Critical Mass

Chapter 30

A gentle sea breeze ruffled the potted flowers on the veranda of the villa that overlooked the Principality of Monaco and the azure Mediterranean. Surrounded by fragrant eucalyptus trees, the expansive, low, stuccoed house was enclosed within a tall concrete fence topped with glass shards. Doberman pinschers patrolled the grounds at night, and along with a sophisticated system of extremely low-light-capable closed-circuit television monitors, the Villa Ambrosia was a relatively secure fortress without being ostentatiously so.

Ernst Spranger, dressed in sandals, white slacks and a bright yellow short-sleeved Izod, came out to the veranda to greet his guest who’d just been announced. The short, slightly built man stood at the low rail, looking at a half-dozen sailboats in the distance. It was just eight in the morning, and Spranger was in a pensive mood in part because of the events, or lack of events, over the past few days, and in part because of this man’s unexpected presence.

“Your coming here today may cause us a problem, unless you took care not to be seen,”

Spranger said.

The Japanese man turned around and smiled. “You should not worry about such inconsequential details when there are so many other things to be concerned about, Herr Spranger.”

Spranger crossed the veranda and shook hands with the man. “Nonetheless, Mr. Endo, I trust you took the proper precautions.”

“Naturally.”

“You understand that we have other clients who must also be protected.”

The expression in Endo’s eyes was unfathomable, but he did not stop smiling. “My message will be brief, but let us sit down together as friends, still.”

Liese was watching and listening from a room in the rear that contained the villa’s security equipment. Later they would go over the tape together to make sure neither of them had missed anything.

The Italian houseboy served them tea when they were settled and after he withdrew, Endo pushed his cup aside and sat forward.

“Tell me what progress you have made concerning Mr. McGarvey. It is still our wish to stop the man.”

“We have temporarily lost direct track of him in Washington. My people there think he may have left the area, but at this point we’re still not certain. In any event, it’s not our intention to confront him directly… and certainly not on his home ground.”

“Your intentions are…?”

“To lure him back to Europe, of course, where we will set up a killing zone of our own choosing.”

“When and where will this be accomplished?”

“The when is very soon, but to answer your question about where is more complicated.

We have reliable intelligence that McGarvey may be an extraordinary man who might not be so easily cornered and killed. First he must be given an incentive to do what we wish, and then he must be softened up. But the odds are with us. We’ll stack them that way.”

“Are you afraid of this man?”

Spranger bridled at the question. “Of course not.”

Endo shook his head. “You should be, Herr Spranger.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. McGarvey is presently in Tokyo, where he gunned down three of our people in cold blood. And in broad daylight, I might add, with all of the odds, as you say, stacked against him. Now the police are investigating us as well as the Americans.

It is an intolerable situation. One which we have paid your organization a great deal of money to prevent.”

The news was stunning. Spranger needed time to think. “Has he gone back to work for the CIA?”

“The fact that he was so recently in Washington makes that a distinct possibility.

As does the fact that he was seen with a woman who has been identified as the mistress of two CIA officers.”

“Who are these men?”

“The chief of station and his assistant,” Endo said. “We eliminated both of them.”

“Verdammt,” Spranger swore. “Is the CIA investigating your operation?”

“That is no concern of yours, Herr Spranger. This man must be made to leave Tokyo.

Immediately.”

“If you’re being investigated by the CIA, if they are making the connection between you and what happened in Paris, then our entire contract is in grave jeopardy.”

“The connection has not been made as yet. But time is of the essence. You must lure McGarvey out of Japan immediately.”

“It may take some time,” Spranger said, his thoughts racing. “There are certain details still to be worked out.”

“Work them out,” Endo said, standing. “You have twenty-four hours in which to do it.”

Spranger looked up. “Or else?”

“We will cancel our contract with you, and demand an immediate repayment of all monies we’ve paid to date.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Spranger warned.

“Our reach is much longer than you would think,” the Japanese said. “Do this for us and you will be a wealthy man. Fail and you will die.”

Endo turned and left the veranda. His car and driver had waited in front for him.

Liese, wearing a stunningly revealing string bikini, came out of the house a moment later, and sat down across from Spranger. She was smiling.

“Why the hell did the bastard go to Tokyo?” Spranger asked. “What the hell is he playing at now?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Liese said.

Spranger focused on her. “What are you talking about?”

“The news from Bern,” she said sweetly. “It has finally come.”

“I see,” Spranger said, grinning. It was as if a giant weight had been taken off his shoulders.

Chapter 31

Traffic on the Washington Memorial Parkway was heavy, though most of it was headed toward the city, and not north, along the river. Already the morning was hot, humid and hazy, and only when the Mercedes convertible turned off the main highway up the Bureau of Public Roads’ treelined entry road, was there any relief.

“I’m here to speak with Phil Carrara,” Kathleen McGarvey told the gate guard. “I didn’t make an appointment, but if you’ll just tell him who it is, he’ll see me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the guard said, and went back into the glass-fronted hut.

During the few minutes it took him, there was a steady stream of traffic into the CIA Headquarters. Most spies, Kath

leen reflected, were nine-to-fivers like the rest of official Washington. She’d had the misfortune of picking one who wasn’t.

“Someone will meet you in the lobby, Mrs. McGarvey,” the guard said, giving her her visitor’s passes. “Just to the right after the clearing.”

“I know the way,” Kathleen said, and she drove up the hill. It’d been years since her one visit here, and she’d vowed then never to come back. Now she was frightened.

The same old fear as in the early days. This time it was the call.

She signed in with the guards in the lobby, and after her purse was searched, a young man who said his name was Chilton escorted her up to the DDO’s office on the third floor.

Carrara was waiting for her at the door to the office. “This is certainly a surprise, Mrs. McGarvey.”

“Not a pleasant one, I’m sure,” Kathleen said, preceding him into his office and taking a seat in front of his desk. She wore a crisply tailored off-white linen suit, and a pastel green blouse with matching shoes and broad-brimmed hat.

“The Agency regrets the intrusion of your house the other day,” Carrara said going around behind his desk. “But if there’s anything I can do personally…“

“I want to know where Kirk has gone off to this time,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. McGarvey but I don’t know anything…“

“Short of that I want to get a message to him.” She crossed her legs. “I won’t leave here until I get what I’ve come for. And if need be, I’ll speak with the general.”

“I don’t know if that will be possible, this morning,” he replied, and for the first time Kathleen noticed that something was wrong. It looked as if he hadn’t slept or shaved in a week. His complexion was pale, and his eyes bloodshot.

“I’ll wait right here if I have to,” she said. “Kirk is on another assignment for you, and I must get word to him.”

“He told you that, Mrs. McGarvey?” Carrara asked sharply.

“Not in so many words. But I know him. One day he is here, and the next day, after your people show up at my front door, he disappears. I merely put two and two together.”

“I’m sorry,” Carrara said tiredly. “I don’t know where he is. And even if I did I could not tell you. I’ll have you escorted back downstairs to your car.”

“You’re lying! You’re hiding something. And believe me, I mean to have it out today.

I won’t take no for an answer.”

Carrara stared at her for a long moment or two. “What’s so important that you need to get a message to him at this moment? Can’t it wait?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Carrara shrugged. “We won’t deliver secret messages, Mrs. McGarvey.”

“That’s ludicrous coming from a man like you in a place like this.”

“Nevertheless.”

“The last time we saw each other I kicked him out of my house. I want to tell him that I was… wrong. That I’m sorry.”

Carrara said nothing. It was obvious he didn’t believe her.

“If he gets killed it’ll be too late,” she said, raising her voice.

“I repeat, Mrs. McGarvey, what makes you believe that your husband is working for us?”

Kathleen looked away. It was probably a mistake coming here like this. Something important was apparently going on. Something that was worrying the Deputy Director of Operations. And whatever that was, it had to be big. But now that she was here, now that she had come this far, she was determined to see it through. She owed that much to Kirk, and to herself.

“Are you going to allow me to get a message to him?” she asked, looking back.

“Not without more information. I’m sorry, but no.”

“Then I want to speak with General Murphy.”

“The Director is not available today.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kathleen said. “If need be I’ll march directly over to the Hill and raise such a stink with the Joint Intelligence Committee, several members of which are regulars at my home, that all of Washington will hear about it.”

Carrara sighed. “Very well,” he said, and he picked up his phone. “Ask the director if I may bring Mrs. McGarvey upstairs this morning to have a word with him.”

The Asia Center of Japan Hotel was near the center of Tokyo and barely fifteen minutes on foot from the Roppongi District and the American Embassy. McGarvey stood at the window of their tiny third-floor room, watching the late night traffic below on the street as he waited for his call to the States to go through.

He’d picked up Kelly Fuller in the lobby of the ANA Tokyo Hotel, and then checked in there to leave a track. Later they’d come over to this smaller and far less conspicuous hotel that she had assured him catered to foreigners. No one would notice him here, nor had he been required to show his passport or any identification when he’d registered under the German workname Rolf Eiger.

For the time being at least he figured that he and Kelly would be safe here. Sooner or later he was going to have to get word to Carrara about what happened. But first he wanted to make sure that their backs were covered.

“Anything?” she asked, coming out of the postage-stamp bathroom.

He turned away from the window and shook his head. “I think we’ll be all right here for a day or so. But we’ll have to keep on the move, or find a better place.”

“Until when?”

“Until I finish what I was sent here to do.”

“Which is?” she asked, her voice brittle.

“Find out who killed Shirley, and Mowry, and why,” McGarvey answered. “If you want out, I can arrange it.”

She looked at him, a wistful set to her mouth, but then she turned away. “I’ll stay.

Besides, there’s no place I could go where they wouldn’t find me eventually now that they know my face.”

The telephone on the bedstand rang, and McGarvey answered it. “Yes?”

“I have your party,” the operator said, and the connection was made.

“Otto, have you made any progress yet?” McGarvey asked. It was 9:00 in the morning, Washington time.

“I tried to find you. But no one knows were you are, or they’re not admitting it,”

Rencke said. “This is getting really weird.”

McGarvey’s gut tightened. “Who’d you call?” he asked, keeping his voice normal.

“Not actually call, except for your ex. But you’re on the computer across the river.”

“Listen to me now. I don’t want you trying to make any personal contacts. I want you to wait for me to call you. No matter how important it is. Do you understand?”

“Oh, sure, but listen up, compadre, the people over there are definitely looking for you. And worse than that they’re beginning to suspect a mouse in the pantry.”

“Meaning you?”

“Bingo. But I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve if you want me to go for broke.”

“Have you found anything so far?”

“Only in the negative sense. It’s definitely not the government. Nor is there any…

material missing from their power plants, if you catch my drift. So whoever is going for the bacon isn’t picking it up at home.”

“I need the help, but it’s up to you,” McGarvey said carefully. “You know what’s happened already. Including the latest?”

“It may take a little while, but I’ll stick with it. I hate getting pushed around, you know. And besides, I’m out of Twinkies again.”

“I’ll buy you a carload.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

McGarvey got the stateside operator back, and had her place a call to Kathleen’s number. But there was no answer, and hanging up he tried to put her out of his mind.

Rencke had called her. She’d told him nothing, because she knew nothing. And that was the end of it. He hoped.

Chapter 32

Roland Murphy got up and came around from behind his desk as Kathleen McGarvey entered his big office with Phil Carrara. Another, prim-looking man, who’d been seated on a leather couch across the room, languidly got to his feet at the same time. He was scowling.

“Kathleen, what an unexpected pleasure,” the DCI said.

“It’s good of you to see me on such short notice, General,” she said. They shook hands.

“Have you met our General Counsel, Howard Ryan?”

“No,” Kathleen said, exchanging glances with the man. “I won’t take up much of your time this morning. I simply need a little of your help, and I’ll be off.”

The DCI motioned for her to take a seat, and when she was settled he went back to his own chair behind his desk. Carrara remained standing by the door, and Ryan perched on the arm of the couch. For a moment it felt to Kathleen as if she were in for an inquisition. But then her reception was nothing less than she’d expected.

“I’m assuming that your visit to us this morning has something to do with your ex-husband,”

Murphy said.

“Mrs. McGarvey is of the opinion that Kirk is working for us,” Carrara said.

“What makes you think so?” Murphy asked. “Did Kirk tell you that himself? Did he tell you that he’d taken on an assignment for us?”

“He didn’t have to. I know him well enough to know when he is off in the bush.”

“Apparently you don’t know him well enough to keep him,” Ryan said.

Kathleen shot him a dirty look, and she started to say something, but changed her mind. She’d heard about him. They called him the “toy spy.”

“Let’s assume for the moment that he is on assignment for us,” the DCI said. “You understand that we could not confirm or deny it, let alone tell you where he was.

You do know that.”

Kathleen nodded. She’d gotten at least part of what she’d come for, and it didn’t make her happy. “I want you to get a message to him.”

“That might not be possible, Kathleen.”

“Tell him to come home. Immediately. His family needs him.”

“Just what’s that supposed to mean…“ Ryan said, but Murphy cut him off.

“Even if he was working for us, would you expect me to pass such a message to him?”

Murphy asked.

“Yes,” Kathleen said. “And in exactly those words. Shall I repeat them?”

Murphy stared at her for a long second, but then shook his head. “It’s not necessary.”

“Well?” she asked.

“I’ll do what I can. But let me ask you something. Do you believe that you are in some danger?”

Kathleen was startled. It was exactly what she believed because of the warning she’d received, but hearing it here was disquieting. “Am I in some danger, General?” she asked, keeping her true feelings out of her voice.

“No,” Murphy said. “No more than any of us are who live in Washington.”

“Somehow that’s no comfort,” Kathleen said rising. “See that Kirk gets that message.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Murphy said.

“That was some cryptic message,” Murphy said when Carrara returned from escorting Kathleen downstairs. “Any thoughts on it, Phil?”

“Well, besides his ex-wife, he’s got a daughter attending school in Switzerland, and a sister, her husband and a couple of kids out west somewhere. Utah, I think.

Mother and father are dead. And so far as I know there’s no one else.”

“What’d she say to you on the way downstairs?” Ryan asked.

“Nothing. Not a word.”

“What about this daughter in Switzerland?” Murphy asked. “Could there be any connection between her and Lausanne? Do you think Spranger’s people might go after her?”

Carrara shook his head. “There’s no reason for them to believe at this moment that McGarvey is investigating them. And of course after what’s happened in Tokyo, he might have his hands full over there for the foreseeable future.”

“Any word from him yet?”

“Nothing,” Carrara said. “But what about his ex-wife’s request? We’re not going to send that sort of a message to him, are we?”

“Of course not,” the DCI replied. “But what was the hidden message?”

“Maybe there wasn’t one. From what I understand McGarvey was on his way here in any event to try to get back together with her.”

Ryan sniggered.

“You believe she wants him back?”

“It may be nothing more than that.”

“Why did she come out here then?” Murphy asked.

“She’s a bright woman, General. We showed up at her house looking for Kirk, and he suddenly disappears. We either arrested him, or sent him off on assignment. She’s seen the precedents.”

“Have her followed,” Ryan suggested.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Carrara said. “As I say, she’s an intelligent woman. If she were to get wind that we were watching her, she could raise a stink.

She knows half of Washington.”

“For the moment I’m going to go along with Phil,” Murphy said. “But I think I’ll have the Bureau put a tap on her telephone. Just for the next few days or so. If she makes any kind of a move, we’ll step in.”

“We shouldn’t have any problems with that,” Ryan said. “I can make a decent case of the request, considering what McGarvey is doing. Might take twenty-four hours though.”

“See to it, Howard. But I want to come back to my original question. Her message was cryptic. Does she know something? Did Kirk tell her some of his little secrets?

Or is it possible after all that someone has gotten to her?”

“Do you mean the East Germans?” Carrara asked.

“Or the Japanese.”

“It’s possible.”

“A soft kidnapping,” Murphy said. “Get a message to your husband, Mrs. McGarvey.

Tell him to back off or we’ll come after you.”

“As I say, General, it’s possible,” Carrara answered.

“I’m not asking that, Phil. Anything is possible. What I am asking you, is it probable?”

Carrara shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“She would have screamed bloody murder.”

Murphy looked away. “Maybe she did, and we didn’t listen.”

Chapter 33

Elizabeth McGarvey emerged from the Bern Design Polytechnic’s Residence Hall Picasso a few minutes after five in the afternoon and unlocked her twelve-speed mountain bike from its rack. The lake air was pleasantly cool and fresh on her bare arms.

At nineteen, Elizabeth was a slender, long-legged young woman with what a former boyfriend had called an “interesting” face of pleasant angles, high cheekbones, a delicately formed nose, a full, almost pouty lower lip and large, brilliantly green eyes that looked at the world with keen intelligence and a hint of amusement. She had her mother’s beauty, and her father’s spirit. A devastating combination of which she was inwardly proud.

