful to the extent that it verified Rencke’s story. But Carrara was definitely holding back not only on the information about the STASI’s bank accounts and possible connections with Japan, but about ModTec, and DuVerlie, the engineer who’d gone down aboard 145. The operational files in many cases had big gaps, especially on the time and contact sheets,

which should have outlined by time and date each contact made with DuVerlie or anyone else from the Swiss high-tech company.

Carrara offered no real explanation, nor did McGarvey question him too closely for the moment. Before he went back to Europe, however, he would have it out with the DDO. The last time McGarvey had worked with the man, Carrara had seemed open, and willing at least to try to help. This time he was definitely reticent.

It was six by the time McGarvey was ready to leave for the day. He figured there was little or nothing he could accomplish here for the moment.

“Where are you staying?” Carrara asked.

“Nearby,” McGarvey said at the door from the DDO’s office. “Don’t have me followed, Phil. If I spot one of your legmen, the deal is off. Clear?”

Carrara nodded.

“And, Phil, if we’re going to get anywhere at all, you’d better convince the general to take off the leash. Tomorrow I’m going to want some answers.”

“What do you mean by that?” Carrara asked, his voice low.

“You understand,” McGarvey said. “It’ll be my ass hanging out in the wind. I want to know the real situation.”

“You have it.”

McGarvey shook his head. “The next time you try to doctor your field officers’ contact sheets you’d better think about filling in the blanks.”

Carrara smiled wanly. He sat back. “You don’t trust anybody, do you?”

“In the old days I did.”

“No one to unburden your soul to now? No one to share your troubles with? No one to help out when you’re stuck?”

“What’s your point, Phil? Am I to kiss and make up with that pissant attorney of Murphy’s? Or let bygones be bygones with Danielle, who, if you’ll look in the history books, was lead man on the headhunters team that kicked me out? Is that what you’re angling for?”

“Might not hurt.”

“It might get me killed.”

Carrara just looked at McGarvey for a long moment. “I guess you’ve had your share…“

“Yes, I have,” McGarvey interrupted, not sure exactly what the DDO was going to say, but not wanting to hear it anyway. “Talk it over with the general, and I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“I’ll try,” McGarvey said, and he left.

After-work traffic was still heavy by the time McGarvey signed out, turned in his visitor’s passes, and drove off. But most of it was coming out of the city so he made good time despite doubling back twice to insure that he wasn’t being followed.

Carrara might show some restraint, but he didn’t think Ryan would.

By 7:30 he had parked his car in a ramp three blocks from his hotel, had gone up to his room where he reassembled his pistol, took a shower and changed clothes, and was again out on the streets.

Any physical contact with Rencke was out of the question for the moment. Nobody’s tradecraft was good enough to be one hundred percent sure of spotting a sophisticated surveillance operation.

If Ryan or Murphy, or whoever, wanted him badly enough they had the capabilities and the resources to tail him without his awareness: High-flying spotter aircraft with backup ground crews was one way in which it could be done.

Well clear of the hotel McGarvey called Rencke’s number from a pay phone at a service station. He still needed the man’s help.

The number was answered on the second ring. “At the tone leave your name, or come up on the bulletin board, I’m monitoring.” The answering machine beeped.

“Is your line clear?” McGarey asked.

“Is the Pope Catholic?” Rencke answered, laughing. “You’re in the file out there already, but only by number. They want to keep your involvement pretty much on the Q-T. Did you talk to Murphy’s raiders?”

“I just got back, but I’m going to stay clear of you for a moment.”

“Good idea. What’s up?”

“They want me to go after K-1, but the files they showed me were filled with holes.

Which means they’re holding something back.”

“Typical.”

“But there’s no reason for it,” McGarvey said. “At least none I can see. I want you to get back into Operations and find out all you can about ModTec, and DuVerlie.

There’s something going on over there that has the Agency walking on eggshells.”

“I’m in right now,” Rencke said. “Could be they’re trying to hide something, though I’m getting no sense of what yet. But they’ve yanked a lot of their line numbers which is very atypical.”

“All right, keep on it,” McGarvey said. “But watch yourself.”

“I’ve always got Ralph in reserve. Not to worry.”

“One other thing. Take a look at Tokyo Station’s operations. When I asked Murphy about a possible Japanese connection with the STASI because of the yen payments into their accounts, he damned near swallowed his tongue. They all did.”

“What do you want specifically?”

“I don’t know,” McGarvey said. “But it’s my guess that something’s going on over there that’s got them worried.”

“So, I’ll go shopping.”

“I’ll talk to you in the morning. But like I said, watch yourself.”

“I’m out of Twinkies.”

“I don’t think it’s such a good idea for me to come over there now.”

“Send them by cab,” Rencke said, and he hung up.

The service station McGarvey had phoned from sold bread and milk and other convenience store items. He bought out their stock of Twinkies, and a couple of blocks from the ramp where his car was parked he hailed a taxi.

“I want you to deliver this package to the caretaker’s house in Holy Rood,” McGarvey said. He gave the driver the exact location and a twenty dollar bill.

“Twinkies?” the cabbie said. “This person weird or something?”

“Or something,” McGarvey said. “But friendly.”

When the cab was gone, McGarvey retrieved his car from the ramp and headed back up to Chevy Chase. Kathleen would be intransigent after what had happened this morning, but he felt they both deserved another try. If for no other reason than their daughter Elizabeth, who’d been beside herself with joy when she’d learned that her parents might be getting back together. Liz was nineteen now, but that didn’t stop her need for nurturing.

The sun had set but it was still dusk when he parked his car on the street in front of Kathleen’s house. Something was going on at the country club. Cars were arriving in a steady stream. It struck him just then that this was Kathleen’s life, but that it never could be his. Black tie dinners and receptions were tolerable once in a while, but not as a steady diet.

He almost got back in his car and drove off, but he wanted to talk to her. At least to apologize for this morning.

It took her a long time to answer the door, and when she finally did she was dressed in a thick terry cloth robe, a towel around her hair. She’d just stepped out of the shower.

“You,” she said, but she made no move to close the door.

“Did you get your car back?”

“Yes. The police were here this afternoon. There is a warrant for your arrest. Car theft.”

McGarvey shrugged. “I came to apologize for this morning. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“What was that, Kirk? Your coming here, or the two Neanderthals who came to arrest you?”

She was beautiful, McGarvey thought, looking at her face and long, delicate neck.

Even more so now than twenty years ago when they’d first met. In those days they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. They made love in his apartment and in her apartment, in hotel rooms, in his car, in the woods, and on the beaches around the Chesapeake Bay. It had been glorious those first two years.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he started to turn away.

“Two against one, and they didn’t have a chance,” she said, her voice softening.

“Are you in any danger?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t tell me if you were, would you,” she asked rhetorically. “Not you.

Ever the loner. Ever the stalwart soldier.” Tears formed in her eyes. “But how about the stalwart husband? The stalwart provider? Where the hell were you during our marriage?”

“Doing my job…“

“What about me?” she cried. “What about my needs? Didn’t you know how much I wanted you, needed you then?” She shook her head.

“Hell, even now…“ She turned away and took a few steps back into the dark stair hall.

McGarvey came after her, and touched her shoulder. “Katy?”

“What do you want here?”

“I wanted us to try to get back together.”

“It won’t work,” she said. “It’s impossible.”

“Yes,” McGarvey replied. “But I’m glad we at least tried for Elizabeth’s sake.”

“My sake too,” she said, turning suddenly and coming into his arms. “I wanted to try too.”