In high school in the States she had done poorly, partly because she was bored, and partly because she’d come from a broken home. When her father had showed up last year, and her mother had not rejected him out of hand, she had blossomed. Life had become important. There was so much to be learned in the world; so much to be grasped, so much to see and do and be, that at times she could barely control her enthusiasms.

She was learning design, everything from fine arts to ergonomics, here outside of Bern near Lac de Neuchatel, and loving every second of it.

“Going into town again?” someone asked behind her.

She turned around as Armand Armonde, one of her fine arts instructors, came up. He’d had a thing for her since January when she’d started in his oil and acrylics class.

“Get your bicycle and join me,” she said. “It’s barely five klicks.”

“I’d prefer to drive, ma cherie. May I give you a lift?”

“I need the exercise. But you can buy me a cognac at the Hansa Haus.”

Armonde was a devastatingly good-looking Parisian, who at thirty still hadn’t lost his boyish charm. “And then what?” he asked, pleasantly.

Elizabeth grinned. “I go to the boutique to buy a pair of nylons, then get back on my bicycle and return here. I have a ton of homework, remember?”

“Better yet, we could have dinner together, and afterward return to my studio where I would help you with your work.”

“My daddy taught me never to mix pleasure with business, especially if your business is important to you. My studies are.”

“A wise man?”

“The wisest,” she said. All her life she’d made up quotes which she attributed to her father whenever she figured the situation warranted it. After so many years she’d come to believe them.

“But then you cannot continue your studies, as you have been, twelve months of the year. Sooner or later you will take a holiday and I will be there.”

“I might take you up on it,” Elizabeth said. “In the meantime, a simple cognac?”

Armonde nodded. “Of course.”

“See you in town then,” she said, mounting her bike, and she took off down the hill, her long hair streaming behind her in the wind.

Past the tall iron gates guarding the school property, the narrow driveway ran down to a macadam country lane into the small town of Estavayer-le-lac. Now, in the summer, the town was busy with tourists, but in the winter the entire countryside became almost monastic. The changes in season and population suited Elizabeth. In the past few years she’d lived with her mother’s constant striving for recognition, which in Washington meant a steady stream of cocktail parties and dinners, with hardly a normal evening. If her mother was home, the house was filled with guests. If the house was quiet, her mother was gone.

Elizabeth craved normalcy, craved routine. And, she supposed, she craved acceptance.

Most of all by her father.

The route into town was mostly downhill, though the grade wasn’t very steep so that the ride back wasn’t difficult. She often made the short trip in the afternoons after classes, and sometimes on weekends if the weather was nice, to see the town and the lake, but mostly for the solitude. This time alone gave her a chance to think about herself, about her future, and about her mother and father. Even if they did get together again, she was starting to believe that it would never stick.

Her mother had been reasonably open and honest about the relationship she’d had with her husband; her fears and her complaints, and his frequent absences, and apparent indifference. And although he said he was coming back from Europe, and her mother said that she would forgo the social scene, Elizabeth didn’t think that either of them could change their lives so radically.

Which left her a little sad, though she was determined that if her childhood relationship with her father was lost forever, she would make every effort to make sure she had an adult relationship with him.

So far as she could figure, her mother had been, and continued to be, too weak a person to be married to such a man as Kirk McGarvey. Elizabeth decided that she would be different. She did not want a stranger for a father.

Closer into town traffic increased and Elizabeth rode all the way to the right, nearly off the road, so that cars and trucks would have an easier time getting past her.

About a mile out, she glanced over her shoulder. A dark Mercedes sedan was hanging back just a few yards behind her, the driver and another man staring intently at her.

She slowed down and waved them on, but after a few seconds when they didn’t pass she looked back again. They had slowed down, and it appeared as if they had no intention of passing her.

“Idiots,” she mumbled, pulling off the paved surface and stopping. She half dismounted and looked back. The Mercedes stopped ten yards behind her.

For a moment she didn’t know what to make of it, but then Armonde’s gray Fiat appeared at the crest of the hill, followed by another car and a delivery van.

The passenger in the Mercedes started to get out when the driver looked in the rearview mirror and apparently said something, because the passenger looked back up the highway.

He immediately got back in the car, and the Mercedes pulled away, spitting gravel from its rear tires as it accelerated.

As it passed Elizabeth, the passenger looked out his window, a grim, almost hateful expression on his broad, pale-complected face. The look had been so intense it made her shudder, and she watched as the car disappeared around a bend in the road.

The plates were French, a big oval F decal on the trunk lid.

Armonde beeped and waved as he passed, and when the car and van behind him had also passed, she got back on her bike and continued into town, the brief incident more puzzling to her than troubling.

Chapter 34

“What was that all about on the road?” Armonde asked when he and Elizabeth were settled at the Hansa Haus.

“With the Mercedes?” she asked. “I don’t know. Some crazy tourists who liked my behind, probably. They were French.” She idly fingered the half-carat diamond necklace her father had given her last year.

Armonde smiled. He had the Gallic reserve and was amused by Elizabeth’s directness.

“And a wonderful derriere it is. But I thought it was someone you knew.”

“No,” Elizabeth said, preoccupied for the moment with her thoughts. Whoever it was in the car had definitely wanted to make contact with her for some reason. But what had been most puzzling about the incident was the expression on the man’s face as the car passed her.

The small gasthaus had filled up with the usual after-work crowd as well as a few tourists, and the room had become smoke-filled and noisy. Suddenly Elizabeth no longer wanted to be there. She wanted peace and solitude. She wanted to return to the school.

She drank her cognac straight back, and waited for a bemused Armonde to finish his.

“Another?” he asked.

“No, but I’d like you to drive me back to the school.”

“Now?”

“Yes,” she said. “We can tie my bike on the roof of your car. If you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not. But what about your nylons?”

She glanced toward the door. She was starting to feel claustrophobic. The last time that had happened to her was when she was little, in Washington, and there’d been a clothes dryer fire in the laundry room. Everyone said she’d probably smelled the smoke, but she’d known differently. She’d

sensed

danger. Like ESP, she’d tried to explain, but no one would listen.

“I don’t need them,” she said, getting up.

“Is something wrong, Elizabeth?” Armonde asked, rising. „

“No. I just want to go. Now.”

“As you wish,” he said. He laid some money for their drinks on the table and, outside, helped Elizabeth heft her bike up on top of the small car. He got some twine from the trunk and tied the bike in place.

“Is it about that car?” Armonde asked as they headed through town, the big lake at their back.

Elizabeth looked at him, not understanding for a moment what he was asking her. She’d been thinking about Washington and her mother, and especially about her father. She knew, in a vague sense, what he did for a living. It involved the CIA. But she’d never been told the whole story. For some reason her lack of knowledge bothered her just now.

“The Mercedes?” Armonde prompted, and Elizabeth shook herself out of her thoughts.

“No,” she said. “The smoke and the noise just got to me, that’s all. It gave me a terrible headache.”

“Standard American,” Armonde said ruefully.

“What?”

“The standard American feminine excuse.”

She smiled and touched his arm. “No, honestly, I do have a terrible headache, but it doesn’t have a thing to do with you.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Really. Even if I didn’t have a headache, I wouldn’t have dinner with you tonight.”

Kathleen McGarvey’s plane from London’s Gatwick touched down at Bern’s small airport just after 6:30 p.m., and she got lucky with the last rental car from the small Hertz office. A helpful clerk showed her on a map how to get down to the Design Polytechnic, which was about twenty-five miles to the southwest. She was on the highway by seven.

Kirk’s great desire had been for them to live in Europe. But from the start it had been an idea she’d resisted, though exactly why she’d never really been able to answer.

Coming here to see her daughter gave her a strange intimation of what their life together could have been like.

Neat. Driving through the outskirts of Bern, and then southwest on the highway, the word kept coming up in her mind. The towns she passed through, and the countryside in between, seemed to be freshly swept. Scrubbed. Groomed. The entire country, or what she was seeing of it, seemed to be a cross between Disneyland and a carefully tended park. Clean. Almost, but not quite, sterile.

For five years Kirk lived in Lausanne, not too far to the south. On the way across the Atlantic this morning aboard the BOAC Concorde SST, she had toyed with the idea of taking Elizabeth with her to visit the city. But it was a foolish notion. That life, the missed opportunities, was dead and gone. There was no use in dredging it up. She wanted only to pick up her daughter, explain the situation to her as best she could and then take her back to Washington to relative safety.

There was little doubt in her mind that the general had ordered someone to watch her. But she had not been interfered with so far. Which either meant she’d been too fast for them, or that their orders were to watch but not touch. In any event she wanted to be back in Washington by tomorrow afternoon where she could be certain they were keeping an eye on her and Elizabeth. As soon as Kirk surfaced again and gave them the all clear, Elizabeth could return to school.

She passed through the small town of Avenches a little before eight, and a few miles farther took the Estavayer-le-lac road. Just past the even smaller village of Payerne, a driveway was marked with a sign for the school and she turned off the paved highway, a little thrill of anticipation fluttering in her stomach. It had been months since she’d last seen Elizabeth, and she wanted to hear all the news.

Elizabeth stood at the window of her dormitory room watching the early evening. There’d been no traffic except for the blue Ford Taurus that had come up the driveway about ten minutes ago. It had been too far away to see who’d been driving, but there were visitors every day.

“Instead of moping around here, why didn’t you have dinner with him?” her roommate, Toni Killmer, asked from the open door to the bathroom. She’d been washing nylons and panties.

“I didn’t want to spend the evening fighting him off,” Elizabeth said, turning around.

Toni’s parents were wealthy New Yorkers. Like Elizabeth she was studying design, but unlike Elizabeth she was here because she’d been kicked out of three other schools, and no one else would have her. She and Elizabeth had become fast friends.

“Why fight? The man is an absolute hunk.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Do you want him?”

“Fuckin’A.”

Elizabeth had to laugh again. “Toni, you are definitely crude.”

“Not crude, sweety, just h-o-r-n-y,” Toni said, and someone knocked on the door.

“Him?” she mouthed the word. “Entrez,” she called.

Kathleen came in, her linen traveling suit lightly crumpled, but her makeup and hair perfect. “I’ve had a terrible time finding you.”

“My God, mother. What are you doing here?”

Kathleen smiled tightly and glanced at Toni, who stood in her bra and panties at the bathroom door. “I’ve popped over to take you to dinner. You haven’t eaten yet, have you, dear?”

“No. But I mean, is something wrong?”

“Of course not. Can’t a mother come visit her daughter at school?”

“Yes, but…“

“Get dressed now, Elizabeth, and we’ll find a place to eat. I think I passed a nice-looking restaurant a few miles back.”

Elizabeth tried to read something from the expression in her mother’s eyes, and from her voice. Something was wrong, she was reasonably sure of that. But to what extent there was trouble, it was almost impossible to tell.

“Mother, I’d like you to meet my roommate, Toni Killmer.”

“Mrs. McGarvey,” Toni said pleasantly.

“Of the New York Killmers?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I know your mother. Lovely lady.” Kathleen turned back to her daughter. “Well, get dressed, dear.”

“May I invite Toni along?” Elizabeth asked.

Kathleen’s expression became apologetic. “No, I’m sorry, dear, but I have something…

well, something private to discuss with you. You understand.”

“Yes, mother,” Elizabeth replied, and she did understand. Something was definitely wrong.

Chapter 35

It took Ernst Spranger a full five minutes to work his way in the near-darkness up through the woods from the road to a position where he could see the Design Polytechnic’s main administration building, and beyond it the Picasso Residence Hall. Nothing moved below, but there were lights in most windows; late classes in some of the buildings, and students settling down to their studies in others.

He keyed the burst walkie-talkie. “I’m in position. Everything looks quiet from here.”

He hit the TRANSMIT button.

A moment later Liese came back. “We’re starting up the driveway.”

Spranger wore a black jumpsuit which made him practically invisible. He would guard the west flank of the school property, while Bruno Lessing, who’d taken up position on the other side of the long driveway, would guard the east flank.

“Are you ready, Bruno?” he radioed.

“All set here.” Lessing’s voice came softly from the walkie-talkie speaker.

“Peter?” Spranger radioed.

“ETA at our rendezvous point in about ten minutes,” a third voice answered.

“Stand by,” Spranger acknowledged, and he raised his binoculars as Otto Scherchen and Liese, driving a four-door blue Peugeot sedan, appeared below, passing the administration building and parking at the side of the Picasso Residence Hall. They were posing as Swiss Federal Police Officers. Scherchen would remain in the car as a backup in case of trouble, while Liese went inside to talk to the girl.

Radvonska’s warning in Rome that McGarvey was something special had been very specific.

“If you can trust the man to do anything, trust him always to do the unexpected,” the KGB resident had warned.

“With him it’s not likely you would get a second chance. For instance: It might even be possible that he’s assigned someone to watch his daughter. Be careful that you do not walk into a trap.””

Herr and Frau Schey, posing as the parents of a prospective student, had come to the school and had a long chat with the dean of admissions. Afterwards they’d been taken on a tour of the campus, including the Picasso Residence Hall.

They had actually been inside Elizabeth McGarvey’s room, and they had tramped all over the campus, even having tea with the faculty afterwards. They had returned with detailed sketches of everything.

“The only sign we saw that anyone was paying special attention to the girl was a young man identified for us as one of the staff. An instructor by the name of Armand Armonde.”

“Do you think it’s possible he’s on staff as a cover for a job as bodyguard to the girl?” Spranger had asked.

The Scheys exchanged glances. “I would say no,” Dieter Schey said. “But anything is possible.”

Liese climbed out of the car, straightened the skirt of her conservatively cut blue suit, and entered the building without looking back.

“She’s inside, everybody stay alert,” Spranger radioed.

“Just over seven minutes to rendezvous,” Durenmatt came back. He was at the wheel of a semi tractor-trailer rig, northbound on the Bern-Lausanne highway. The rendezvous point was a turnaround just north of the intersection with the Estavayer-le-lac road.

The timing was tight, but so far everything was going exactly according to schedule.

Spranger tightened his grip on the binoculars as he studied the side and back of the residence hall, and the area between it and the administration building.

If there was to be any trouble it would happen in the next minute or so. If the girl put up a fight, and Liese had to use force to subdue her, and that action was witnessed by someone who decided to interfere the entire operation could fall apart.

“What do you want me to do in that case?” Liese had asked him.

Spranger shrugged. “She will have seen your face,” he said. “If it comes to that you will have no other choice but to kill her and anyone else who could recognize you.”

Liese grinned, the expression feral. “Mr. Endo would not be happy.”

“Perhaps, but it would probably lure McGarvey out of Japan just the same.”

The dormitory corridor smelled of a combination of liquor, cigarette smoke, and a dozen too-strong colognes and aftershave lotions. Liese hesitated in a stairwell, testing the air and listening to the distant but pervasive hum of conversations, radios and stereos and television sets, of clacking typewriters and hair dryers and electric shavers.

Like Dresden, she had the fleeting thought. But not so much like her college days when she’d transferred to Moscow University.

The sounds and smells were normal here. Nothing bad was happening, and no one expected anything bad to happen.

If it came to a kill, she told herself starting upstairs, it would be easy. No one would interfere.

At the third-floor landing she felt in her shoulder bag for her silenced Bernadelli .32 caliber automatic, checking to make sure that the safety catch was in the on position as she looked through the window into the corridor.

A young man, a towel around his neck, was leaning against an open doorway talking to someone in one of the rooms. At the far end of the corridor two girls dressed in shorts and Tshirts, their legs well-tanned, were engaged in conversation. Just across from them, two women, one of them older, both of them dressed for the street, came out of one of the rooms and started up the corridor.

For an instant Liese disregarded them. But then she realized with a start that one of the women was Elizabeth McGarvey, and she stepped back.

They were obviously going out. Dinner perhaps, or a show in town. They definitely were not dressed for campus.

She checked the window again. They were barely five yards away, Elizabeth talking, saying something to the older woman.

Liese turned and hurried halfway down to the second-floor landing, then turned and calmly started back up, as the third-floor door opened and the two women entered the stairwell.

They started down, moving over so that they could pass, when Liese stopped short.

“Are you Elizabeth McGarvey?” she asked, feigning surprise.

Elizabeth and Kathleen stopped, a wary look on Kathleen’s face.

“Yes, I am,” Elizabeth said.

Liese dug in her shoulder bag and brought out her blue leather identification booklet.

She flipped it open and held it up so that both women could see her picture ID and gold shield. “My name is Liese Egk. Federal Police. I’ve been sent from Bern to fetch you.”

Elizabeth was instantly concerned. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“It’s about your father,” Liese said, watching the older woman. There was something familiar about her. Something from a file folder. From photographs. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”

“Oh, my God,” Kathleen said. “Is Kirk here, in Switzerland?”

Suddenly Liese had it, and she could hardly hold back a broad grin. “I’m sorry, madam, but this is a personal matter.”

“You don’t understand,” Elizabeth said. “She’s my mother. Now what has happened?

God, tell us.”

Armonde was just coming across the driveway from the Fine Arts Building as the Peugeot headed down to the driveway. Elizabeth looked out at him, and he half-raised his hand, startled, as they passed.

“Is it serious?” Kathleen was asking the policewoman and her driver. “Has he been injured?”

Liese glanced back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McGarvey, but I don’t have any further information.

I was simply ordered to pick up your daughter.”

“Then someone must be trying to reach me in Washington.”

“I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”

Elizabeth was having a hard time keeping her thoughts straight. She kept envisioning her father lying on the floor or on the ground somewhere, blood pouring from the back of his head. She had the distinct feeling that she was seeing him moments before his death. Something very dreadful had happened, and she felt so terribly helpless, ineffective, useless.

At the end of the driveway, they turned left toward the Bern-Lausanne highway, and their taciturn driver sped up, the night suddenly and ominously dark.

“What about my car?” Kathleen asked. “It’s a rental from the Bern airport.”

“We’ll have someone pick it up, ma’am,” Liese said.

“My luggage is in the trunk.”

“Yes, ma’am, we’ll take care of that as well.”

Last year when he’d come home briefly, Elizabeth had thought he’d looked tired. Completely worn out, and above all lonely… alone.

“Where exactly is it we’re going?” Kathleen asked. “Police Headquarters in Bern?

A hospital? The American consulate?”

Liese didn’t answer, and Elizabeth looked up out of her thoughts, then looked at her mother who was clearly becoming alarmed.

“May I see your identification again?” Kathleen asked.

Liese reached for something on the seat next to her, and when she turned around she was holding a gun in her hand. She cocked the hammer. “No more questions.”

“You’re kidnapping us,” Kathleen said. “My, God, you’re actually kidnapping us.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Then my father hasn’t been hurt?” Elizabeth asked, relief suddenly washing over her.

“Not yet,” Liese said. “But you’ll be there when it happens.” She laughed.

Elizabeth grinned. “I’ll be there, all right,” she said. “But you’ve got to know that you fucked up this time.”

Liese looked at her, surprised. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said confidently. “My father is going to tear you a new asshole.”

Chapter 36

It was only two-thirty in the afternoon, but Carrara had been going steadily for the past four days and he was seriously considering throwing in the towel and going home for some much-needed rest.

There’d been nothing out of Tokyo since yesterday. McGarvey and Kelley had simply disappeared, and Tokyo Station was completely closed down.

His secretary buzzed him. “Sargent Anders from Technical Services is here. He says it’s urgent.”

“All right, I’ll see him.”

Moments later the Technical Services director came in. He seemed out of breath, and extremely agitated. “We’ve just got a break in this operation, but you’re not going to like it.”

Carrara motioned for him to take a chair. “Are you talking about Tokyo?”

“Yes, and Switzerland.”

Something clutched at Carrara’s gut. “You’ve made a bridge?”

“The Golden Gate,” Anders said, his eyes shining. “Have we had any word from McGarvey or Kelley Fuller?”

“Nothing yet. But what have you got?”

“Remember the encrypted burst-transmission walkie-talkie the French found at Orly?

The one Boorsch had used?”

Carrara nodded. “Have we got an ID on the manufacturer?”

“Depending on your point of view something even better. A duplicate was found by the Tokyo Police in a red Mercedes parked near the Imperial Palace Outer Gardens.”

“The red Mercedes from the attack on Mowry?”

Anders nodded. “And a third duplicate, charred but recognizable, was found in the burned-out remains of the bogus Tokyo Police van in front of the safehouse.”

The implications were overwhelming. Carrara sat back wearily in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment. If the Japanese were supplying Spranger’s group of ex-STASI thugs with advanced communications equipment, and if K-l were after nuclear weapons technology, what was there to look forward to?

“A DNA trace from what we found in the truck used in Shirley’s assassination matched with one of the bodies in the Outer Gardens. Same people killed Shirley and Mowry and my two people over there.”

“And presumably it was the same people who shot down the Airbus… or ordered it destroyed.”

“Yes, sir,” Anders said. “It looks like the Japanese are in this up to their ears.”

“It’s not the government.”

Anders shrugged. “That’s not for me to say. But whoever it is-a political or military faction, a corporation or an individual-they’ve got big bucks. This sort of thing doesn’t come cheap.”

“Nor does capitalizing on the technology Spranger and his people are stealing for them.”

“I’m not sure it’s that complicated,” the Technical Services director said. He took off his glasses and polished the lenses with his handkerchief.

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t know yet if that’s what K-l was after in Switzerland.”

“The triggers…“ Carrara objected, but Anders held him off.

“Excuse me, sir, but the impression I get is that they weren’t necessarily after the technology so much as they were trying to buy the specific item. They wanted the actual working triggers. The devices themselves.”

“Same thing.”

“I don’t think so. If they were after the technology as such, then I would tend to believe that the Japanese, or someone in Japan, wanted to learn how to build nuclear weapons.”

“The Japanese are developing a credible rocket program. They’d have the delivery system.”

“Nasty thought, isn’t it?” Anders said. “But if someone over there was simply interested in purchasing the triggers and an initiator and seventy or eighty pounds of plutonium, then I’d say their aim was to build an actual weapon.”

Carrara sat back. “Terrorists.”

“They didn’t hesitate to shoot down that Airbus loaded with innocent people,” Anders said.

“No. The question is, how far along are they? How close have they come to gathering everything they need to make such a device?”

“And once they’ve got the bomb, what’s the target?”

“The answers are in Tokyo,” Carrara said, picking up his telephone. “I don’t care what it takes, Sargent, but we must find McGarvey. Immediately.”

“I’ve got an idea on that score as well,” Anders said.

“Just a minute,” Carrara said to his secretary on the phone, and he put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Go on.”

“We think someone is hacking in our computers. And considering the nature of the files the intruder has been trying to pry open, we think the hacker may be working for McGarvey.” Ander smiled ruefully. “The son of a bitch has got friends everywhere.”

Carrara nodded. “You think we can get a message to McGarvey via this intruder?”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Do it,” Carrara said, and he removed his hand from the telephone mouthpiece. “Tell the general I want to see him immediately.” He smiled grimly. “No, tell him.”

To the east the sky seemed to be getting brighter with the false dawn as McGarvey sat smoking a cigarette by the window. Behind him, Kelley Fuller rolled over on her tatami mat and sighed. They’d both spent another restless night.

It was the confinement, he thought. But just now Tokyo was a dangerous city for them.

Until Rencke could supply him with a name they could only stumble around in the dark.

Sooner or later they would end up like Shirley and Mowry. There’d be no defense against such an attack.

“What is it?” Kelley asked softly from the darkness.

“I’m waiting for my call to go through.”

“To your friend?”

“Yes. Can’t you sleep?” McGarvey turned from the window. Kelley was sitting up. She wore one of his shirts as a nightgown. It was very big on her, and made her look even smaller and more vulnerable than she was.

“How long must we wait?” she asked.

“Until we get some answers…“

“Which could be never!”

“There are a lot of powerful people working on this,” McGarvey said patiently. They’d gone over this several times already. “Sooner or later at least some of the answers will be forced. It’s inevitable.”

“In the meantime we hide and do absolutely nothing. I’m going crazy.”

“If you want to go home I’ll arrange it for you,” McGarvey said. When the time came he would need her as a guide through Tokyo’s labyrinths. But if she folded she would be less than useless.

“You didn’t see him on fire in front of the Roppongi Prince,” she said softly. “You didn’t hear his screams, his pleas for someone to help him.” She hesitated. “You didn’t… smell the odor of burning flesh.”

The telephone rang, and McGarvey stubbed out his cigarette and picked it up. “Yes?”

“I have your party on the line, sir,” the operator said.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s me, anything new?”

“Let me tell you, I’m either going to have to get out soon or 111 be forced into setting Ralph loose on them.”

“Are they on to you?”

“Looks that way. Are you keeping your socks dry?”

“Trying to,” McGarvey said. “Have you anything for me? A name?”

“No names yet, but apparently you’re in the right place. Seems like the local cops found a pair of highly unusual and very sophisticated communications devices that match the one the cops at Orly came up with.”

“Are the Japanese authorities cooperating with us now?”

“I’m not clear on that point, but hang on to your suspenders. Looks like Phil or somebody over there has put out a call for you. They want, in a most urgent manner, for you to make immediate contact.”

“Put out the call how?”

“Well, that’s just it, you see. They know that someone is dallying in their valley, and the smart buggers figure it’s your doing. Get a message to the intruder and ergo, the message is got to you.”

A Tokyo police van passed on the street below and disappeared around the corner at the end of the block.

“They’re making the connection across the river,” Rencke was saying. “And it’s got them shakin’ in their boots.”

“But it’s not the government over here?”

“I’m getting no indications. But whoever it is has got to be a well-heeled dude.

And just now there’s oodles if not googols of them.”

Another police van pulled up at the end of the block. “Hold on a second,” he told Rencke, and he motioned for Kelley to get up. “Get dressed, we’re leaving,” he whispered urgently, and he turned back to the phone.

“Mac?” Rencke asked. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” McGarvey said. “But listen, you may be going about this from the wrong direction.

Granted it may have to be a wealthy Japanese, but it’s more than that. We’re looking for a wealthy man or group, who would have a motive to assemble the parts for such a device.”

Rencke sucked his breath. “Revenge,” he said.

“I’ll call you soon,” McGarvey said, and he hung up.

The first police van returned and stopped at the opposite end of the street. Two police cars passed it and slowly approached the hotel.

“It’s the police,” McGarvey said to Kelley, who was hurriedly dressing in slacks and a sweatshirt.

“They’re looking for us,” she said.

McGarvey slipped on his shoes and threw his things into his overnight bag. Under no circumstances did he want to get into a gun battle with the legitimate police.

But there was no way of telling for certain who was legitimate and who wasn’t until after the fact.

A minute later he and Kelley stepped out into the narrow corridor. Their room was on the fourth floor, and already they could hear some sort of a commotion going on in the lobby.

“We’ll go out the back, so long as they haven’t blocked the alley,” McGarvey said as he led the way to the fire escape he’d discovered a half hour after they’d checked in.

Nothing moved below in the dark, crowded alley. During the day the narrow, winding pathway was crammed with tiny shops, stalls and vendors selling everything from American video tapes to bolts of silk, electronic games, potency potions and powders, live eels and traditional kimonos. At this hour, the permanent shops were tightly shuttered, and the vendors had taken their stalls away.

They reached the alley, and hurried off into the darker shadows as four uniformed police officers showed up from the opposite way and rushed to the back of the hotel.

Well clear of the hotel, they ducked into a subway station and took the escalator down. The first trickle of workers on the way to their jobs was beginning. Within an hour the city’s entire mass transit system would be mobbed.

“Did your friend come up with something yet?” Kelley asked on the way down.

“He’s close. We’re going to need to stay hidden for a little while longer, though.

Is there someplace?”

Kelley looked up at him, the expression in her eyes hard to read. She was frightened, that was reasonably clear, but she was also determined. He had no idea what motivated her.

“The trouble is that you’re a foreigner. You stick out.”

“There must be tens of thousands of Westerners in Tokyo at any given moment.”

“The police are very efficient.”

“Then we’ll have to get out of the city for a day or so.”

Kelley was shaking her head. “It’s not necessary,” she said. “We will go into Shinjuku’s Kabukicho.”

“What is that?”

“A district of the city where anything might happen, for a price.”

“Is there a place there we can hide?”

“Yes,” Kelley replied, smiling faintly. “Several places where no questions will be asked of anyone, providing the money lasts.” She smiled again. “They are called ‘love hotels.’ You will see.”

Chapter 37

Elizabeth McGarvey held her mother’s hands in hers. There was some traffic on the road, and she knew that there would be even more on the main highway tonight. If she could only signal a passing car or truck, indicate that they were in serious trouble, there might be a chance that the real police would be notified in time.

From what she’d seen during her one year here, the Swiss were an extremely efficient people.

But the woman continued to hold the pistol on them, and Elizabeth had little doubt she would use it if need be. There was something dead and cold in her eyes and in the set of her mouth. She was certainly beautiful, in a European way, but she seemed distant, and totally devoid of normal human feeling.

Armand had been clearly surprised to see her leaving the campus after what she’d told him earlier. Providing he didn’t go back to his studio to sulk, he might be talking to Toni this very moment. He’d learn about Elizabeth’s mother showing up, and about some kind of trouble at home, which would seem logical to him until he found the rental car where her mother had parked. He was intelligent. He would put two and two together, realize that Elizabeth was in trouble, and would call for the police.

But why should he? There was absolutely no reason for him to sound the alarm. He’d worry about turning out the fool, as would anyone in the same situation.

The driver had glanced in the rearview mirror several times in the last minute or so. He did it again.

“Somebody is following us,” he said in German.

German and French were Elizabeth’s two languages. Her mother said she inherited the ability from her father. But this didn’t sound Swiss-German. It sounded to Elizabeth more guttural, more like Plattedeutsch from the Rheinland.

“There is traffic behind us,” Liese replied.

“Yes, but this one has passed at least two cars to get behind us, and now he is maintaining his position.”

“The little one directly behind us?”

“Yes.”

Elizabeth started to turn around, but Liese sharply nudged her cheek with the gun barrel. “Eyes straight ahead!”

“Stay away from me, bitch.”

“If need be I will kill you here and now,” Liese said.

“I don’t think so. Not if you want to lure my father here.”

Liese was unimpressed. “You’re correct. Perhaps I will merely break all your fingers.

Or maybe bruise your cute little tits. Or you might still be a virgin. That can be fixed.”

Elizabeth was shaking with fear and rage. She started to shout something, but her mother held her back.

“Let’s just do as they say, Liz. Your father will handle it when the time comes.”

Elizabeth turned to look at her mother in surprise.

“That’s right dear, it won’t be long now.”

With her free hand Liese picked up a complicated-looking walkie-talkie and pressed a button. “Ernst, looks as if we’ve got a tail,” she said, and she pushed another button.

“Right. It’s a gray Fiat, from the school, I think. He passed me, but I’m coming up on him now.”

It was Armand’s Fiat, Elizabeth thought. It had to be! But what did he expect to accomplish by following them? He was a beautiful fool.

“What do you want to do about it?” Liese radioed.

“Stand by,” the voice came from the speaker. “Peter, are you copying?”

“Right. I’m about two minutes from the rendezvous. Shall I abort?”

“Negative. Proceed as planned. Liese, have you got your situation under control?”

“Yes.”

“Then proceed to the rendezvous. Bruno and I will take care of our uninvited guest.”

“What?” Elizabeth asked incredulously. “He’s got nothing to do with this. He doesn’t even know about my father.”

“You know who is back there?” Liese asked. “Is it Armonde?”

Elizabeth was shocked. How had they known? Who were these people? “I don’t know.”

“Your father hired him to watch over you, did you know that? Is he your lover? I’m told that he’s quite good looking. Tell me, how is he in bed?”

Elizabeth closed her eyes tightly, and for the first time in a very long while, she was drawing some comfort from her mother’s touch. This wasn’t happening. It was a nightmare. Yet it was real.

They merged with northbound traffic on the Bern-Lausanne Highway. A big semi truck marked Pirokki Shipping, Ltd., was directly in front of them. Almost immediately the driver signaled he was turning right, and the truck began to brake.

Liese keyed the walkie-talkie. “We’re directly behind you, Peter.”

“I see you.”

“Ernst?”

“We’re approaching the intersection. Don’t wait for us. Just do it.”

“We’re turning off now,” Liese radioed and she put down the walkie-talkie.

The big truck turned onto a gravel driveway that looped through the woods for a hundred yards before leading back up to the highway. It was used as a rest stop as well as a turnaround. One other semi was parked off to the side, but the cab was dark, the driver either asleep in the back, or gone.

The Pirokki Shipping truck pulled up and shut off its headlights, leaving only its parking lights illuminated.

“We’re getting out of the car here,” Liese said as they pulled up behind the Pirokki truck. The driver shut off the Peugeot’s lights and engine, and got out of the car.

He opened the rear door on Kathleen’s side.

“Out, schnell,” he said, his voice low and rasping.