“I know,” McGarvey said. It felt awkward holding her in his arms. Unnatural somehow.

Wrong.

They remained like that for several long seconds, until she pulled away. She half-smiled up at him, the gesture wistful.

“The next time you hold a woman in your arms, Kirk, take off your gun first,” she said. “It dampens the spirit.”

Chapter 24

Spranger was shown upstairs to the KGB’s rejerentura section of the Russian Embassy in Rome. His escort was a young, attractive blonde woman, who said her name was Tatiana. She was from Leningrad, and her desire was someday to be stationed at the embassy in Washington.

“Comrade Radvonska is looking forward to seeing you again,” she said, smiling. They spoke in German.

“I appreciate him taking time from his busy schedule,” Spranger replied graciously.

“Will he be long?”

“I don’t believe so,” the young woman said.

They entered a small conference room that could accommodate about ten people around a marble-topped table. Frescoes covered two plaster walls. Windows in the third opened down on a pleasant pocket piazza, deserted at this time of the evening. It was after midnight.

“Is he in the embassy now?”

“Yes, he is. As a matter of fact he is having supper with his family and some friends.

He expressed his regrets in not inviting you to join them, but considering the unexpectedness of your arrival…“

“I quite understand,” Spranger said. “If he will not be long, I’ll wait. Otherwise I could return in the morning.”

“Unfortunately, Comrade Radvonska leaves Rome first thing in the morning.”

“Reassignment?”

“Nein,” Tatiana said. “May I offer you some refreshment? Vodka, schnapps, cognac?”

He was being put off, shown his place, because he no longer represented an agency sponsored by a legitimate government. But Radvonska, who until two years ago was the KGB resident

in East Berlin, had agreed to see him because in this business old alliances died hard. There was no telling when old friends might be needed again. And considering the trouble the former Soviet Union was in at the moment, friends were at a premium.

“No,” Spranger replied. “This is not a social visit. And I too am a busy man.” He glanced toward the door. “Please tell Comrade Radvonska not to concern himself about me. I shall find an alternative source for the information I’m seeking.”

“I’m sure that will not be necessary. His engagement this evening is a legitimate one.”

“And so are my needs.”

The young woman’s smile tightened. “If you will give me just a moment, sir, I will see that Comrade Radvonska is given your message.”

“Do that.”

Tatiana left the conference room and when she was gone Spranger went over to the window. A fine mesh screen covered the opening, and he could see where a wire was connected to it in one corner. The lights overhead were fluorescent, there was no telephone, and the only door in or out of the room was thickly padded. The methods were old-fashioned, but the room was for the most part surveillance proof.

The young woman returned five minutes later with an angry Yegenni Radvonska. The resident was a barrel-chested man with thick, jet black hair. He was dressed in a warmup suit, CCCP stenciled on the left breast.

“Ernst,” he said, stiffly embracing Spranger. “It’s been too long since we last worked together.”

“We’re available any time you need us, Yegenni Sergeevich,” Spranger said. “You know this.”

“Yes, of course.” Radvonska motioned him to take a seat, and he and Tatiana sat across from him.

Spranger looked pointedly at her.

“Tatiana is my trusted and most valuable assistant,” the KGB chief of station said.

“You may speak freely.”

“I need use of KGB archives,” Spranger began. “My people and I are working on a… delicate project, and something has come up for which I must have some information that only you can provide.”

“Yes, and who is your client in this project?”

“I can’t say. But I give you my personal assurances that my client’s aims are in no way at cross purposes with the policies or well being of Russia.”

Radvonska studied him for a moment. “I will hold you to that assurance at a later date, Ernst. Please proceed.”

“My group was involved in the July Second destruction of the Swissair flight from Orly Field, Paris.”

Tatiana’s complexion paled slightly, but Radvonska showed no reaction other than mild curiosity.

“One of my people was killed by French police, but only after he’d been cornered by a man we took to be an outsider. Well-built, tall, dark hair, wearing a British-cut tweed sport coat. At the time we suspected he might have been either a British or an American police officer, or even an intelligence service officer.”

“Something you have subsequently learned has changed that opinion?”

“We now have reason to believe that he is a civilian. A man with whom we have done contract work in the past monitored a recent conversation in a Paris park between Thomas Lynch, who is the CIA chief of Paris station, and Phillipe Marquand, who is a high ranking officer in the SDECE’s Action Service.”

Spranger took a copy of an amended version of the transcript out of his jacket pocket and handed it across the table. He’d taken out Marquand’s references to the Japanese yen payments into their Bern account.

“This came to us less than twenty-four hours ago. There was a delay in getting it out of Paris…“ Spranger stopped.

Radvonska had looked up from the transcript, a knowing smile on his face, his eyes bright. He almost licked his lips. “McGarvey,” he said.

“Yes, that was what Marquand called him. Do you know this name?”

Radvonska focused on Spranger. “Yes, my friend, and so should you. In fact I am very surprised that this man hasn’t already killed you and destroyed your organization.”

“What are you talking about?” Spranger demanded.

“Do the names General Valentin Baranov and Colonel Arkady Kurshin mean anything to you?”

“They were legends in their own time. But…”Again Spranger stopped in mid-sentence.

“He killed them. It was McGarvey?”

Radvonska nodded. “Kirk Cullough McGarvey. As I said, if he is involved and was inside Switzerland, you may count yourself a very lucky man to be alive. But if he has gone to Washington to accept the assignment from the CIA, then your luck may not have very long to run.”

“One man,” Spranger mused.

“Yes, one man, Ernst.”

Spranger looked up. “Then my people will kill him. Immediately.”

Radvonska placed a forefinger on the side of his nose. “Do not become so overconfident.

Under the present situation in Moscow the KGB will not be able to offer you much help. But some Russians have very long memories. I will supply you with the information you need.”

“Give me photographs so that he can be clearly identified, and tell me about his haunts in Washington, and I will take care of the rest.”

“A word of caution before you begin, Ernst. Unless McGarvey has involved himself directly in your operation, stay away from him.”

“Did you know him? Personally?”

“I was an aide to General Baranov. I saw what McGarvey did to Arady Kurshin the first time they met.”

“Then you have a personal interest.”

“Yes, I do. And you must listen to me. If you are going to go up against him, you better stack the deck heavily in your favor. Back him into a corner. Take away his will to fight. Hurt him, even cripple him. But until those things are achieved, be very careful, because he’ll not hesitate to kill you first.”

“I’d go one-on-one with him,” Spranger said. “There isn’t a man on this earth I fear.”

“You would lose,” Radvonska said, and the simple directness of his statement stopped Spranger cold.

Tatiana was watching him, a very faint smile on her lips. Spranger had the urge to reach across the table and slap it from her arrogant face.

“Then I will back him into a corner first, as you say.”

“Yes, and I will help you,” Radvonska said.

“How?”

“By telling you about his ex-wife in Washington, but more importantly about Elizabeth, his daughter, who is presently in residence at a private school outside of Bern, Switzerland.”

“Why haven’t you gone after him?”

“We don’t do things like that anymore,” Radvonska said. “But you do.”

“Yes, I do,” Spranger said, and he couldn’t keep the smile from his face.

Chapter 25

“The question comes back to exactly what he was working on that got him killed,”

Bill Neustadt, head of the CIA’s forensics team in Tokyo, told Ed Mowry. “It’s been more than three days and still we don’t have the answer.”

“It’s frustrating, Christ, don’t I know it,” Mowry said. “I was his assistant COS and he didn’t say a word to me.”