Kathleen and Elizabeth climbed out of the car, and Liese, the pistol still in hand and the bulky walkie-talkie slung over her shoulder by its strap, hurried around the back to them.

“Let’s go,” she said motioning toward the truck.

Their driver opened a side door in the truck, pushed some boxes aside, and then waved them on.

Kathleen was the first, and he started to help her up, when she balked and tried to pull back. “It’s dark.”

He grabbed her arm and half-pulled half-shoved her up through the opening into the pitch-black interior.

Armonde’s little Fiat came up the driveway, its headlights illuminating the scene, and slid to a halt. A second later a dark Mercedes pulled in behind it, and two men jumped out before Armonde could do a thing.

The Fiat’s door started to come open as one of the men reached the car, and he raised his right hand.

“Armand,” Elizabeth cried at the same moment three silenced shots were fired into the Fiat.

Scherchen grabbed Elizabeth’s arm and shoved her up inside the truck and slammed the door, locking it behind her.

Chapter 38

Clouds had rolled in and it had begun to drizzle when the blue and white Swiss Regional Police car pulled off the highway just north of the road to Estavayer-le-lac. Rain glistened on the leaves, and puddled on the gravel driveway into the truck turnaround.

As part of their routine patrol they usually checked this place once or twice on a shift. This was their first sweep for the evening.

“Looks like headlights,” Adler Boll said as they came slowly around the curve. “There,”

he said.

His partner, Thoma Grillparzer, rolled down the window on the passenger side, switched on the spotlight, and shined it toward the gray Fiat sedan. Immediately they could see that something was wrong, and Boll stopped five yards away.

The driver’s window was shattered, and what looked like a great deal of blood had splashed up against the inside of the windscreen and the passenger side window.

Boll snatched the communications radio handset, and keyed the push-to-talk switch.

“Central Control, this is unit one-seven-green.”

“One-seven-green, roger.”

“We have a possible homicide scene, request immediate backup.”

“Rolling. Say location.”

Grillparzer got out of the car and drew his service revolver.

“Hold on and I’ll cover you,” Boll said, and he quickly radioed their location and the exact situation as they knew it at that moment. The only other vehicle in the rest area was a sixteen-wheel truck parked and dark fifty yards away.

Boll got out of the patrol car, and drew his revolver. He remained in a protected position behind the car as his partner approached the Fiat still brightly illuminated by the spotlight.

“One man down in the front seat,” Grillparzer shouted back. “There’s a lot of blood.

Looks like one or more head wounds. Deep.”

“Any movement?” Boll yelled.

“No,” Grillparzer said. “Wait, wait! Mother of God, I think he’s still alive.”

Boll rushed across to the Fiat as his partner holstered his weapon and hurried around to the passenger side where he yanked open the door.

“Fingerprints…”

Boll said, but the word died on his lips. The victim had been shot at least twice: Once in the forehead and once in the side of the head just above his left ear. He was slumped across the gearshift lever, his head and upper body resting on the passenger seat. His eyes were fluttering and he was trying to speak, but his voice was very weak.

Grillparzer looked up.

“Backup units are on the way,” Boll said. “They’ll be sending an ambulance.”

Grillparzer took off his cap and leaned inside the small car. “We’re police. An ambulance is coming. Can you hear me? Who did this to you?”

Boll suddenly recognized the man. He’d seen him often in Estavayer-le-lac. He was an instructor at the Design School. Armand something.

“A truck?” Grillparzer asked. “A white truck?”

Boll’s eyes immediately went to the truck parked farther up the driveway. It was gray, not white.

“Elizabeth who?” Grillparzer asked. He looked up again. “There’s been a kidnapping.

Elizabeth someone. Whoever did it, shot him.”

It was well after eleven by the time the crime scene was secured and Bern Chief Investigator Yvonne Coquillat came over to speak with Boll and Grillparzer. They were tall, atheletically built men, while she was short and slight. But she had a tough reputation. Both officers were respectful.

“We’re nearly finished here,” she said. “As soon as the evidence van leaves, you can return to your duties.”

“Will you need our reports tonight?” Boll asked.

“In the morning will be soon enough,” the chief investigator said. “Unless there’s anything you might have remembered in the past hour?”

Grillparzer shook his head. “Anything on the white truck yet?”

“We’ve put out an APB, but so far as I’ve heard there’s been no sign of it so far.”

“What about Armonde?” Boll asked. He’d remembered the instructor’s last name.

The chief investigator shook her head. “He died enroute to the hospital. The medics said his wounds were too massive. Sorry.”

“Yes, madam,” Boll said.

“Well, you can leave in a few minutes,” the chief investigator said, and she started to turn away, but suddenly stopped dead. She turned back, her eyes narrowed. “What did you say?” she asked.

Boll was confused. He shook his head. “I’m sorry?”

“About the gunshot victim. You used his name.”

“Yes.”

“You know him?”

“Yes,” Boll said, realizing he was in trouble. The evidence team had identified the dead man from his papers. He hadn’t thought to tell anyone that he slightly knew the victim. “I believe he was an instructor at the design poly.”

“Here?” she asked. “Just down the road?”

“Yes.”

“Why in heaven’s name didn’t you say something?” the chief investigator demanded.

“I didn’t think it was important that I personally knew him…“

“Where is your brain? He got himself killed by stumbling into the middle of an apparent kidnapping.” She shook her head in exasperation. “I’m going down to the school. Get in your unit and follow me.”

“Madam?” Boll asked.

“The man mentioned a woman’s name. Elizabeth. Now that we know he was an instructor at the school, we might reasonably suppose that Elizabeth is a fellow instructor, or perhaps a student. In any case, we have a lead!”

It was three o’clock in the morning when the bedside telephone of Swiss Federal Police Supervisor Johann Meuller rang, dragging him out of a deep sleep.

His wife stirred beside him as he picked it up. “Yes?” he mumbled.

“Terribly sorry to bother you at such an hour, sir, but something has come in that I thought you would like to know about immediately.”

It was Brent Wylie, Mueller’s number two, a no-nonsense cop who had worked his way into the Federal Police by dint of brilliant and tireless effort. He’d never been given to making statements lightly.

Meuller switched on his table lamp and sat up, his sleepiness leaving him instantly.

“Yes, what it is?”

“It’s about Kirk McGaryey.”

“Is he back?” Mueller asked angrily. Marta Fredricks had been like a daughter to him. He’d never forgiven McGarvey for making her fall in love, and his enmity had grown when she’d been killed in the crash of flight 145.

“Not yet, but he’ll probably be coming.”

“Don’t be cryptic, Brent. What are you talking about?”

“Sorry, sir. You know that McGarvey’s daughter, Elizabeth, currently attends the Bern Design Poly in Estavayer-le-lac?”

“Yes.”

“Apparently she was kidnapped last night,” Wylie said.

“Gott in himmel” Mueller muttered. “By whom, someone trying to get to her father?”

“It’s unknown at this point. But it’s worse than that.”

“It can’t be.”

“Evidently the girl’s mother was visiting the school, and she was taken along with her daughter.”

“McGarvey’s ex-wife?”

“Yes, sir.”

Meuller threw the covers aside and felt for his slippers as he talked. “I’ll be there within the hour. Put a call through to Washington for four-thirty our time. I want to speak with the general.”

“It’ll be ten-thirty at night over there.”

“I don’t care. Next, call the French and find out if they have unearthed any leads on the flight one-four-five case, especially anything that might lead back to McGarvey.

Ask the same of Interpol. Oh, and see if you can find out where McGarvey is at this moment. Then gather the latest reports on this… incident, and have them on my desk.”

“Yes, sir,” Wylie said.

Mueller hung up, and shuffling into the bathroom he was struck with the notion that he’d known something like this would happen ever since he’d learned that Elizabeth McGarvey had enrolled in a Swiss school. Death and destruction followed the girl’s father wherever he went.

Chapter 39

“When I was a child in Honolulu my grandfather told me stories about the western desert,” Kelley Fuller said.

McGarvey was seated in a tub of extremely hot, scented water to his neck. He turned at the sound of her voice as she closed the rice paper door. He could hear traditional Japanese music playing elsewhere in the building.

“He said that he was sent there simply because he was of Japanese descent.” She pinned her hair up, exposing her tiny ears and long, delicate neck. “He hated America until he died.”

“I thought you were sleeping,” McGarvey said. It was nearing noon, but in this place time seemed to have no meaning.

It was called the Sunny Days Western Ranch, and was housed in a nondescript but expansive two-story building off a crowded back street in the Shinjuku’s Kabukicho District.

On the first floor were the public baths, hostess rooms and kitchens, while the second floor was reserved for suites. They had rented a bedroom, sitting room and small bath.

The tariff was fabulously expensive, but the place was absolutely safe. No questions were asked or answered here. McGarvey had drawn an American Express card under a workname from his Channel Island account before he’d left Paris. A few eyebrows might be raised in Jersey when the bills started coming in, but they would be paid without hesitation and in secrecy.

“It was not possible to sleep. So I have come to wash your back, McGarvey-san,” Kelley said. She wore a snow-white kimono which she opened and dropped to the floor. She was nude, her legs long and delicately formed, her belly nearly flat, her hips almost boyish, and her breasts small, the nipples large and very dark. She looked exotic.

“This isn’t necessary.”

“You will save my life, I believe. I wish to thank you now, while there is still time.” She sat on a small stool and using a big natural sponge and a wooden bucket of warm soapy water, washed herself.

McGarvey watched her. “We may not find anything,” he said. “In the end you may have to return home.”

She glanced at him, her eyes round, almost as if she were a startled deer. “But your friend told you something this morning that troubled you.” She shook her head. “You will not leave Tokyo until you have struck back.”

“I need a name and a face before I can do anything.”

“You will find what you are seeking,” she said serenely. She rinsed herself with a bucket of clear water and a ladle, then joined McGarvey in the tub, kneeling on the bench behind him so that she could scrub his back with a rough towel.

“Perhaps not.”

“It’s terrible to live in fear. I have, all of my life, you know. Now, there is nothing to go back for.”

“What about your parents?”

“My parents also hated America, and they taught this to me so that when I finished school I decided to work for the Central Intelligence Agency so that I could learn secrets which I could give to their enemies.”

“Did you become a traitor?”

“No. In the end it was impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because I saw that my grandfather and my parents were wrong.”

McGarvey turned to her. She was crying silently, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Slowly, carefully, as if she were a fragile, easily breakable objet d’art, he gathered her into his arms, and they began to make love.

“I understand,” he said. And he did, because he’d also been afraid.

It was after midnight in Washington and McGarvey could hear the strain in Rencke’s voice on the telephone. The man had probably worked around the clock since he’d been handed the problem.

“I may be on to something,” Rencke said.

“Have you got a name for me yet?” McGarvey asked. He was calling from a private cubicle just off the manager’s office on the first floor. He’d been assured that the phone was completely untraceable.

“I did what you suggested, looked for a motive. What we’re talking about here, I figure, is a case of hate and contempt. I mean really massive. Combine that with the money to do something about it … we agree that this dude is well-heeled…

well, there’d have to be some public notice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody would catch it for what it really was, I don’t think. But look, if you’re worth let’s say a billion dollars, and you spend your life trying to screw Americans, something will come up.”

McGarvey was beginning to see what Rencke was getting at, and it did make sense.

“State might have something.”

“Them and the Company’s Intelligence Directorate’s archives, and of course the Defense Intelligence Agency’s files.”

“You’ve been in their computers?”

“Of course. But the real paydirt came when I checked out the New York Times’

files, with cross references in three newsmagazines and two television networks.

I came up with a nifty little search program that sought out anti-Americanisms based on a weighted scale… one to a hundred. For instance: Making a flat-out public statement that a man hated America and would do everything within his power to bring it down, would be worth anywhere from seventy-five to a hundred points, depending on whether or not the man had control of enough money to buy and put to use one of the devices K-l is going after. Do you follow my drift so far?”

“Go on,” McGarvey said.

“I came up with beaucoup names. Seems as if there’s a lot of dudes in the empire who’ve got varying degrees of hardons for us. So I had another brainstorm. Wait’ll you hear this one. Just for the hell of it I added two other parameters to my search program. Number one: I figured that in order to pull this sort of a thing off our bad guy would have to be worth at least a hundred large. I mean a hundred million U.S. Agreed?”

Terrorism was fabulously expensive if it was to be successful. Many small countries couldn’t afford it. A hundred million wasn’t out of line. “Agreed.”

“Hang on to your socks. Now come motives, and I came up with a few dillies. For instance: How about former prisoners of war? How about Japs whose businesses had failed because of U.S. policies?” Rencke giggled. “Or the grand-dilly of them all. How about dudes who lost families or loved ones in Hiroshima or Nagasaki?”

McGarvey was speechless for a moment or two. Christ, it fit. A man whose family had been destroyed by an American atomic bomb, and who’d later made his fortune, could be thinking of revenge. But there’d have to be more.

“Have you come up with a name yet?”

“No,” Rencke admitted. “But I’ve come up with a half-dozen candidates whose birthplaces, and whose backgrounds during that period of history are unclear. I’m working on that.”

“I want you to throw in one other consideration,” McGarvey said. “I don’t think simple revenge would be enough. Whoever this person is, he is rich. In order to get there he has to be smart; shrewd, at the very least, perhaps even brilliant.”

“Which means he’d have to have another motive. He’d have something to gain by using his little toy.”

“Exactly.”

“If I can’t buy the Rockefeller Center, I’ll nuke it,” Rencke said.

“Something like that.”

“I’ll get on it,” Rencke said, and already McGarvey could hear the faraway note in the man’s voice which meant most of his mind was elsewhere; working on the problem at hand.

“I’ll call later,” McGarvey said.

“Oh, wait,” Rencke came back. “I almost forgot. Your name has come up again across the river. They want to make contact with you in a worst way. It has something to do with your daughter and ex, I think.”

“What about them?”

“I don’t know,” Rencke said distantly, and the connection was broken.

McGarvey’s call to Carrara’s home was automatically routed to his office at Langley.

The DDO sounded harried, even worried, but not at all surprised.

“Who have you got hacking for you?” Carrara asked. “My records people are having fits.”

“What about Kathleen and my daughter?” McGarvey asked, ignoring the question. “Has something happened to them?”

“They’ve been kidnapped.”

The air left the room. “By whom?”

“We don’t know yet. Evidently your ex-wife was visiting the school outside of Bern, and both of them were taken just a few hours ago. The general got the call personally from the Swiss Federal Police.”

“K-l?” McGarvey asked, dreading the answer he knew he was going to hear.

“We think so. It has all the earmarks of a Spranger operation. An instructor from the school evidently got in the middle of it and was shot three times in the head.”

“Any leads?”

“They may have been taken across the Swiss border into France. The Surete may have a lead.”

“Call Marquand,” McGarvey said. He was sick at his stomach.

“Already have. He’ll meet you in Paris.”

Chapter 40

At Roland Murphy’s suggestion the President had called his National Security Adviser Daniel Milligan and Secretary of State John Cronin to the Oval office for an 8

a. m. meeting. It was a few minutes after that hour and the three men were looking at the DCI, grim expressions on their faces.

“Let me get this absolutely clear, Roland,” the President said. “What you’re saying is that some group, or perhaps some individual in Japan is being linked to the STASI organization’s effort to steal the components of a nuclear bomb?”

“Yes, sir. Our best evidence seems to be pointing in that direction.”

“But it’s not the government,” Secretary of State Cronin asked. “You’re sure of that?”

“We’re not sure of it, John, but we don’t think it’s likely. There’ve been no indications whatsoever out of Tokyo.”

“Nor was there before Pearl Harbor,” Cronin grumbled.

“That’s not true,” Murphy said. “We had plenty of warnings before Pearl, but they were ignored.” Murphy turned back to the President. “The government or the military wouldn’t simply be after the parts, they’d be after the technology itself. A technology, I might add, that their own scientists could come up with.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” the President said. He turned to his National Security Adviser.

“Dan?”

“I tend to agree with Roland, as well. The Japanese government has no need to become a nuclear power. Hell, they lost the war but they’re sure winning the peace. They’re outshooting us with their currency, their technology, and before long maybe even their GNP. Why risk world censure by joining the nuclear club? They’d have nearly everything to lose, and almost nothing to gain. Nuclear weapons, at least so far as governments go, have become almost useless.”

“But not in the hands of a terrorist,” Murphy said.

“No,” Milligan said. “And we all knew it would happen sooner or later. What are the latest estimates of how much weapons-grade plutonium is missing each year? Enough to make a dozen effective bombs?”

“More,” Murphy said. “But this is the first time we’ve detected a concentrated effort to come up with all the components.”

“Except for Libya’s attempts a few years back,” Cronin said. “And more recently, Iraq’s.”

“I’m not talking about governments now, John. I’m talking about individuals.”

“This sort of thing would take a lot of money, wouldn’t it?” the President asked.

“In the tens of millions of dollars at the very least,” Murphy said.

“Which narrows down the field, somewhat, especially if we’re limiting ourselves to the Japanese.”

“There are a lot of rich people in Japan at this moment in history. My people are working on ways to narrow down the list, but it’s going to take time. We don’t even have a motive yet. In the meantime the Agency’s operations in Japan are all but shut down.”

“I’m sending John to Tokyo in a few days. He’ll speak with Prime Minister Kunihiro, but there’s no guarantee anything positive for us will come of it. Eight murders in a few days time in Tokyo, five of them Americans, has got everyone on edge.” The President sat back, his chin resting on a bridge of his thumb, forefinger and middle finger. “It was my understanding, Roland, that you had sent some additional people over there… someone not directly connected with our embassy.”

Murphy nodded. “We have even more trouble on that score, Mr. President. You may recall the name Kirk McGarvey.”

“He was involved in stopping the people who kidnapped that submarine of ours in the Mediterranean a few years back.”

“Yes, sir. And he was responsible for getting that shipment of gold through to Iran.”

“Yes. That was one of the reasons the Iranians cooperated with us when we kicked Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. If McGarvey’s involved now, the scale has been tipped to our side.”

“It’s very likely the STASI group has had the same thought,” Murphy said. “They may have found out he was involved and done something about it.”

No one said a thing.

“McGarvey is divorced. His ex-wife lives here in Washington. She came to see us yesterday morning. Somehow she figured out that McGarvey was working for us, and she wanted to get a message to him.”

“What message?” the President asked.

“It was nothing important. At least we didn’t think so. Before we could react, she disappeared from the Washington area. McGarvey has a nineteen-year-old daughter attending a school of design outside of Bern. His ex-wife showed up there last night, and she and her daughter were kidnapped by a person or persons unknown.”

“The STASI organization?”

“It’s possible. The Swiss, and now the French, are helping us. They may have a lead.”

“Has McGarvey been told?”

“Yes, Mr. President. He’s on his way to Europe at this moment.”

“If the STASI kidnapped them, was it to lure McGarvey out of Japan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Into a trap?”

Murphy nodded. “We’re doing everything we can to help him.”

“Indeed,” the President said. “Because I want to make something else very clear to you, General. McGarvey has been of great service to this country.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now, we owe him.”

Chapter 41

The weather in Paris was overcast and rainy when the Japan Airlines 747 touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was a little before three in the afternoon but the day was dark and chilly, which served to deepen McGarvey’s already bleak mood. He’d had little else to do during the long flight from Tokyo via Calcutta but worry.

Carrara had not suggested he drop everything in Japan, but his not-so-subtle between the lines message had been quite clear. Spranger had taken Kathleen and Elizabeth to lure McGarvey to Europe where they meant to kill him. Everyone wanted him to take the challenge.

In the old days, the field officer’s family was inviolate. That wasn’t the case any longer. What few restraints men like Spranger had worked under were no longer in place. Nothing was sacred. The stakes in the Cold War had been high, but they were even higher now in the invisible war. Ten years ago the fight had been over ideologies.

These days it was over money. What little honor there’d been was totally gone.

It was their game. They had made the rules. And if that’s the way they wanted it, he would play it out this time … no holds barred.

A tall, lanky man with thick eyebrows over a hawkish nose was waiting for him at the arrivals gate. “Name’s Robert Littel. You got any other baggage?” He spoke with a Texas twang.

“Who told you I’d be on this flight?” McGarvey asked. This wasn’t beyond Spranger.

“Nobody. Phil Carrara just said you were coming and we were supposed to watch for you. Now, if you’ll shake a leg we’ll get you out of here and down to the chopper.”

“Have you got something?”

“Yeah, but I’ll tell you all about it on the run. We don’t have much time if we’re going to make the show.”

McGarvey fell in step beside the taller man as they walked past the passport control booths without challenge and then through customs and downstairs.

“Is Marquand here?” McGarvey asked.

“He’s in charge down in Grenoble. But he sent Rene Belleau, his number two. A little prick, but I think he’d be one tough sonofabitch backed into a corner.”

On the ground level, before they went through the steel door, McGarvey grabbed Littel by the arm and stopped him. “What’s going on in Grenoble?”

Littel started to challenge McGarvey but then thought better of it. “How much did Carrara tell you?”

“That someone kidnapped my ex-wife and daughter, and that the French had a lead.”

“Apparently they were taken from the school and loaded aboard a white truck. A semi.

It was seen crossing the frontier at Jougne, above Lausanne. This morning it was located in a barn at the end of a road that leads up to a mountain chalet about six miles north of Grenoble.”

“Any sign of them or the kidnappers?”

“At last word, no. The Action Service has got the place surrounded, but they’re waiting until nightfall to move in.”

“Who owns the chalet?”

“It belongs to a property management company in Grenoble. Three days ago it was leased to a couple by the name of Schey. Two days ago the same couple visited the Design Poly outside Bern, evidently to look the place over.”

It was too pat. If this was Stranger’s doing, he’d left too many clues on the trail.

He’d practically advertised his whereabouts. Why?

The clues were lures, of course, meant for McGarvey. But they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be cornered so easily. Something else was happening. Something…

“The chopper is waiting, Mr. McGarvey,” Littel prompted after a few moments.

“Right,” McGarvey said looking up out of his thoughts. But he was troubled.

Belleau was waiting impatiently for them aboard the idling Dassault SF-17 transport helicopter, and even before they had strapped in, the sleek machine was lifting off the pad and accelerating south as it climbed at a sickening rate.

The chopper was a stripped-down version of the transport helicopter, with larger engines for greater speed and extra fuel capacity for greater range. The noise level in the main cabin was so great that any sort of a normal conversation was difficult.

The compactly built, deadly looking Frenchman motioned for McGarvey to don one of the headsets and plug it in.

“What were you doing in Tokyo, Monsieur McGarvey?” Belleau’s voice came through the earphones.

“I was on vacation. Can we establish communications with Colonel Marquand from here?”

“I asked you a question,” the Action Service officer said, his eyes narrow.

“I answered it.”

“You are on French soil now, you salopard, and you’ll do as you’re told.”

“Don’tfuck with me you little cocksucker, or I’ll throw you out of this helicopter at altitude,” McGarvey said in his best gutter French.

Belleau’s eyes widened in surprise, and a faint flush came to his cheeks. “Phillipe told me that you were quite the specimen.” He smiled ruefully. “For now I will simply assume that you were seeking a connection between the Japanese and these East German bastards.”

“There is a connection,” McGarvey said, relenting a little. “But to this point that’s the only thing I’m certain of.”

Belleau nodded, and he glanced at Littel, who was listening on another headset. “Do you believe that your wife and daughter were kidnapped to force an end to your investigation in Tokyo?”

“It’s possible.”

“Then you must have been getting close to something or someone.”

McGarvey took off his headset and leaned closer to the Frenchman who did the same, effectively blocking Littel out of their conversation for just a moment.

“If you help me in this matter, if you do not interfere, I promise to share with you whatever information I come up with later.”

Belleau looked into his eyes for a long moment, but then nodded, and they both sat back and put on the headsets. Littel was clearly upset.

“What was that all about?” he demanded.

McGarvey ignored him. “Can we make contact with Colonel Marquand from here?”

“Yes, but it is inadvisable. It’s possible that the kidnappers are monitoring our frequencies.”

“You’re probably right,” McGarvey said. “Did you bring a map of the area? I’d like to see what we’re facing.”

“Yes,” Belleau said. He took a large-scale map from his briefcase 201

and spread it out on a small fold-down table and switched on a gooseneck spot lamp.

McGarvey leaned forward so he could see better. The map’s area of detail included the town of Grenoble and about five or ten miles in each direction.

Belleau pointed with a pencil to a spot north of the city, along highway D912, which was indicated as a secondary road and scenic route through the mountains.

“The base of the driveway is at slightly more than sixteen hundred meters,” Belleau said. “Here, just below the Col de Porte pass at eighteen hundred sixty-seven meters.”

“The barn is where?”

“Just off the highway, and the chalet is one kilometer farther up the driveway, at an elevation of one hundred-fifty meters above the barn.”

“It’s a very steep driveway,” Littel said.

“No other way in or out?” McGarvey asked.

“Not by car or truck,” Belleau said.

“How about with a four-wheel drive, like a jeep?”

“Not possible. This area is all very rugged. One would need to be a mountaineer to move off the road.”

Helicopter?”

“The wind currents in the mountains are formidable.”

McGarvey sat back. “Of course there’s no guarantee they’re still there.”

Belleau shook his head. “If they are, however, then they are cornered.”

“I think it’s unlikely they’re still there,” McGarvey said, reaching for his overnight bag. He took out his toiletries kit and removed the components of his Walther PPK

as Belleau and Littel carefully watched.

“But you’re going in armed, just in case,” Littel said.

“I hope they are there,” McGarvey said, looking up. Both Littel and Belleau shivered.

Chapter 42

The Action Service helicopter touched down on the police barracks parade ground on the western outskirts of Grenoble, the city’s modern skyscrapers rising against the mountain backdrop. The wind was gusty but the weather was much clearer here than in Paris. And much colder.

Marquand was waiting for them aboard an Italian touring coach marked Lake Geneva.

Its windows were mirrored so that from the outside nothing could be seen of the interior.

He and McGarvey shook hands.

“You’ve arrived just in time, Monsieur,” the short, heavily built colonel said. “We were just about to leave.”

“Has the situation up there changed in the past few hours?” McGarvey asked. It was obvious Marquand knew Littel, so there’d been no need for introductions.

“At five o’clock a package was delivered to the front door of the chalet where it remains.” Marquand looked at his wristwatch. “That was nearly two hours ago. It was addressed to a D. Schey… we’re assuming for the moment that the D stands for Dieter. ’. from the Georges Cinq Hotel in Paris.”

“Was there a name?”

“It was a little joke. The sender was marked as E. Spranger.”

“You checked with the hotel?”

“Naturally. And with the delivery service. Of course Spranger is not at the hotel, and so far as the delivery service clerk in Paris can recall the package was dropped off at their office by a middle-aged, matronly looking woman, who paid in cash.”

“How much does it weigh?”

Littel and Belleau looked puzzled, but Marquand understood. “It was heavy. Slightly more than ten kilos.”

“Then I would hope that you have instructed your people to treat that package with extreme respect.”

“Yes,” Marquand said. “It would seem now that the chalet is deserted.”

“But we cannot be one hundred percent sure,” McGarvey said, thinking of something else. “We’ll have to find out.”

Marquand looked sharply at him. “What is it?”

“You were right in the beginning, there is a Japanese connection. I’ve just come from Tokyo where our chief of station and his assistant have both been assassinated.”

“Mr. McGarvey, may I have a word with you outside?” Littel interrupted.

“No,” McGarvey said. “A pair of walkie-talkies like the one found at Orly were used in Tokyo.”

“Are the Japanese authorities working with you?”

“No one knows I was there except, apparently, for Spranger and whoever he’s working for.”

“But why?” Marquand asked. “What the hell do they want?”

“McGarvey,” Littel cautioned.

“I don’t know yet,” McGarvey lied. “But obviously I was getting close, or else Spranger wouldn’t have tried this move.”

“I think you’re lying now,” the Action Service colonel said, but then his expression softened. “You understand that the outcome of this… situation, might not be very pleasant for you.”

“They’re not dead,” McGarvey said flatly.

“In cases like these…“

“They’re not dead,” McGarvey repeated, looking into Marquand’s eyes. “Spranger means to trade with me.”

“For what?” Littel asked.

“My life for theirs.”

“Then why the package bomb, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s there to let us know they’re serious,” McGarvey said. “If it kills me, so much the better.”

“The bastards,” Marquand said, tight-jawed. “We would have walked right into the middle of it.”

“Spranger’s one of the best.”

“Yes. And well-funded. But why the Japanese?”

“When I find out, I’ll let you know.”

“Do that,” Marquand said. “In the meantime, they will have left something up there for you to find. Some clue as to their whereabouts.”

“Maybe not,” McGarvey answered. “They’ve lured me away from Tokyo. Maybe there’ll be nothing up there.” “Except death,” Belleau said grimly.

A half-dozen of Colonel Marquand’s Action Service operators came along on the bus, which passed the entrance to the Chalet’s driveway shortly after dark, and pulled off the highway onto a scenic overlook area at the crest of the Col de Porte pass.

Their driver switched off the coach’s lights just as they crested the hill so that from below it might seem as if the bus had simply disappeared from view as the road started down the other side.

One of the men immediately opened a window, and set up a light-intensifying scope on a tripod. He trained it on the chalet about a mile below them.

“Anything?” Marquand asked.

On the way up they’d all changed into dark jumpsuits, and had blackened any exposed skin.

“There is a very dim light in the upstairs corridor,” the scope operator said softly without looking up. “Stationary. Maybe a night light. No movement.”

“Outside?” Marquand asked.

The others had left the bus and were opening the cargo bays, leaving Littel and McGarvey alone for a moment. The Texan pulled McGarvey aside.

“Look here, I don’t know what you’re up to, but my instructions were specific. You’re not to breathe a word of your Tokyo operation to the French.”

“Just what is it I’m doing in Tokyo?” McGarvey asked.

“I don’t know…“

“You haven’t been told my assignment?”

“No, sir. Just that you were coming to France and to provide you with whatever help I could, but to make damned sure you didn’t say anything of importance to the Frogs.”

McGarvey had to smile despite the situation. “How’s your hand-to-hand combat skills?”

Littel was taken aback by the question. “Fair,” he said.

“I’m told Marquand is an expert. I would assume his men are pretty good too. I don’t think they’d like to hear you call them names.”

Littel glanced over at Marquand and the scope operator. “I didn’t mean anything.”

“They’re Frenchmen, or Corsicans, depending on what mood you catch them in. Do you understand?”

“I got you, but I still have my job to do.”

McGarvey patted him on the arm. “I won’t tell them anything they don’t already know.

But at the moment they’re risking their lives to help rescue my family. I owe them, wouldn’t you say?”

“Ah… yes, sir.”

Marquand was checking his wristwatch again. “Six minutes,” he said, looking up. “Time to go.”

“Any movement in or around the chalet?” McGarvey asked, following the Action Service colonel off the bus.

“None,” Marquand replied tersely.

His troops had taken eleven small motorbikes from the coach’s cargo spaces, and started them all. The small engines were so highly muffled that almost nothing could be heard head on, and only a light purring noise from the rear.

“Ten of my people have been in position behind and to the east of the chalet since early this afternoon. In about five minutes they’ll start moving in. In the meantime, we’ll go down the mountain, secure the barn and the truck on one; proceed to and secure the front approaches to the house on two; neutralize the package, if need be, on three; and make entry through the windows and main door on four. Questions?”

There were none.

The Action Service troops were armed with stun grenades and silenced MAC 10s. Littel carried a.44 magnum, not silenced, of course, and McGarvey stayed with his Walther.

The troops were watching him as he took it out and checked the action. Marquand shook his head. “If it was anyone else but you, Monsieur, carrying such a toy, I would say he was a fool.”

“It’s an old friend.”

Marquand smiled faintly. “So I’m told.” He turned abruptly to his troops. “Allons-y, mes copains.”

They all mounted and peeled out onto the highway from behind the bus in pairs, the throttles wide open, the bikes hitting sixty miles per hour down the hill.

If there was to be trouble here, these men plus the force coming up from the rear would be more than enough to handle it. But racing down the hill McGarvey was certain of two things: That Kathleen and Elizabeth were not here, and that a message would be waiting for him and him alone.

Spranger’s purpose was to lure McGarvey out of Tokyo, and then meet head-to-head but only at a time and place of the East German’s choosing when the odds would definitely be against McGarvey.

The road flattened out for about twenty yards, a field of mountain grasses and flowers protected by a split rail fence to the right. A gravel driveway led past the field and up the side of a very steep hill to the chalet in the distance. A large stone barn with a sharply pitched shake roof sat just off the driveway about fifty yards from the road.

The mountainside was in complete darkness. Only Grenoble down in the valley was lit like phosphorescent points in a black sea.

Two of Marquand’s force continued straight up the driveway to act as advance scouts on the chalet’s front entrance, while the others quickly surrounded the barn.

On Marquand’s signal one of them used a bolt cutter to remove the heavy padlock from the main doors, and hauled them open.