By contrast to Neustadt and most of the others Langley had sent over to help with the investigation, Mowry was a short, undistinguished man in his late forties. With a paunch, a receding hairline and a red, bulbous nose he was anything but athletic-looking.

But he was a competent administrator and a good field agent in the industrial and economic espionage arena, which Japan had become.

“No contact sheet, no references in any file, no note on his desk calendar, nothing in his apartment, no mention to anybody why he was going to the Roppongi Prince Hotel that night, not even to his wife, and yet he was wearing a wire.”

Mowry and Neustadt were meeting in the embassy’s screened room in the section of Tokyo called Minato-ku. The hotel where Jim Shirley had been murdered was barely a half-dozen blocks to the west. It was after eight Tuesday morning, and none of them had gotten much sleep since Friday.

“Unfortunately the recording equipment he had taped to his chest was completely destroyed,” Neustadt continued. “In the meantime the Tokyo Metropolitan Police are starting to ask some tough questions. For instance: Witnesses say that Shirley met with a man at the hotel bar. A Westerner. The Dunee imposter?”

“Unknown.”

“For instance: Were we aware that Shirley was heavily invested on the margin in the Tokyo Stock Market?”

“We’ve been over this a dozen times, Bill. This has taken me completely by surprise.

All of it.”

“I’m getting the impression that he was making ready to jump ship. Quit the Company and settle in here for the duration.”

“It certainly looks like it,” Mowry said glumly. “His wife Doris apparently has no plans to return to the States.”

They were alone in the conference room. Neustadt leaned forward. “So tell me, Ed, do you think he was doing a little freelance work on the side? Something that may have backfired on him?”

Mowry had asked himself that same question a dozen times over the past seventy-two hours. “If you had suggested such a thing to me last week, I would have punched you in the nose.”

Neustadt sat back and shook his head. “Beats me what I’m going to write in my report.”

The telephone rang and Mowry picked it up. It was his secretary just down the hall.

“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Mowry, but when you get a chance there’s someone in your office who wishes to speak with you. She says it’s urgent.”

“Who is it?”

“Yaeko Hataya. She’s a USIA translator from downstairs.”

“I’m going to be tied up all day. Have Tom or one of the others talk to her.”

“Sir, she says it’s about Mr. Shirley.”

Mowry glanced at Neustadt, who was reading one of the files. “Be right there,” he said, and he hung up. There’d been rumors that Shirley had had a mistress. So far she’d not come forward, and no one knew who she was.

Neustadt looked up. “Something?”

“One of my translators is getting excited. I’ve got to go hold her hand for a minute or two.”

“Why don’t you go over to the safehouse and get some rest. You look like I feel…

like shit. Nothing’s going to happen until Langley wakes up anyway.”

“I guess I will,” Mowry said, getting up.

“The apartment is clean,” Neustadt said. “But use your own driver. I’ll have my people right behind you.”

“Will they stick around?”

“Probably. We’ll see.”

“I’ll be glad when this is over,” Mowry said, and he left the conference room.

“I put her inside,” his secretary, Amanda Richardson, said. “Poor kid is terrified.”

“I’ll talk to her. In the meantime get my car and driver around front. I’m getting out of here for a few hours.”

“Yes, sir.”

The young woman was seated in front of his desk when he came in. Her hands were folded primly in her lap. She looked vaguely familiar to Mowry, who thought he might have seen her around the embassy. If she’d been Shirley’s mistress, he’d had good taste.

“My secretary tells me that you know something about Jim Shirley.”

“I was there when he was killed,” Kelley Fuller said in a small voice.

Mowry had gone around behind his desk, and was about to sit down. He stopped. “You were there, at the Roppongi?” he asked, incredulously.

“In front, on the path behind the trees. I saw everything. It was horrible.”

“Why did you wait to come forward?” Mowry demanded. He reached for the phone, but she half rose out of her chair.

“No,” she cried. “You mustn’t tell anyone. Not now! Not yet!”

“The investigators are here from Washington. They have to be told.”

“Especially not them,” Kelley said. “Jim was just as afraid of Washington as he was of the people here in Tokyo.”

“What people? What are you talking about?”

“Jim called it the chip wars. There was money, so much it was hard to imagine. Billions.”

“Of yen?”

She shook her head. “Dollars. In gold and diamonds. Jim said that so much wealth had corrupted everyone who’d come near it.”

“Was Jim investigating this group?”

“Yes,” Kelley said. “He was going to accept some of their money. But he had to prove that he believed in them. It had something to do with the Tokyo exchange. He would get information, and then he would buy some stock. I don’t understand it all.”

“Then why was he killed?” Mowry asked, barely able to believe what he was hearing, and yet instinctively feeling it was true.

“I don’t know. But he was worried that someone in Washington had found out about what he was doing. Don’t you see, Mr. Mowry, that nobody’s to be trusted? Nobody?”

Their investigation into Shirley’s assassination was getting nowhere. The Station had all but closed shop. Nothing of value was coming in or going out, and there was no telling how long the situation would last. The Japanese authorities were enraged, and Langley was hamstrung.

“Where are you staying?” Mowry asked, making his decision.

Kelley looked up and shook her head. Tears were sliding down her cheeks. “I ran away to the country Friday night, and I just got back now.” She sat forward. “I can’t go back to my apartment. Not now. Someone… might be watching.”

“Were you working with Jim?” Mowry asked.

“Yes. He and I were… friends.”

“Will you work for me? Will you help me find out who killed him? Together we can stop them.”

She shook her head again. “I’m frightened. I don’t know what to do.”

She looked very fragile. Totally at wit’s end. “I’m sorry, Miss Hataya, but we’ll have to go through normal channels with our investigation in that case.”

“No, please!”

“What is it?”

Kelley was wringing her hands. “I need a place to stay that’s safe. That no one knows about.”

“If I provided you an apartment like that, would you help me?”

“Yes.”

Tokyo Station maintained two safehouses within the city. One, near the Ginza shopping district, was an open secret, but expenses for the other were buried in one of the embassy’s housekeeping accounts. Only a few key station personnel even knew the place existed. Ironically it was located less than a hundred yards from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters on Sakurada-dori Avenue and within sight of the Imperial Palace.

“We’ll go there now,” Mowry said, rising. “And you’ll tell me everything you know.

Everything.”

Shizuko Igarshi was parked across the street from the U.S. embassy when Edward Mowry came out with a young Japanese woman, and they both got into the back of a waiting Lincoln Town Car.

The woman was somewhat unexpected, but then it was very common for Occidental men away from home to have young mistresses.

Igarshi kick-started his Honda 250 as the gunmetal gray Lincoln pulled smoothly away from the curb. He waited, and moments later a blue Toyota with two Americans inside pulled out of its parking spot, shot across the road, and fell in behind the Lincoln.

It was as he had been told to expect. Mowry would be protected.

But who was the girl?

Igarshi waited for a break in the traffic and headed after them, keeping a couple of cars behind the Toyota.

The girl was probably not important, but he’d been taught to keep an open mind, especially when it came to Americans, and those around them. “They are a crude, bellicose and unpredictable people,” he’d been warned. It was true.

Mowry’s driver, a Japanese contract employee, knew the city well, and in less than ten minutes he pulled up in front of a sprawling three-story apartment building near the Imperial Palace’s broad Sakurada Moat.

The Toyota made a sudden U-turn and parked directly across the street, leaving Igarshi no other choice but to continue beyond.

Mowry had already gotten out of the car, and the girl was just climbing out at that moment. Her eyes locked with Igarshi’s for an instant, and then he was past.

Around the corner, thirty yards away, he hurriedly parked his motorcycle and rushed back to where he could see the front entrance of the apartment building. Mowry and the girl were going inside, and the Lincoln was leaving. But the Toyota remained.

Igarshi pulled off the paper air filter that covered his face, and wiped his mouth.

For just that split second he thought he’d seen a hint of recognition on the girl’s face. But that was not likely.

Killing Mowry, he thought, would be even more interesting than the first one, because this time they would have to take out the two Americans in the Toyota, as well as the girl.

Chapter 26

McGarvey called Rencke’s number from a pay phone downtown near the White House a few minutes before eight in the morning. He’d expected it to ring a long time, because Rencke would be in bed asleep by now. But it was answered immediately.

“Yes!”

“It’s me,” McGarvey said. Rencke had sounded breathless.

“Listen, Mac. All hell is breaking loose. I mean the shit has really happened. So it’s up to you, but I say run and don’t look back. The bastards want you. And listen, if you want my guess, I’d say it has something to do with Tokyo. They’re killing people out there.”

“Is your line still clear?”

“They’re killing people out there, aren’t you listening?”

“Is your line clear?” McGarvey repeated the question slowly. He could envision Rencke bouncing off the walls.

“Yes, yes! Clear, clear! But I don’t know for how long.” “Calm down, Otto, and tell me what’s going on. Did you pick

something off the computer?”

“Hoo, boy, you betcha I did. The jackpot. On Friday, Tokyo time, which makes it …

I don’t know, Thursday or Saturday or something here, the friggin’ chief of Tokyo Station was assassinated. Everybody went bananas over there and over here and everywhere.

They red-lighted the thing.”

“Who killed him?”

“Nobody knows. The Japs, apparently. Two of them in masks and hardhats. We got the masks and one of the hats at Yokosuka doing a DNA search. But now it looks as if the assistant chief of station has been targeted. Operations has evidently fielded a blind asset who got cold feet, or something.”

“Is anyone making a connection between Tokyo and K-l?” McGarvey asked.

“If they are, they’re not logging it in operational files. But the situation has definitely got their attention. Nuclear triggers from the Swiss. K-l’s Swiss bank account loaded with yen. It’s got to make somebody wonder. Operations has nixed your Swiss trip. It’s already in housekeeping. I’d say, run.”

“I can’t. I’m already in too deep.”

“Aren’t we all,” Rencke said.

“I’m going to need more help from you, Otto. If you’re willing to stick with it.”

“Tall orders or short orders?”

“Very tall.”

“May have to go to pink,” Rencke said, but McGarvey didn’t catch the meaning.

“I need to find out two things. First if there have been any incidents involving the theft of fissionable material, enough to make a bomb, or the theft of initiators.

Anywhere in the world.”

“At any given time there’s a half ton or more of plutonium missing. And it only takes seventy pounds or so to make a big bang. But you want to know if any of these incidents have any ties, however remote, with K-l, or especially with the Japanese. Right?”

“Right,” McGarvey said. “And secondly … I don’t know how you’re even going to get started on this one, but, assuming that the Japanese are interested in getting their hands on nuclear weapons technology, or better yet the actual item, and assuming that the Japanese government itself is not involved, I want to know what Japanese interest group, military faction, or even private concern or corporation, would have the most to gain from such a project.”

“We’re talking big bucks. Major yen.”

“That could be a start. Whoever it is would have to have the expertise to make contact with Spranger and his group. Maybe someone with East German ties.”

“Or from the War,” Rencke suggested. “Germany and Japan were allies.”

“Yes,” McGarvey said. “See what you can do.”

“Okay. And thanks for the Twinkies.”

One of Carrara’s people met McGarvey downstairs and escorted him up to Operations on the third floor. There was a buzz of activity, and everyone seemed more animated than usual; on edge, in a hurry.

The DDO was just emerging from the briefing auditorium and he led McGarvey the rest of the way into his office. “We’re putting Switzerland on the back burner for the moment. We’ll let our assets already in place handle it. The general wants to know if you’re interested in taking on an assignment in Japan.”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to him, and then think it over.”

“No time,” Carrara said. “I’ve got a private jet standing by at Andrews for you.

It’ll get you to Tokyo via Seattle and then the Aleutians first thing this morning…

Tokyo time. You can catch up on your reading on the way over.”

“Does this have any connection with the STASI group? I asked about the Japanese connection yesterday.”

“Frankly I don’t know, Kirk. And that’s the truth. I just hope to God it doesn’t have a connection. The Japanese and nuclear weapons is a thought I’d rather not dwell on.”

McGarvey held off for a long moment. Carrara was agitated. He wanted the man to focus his attention on what was being said.

“I’ll probably take your assignment, Phil, but of course I’ll need to know what’s expected of me, and I still want to know what you were holding back yesterday.”

Carrara looked at him bleakly, as if he were a man who knew he’d just been backed into a corner. “The two things may be mutually exclusive.”

McGarvey said nothing.

The DDO started to reach for the phone, but then stayed his hand. “Which do you want first?”

“Orly.”

Carrara nodded, as if he’d known that subject would be first. “DuVerlie was a snitch.

He was going to show us where a fellow ModTec engineer was buried so that we would believe the fantastic story he was trying to sell us. He wanted a lot of money. I mean a lot of money.”

“We’re still talking about nuclear switches?”

“Yes,” Carrara said. “The STASI group, which we’re calling K-l, had approached another ModTec engineer with an offer to buy the switches. When the engineer held out for more money they killed him and hid his body. But DuVerlie found out about it, and figured he would be safer dealing with us than them, and probably make just as much money in the bargain.”

“You knew about this K-l group before DuVerlie approached you?”

“Yes,” Carrara answered. “And we’d picked up rumors that one-four-five would be shot down.”

“Because of DuVerlie?”

“We didn’t know that.”

“But you made the connection.”

“Yes.”

“But did nothing,” McGarvey said, his stomach knotting up. “You didn’t warn Swissair. Hell, you didn’t even hold your own people from taking the flight.”

“We warned Interpol that there might be trouble on an international flight out of France.”

McGarvey could no longer sit down. He got to his feet. “That was fucking big of you.

The public be damned.”

“I don’t set policy, McGarvey.”

“Who does?”

Carrara looked away.

“You sonsofbitches ignored it all, and because of it more than a hundred fifty innocent people are dead.” McGarvey went to the window and looked outside at the beautiful day. “There were other considerations, weren’t there? Sources that would have been revealed if you’d warned the public.” He turned back. “Christ, to what end, Phil?

Tell me, have you or I or the entire CIA made even the slightest difference on how events have turned out over the past fifty years?”

Carrara looked up at him. “I have to believe we have, McGarvey. Else why do we do our jobs?”

The conviction that his entire life had been nothing but an exercise in futility suddenly welled up in McGarvey’s breast. “Christ,” he said softly, Mati’s face rising up in his mind’s eye. It took everything within his control not to turn on Carrara.

“Jim Shirley, our chief of station in Tokyo, was murdered on Friday by two as yet unidentified Japanese,” the DDO said. “We learned overnight that Ed Mowry, our acting chief of station, may be next on their list.”

McGarvey was listening with one part of his mind, while with another he was still thinking about Marta. Her mistake had been falling in love with him. It had cost her her life.

“Shirley had apparently been conducting a series of meetings with a man by the name of Armand Dunee, who supposedly was a spy for a Belgian bank operating in Tokyo.

But he was an imposter.