On signal, their MAC 10s sweeping from the center outward, two Action Service officers rushed into the barn.

For several long seconds there was absolute silence, until one of them came to the doorway. “Clear,” he called softly.

“Hold up, I want to check out the truck before we proceed,” McGarvey said.

Marquand motioned for his people to hold their positions, and he went with McGarvey into the barn where the large white semi-truck had been hidden. The markings on the side were for PIROKKI SHIPPING, LTD., ATHINAI.

“The truck was reported stolen from Amsterdam,” Marquand said.

“Pirokki?”

“No such company.”

The side door in the trailer was open. One of Marquand’s troops shined a flashlight inside, but the trailer was empty except for a few pieces of cardboard.

“Nothing here,” Marquand said, and McGarvey followed him out of the barn, glancing back for another look at the markings on the side of the truck.

At the top of the hill Marquand’s other people were already in position at the rear and to the east of the chalet. He gave a signal and two of his people ran, dodging across the grassy area beside the driveway, and silently mounted a low entry area at the front door.

One of them held a narrow beam penlight on the package, while the other began to work on it, shielding it with his body to minimize the effects of a possible explosion to his partner.

A full ninety seconds later, he picked up the package and gingerly carried it well away from the chalet where he carefully laid it on the ground, then he turned and moved away from it, signaling the all clear.

“Do your people have a clear identification on the non-targets?” Littel asked.

The Action Service colonel glanced back at him, then McGarvey, and nodded. “But it will be for the best if you do not get ahead of me. My boys might mistake you for one of the perpetrators.”

“All right.” Six of Marquand’s men flattened themselves against the front of the house, two each on a pair of ground-floor windows and two with a small battering ram on the door. On the count of three they smashed in the door, busted out the window glass and made simultaneous entry, their MAC 10s up and ready to fire.

From the rear they could hear the sounds of breaking glass and splintering wood, and seconds later McGarvey and Marquand, acting as backup in case the situation inside became critical, raced up onto the stone entry area and took up positions on either side of the door.

On the count of three they rolled inside, spreading left and right, their weapons up.

“Red clear,” someone shouted.

“Vert, aussi,” someone upstairs responded.

Marquand held his position, motioning for McGarvey to do the same.

For several long seconds the chalet was deathly still, but then from somewhere at the back of the house, a third team leader shouted the all clear, and the lights came on.

“Looks as if you were correct,” Marquand said, straightening up and switching his weapon’s safety to the on position.

McGarvey did the same, and holstering his pistol, went into the expansive living room, the sloping ceiling open to a loft above, a natural stone chimney rising up from a massive fireplace in the middle of the room.

Littel entered the chalet, and moments later Marquand was issuing orders that the house and grounds be thoroughly searched.

The chalet was a typical rental unit, with the same sterility as a hotel room, and yet McGarvey had a sense that Kathleen and Elizabeth had been here, however briefly.

Spranger wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble for nothing. The truck was here.

It meant something. Greek, perhaps. Toward Greece.

But what else?

“Nobody home?” Littel asked, crossing the living room to the fireplace.

No one paid any attention to him. Marquand’s men from front and back were swarming all over the house, from the root cellar to the attic crawl space above the servants’ quarters off the kitchen. There was no fire on the grate, but there had been, and Littel took a poker from the hearth rack and began idly poking through the ashes.

Marquand left the room and McGarvey was alone with his own thoughts for the moment.

On first coming into the chalet he’d thought he smelled perfume. Faintly, but there.

He tested the air again, but if anything the house now smelled neutral to him.

“McGarvey,” Littel said softly.

Kathleen had always worn perfume, of course. But she’d been subtle about it. This had been different.

“McGarvey,” Littel called, still softly, but more insistently.

McGarvey looked up. “What is it?”

“Take a look,” the Texan said, motioning him over.

McGarvey joined him at the fireplace. Littel had found a diamond necklace in the ashes. It was Elizabeth’s. McGarvey recognized the setting. It had been his mother’s.

The only personal thing he’d ever gotten from her, the only thing he’d ever had to remind him of the side of his mother that he’d always loved.

But the setting and the necklace itself, both 18-carat gold, were intact, which meant the necklace hadn’t been subjected to any heat. Yet the diamond was black with burned creosote or pine tar.

“It’s my daughter’s,” he told Littel, who nodded.

“I know. I saw it in a file photo. I recognized it right away. They were here.”

McGarvey pocketed it as Marquand appeared at the balcony above. He looked up. “Have your men found anything yet?”

“Not yet,” the Action Service colonel said. “You?”

“Nothing,” McGarvey replied, conscious of Litters eyes on him. “I don’t think they were ever here.”

Chapter 43

A green and white private medevac ambulance pulled up on the quai beside the 208-foot Greek cargo ship MV Thaxos at two in the morning. A thick, oily fog that smelled of the sea, wet cordage, spilled bunker oil and raw sewage blanketed the low island city of Venice. The only sounds were machinery noises from the ship’s generator, and somewhere in the distance a bell buoy.

“Turn off the lights,” Spranger said from the back of the ambulance, and their driver Peter Diirenmatt switched them off, but left the engine running.

“There go the lights on the bridge,” Liese said a few moments later. She’d ridden in front since the Italian border beyond the Col du Mont Cenis above Torino. All of them were dressed in white medical garb.

They hadn’t been delayed at all. The French border people had simply waved them through, and the Italians had clucked sympathetically, with one eye checking the paperwork of the two Yugoslavian cancer patients, and with the other looking up Liese’s short skirt.

“Okay, there’s Bruno,” Liese said. “They’re coming down now.”

“As soon as we’re unloaded, get rid of the ambulance,” Spranger told Diirenmatt.

“We sail when you return.”

“See that you wait. The French can’t be far behind us, and I have no wish to remain here in Venice waiting for them.”

“Just be quick about it,” Spranger said.

Liese came back and helped him release the straps holding Kathleen and Elizabeth on their portable gurneys. They’d both been heavily sedated since shortly before they’d left the chalet, but that had been more than twenty hours ago, and Elizabeth was beginning to show signs that she was coming around.

They were dressed in hospital gowns, and the hair had been shaved from their heads, their scalps marked with surgical pen. The extra touch had been a wasted effort, because the border police had not asked to have a look at the patients.

“They’ll be angry when they wake up and see what we’ve done,” Liese said. “Especially the young one.”

“It won’t matter,” Spranger replied. “They’ll be dead in a couple of days in any event.”

“Such a pity,” Liese said, brushing her fingertips across the nipples of Elizabeth’s breasts.

“Your appetites will be your undoing one day.”

She looked up and smiled coyly. “But in the meantime…“ She let it trail off.

The ambulance’s rear door opened and Bruno Lessing was there with two crewmen from the ship. “Any trouble crossing the border?”

“No,” Spranger said. “How about here?”

“We have our clearance papers, and the radar set is up to date. The captain assures me we can sail tonight.”

“Good. As soon as they’re aboard and Peter gets rid of this ambulance, we’ll leave.”

The Thaxos’ crewmen lifted Kathleen and Elizabeth out of the ambulance and carried the unconscious women up the ladder aboard the ship. Liese went with them, while Spranger and Lessing went directly up to the bridge where the captain was waiting.

His name was Andreas Bozzaris, and he was a tough little Greek whose primary source of income was arms smuggling from the continent of Europe across to Africa. He’d done work in the past for the STASI, transporting people to and from the Black Sea.

He was nobody’s fool, but he was fearless, and his loyalty went strictly to the highest bidder.

“Ernst. I thought by now that the Germans would have lined you up against the wall and shot you.”

“Would you mourn my passing?”

The Greek laughed. “No, but my bank account would.”

“Are we ready to sail?”

“We have been for the past twelve hours.”

“Then make your final preparations, Captain. As soon as Peter comes aboard we’ll leave.”

“For Izmir?”

“Yes,” Spranger said, smiling faintly. “For Izmir.”

Elizabeth regained consciousness first, and as she awoke she sat up and swung her feet over the edge of the narrow cot. She felt groggy, her lips thick, her mouth and throat extremely dry.

She was in a small cabin, aboard what she immediately understood was a ship. They were moving, she could hear the engine noises, and feel the bows rising to meet the swells, and it was nighttime. She could see the blackness outside through the single porthole.

Her mother was huddled under a thin brown blanket on a cot against the opposite bulkhead.

She was still out, but something was different about her. Something wrong, and as Elizabeth tried to work it out in her still drug-befuddled brain, she reached up and touched the top of her head, which she suddenly realized was cold.

She had no hair. She was bald. And so was her mother. The bastards had shaved them!

She shoved aside her blanket and got to her feet. She stood swaying for a moment, trying to keep her balance as a wave of nausea washed over her, trying to work out in her mind what was happening to them.

They’d been drugged back at the chalet, but not before she’d managed to hide her necklace in the fireplace. The Swiss or somebody would find it sooner or later, and she could only hope that her father would be notified, and that he would recognize the clue for what it was.

It was a long string of ifs, but they’d been lucky overhearing their kidnappers talking about their plans. It had been their only mistake so far.

She tottered across to the other bunk and checked her mother, who was unconscious but seemed only to be sleeping peacefully. Someone had drawn circles and arrows on her mother’s scalp with a pen, making her look bizarre.

Again her hand went to her own scalp. It had been made to appear as if they were hospital patients. Probably to get them across a border without questions. They were no longer in France.

She went to the porthole and looked outside, but there was very little to see. Mostly darkness and fog, and perhaps a vague glow off in the indistinct distance.

Armand was dead. There was little doubt in her mind. Poor, silly Armand who’d wanted to have an affair with her. A Parisian whose gallantry had cost him his life.

Elizabeth heard the cabin door open and she turned as Liese Egk came in with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

Chapter 44

A light drizzle fell from a deeply overcast sky as the Dassault helicopter touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was just dawn, and the terminal area had a deserted air, the lull before the day’s international flights began arriving and departing.

McGarvey and Littel had ridden up with Marquand and Belleau. For most of the three-hour flight no one had said much. Elizabeth and Kathleen and their kidnappers had simply disappeared, leaving behind no trace.

The alert had gone out to every airport, train station and bus depot in the Grenoble area, as well as the border crossings in all of France. Word had also been sent to every police district to check every hotel, inn or any other place of lodging for the two women and their captors.

“It will take time,” Marquand explained on the tarmac. Two cars were approaching, one of them from the U.S. Embassy at Littel’s behest. “But if they have left France we will learn of it, or if they are still here we will find them.”

“In the meantime?” McGarvey asked.

Marquand shrugged. “We wait, naturally. But what about you? Will you return to Tokyo now, or wait here?”

“They’re still in Europe.”

“Yes, and where is this?”

McGarvey looked into the Action Service colonel’s eyes. “I don’t know yet, but I will find them.”

“If they are in France, Monsieur, you will let me know before you do anything. Anything at all.”

The embassy car pulled up and Littel opened the rear door. “Mr. McGarvey.”

“I will insist on this,” Marquand said.

McGarvey nodded. “If they are in France I’ll call you.” He and Marquand shook hands.

“Thanks for your help, Colonel, but I think that Grenoble was just a diversion.”

“You know where they are?”

“Not yet.”

“You found something at the chalet. Something that has given you a clue as to their whereabouts. What was it?”

“They’re not in France,” McGarvey repeated. “The case is out of your jurisdiction.”

“I could have you detained for withholding information,” Marquand said in frustration.

Belleau stepped to one side, his right hand inside his jacket, ready for trouble.

“That wouldn’t help anyone,” McGarvey said, in a reasonable tone. He got into the car, and Littel scrambled in after him.

“I want to know,” Marquand called after them. “I’m on your side, McGarvey.”

“Get us out of here,” Littel told their driver, and they headed off leaving the two Frenchmen standing beside the helicopter. “That was a slick move. You really told them. Christ, that Marquand is a son of a bitch…“

“Shut up,” McGarvey said mildly, cutting Littel off in mid-sentence.

McGarvey reached into his jacket pocket and fingered Elizabeth’s diamond necklace.

The clasp was intact, and latched, which meant the necklace hadn’t been taken from her forcefully. She had unsnapped the clasp, lifted it from her neck and relatched the clasp.

He turned that thought over in his head for a little while. She’d been out of sight of her kidnappers for a few moments. She knew something; she’d figured it out, or seen something, or overheard them talking… whatever. But she’d come up with a bit of information that she wanted to make sure only her father would understand. So she’d left her necklace.

What next? Alone, her necklace off, the clasp relatched, she’d tossed it into the cool fireplace.

Check that. First she’d blackened the stone with a bit of creosote or pine tar. She’d blackened the diamond. The move had been deliberate. She was telling him something.

McGarvey closed his eyes, the solution suddenly coming to him. But it was simple…

too simple for mere chance. It was Spranger again, telling him something. The East German had left the clue, or had maneuvered Elizabeth into leaving it.

Either way, it was a sign post: Here I am. Catch me if you can.

Chapter 45

“In forty minutes the Japanese Ambassador to the United States is going to walk through that door and start asking me a lot of tough questions,” the President said. “And if he decides to hold a news conference either before our meeting, or afterward, the cat will be out of the bag.”

It was Saturday noon. The President had called a number of people to the Oval office, among them his National Security Adviser Dan Milligan, Secretary of State John Cronin, his advisers for Far East Affairs Harvey Hook, and Domestic and International Finance Maxwell F. Peale, his Press Secretary Martin Hewler, and the DCI Roland Murphy.

“At least it’s the weekend,” Peale said. “The panic on Wall Street won’t be so bad.”

“If he holds it inside his embassy, there won’t be much we can say or do,” Hewler said. “But once he steps outside, we’ll do the orchestration.” Hewler was a big, shambling bear of a man with a direct and very honest view about everything and everyone.

He was enormously popular among the press corps.

“Don’t tell me somebody’s watching him,” Cronin said.

“I have a friend over at the Post who’ll tip me off if Shiro makes a move.”

“Won’t this friend of yours take this request as a news story in itself?” Cronin pursued the issue.

“No,” Hewler said simply.

Cronin turned back to the President. “Of course, none of this comes as a surprise.

Prime Minister Kunihiro has shown that he’s willing to go to almost any lengths to save face. He took a terrific battering over the Diet’s failure to come up with what he thought was a fair amount of financial help to the Western Alliance for the war with Iraq. This now may be nothing more than a catalyst for him.”

“He’s clutching at straws,” Harvey Hook, the Far East expert said. “But I have to agree with John. There is a new feeling of national unity in Japan that i s increasingly causing overt moves, especially in the marketplace. We’ve talked about this before.”

“Nobody has prevented them from investing here,” Peale said. “But what Harvey is getting at are perceptions and the backlash they’re causing.”

“Get to the point,” the President said harshly.

“The point is this, Mr. President,” Hook said. “Rightly or wrongly there is a growing anti-Japan sentiment in this country. The Warsaw Pact has been dismantled. The Russian threat has faded with their internal problems. Quaddafi is quiet. Iran is behaving itself. We’ve settled the issue with Iraq. And China is being docile for the moment.

So who will be our new enemies? The Japanese?”

Hook looked to the others, but no one said a thing.

“The Japanese have a monetary surplus, and the public perception is that they’re buying up America, so let’s restrict trade with them, and let’s place severe restrictions on what they’re able to purchase in this country. The fact of the matter, however, is that the British own twice as much property in the United States as the Japanese do. But, the Brits are our friends. And their eyes are round, their skin is white, and they speak the same language, better than we do-they don’t make Ls out of their Rs-and they didn’t attack Pearl Harbor.”

“We were talking about the Japanese reaction,” the President said.

“That’s right, Mr. President. The Japanese are reacting to the anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. It has become a point of honor to them during a time when their national psyche, if you want to call it that, is so confused that political faction differences in Tokyo have damn near erupted into all-out war.”

“What you’re saying is that we’ve brought this on ourselves,” the President’s National Security adviser put in.

“What I’m saying is that the Japanese have become the second richest country in the world …

in terms of GNP, and they don’t know what to do with their wealth. They feel that they’ve become a superpower, and yet they’ve outlawed any real military. They are the only people in the world to have suffered a nuclear attack in a war they began and lost. They had to endure the reorganization of their own government at the point of a gun. Their own children have rebelled against the old traditions of music and dress. They’ve developed an inferiority complex over their short stature relative to Westerners, and even the shape of their eyes. So much so that they spend hundreds of millions annually on cosmetic surgery.

And yet they are beginning to develop feelings of superiority that they’re having a terribly difficult time in reconciling with everything else.”

“The whole damn country is psychotic? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?” Milligan asked.

“Confused,” Hook replied softly.

“With their clout, that makes them dangerous,” Milligan said. “Thank God they haven’t developed a big military, or become a nuclear power.”

“In the middle of all that they’ve taken official notice that we’re spying on them,” the President said, turning to Murphy. “What do I tell Ambassador Shiro?”

“That we do spy on them,” the DCI said heavily. “We have been since shortly after the war, and no president before you, other than Truman, has suggested otherwise.”

“That’s not what I’m asking, General,” the President said, a dangerous edge to his voice.

“No, sir, I understand that. But the fact of the matter is that some person or group in Japan has hired an organization of East German mercenaries to steal the components for a nuclear weapon. We don’t know if they’ve been successful yet, though we’re reasonably sure that they’ve got at least one of the parts. Nor do we know what their eventual target might be, or the reason they might be doing such a thing.”

“But we do know there have been killings,” the President said.

“Yes.”

“Which is exactly what Ambassador Shiro is coming here in a few minutes to ask me about. What do I tell him?”

“That two economic advisers to the U.S. Ambassador to Japan were murdered by a person or persons unknown, and for unknown reasons. And that in a wholly separate incident, an unknown Occidental, possibly an American, was involved in an altercation in the Imperial Palace’s Outer Gardens in which one or more Japanese nationals were killed.”

“He’ll know that’s a lie.”

“Yes, Mr. President, he’ll almost certainly know that.”

“You’re suggesting that I stonewall it.”

“I don’t think we have any other choice, Mr. President. Otherwise we definitely would be letting the cat out of the bag as you say.” Murphy leaned forward to emphasize his point. “Involve the Japanese and we will be barred from continuing our investigation on their soil.”

“A predecessor of mine ended up with egg on his face when he tried to deny that we were sending U-2 spy planes over the Soviet Union.”

“Yes, sir, there are risks.”

“In this case we’re talking about spying on a friendly country.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if, as it has been suggested this morning, the Japanese are confused, and they are trying to save face by using this incident as a catalyst, the financial implications could be enormous.”

“It couldn’t come at a worse time,” Peale, the president’s economic adviser, suggested.

“You can say that again, Maxwell,” the President agreed. “I’m going to have to offer the man something. Some concession, some promise, something. Anything.”

“Stall him,” Murphy said.

“Why?” the President asked sharply.

“If we can offer the Japanese government the villain, especially a Japanese villain, with the promise that we’ll keep it quiet, they’ll find a way to save face. I can guarantee it.”

“What are you talking about?” Cronin demanded, but the President held off his secretary of state.

“Just a minute, John.”

“We may be on the verge of a breakthrough in Europe,” Murphy said.

“McGarvey?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have we found his wife and daughter? Are their kidnappers in custody?”

“Not yet,” Murphy said. “But we were correct in our assumption that the kidnapping was carried out to lure McGarvey from Japan, which of course clinches the connection between the Japanese and the STASI.”

Murphy quickly told them everything that had happened in France, including the obscure clue of the necklace and blackened diamond that McGarvey’s daughter had evidently left for him in the chalet outside of Grenoble.

“What does it mean?” Milligan asked.

“We’re not quite sure… or I should say we weren’t quite sure until McGarvey made his move. If he’s heading where we think he’s heading then we’ll have it.”

“Go on,” the President said.

“As of a few hours ago he was in Athens, which surprised us because earlier in the day he’d spoken with my deputy director of operations on the telephone from Paris.

When he was asked what his next move would be, he said he was going to wait there.

Sooner or later the kidnappers would make contact with him, he said. And he did check into the Hotel Inter-Continental, but he slipped out almost immediately and flew from Orly to Greece.”

“How do we know this?” Milligan asked.

“You may recall, the French found a sophisticated communications device used by the terrorists at Orly. The SDECE handed it over to us, and one of my Paris Station people gave it to McGarvey. The idea was for him to use it to intercept the kidnappers’ transmissions, if and when he got close to them. But we modified the device, adding what’s called an EPIRB… an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. It’s a National Security Agency-designed version of a civilian device. It transmits a continuous signal that’s picked up by our satellites from which we can pinpoint his location to within a couple of yards or less.”

“He’s in Athens, you say?” the President asked. “What does that tell you?”

“He was in Athens, Mr. President. But he didn’t stay long. He went south to Piraeus, which is Athens’ seaport, from where he evidently hired a boat.”

“Where’s he going?”

“It took my people all morning to come up with the answer,” Murphy said. “McGarvey is heading to the Greek island of Santorini.”

“Yes,” Cronin said, seeing it before the others. “Santorini, the island most Greeks think was part of the lost city-state of Atlantis.”

“I don’t understand,” the President admitted.

“Neither did I,” Murphy said. “But my people tell me that Santorini was also famous for its black diamonds.”

“Clever,” the President said after a moment. “And you say that McGarvey figured this out on his own?”

Murphy nodded. “Nobody ever denied that the man was bright.”

“His daughter too, evidently,” the President said. “What can we do for him? Assuming that the kidnappers are holed up somewhere on or near Santorini. It’s a big island, filled with tourists this time of the year, I would imagine.”

“The advantage might be ours for once. If we’re reading our signals right, the kidnappers may not be on the island yet.”

“Explain.”

“The Italian customs people reported that a Swiss medevac ambulance crossed their border last night above Torino. It was carrying two cancer patients, identified as Yugoslavian nationals. Women. The ambulance was found abandoned near theAvaterfront in Venice this morning.”

“They’re going by sea the rest of the way.”

“Only one ship sailed from the port of Venice this morning, and she was the Greek freighter Thaxos,

a vessel we’ve long suspected was used by the STASI for contract work.”

“It could be them.”

“Yes, sir. We have a satellite shot several hours old showing the Thaxos entering the Mediterranean past Brindisi. I’d like to intercept them before they land on Santorini.”

“How?” the President asked.

“The Sixth Fleet is nearby. I’d like authorization to use a unit of SEALS to board the Thaxos, without warning, under the assumption that McGarvey’s ex-wife and daughter are aboard, held by Spranger and his people.

“That’s piracy,” Cronin blurted.

The President ignored him. “There’ll be casualties.”

“Yes, sir. Almost certainly.”

The President thought about it for a moment or two. “What about McGarvey?”

“He’ll be on the island a few hours ahead of time. If something should go wrong, he’d act as backup.”

“Unknowingly.”

Murphy nodded. “Yes, sir. For the time being I would leave him out of the operation.”

“Not very fair.”

“No, sir. But I believe that we have very high odds of success if we act now. Any move against Spranger once he got to the island could complicate our relations with the Greek government.”

“Do it,” the President said. “But keep me informed, General.”

“Will do, Mr. President. What about the Japanese?”

“I’ll stall Ambassador Shiro this afternoon, but I’m going to have to have some results.

And damned soon.”

Chapter 46

The weather system that had moved in over western Europe was sinking unexpectedly to the southeast, and U.S. Navy meteorologists were predicting thickly overcast skies and rain by midnight over the entire Aegean Sea.

Moving silently, almost as if phantoms in the deepening twilight, the CVN Nimitz and her abbreviated task force were on station fifty nautical miles south-southwest of the island of Crete. They had spent the better part of the past eight months sailing back and forth just off the coast of Lebanon, showing the American flag during the latest round of fighting in the ongoing civil war there. It was time to be rotated home and they’d been steaming for Gib when they’d been given their temporary mission orders.

Lieutenant Edwin Lipton stood hunched over a weather radar-scope in operations with the Nimitz group’s chief meteorologist Lieutenant Commander Brent Eastman, and the chief of Air Operations, Commander Louis Rheinholtz.

Lipton was a SEAL, a fact that would have been obvious to the most casual observer, even if he hadn’t been dressed all in black. Physically he stood out. Although he was only of medium height, his body was in perfect athletic condition, and with the way he held himself like a boxer ready to spring it was clear that his reflex speeds, coordination and endurance were probably very good. The look in his eyes and the expression at the corners of his mouth were those of a man utterly and totally committed to the task at hand, and completely devoid of any nonsense whatsoever. He and the five men in his elite strike group were highly trained professionals in the highest sense of the word.

“What are the chances for a break in the weather?” he asked. “We’re under a full moon tonight.”

“Less than ten percent, Lieutenant,” Eastman said. “In fact the cloud cover will begin moving in over the region within the next hour. In two hours moonlight will not be a significant factor at all. Your real problem is going to be the next satellite overpass. It’ll be blind.”

Lipton studied the screen for a moment longer, then turned and crossed to the chart table where their present position was electronically updated on a continuous realtime basis.

The last known position of the Thaxos was about sixty miles southeast of Piraeus.

She’d made a shortcut through the Gulf of Corinth and the Corinth Canal.

“On that course and speed she’d make Santorini around oh-one-hundred hours,” Commander Rheinholtz said. “Another five hours, if that’s where she’s heading, if she doesn’t change her speed, and if she takes the best direct-line course through the islands.

There’s still a lot of sea out there between us and them.”

“Yes, sir,” Lipton said.

“We’d attract too much notice if we sent out patrols to find them. You do understand that.”

“Yes, sir,” Lipton nodded. He stabbed a blunt finger at a spot just north of the island. “We’ll wait here. When she passes, we’ll get aboard.”

“You’re betting they won’t put in at either the old port of Thira of the new port of Athinos.”

“I don’t think so. They’d have to figure they might run into some trouble with the authorities. I’m told that these people are sharp, and I’ll have to go with that until it’s proved differently. But it’s my guess they’ll disembark five miles offshore and come in here, or here.” He pointed to the island’s only two beaches. Everywhere else tall cliffs plunged into the sea, making a landing next to impossible.

“What if you miss them?”

Lipton shrugged. “Then it would be out of our hands. My orders are that we are not to conduct any operation on Greek soil. But we won’t miss them, sir.”

Commander Rheinholtz studied the chart. “We’ll put up a couple of LAMPS III choppers to give you a steady over-the-horizon radar coverage to the north, and we’ll splash you down around midnight.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“These two women are VIPs, but there’s no telling what condition they’ll be in.”

“My people are briefed.”

“Very well, Lieutenant,” Commander Rheinholtz said, and he glanced over at the plotting board they were using for this operation. “Where is Brightstar at this moment?” he asked. Brightstar was McGarvey’s operational codename.

“He’s just approaching the port of Thira, sir,” the plotting board rating replied.

“No telling what he’ll do when he finds out the Thaxos hasn’t docked yet,” Rheinholtz said. “I’ll be glad when this night is over.”

“Yes, sir,” Lipton said, and it was clear that he meant it.

The moon was blood red on the horizon as the aging 37-foot fishing boat Dhodhoni chugged into the dramatic harbor of Thira. Once the crater of a volcano, the cliffs rose a thousand feet out of the sea, and from across the water McGarvey could hear the sounds of music echoing off the rock faces.

“You are looking for somebody,” the grizzled old captain said, his broad grin nearly toothless. He’d been drinking ouzo most of the way over, but he didn’t appear to be drunk.

“Two ladies,” McGarvey said.

“Ah, the ladies. Not from this island. So they have come by water.”

There were several boats in the harbor, but nothing McGarvey thought Spranger would have used. Of course the East Germans could have landed at Athinos, if they had already arrived and if the black diamond had not been a false clue, or if he had not misinterpreted it.

“Who do I see about them?” McGarvey asked.

The old man’s grin widened. “If you are a policeman it may be difficult, you see.”

McGarvey shook his head. “I’m not a policeman.”

“But there is a stench of… trouble on you.”

McGarvey was certain the old man had been about to say death, instead of trouble.

“This is important to me. One of the ladies is my daughter, and the other my ex-wife.”

The captain nodded. “When you find them…?”

“Someone may have brought them here.”

“Then you will kill this someone?”

McGarvey stared at the old man, and after a long time he nodded. “Yes.”

“I thought so,” the captain said triumphantly. “In that case I will help you.”

“You?”

The captain laughed out loud. “Yes, me. You didn’t think that I was a Piraievs pig, did you? I am Spyros Karamanlis from Santorini. This is my island. You will see.”

Chapter 47

The Japanese ambassador to the United States made his official call on the President and left. The President’s Press Secretary Martin Hewler called Murphy with the news.

“The man is not happy, but he’s agreed to wait.”

“How long?” the DCI asked. It was a little after three in the afternoon, Washington time, and after nine in the evening in the Aegean Sea.

“Not very long, General. We’re going to need some action on this soon. Like first thing in the morning. Better yet, this evening.”

“With any luck we should have something within the next three or four hours.”

“With any luck,” Hewler said. “Which translates into: We’ve got our fingers crossed, and should a miracle happen, we’ll pull it off.”

“Do your job, Martin, and let us do ours,” Murphy replied sharply.

“Do that, General. Just do that much, and we’ll all come out smelling like roses.”

Paul Shircliff stepped up to tier B of the Special Operations balcony and plugged his headset into Patsy Connor’s console. Shircliff was early swing shift OD at the National Security Agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Patsy was just entering data from the latest KH-15 pass over the Mediterranean, picking out the EPIRB signal from McGarvey’s transmitter and isolating it against an area overlay map.

“Bring up more detail,” Shircliff said softly.

Without looking up, Patsy punched a series of buttons, which expanded the map view displayed on her terminal. In this instance the scale was such that the island of Santorini barely fit on the screen. A tiny but very bright cross with a series of identifiers to its right indicated the EPIRB’s realtime position. At this scale the cross seemed to be located in the harbor area of the port of Thira.

“Expand,” Shircliff said.

Patsy hit another series of buttons, and now the map scale expanded so that the port of Thira itself mostly filled the screen. “This is the last enhancement,” she said.

The EPIRB was transmitting from a location near the harbor, but not on the water.

It was definitely ashore.

“How long has he been at that location?” Shircliff asked.

“About an hour.”

“No movement?”

“None. He’s remained within a three-yard radius the entire time.”

“It’s possible he’d ditched the transmitter then,” Shircliff said, reaching for the folder of Greek maps on top of the console.

“Could be a hotel, I was about to check it out,” Patsy suggested. “The transmitter could be with his luggage.”

Shircliff opened a large-scale map showing the port town in detail. It took him a few moments to orient the computer’s perspective with the printed chart. “Looks like a waterfront taverna.”

Patsy looked up. “What do you suppose he’s doing there, sir?”

“I don’t know,” Shircliff said shaking his head. “I don’t know anything about the man except that he’s damned important.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me know the moment he makes a move,” Shircliff said, replacing the chart folder but keeping the Thira map out. “I’ll be at my console.”

Clouds were already starting to roll in from the west as Lieutenant Lipton and his five men clambered aboard the SH-3D Sea King that would take them out to the intercept point one hundred miles to the north. The wind was rising and the smell of rain was heavy on the night air. The weather system was developing faster than the meteorologists had predicted, but so far as the SEALS were concerned the weather couldn’t have been better.

“No moon, overcast skies and choppy seas. The Thaxos crew won’t know what hit them until it’s too late,” Lipton told his number two, Ensign Frank Tyrell.

“If we don’t miss them in the darkness.”

“You worry too much.”

Tyrell, who was a deceptively thin and mild-mannered man, grinned. “It’s a bitch, but somebody’s got to do it.”

Lipton started to strap in as the helicopter’s engines came to life and the main rotor began to turn, but a runner from Operations came across the deck to the open hatch and motioned for him.

“Stand by,” Lipton shouted up to the pilots, and he scrambled over to the hatch.

“Commander Rheinholtz wanted you to have the latest on Brightstar, sir,” the rating shouted over the noise.

“Is he on the island?”

“Yes, sir. Apparently he’d been holed up at a waterfront bar for the past couple of hours.”

“What’s he doing there?”

“Unknown, sir.

Lipton thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Get word to us the moment he moves.”

“Aye, aye, sir. And good hunting.”

McGarvey sat across from a very well-dressed man by the name of Constantine Theotokis, whom Karamanlis had identified as his uncle. Theotokis was a member of the Greek Mafia, and Santorini was

his island in almost every sense of the word.

During the couple of hours they’d been together at the crowded, smoky taverna, a constant stream of runners came to their corner table with messages for him which they whispered into his ear. Afterwards he’d send them off on other errands.

“These people you seek are almost certainly the very same ones who have done business here previously,” Theotokis said. He fingered the black diamond stick pin in his tie. “Unfortunately they are not on the island at this moment.”

“They will arrive by sea,” McGarvey said.

“Of course they will.”

“Soon. Probably this evening. Late.”

Theotokis nodded sagely.

“Will they land here or at Athinos? Or, considering what they are bringing with them, is there another less conspicuous place for them to come ashore? Let’s say in a dinghy?”

Again the Greek gangster nodded wisely. “They have taken a deconsecrated church in the north. It is on a cliff above the grottoes within site of Oia and the volcanic island of Akra. The only good approach is by sea. Overland…”He spread his hands.