In the beginning, in Lausanne, Mati had been a diversion. His real work had been the bookstore and his research on the French writer-philosopher Voltaire. But he’d been deluding her and everyone else, including himself. Once a spy, always a spy.

Hadn’t he heard that line somewhere?

“We have a blind source there who may have spotted one of Shirley’s assassins following Mowry.”

Mati had wanted him to give it up, as did Kathleen. But neither of them understood the thing inside of him that was his driving force. His sister had come close a number of years ago when she’d pleaded with him not to sell their parents’ ranch in western Kansas after they had died. She’d inherited the cash and securities, but he had been given the land. “There’s nothing wrong with being tied to the land,” she’d argued.

“A piece of ground cannot be tainted. Not that way.”

But he’d disagreed, and had sold his parents’ property without going back to see it. Daughters are not guilty of the sins of their fathers, he’d told another of his women. But what about the sons?

“We have a team in Tokyo, but no doubt they’ve been spotted. You might have a better chance of not only protecting Mowry, but finding out who wants to kill him and why.”

McGarvey turned around. “Have you warned him?”

“He’s been told that he may be a target. I sent over some help from Technical Services.

But you’ve got to understand that we’re limited in what we can overtly do just now.

The Japanese authorities are very touchy.”

“Have you told him about your blind source?”

Carrara looked uncomfortable. “Of course not.”

“So Mowry doesn’t specifically know that he’s being tailed?”

“No.”

“How about the Technical Services team?”

“We’re keeping the need-to-know list to a minimum.”

McGarvey shook his head. “What the hell is going on, Phil? The Company never did this sort of thing before.”

“The world has changed,” Carrara replied tightly.

“And that’s it? The world has changed?”

Carrara said nothing.

“What’s going on in Tokyo? Why was your chief of station killed, and why the blind asset?”

“I’m sending a briefing book with you so that you can familiarize yourself on the flight over. But in broad strokes we were asked to investigate the possibility that a Japanese corporation, or consortium of corporations, were going to institute an all-out technological-economic war on us. Specificially in the military-aerospace electronics field. First they would mount an espionage operation against U.S. companies doing research and development in order to find out to what point we’d taken the technology. And then they would simply better it.”

“To what end?”

“Economic blackmail. Either we buy their new developments or they’d sell them on the world market.”

“Shirley was killed because he was on to them?”

“It may not be that simple, Kirk. It may be that Shirley was involved in kickbacks. We’re just not sure. But what’s at stake here amounts to billions of dollars.”

“Maybe they’re after improvements in nuclear technology as well.”

“ModTec is not the only manufacturer of those switches, nor are they the best.”

“Assuming Shirley got caught in the middle, why target Mowry?” McGarvey asked.

“I don’t know. Perhaps he was involved as well, or they think he was. Either way we’d like you to find out.”

“What about your blind asset?”

Carrara handed McGarvey a photograph of Kelley Fuller. “She works as an interpreter for the USIA at our embassy under the name Yaeko Hataya.

She was Jim Shirley’s lover.”

“Shit,” McGarvey mumbled half under his breath as he studied the photograph. She was a good-looking woman.

“You’re going to have to stay out of the way of the Tokyo police. Needless to say they won’t be sympathetic.”

“Do you think the government is involved?”

“I don’t know. I hope not, but I don’t know.”

“What’s the girl’s situation? How will we make contact?”

“Mowry has put her up in one of our safehouses. Once you’re settled in Tokyo she’ll get word to your hotel. She knows you’re coming.”

“But Mowry knows nothing about this?”

“That’s right.”

McGarvey had to shake his head. “When do I leave?”

“Immediately,” Carrara said.

Chapter 27

It was dawn. Igarshi parked the blue and white police van at the end of the block from the apartment building on Sakurada-dori Avenue, and watched the activity on the street for a few moments. Already traffic was getting heavy. In another hour the area would be a madhouse, and therefore anonymous.

He studied the apartment building through binoculars. The shutters on the second-story windows were still tightly closed and there was no sign of activity yet. But Mowry would be showing up sometime this morning. He wouldn’t be able to leave his whore for long. At least in that aspect all Americans were alike.

A uniformed police officer came up the street on foot from the direction of the Imperial Palace. Igarshi started the van’s engine. He did not want to be caught here.

“What’s wrong?” Kozo Idemitsu asked from the back.

“A policeman is heading toward us.”

“Ido?”

“I think so, but I’m not sure,” Igarshi said. He raised the binoculars and studied the approaching figure. At first he couldn’t quite tell, but then the cop raised his head, and Igarshi had him. “It’s Ido.”

“Something must have gone wrong. Contact Tanaka again and see if there has been any change.”

As of ten minutes ago their observers near the American embassy in Minato-ku had reported that Mowry was still inside. There was little likelihood that he could have gotten out without being spotted, but if he was on his way now it could make things difficult.

Igarshi picked up the bulky secure walkie-talkie lying on the seat next to him, and keyed the READY TO TALK button.

“Tiger, this is lion,” he said. “Has hummingbird departed yet? We may have a developing situation.”

He pressed the TRANSMIT button, and his digitally-recorded words were encrypted, compressed into a one-microsecond burst, and sent out.

“Stand by, lion. It looks as if his people have just pulled up out front.”

“Any sign of hummingbird?”

“Not yet. Are you in position?”

“Yes, but Ido has broken his cover and is approaching us.”

“See what the idiot wants, then get rid of him.”

“Stand by,” Igarshi radioed. Ido Meiji was the koban police officer assigned to this neighborhood. He was supposed to have provided them with a diversion if they ran into trouble. Later he would give his superiors false descriptions of the assailants he’d so bravely tried to stop. But his story wouldn’t hold up if someone remembered seeing him talking with the officers in the van.

Igarshi rolled down his window as the cop stopped to check the locked security shutter in front of a shop. He turned and came over to the van.

“I thought it was important for you to know that the woman left the apartment early this morning,” Ido Meiji said breathlessly.

“Are you sure?” Igarshi asked.

“Yes, of course. I watched the entire thing. She went around the corner to the telephone box and made a call of twenty-seven seconds duration, and then returned to the apartment.”

“She’s back now?”

“Yes. But maybe she suspects something. Perhaps she telephoned a warning.”

“Return to your position,” Igarshi ordered, making his decision. Mowry was the prime target. They couldn’t let anything get in the way.

“You mean to continue?”

“Yes. Now, go.”

The cop half bowed, then turned and walked off. Igarshi snatched the walkie-talkie and hit the READY TO TALK button.

“Tiger, this is lion. Ladybird left the apartment this morning and made a brief telephone call to an unknown party.”

“Never mind that,” Tanaka radioed. “Hummingbird is getting into his car now. We’ll be on our way in under a minute.”

“The woman may have seen something. She might have warned him.”

“In that case she would have remained inside the apartment and used that telephone,”

Tanaka shouted. “Remain at your position. I’ll advise you of any change in plans.”

“Roger,” Igarshi said, and he tossed the walkie-talkie aside in disgust. They were dealing with a deadly business here. There was no room for mistakes, and even less room for blindness.

“This won’t be so good if the girl warned somebody,” Idemitsu said.

“Don’t be a fool,” Igarshi countered impatiently. “What does it matter?”

“You said yourself that she got a good look at you.”

“I was mistaken.”

“How can you say that?”

“Are you ready back there?” Igarshi shouted.

“Yes,” Idemitsu said after a moment. “I am ready now.”

“Then nothing has changed.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“She’s just an empty-headed whore. After today she will be dead.”

Kelley Fuller watched the street through the slats in the bamboo shutters that covered the window in the tiny living room. The cop had crossed the street from the police van and was heading past the apartment back to the corner. It was the same koban cop who’d followed her to the telephone, she was certain of it.

Which meant what? she asked herself, trying to think it out. That the Tokyo Police had mounted a surveillance operation on her? Or more likely on the apartment?

Phil Carrara had warned her that the Japanese authorities were extremely agitated over Shirley’s assassination. It wasn’t so much the brutal nature of the killing that was disturbing them as it was the fact he’d been CIA. The Soviet Union, Communist China and North Korea were just across the narrow Sea of Japan. No one wanted a new battle in the old Cold War to erupt here with those enemies so close at hand.

If Mowry were being identified as CIA-which was entirely possible given the present apparent state of security at the embassy-then his coming here to a secret apartment would raise some embarrassing questions.

It would also mean that her effectiveness would be at an end. They might never find Shirley’s killers, or their real reason for targeting the CIA, beyond the public speculation that the incident had been an act of anti-American terrorism.

Again the ghastly picture of his body on fire rose up in her head and she closed her eyes.

A bullet in the head would have been one thing. But the way Shirley had been murdered had been a message. A strong message. But from whom? From the man on the motorcycle who’d followed them here? His eyes had been hauntingly familiar to her. And she’d felt in her heart that he’d been one of the two in front of the Roppongi Prince that night.

“Help me,” she said softly. She didn’t know what to do.

The man Carrara had sent from Washington had touched down at Narita Airport earlier this morning. By now he’d be in place at the ANA Hotel Tokyo near the embassy. He would have to be warned, as would Mowry. But then what?

Mowry had no real idea what he was up against. None of them did.

From her vantage point she could just make out a figure behind the wheel of the van, but little else. It was obvious they were waiting for something, or somebody.

She picked up the phone and dialed the embassy’s number. When the operator answered she asked for Mowry’s extension, his secretary came on.

“Three five eight.”

“Please, may I speak with Mowry-san. This is Yaeko Hataya.”

“I’m sorry Miss Hataya, but Mr. Mowry is not here.”

“I see,” Kelley said. “Can you tell me, is he in the embassy, or has he left?”

“He’s gone,” Mowry’s secretary said.

“I see. Thank you,” Kelley said. She broke the connection and called the ANA Hotel Tokyo. “Please connect me with the room of Mr. Kirk McGarvey. He is a registered guest of yours who was due this morning.”

“I’m sorry, madame, but Mr. McGarvey has not yet arrived,” the hotel operator said after a moment. “Would you care to leave a message?”

“No. That will not be necessary.”

Kelley hung up and looked out the window again. The police van was still in place.

Mowry was undoubtedly on his way here, which didn’t give her much time. But the only thing she could do now would be lead the police away from the apartment. Everything could be sorted out later.

Chapter 28

The taxi dropped McGarvey off in front of the Imperial Palace’s Outer Garden East Gate, the morning coming alive with traffic. Already the first of the joggers were starting their three-mile runs around the palace. Everyone ran the course counterclockwise.

It was tradition, on which the Japanese were very big.

Although he’d gotten plenty of rest on the long flight over the Pacific, his body clock was still telling him that it should be the middle of the evening, not first thing in the morning. He’d taken a shuttle bus from the airport to catch the train into Tokyo’s Keisei-Ueno Station, and from there a cab to his hotel where he dropped off his bag with the bellman.

His gun had come through customs in a diplomatic pouch, the package returned to him on the other side of the barrier. The weapon was a comfortable weight at the small of his back, though if the local authorities discovered he was armed, he would face immediate arrest and deportation.

He crossed the moat and entered the relative peace of the garden. There were so many people packed in such close quarters in Tokyo that parks and gardens were places revered almost at a religious level.

Reading between the lines of Carrara’s report, McGarvey had come to the conclusion that Jim Shirley had been the only effective field officer here, but that even he had been suspect in the end.

Mowry was an administrator and Kelley Fuller, A.K.A., Yaeko Hataya was starting to fall apart, which left a very big and dangerous blind spot when it came to Japan.

He couldn’t help compare the situation to the days before Pearl Harbor, when there’d been another serious lapse in hard intelligence on what the Japanese were up to.

Rightly or wrongly there was a growing paranoia about exactly just where the Japanese were headed these days. As Carrara pointed out, it wasn’t so much that they seemed to want to buy everything they could get their hands on in the States-the British owned nearly twice as much property in the U.S. as the Japanese did. But it was what the Japanese were buying, and how they were going about it.

Owning a building in midtown Manhattan was one thing, but buying out a major communications industry, including a movie production company and a major book publisher, was another.

As was a rumored move to buy out a major U.S. aircraft company. In each case the Japanese promised not to make any changes in company policy. That, of course, was forgotten the moment the ink was dry on the contracts.

“We can’t afford anti-Japanese sentiment, but neither can we afford a Japanese buyout of what’s vital to this country,” Carrara said.

Finding out who was behind the assassination of Shirley, and how that connected to Carrara’s sweeping generalizations was a tall, if not an impossible order. One which McGarvey had his doubts about being able to fulfill. And there was still the nagging suspicion at the back of his mind that somehow the Japanese were connected with Spranger and his group of ex-STASI officers.

At the south end of the gardens the ornate Sakuradamon Gate crossed another moat to the end of Sakurada-dori Avenue. A couple dozen joggers were warming up in the courtyard between the portals of the gate. McGarvey stopped just inside the garden.

On the corner was the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Building, and across the street was the Ministry of Justice housed in a nondescript old brown brick building. This area was the heart of the Japanese government. Within a few blocks were the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Education, International Trade and Industry.

The CIA’s safehouse was in a building used by foreigners doing business with the government. Activities unusual for any other part of Tokyo were common here and raised few suspicions.

“So far Mowry hasn’t officially told anyone that he’s stashed Kelley over there,”

Carrara had said.

“Which means he’s got something to hide.”

Carrara shrugged. “The Station leaks, and he doesn’t want to end up like Shirley.”

“What’d the girl tell him?”

“That she saw Jim Shirley’s murder and that she’s frightened she’ll be next.”

“But he hasn’t told any of that to your Technical Services team?”

“No, but they’re keeping an eye on him twenty-four hours a day. They know he’s got a girl there, but they don’t know who she is.”

“And you haven’t clarified the situation.”

Carrara shook his head.

“You really are a bastard after all,” McGarvey said, but the DDO hadn’t responded.

It was the business, McGarvey thought, watching the street. When government policies became the primary consideration, people became expendable. It had happened to him, only he’d been tough enough-and lucky enough-to survive. So far.

Already the first of the clerks and bureaucrats were heading to work, and traffic was beginning to pick up. In another hour or less all of Tokyo would become a congested mass of humanity on the move. Half hour taxi rides would take two hours or more.

Buses and trains would be packed to overflowing. The city streets would become anonymous for the field officer as well as for the killer and his victim.

Crossing Harumi-dori Avenue with the light, McGarvey headed past the Police Headquarters keeping his eyes and ears open, trying to absorb what was the norm for this area; looking for the routine, the ordinary, the usual ebb and flow so that he could pick out the odd, out of place person or vehicle.

In Europe he understood what he saw. Here, though, it was different: The people, the scenery, even the flavor and odors on the air were odd by Western standards.

“Between you and the girl you can keep an eye on Mowry,” Carrara had said. “If they do make a try on him, you’ll get your lead.”

“Short of that?”

“Keep your eyes open,” Carrara said. “Something will come up. With you it always does.”

The safehouse was in the block beyond the Police Headquarters. Some shops were beginning to open, and traffic, especially pedestrian, was getting heavy.

At the near corner a uniformed police officer was speaking on a telephone at a police callbox outside a tiny cubicle. At the far end of the block a blue and white police van was parked on the opposite side of the street.

As McGarvey passed, the cop at the callbox glanced up at him, but then turned away.

Something was happening here. Or was about to happen. That much he could pick out.

Then he spotted her. Kelley Fuller had just emerged from a building in the middle of the block and was heading directly toward him. She was thirty yards distant, but he had no trouble recognizing her from the photographs Carrara had included in the briefing package.

Nor was there any doubt from the way she was moving that she was in trouble. Immediate trouble.

Igarshi could hardly believe his eyes. It was Mowry’s whore. She was on the move.

Now! Of all times! She must have seen something and warned the American. She’d probably spotted Ido. The bastard!

He grabbed the walkie-talkie, pushed the READY TO TALK button and screamed into the microphone. “Tiger, this is lion. The woman just left the apartment. She’s getting away!”

He hit the TRANSMIT button and a moment later, Tanaka came back.

“Never mind her for now. We’re just around the corner from you. Get ready.”

“We can’t let her escape,” Igarshi shouted.

“Stand by. We’re coming.”

Igarshi tossed the walkie-talkie aside, and started the van’s engine, as Mowry’s chauffeured Lincoln appeared in his rearview mirror, the opposite direction from where he’d expected it.

Ten feet from McGarvey, Kelley glanced over her shoulder, back the way she had come, and she pulled up short, almost stumbling over her own feet.

A big American car had just turned the corner at the end of the block and was barreling up the street. A light blue Toyota with two men inside was directly behind it.

The woman started back, but McGarvey caught up with her in two steps and grabbed her arm.

Something was starting to go down. The blue and white police van was pulling away from the curb, and a red Mercedes was squealing tires coming around the corner.

Kelley tried to yank her arm free, but McGarvey forcefully pulled her off to the side. “Miss Hataya, it’s me. Kirk McGarvey!”

For a split second Kelley’s face was screwed up in a grimace of terror and the raw animal reaction to being cornered. She looked back over her shoulder, wildly thrashing her free arm in an effort to escape as the Lincoln made a sudden U-turn and stopped in front of the apartment building.

“We have to warn him,” she cried.

The blue Toyota pulled over to the curb across the street, the police van and Mercedes right behind it.

“We’re not going up against the Tokyo Police,” McGarvey said, hauling her into the shelter of a small used-book stall.

“Something is wrong, I tell you,”

“Wait,” McGarvey said forcefully. Something was wrong here, but he didn’t know what it was. No matter how agitated the Japanese authorities were because of the incident involving the CIA, arresting an American diplomatic officer was an extreme move.

The koban cop from the corner came past in a run, his pistol drawn, as the police van pulled up opposite Mowry’s limousine. The acting chief of station got out of the car, and turned to see what was happening.

The red Mercedes stopped alongside the Toyota, and for several beats it seemed as if nothing would happen. Traffic flowed around the two stopped vehicles, but everything else seemed to be in stasis. Like a time bomb ready to go off.

A uniformed cop jumped out of the back of the van and hurried around the big American car. He carried what appeared to be a large fire extinguisher, but he was holding it as if he were about ready to put out a fire.

Or start one! The chilling thought suddenly flashed into McGarvey’s head. They weren’t cops!

“Get down,” he shouted, pushing Kelley farther back into the book stall.

The driver’s side window in the blue Toyota suddenly burst into a million pieces, blood spraying the inside of the windshield as one of the men in the Mercedes opened fire with what sounded like a silenced Uzi… the clatter of the expended shell casings louder |than the actual shots.

McGarvey yanked out his pistol as he sprinted forward, switching the safety to the off position.

Mowry reared back, inadvertently placing himself between the koban cop and the cop with the fire extinguisher, leaving McGarvey no shot.

“Get back, get back!” McGarvey shouted, knowing that he was already too late.

The cop from the van raised the fire extinguisher, and a geyser of flame twenty-five feet long gushed from the horn-shaped nozzle, completely engulfing Mowry, as well as the koban cop behind him.

McGarvey spun on his heel and darted behind a parked taxi, the heat from the flame thrower so intense even at a distance of fifty feet that it made his eyes water and singed the hair on his head.

Mowry and the koban cop were both screaming inhumanly as they did a macabre little jig, almost as if they were marionette puppets on strings.

The air was filled with the stench of gasoline and burning flesh. Traffic was coming to a screeching halt, people were falling back, running away, screaming in terror.

The Lincoln started to pull away from its parking place, but got only five feet before its windshield disintegrated in a hail of automatic gunfire from the driver’s side of the police van.

A second burst of flame from the bogus fire extinguisher completely engulfed Mowry and the koban cop again as McGarvey popped up and fired three shots in rapid succession.

The column of flames suddenly veered wildly left, splashing the fronts of the buildings across the sidewalk as Mowry’s assassin staggered backward.

McGarvey snapped off a fourth and fifth shot, the last hitting the flamethrower’s fuel tank which erupted in a huge fireball, instantly killing the man.

The police van burst into flames, and the driver, also dressed in a police uniform, jumped out, firing his Uzi toward McGarvey, forcing him down behind the taxi, glass and bits of bullet fragments raining down on his head.

Mowry and the koban cop had stopped screaming. They were mercifully dead. But in the near distance McGarvey could suddenly hear the sounds of sirens. Probably behind the police headquarters in the last block.

He popped up again and fired two shots at the cop who was scrambling into the back seat of the already moving Mercedes. Then a third. The fourth time he pulled the trigger the hammer fell on an empty chamber.

The answering automatic weapons fire raked the taxi McGarvey was crouched behind, almost completely destroying it.

He ejected the spent clip from his Walther PPK, slapped home a fresh one, relevered the ejection slide and jumped up as the Mercedes accelerated down the street.

He managed to get off two shots before the risk of hitting an innocent bystander became too great. Then he turned, looked toward the still-burning remains of Mowry and the cop, holstered his pistol and hurried back to Kelley Fuller, who was shaking with fear and rage. The sirens were very close now.

“We have to get out of here,” he told her. “But you’re going to have to act normal.”

“What?” she cried incredulously, but she didn’t resist as McGarvey took her arm and led her away, back toward the Imperial Palace gardens, past the Police Headquarters building.

Chapter 29

“Who the hell was that bastard?” Tanaka demanded. He was an expert driver and he knew Tokyo very well. He’d gotten them clear before the police arrived.

“I don’t know,” Igarshi shouted wildly. “He came out of nowhere. Kozo didn’t have a chance.”

“We have to find out. He’s with the girl, and she may know too much.”

“We have to kill them,” Heidinora Daishi said from the front seat. “They’re witnesses.”

He’d killed Mowry’s two bodyguards in the Toyota.

“I agree,” Tanaka said. He glanced in the rearview mirror at Igarshi who was changing out of the police uniform. “Are you injured?”

“Just a scratch on my leg. But it was close.”

“Did you see where they were headed?” Heidinora asked. He was a bulldog of a man, with a short, thick torso and massive arms. He was a ruthless, efficient killer.

“The Imperial Palace,” Tanaka replied through clenched teeth. “We’ll go there now and finish the job.”

“We’d better,” Igarshi muttered. “I for one don’t want to go back empty-handed. But we have no flamethrower.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll enter the garden from three different directions to cut off any possible escape. The moment we spot them we shoot.”

“What about the car?”

“We’ll leave it,” Tanaka said, hauling the big car around the corner onto Hibaya-dori Avenue. He pulled up in front of the east gate into the Imperial Palace’s Outer Garden.

“Take this entrance,” he told Heidinora. “Igarshi and I will come from the south side and drive them toward you.”

“Very well,” Heidinora growled, and he got out of the car and entered the garden.

Police units seemed to be converging from all over the city on the scene of the killings.

Violent crime was relatively unknown in Tokyo, and when it occurred the police were quick to respond. McGarvey led a shaken Kelley Fuller across Harumi-dori Avenue into the Imperial Palace’s Outer Garden. Most of the joggers were already gone on their circuit of the palace grounds, but a few stood at the outer portal looking to where black smoke rose into the morning sky.

“They weren’t the police,” Kelley said.

“You’re right, but there’s nothing we can do about it for the moment,” McGarvey said.

He pulled up short just within the garden and studied the approaches behind them.

The Mercedes would be back. Today’s attack had been well planned and coordinated.

Whoever they were, they would not want to leave any loose ends dangling.

“I tried to warn Mowry, but his secretary told me that he’d already left. And your hotel said you hadn’t checked in yet.”

“Where were you going?”

“I was trying to lead them away. But God, I didn’t know this would happen.” She was distraught, and clearly on the verge of breaking down.

“All right, listen to me. They saw which way we headed, and they’re probably going to come back for us. Have you got someplace to go? Someplace where you can hide at least for the rest of the morning?”

“I had an apartment, but I’m not going there now,” she said. “Maybe the embassy.”

“No,” McGarvey said. “The moment the authorities found out you were there they’d demand that you be turned over to them. You’re a material witness to at least one killing.”

“So are you,” she said.

“That’s right. But so long as we make no contact with the embassy the police won’t know who we are.”

“That’s just great,” Kelley said bleakly. “If we run for safety the Japanese police will take us. If we stay on the streets, the maniacs who killed Shirley and Mowry will have us.”

“I want you to go over to my hotel and wait for me in the coffee shop, or the lobby.

Anyplace that’s public, where there are a lot of people.”

Kelley’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? You mean right now?”

“Yes. Take a cab.”

“What about you…?” She looked closely at him. “You’re going to wait here for them?”

“One of them is already dead, and I may have wounded the second. Which leaves two more, possibly three. I’d like to even the odds a bit, and then have a little chat with whoever is left.”

“You’re crazy.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You saw what they did to Mowry. God, they did the same thing to Shirley.”

The red Mercedes slid to a halt a hundred feet away on Harumi-dori Avenue. McGarvey spotted it out of the corner of his eye and pulled Kelley back out of sight behind the gate as a slightly built man got out of the back and started up the broad pedestrian walkway. He was limping. The car left immediately, but not before McGarvey saw that the driver was now the sole occupant.

“He’s the one from the van,” Kelley said. “At least I think so. But he was wearing a uniform then.”

“It’s the same one,” McGarvey said. “But one of them is missing. He’s probably somewhere behind us, and this one means to drive us into him.”

Kelley looked wildly from the approaching figure, back down the treelined concourse that led into the garden. Already the park was beginning to fill up. “We have no idea what he looks like.”

McGarvey had gotten a vague impression of a bulky man in the front passenger seat, but he had not gotten a clear look. “No, but he shouldn’t be so hard to spot once this one tells me what he looks like.”

The driver of the Mercedes would probably abandon the car and come in from the west, boxing them in, leaving them only one direction to run. The killers were taking a big risk of being spotted by the police, which meant they considered McGarvey and Kelley very important.

“We can let him pass and duck out behind him,” Kelley said.

The police imposter was less than fifty feet away, his right hand stuffed into the light brown jacket he wore now. Passers by didn’t look directly at him; the Japanese were too polite to stare. But it was clear that his presence, blood on one leg of his trousers, was causing a stir. It would be only a matter of a few minutes before the alarm was sounded and the police showed up.

“As soon as he comes through I want you to do just that,” McGarvey said. “Grab a cab and get out of here.”

“I don’t want to leave you here like this, not with three-to-one odds,” she argued, and McGarvey looked at her with a new respect. She was frightened half out of her mind, but she was willing to stay and help.

“Are you armed?”

“No.”

“Then go to the hotel and wait for me there.”

The killer was nearing the gate, and McGarvey pulled Kelley farther back behind the portal, so that they were completely hidden for the moment.

“What if you don’t show up?” she whispered urgently.

McGarvey took out his pistol and switched the safety off. This was the last of the ammunition he had with him. But he was going to avoid at all costs any kind of a shootout here in a public park.

“If I’m not back by noon, make contact with Phil Carrara, he’ll know what to do,”

McGarvey said. “Now get ready to go.”

“This is stupid,” she whispered in desperation.

“You can say that again,” McGarvey agreed.

The man came through the gate, and as soon as he was past, McGarvey stepped out from around the portal and fell in behind him. Kelley darted around the corner and out the gate.

“I don’t want to kill you, but I will unless you do exactly as I say,” McGarvey said in a conversational tone.

Igarshi practically jumped out of his skin. His step faltered and he started to withdraw his hand from his pocket.

“I killed your friend back there, I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in your spine,” McGarvey warned.

“Who are you? What do you want here?” Igarshi demanded, his English very bad but understandable.

“My questions,” McGarvey said. “But first I want to know who hired you to kill Shirley and Mowry…“

Igarshi was incredibly fast. With his right elbow he knocked McGarvey’s gun hand aside, and then spun around, smashing three well-aimed blows into McGarvey’s chest and throat within the space of barely one second.

On instinct alone, McGarvey was just able to fall back, sidestepping the killer’s next blows, and smash the butt of his pistol into the back of the man’s neck. Igarshi went down with a grunt.

Several people stopped and turned to see what the commotion was all about, and McGarvey stepped back, bringing up his gun as the Mercedes driver came down the broad path on the left in a dead run.

Tanaka fired three shots, one of them hitting a bystander, one smacking into a tree and the third plucking at McGarvey’s sleeve.

McGarvey turned sideways to present less of himself as a target, and squeezed off two measured shots, both hitting the oncoming Japanese in the chest, driving him to his knees and then down.

A woman was screaming and another woman was down on her knees beside the bystander who’d been shot, wailing and wringing her hands.

McGarvey hauled the dazed Igarshi over on his back. “Who hired you to kill Shirley and Mowry?” he demanded. There wasn’t much time. Already in the distance there were more sirens.

Igarshi snarled something in Japanese and lunged upward, grabbing the barrel of McGarvey’s pistol. The gun discharged, the bullet entering the man’s forehead, his head bouncing off the gravel path and his eyes filling with blood.

He’d committed suicide!

McGarvey recoiled and then looked up as a heavyset man built like a Sherman tank came charging down the main concourse. He looked like a wild animal.

Stepping back, McGarvey brought up his pistol in both hands and crouched in the shooter’s stance. Heidinora stopped in his tracks ten feet away. He was unarmed, an expression of pure hatred on his round, rough-featured face. The sirens were much closer now, and it was clear that he heard them.

“I don’t want to kill you, but I will not leave Tokyo until I have answers,” McGarvey said.

Heidinora backed up, his hands spread in a gesture of peace.

“Remember my face,” McGarvey said, lowering his pistol. “I’ll want answers to my questions.”

Heidinora nodded once, then turned on his heel and walked off. Holstering his pistol, McGarvey turned in the opposite direction and headed out the gate to Harumi-dori Avenue.