“It is a very difficult track, not to be advised in the darkness.”

“But one could wait with a small boat.”

“Yes. Such boats are available. Of course one would need a guide, perhaps two. They would have to be… paid.”

“I understand,” McGarvey said. “They would have to be discreet men. And men of a certain talent.”

Theotokis mentioned a price. It was high, but it would guarantee professionalism.

Yet there was something bothersome about the arrangement. About Karamanlis and his uncle. About the entire setup.

Chapter 48

The fishing vessel Dhodhoni, her lights off, bobbed in the gentle swells off the protected east coast of the island.

A few miles away they could make out a few lights above the almost sheer cliffs that rose in some spots five hundred feet straight out of the sea. In all other directions was darkness, the blackness of the sky merging with the blackness of the water.

Theotokis had suggested Karamanlis’ boat, and had sent along a younger, darker, even more ruggedly built Greek by the name of Evangolos Papagos as crew.

It was nearing one in the morning, and they had been waiting just offshore since before midnight. So far they’d seen nothing. The three of them were in the wheelhouse; Karamanlis standing at the helm, McGarvey with his back against the door, and Papagos insolently facing him from the corner.

“How will we know this boat of yours?” Karamanlis asked, scanning the pitch-black sea to the north. They’d seen only one other boat since Thira, a freighter well south and heading into the open Mediterranean.

“If, as your uncle said, there is a route to the old church from here, then they’ll show up sooner or later.”

“Maybe you are being tricked,” Papagos rumbled, his voice deep. He was staring out to sea.

“She’ll probably be running without lights,” McGarvey continued. “At least until Spranger and the others get off.”

Papagos looked up. “What is your quarrel with Ernst Spranger?”

“You know him?” McGarvey asked, tensing.

“He’s an old friend.” The Greek grinned broadly, showing nicotine-stained teeth.

“Not to worry,” Karamanlis was quick to explain. “He and my uncle have had a falling out. If it is the East German you are hunting, then we will help you.”

The entire thing was a setup, McGarvey understood at last. Spranger had been one step ahead of him the entire way. He’d taken Elizabeth and Kathleen to lure McGarvey out of Japan, and then had marked the trail all the way here. To what?

To a killing ground, of course. Somewhere on the island, in the end, if he survived that long.

He focused on the two Greeks again. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth? Maybe you’re working for Spranger. The Germans always had a way with you Greeks. A fatal attraction on your part.”

Papagos’s jaw tightened. “You will find out very soon,” he said.

Karamanlis said something to him in Greek that McGarvey didn’t catch.

“Out there,” Papagos said in English. “Two points to starboard.”

McGarvey didn’t bother to look. “You knew it would be here.” He reached into his pocket, his fingers curling around the grip of his pistol.

Papagos shrugged, his eyes going to McGarvey’s gun hand. “It’s why we came. You hired us to intercept them. Well, we have. They’re just out there. Dark, as you predicted.”

“They must already be on the island,” Karamanlis said. “We must have missed them.”

“We’ll check the boat,” McGarvey said.

Karamanlis started to protest, but Papagos cut him off. “Naturally. Maybe something went wrong, maybe they’re still aboard.”

Again Karamanlis said something to him in Greek, and Papagos stiffened, his entire attitude suddenly changing.

McGarvey took out his gun and pointed it at them, Karamanlis’ eyes going nervously from the gun to the starboard windows.

“We’ll go over there now,” McGarvey said.

“Why is it you are pulling a gun on us?” Papagos asked. “Don’t you have any trust?”

“It may be a trap over there, you know,” Karamanlis said nervously.

“Yes, it might be.” McGarvey cocked the hammer.

“Do as he says, Spyros,” Papagos said, a cunning look coming into his eyes. “And be quick about it. Let’s help Mr. McGarvey find what he’s looking for.”

The Thaxos showed no lights, nor was there any movement on her decks. She was drifting slowly to the southwest, and there was no way of telling how long she’d been left apparently abandoned, but her portside boarding ladder was down and one of her lifeboats was missing from its davits.

“She’s been abandoned,” Karamanlis said, as they bumped up against the boarding ladder.

He put the engine in neutral.

“We’ll go aboard and see,” McGarvey said, motioning with the gun. He opened the door and backed out on deck. No sounds came from the bigger ship. No machinery noises.

Nothing.

Karamanlis and Papagos followed him out of the wheelhouse, and he stepped aside so that they could tie a line to the bigger ship then precede him up the ladder.

The cargo vessel was set to blow, there was little doubt in McGarvey’s mind about it. That was what Karamanlis had told Papagos. And that was why they were both nervous.

But so long as they didn’t jump ship there was a possibility some time remained.

He had to make sure that Kathleen and Elizabeth hadn’t been left behind. It was the kind of monstrous joke that Spranger liked most.

On deck a man dressed in dungarees and a watch cap was crumpled in a heap half in and half out of a hatch. Blood had pooled behind his head. He’d obviously been shot to death.

“Spranger’s work,” McGarvey said. “The rest of the crew are probably dead as well.”

“He’s probably planted explosives,” Karamanlis said.

“Then we’d better hurry,” McGarvey said. “We’ll start with the bridge.”

“What are you looking for?” Papagos asked.

“I’ll tell you when I find it. But we’re going to check every space aboard this ship before we leave. So if you’re worried about being blown out of the water, I suggest you get on with it.”

Karamanlis and Papagos exchanged glances, and for a long moment neither of them moved, until suddenly Papagos ducked through the hatch and was gone.

McGarvey started after the man, but Karamanlis shoved him aside and darted for the rail.

“Stop,” McGarvey shouted, regaining his balance, and he snapped off a shot striking the Greek in the left leg and sending him sprawling.

Papagos fired from somewhere inside the ship, the bullet ricocheting off the hatch.

McGarvey reared back at the same time Karamanlis pulled out his pistol and fired.

The shot smacked into the bulkhead inches from McGarvey’s left shoulder, leaving him no other choice but to fire back, his shot catching the Greek in the head just below the right eye socket.

The six-man team of SEALS rode in one rubber raft powered by a highly muffled eighty horsepower outboard. The boat was big enough for them and the two hostages they hoped to free, but no larger. There were no plans to bring anyone else out alive.

They had made all possible speed from their position well to the north the moment they’d received radar vectors on the stationary object just off the eastern coast of the island, and an update on McGarvey’s position showing him converging on the same target. But they’d badly guessed Spranger’s plans, and the mad dash across had taken nearly thirty minutes.

“Definitely a muzzle flash,” Ensign Tyrell said. “Small caliber.”

“Do you see anyone on deck?” Lipton asked. They were still a half mile out, but Tyrell was studying the ship through a starlight scope which showed figures as ghostly images in all but a total absence of ambient light.

“There was a movement just behind the flash, but the decks are clear now.” Tyrell looked up. “How the hell did he get here before us?”

“They said he was a sharp sonofabitch. And the man is well motivated.”

“I’ll say,” Tyrell agreed. “But this isn’t going to make our job easier.”

“No,” Lipton said, tight-lipped. “No it won’t.”

Chapter 49

The cell in which they’d been placed was small and very cold. A tiny window in one wall was dark. Kathleen lay on one of the cots, still only semiconscious, but Elizabeth sat on the stone floor in the corner, her knees hugged to her chest. Her head was spinning from the aftermath of the drugs she’d been given since Grenoble, with the almost total lack of food or water, and with what the woman-Liese Egk-had done to her aboard the boat.

She shuddered, not so much because of the damp cold, but because of what had happened.

She felt dirty and used; as if she had been forced to age a hundred years overnight.

Yet there was enough defiance in her that she could fantasize about what would happen to her captors once her father got here.

“Keep your head down, because I’ll be coming in swinging,” he would say.

She could see him dressed in black, darting silently down a dark corridor, moving like a deadly jungle animal that no one could resist.

He’d have to be warned about the woman. It was the only trap they could possibly set for him, and yet in her heart of hearts she knew that her father would see through Liese Egk. He would recognize the woman for what she was.

“I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve been around. I’ve seen a few things.”

In the end the Germans would be dead, Armond’s murder avenged. And she could almost feel her father’s strength flowing into her as he led her and her mother away. It would be morning. The sun would be brightly shining, warm on her shoulders and head.

Her mother said something, but her voice seemed muffled and indistinct, and for a moment Elizabeth was confused. In her fantasies only her father ever spoke.

She remembered her father from when she was a young girl, but lately she’d had a difficult time visualizing exactly how it had been. At times she wasn’t certain if she was recalling genuine memories or her fantasies.

“Elizabeth,” Kathleen said thickly.

Elizabeth looked up out of her thoughts. Her mother had rolled over. She was clutching the thin blanket up to her chin but she was still shivering. “Are you all right, mother?”

“What’s happening? Where are we?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Elizabeth grunted, getting painfully to her feet. She had to stand for a few seconds, holding onto the stone wall for support lest she lose her balance and fall.

“My God, what happened to your head?” Kathleen asked in shock.

Elizabeth raised her fingers to her bald skull. Already a light stubble had begun to appear. “Your head is the same. They wanted us to look like hospital patients.”

“But why?”

“So that they could take us across the border without question.”

“We’re not in Switzerland?” the older woman asked, panicking a little. She seemed very frail and weak.

“We’re in Greece, I think,” Elizabeth said. “The island of Santorini. Or at least I hope we are.” She tottered over to the window.

It was pitch-black outside, and she couldn’t make out a thing. Even the dim light from a tiny bulb in the ceiling overpowered her night vision.

“What’s out there,” her mother asked anxiously.

“I can’t see yet,” Elizabeth said. She climbed up on the edge of her cot so that she could reach the bulb, and gingerly unscrewed it, plunging the room into darkness.

“Elizabeth?” her mother cried.

“It’s all right, mother. I just want to look outside. I’ll put the light back on in a minute.”

“But I can’t see. I’m frightened, and I’m cold.”

Elizabeth felt her way across to her mother’s cot and sat down, taking her mother’s hands in hers. She leaned in close and lowered her voice in case someone was standing on the other side of the wooden door listening to them.

“Father will be coming to rescue us very soon,” she whispered.

Kathleen’s grip tightened. “How do you know?”

“I left a clue for him back at the chalet. In the fireplace. I’m sure he’s found it already and is on his way with help.”

“What kind of clue? What do you mean?”

“Don’t worry about it. Father will know what it means, and he’ll come for us.”

“But that’s what they want. Elizabeth, what have you done?”

“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked, a sudden sick feeling coming to her stomach.

“I came to bring you back to Washington. One of your father’s friends warned me that he was in danger. That we all were in danger.”

“Daddy’s working for the CIA again. Is that it, mother?”

“I think so. These people want to trick him into coming here so they can kill him.”

“He’s too good for them.”

“He’s only one man, my darling. And there’s too many of them. They’re too well organized.”

“But before, back in Switzerland, you said that he would come for us.”

“I know, but I was wrong for wanting it.”

Elizabeth pulled her hand away and got up. Her mother was a contradiction. First she was weak, a simpering idiot, and then she was suddenly strong. What was happening?

Elizabeth went to the window, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. It was the drugs and everything that had been done to them that made her confused. That made them both confused, and say things they didn’t mean.

At first she wasn’t able to make out a thing; just as amorphous blackness, a featureless nothing. But then she thought she was seeing a movement far below. A white, almost ghostly swirl that lasted for a second or more, but then was gone.

“Elizabeth?” her mother called, but she ignored her.

The white swirl came again, rushing inward, far below, until suddenly she understood that she was seeing waves breaking on the rocks. The room they were in was perched on the edge of a hill, or a sheer cliff that plunged down to the sea. They were in a castle of some sort. A medieval keep. Perhaps a Roman or Greek ruin.

She was about to turn away when a tiny flash of light directly below caught her eye, and she sucked her breath.

Someone was outside, just beneath her window. Father?

She searched with her fingers in the darkness for a latch, and finding one, fumbled it open, breaking two of her fingernails against the stonework.

The window opened inward, a rush of fresh air bringing the odor of the sea into the room. Standing on tiptoes she was just able to look out over the edge. Barely ten feet below her a man dressed in black dangled from a series of ropes. He was concentrating on doing something directly in front of him. It seemed as if he was stuffing something into a big crack in the stones.

She almost called to him, but something made her hold back. It wasn’t her father. He was the wrong build, his hair the wrong color. Even in the darkness she could see that.

He switched on a small flashlight for just a second or two, shielding it from the sea, but not from Elizabeth’s view, and kept it long enough for her to see what he was doing.

She pulled back into the room, her heart pounding. The man had been attaching wires to whatever it was he’d stuffed into the crack in the wall.

Wires leading to explosives that when they blew would send this entire side of the castle into the sea far below.

Chapter 50

McGarvey stood just within the hatchway that Papagos had disappeared through, and held his breath as he listened for a sound, any sound. But the ship was dead. Nothing moved, not even a whisper of air.

This entire thing had been a setup from the moment he’d shown up in Piraeus looking for a boat to bring him out to Santorini. Spranger had anticipated his every move and had stayed at least one step ahead of him since France.

“Kathleen.” he shouted. “Elizabeth?” He stepped to the opposite side of the corridor, flattening himself against the bulkhead in the darkness.

There was no answer. No cry, no pistol shot, no movement. Nothing. But Papagos could be anywhere. There were a thousand places aboard for him to hide in the darkness.

A thousand ambushes.

The question was, were Kathleen and Elizabeth aboard now? Was it Spranger’s intentions to let them go down with the ship, knowing that an enraged, out-of-control McGarvey would come after him? Or was this just another of the man’s obstacles before the final confrontation?

Straight down the corridor, about midships, a stairway led up to the bridge deck.

He was going to have to search the ship for them.

Now. Immediately. Which meant he was going to have to start taking chances.

Tightening his grip on his pistol, McGarvey darted down the corridor and took the stairs two at a time. At the top he halted for just a second.

A narrow landing led to an open hatch onto the bridge. No lights illuminated any of the instruments or gauges, and only a very dim light filtered in from outside.

A figure of a man was lying on the deck. He was dead, there was little doubt of it.

All the crew would be dead, and the hatches locked in the open position so that when the sand kickers blew out the ship’s bottom she’d sink in a couple of minutes, attracting no attention from shore.

Something moved below, on the main deck. McGarvey turned and looked down the stairs, but he couldn’t see a thing. He’d heard a noise, lightly, metal against metal, perhaps.

But there was nothing now.

Papagos trying to get off the ship?

McGarvey started down the stairs, and halfway to the deck he dropped low so that he could see into the corridor. The figure of a bulky man was outlined against the open hatch, his back to McGarvey. Something outside, on deck or out on the water was apparently holding his interest.

He backed up and turned around as McGarvey came the rest of the way down, and he stopped short. It was Papagos. He held what looked like a Russian Makarov automatic loosely at his side, the muzzle pointed down.

“Your wife and daughter are not aboard,” he said. He was clearly agitated. There was no insolence about him now.

“Who’s out there?”

“I don’t know. I thought I saw something.”

“Is that why you didn’t jump ship?”

“Did you bring someone with you?” Papagos asked, his eyes narrowing. He looked like a cornered rat getting ready to spring.

“I didn’t bring anybody. It could be Spranger.”

“He wouldn’t come here now.”

“This boat is going to blow up. When?”

“I don’t know. I swear to God, I don’t know.”

“Where are my wife and daughter, if they’re not aboard now?”

“On the island. In the monastery.” Papagos nervously glanced over his shoulder.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You must believe me,” Papagos pleaded. He came forward a step and McGarvey raised his pistol.

“Put your gun down.”

“Kill me and you’ll never see your wife and daughter again. He’s crazy. He’ll kill them first, and then he’ll kill you. He means to do it. He’s got the power, even more than Constantine does. But I can help you. I know what he’s up to.”

Something bumped against the hull on the portside of the ship. The Dhodhoni, or a distraction? McGarvey, still holding his gun on the Greek, stepped farther back into the darkness.

“What are you doing?” Papagos whispered urgently.

“Put your gun down, and you might come out of this alive,” McGarvey whispered back.

If it was Spranger’s people out there coming back to the ship for some reason, Papagos would provide a brief delay. Possibly long enough for McGarvey to gain the advantage.

It would also mean that this ship wasn’t set to blow after all.

“Fuck you,” Papagos snarled, and he spun on his heel, darting for the open hatch as a black-suited figure appeared on deck.

The Greek cried out and got off one shot that staggered the man in the hatchway, but did not knock him down. McGarvey figured he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Then three silenced shots were fired down the length of the thwartships corridor from the starboard side, slamming into Papagos’ back and head. He fell forward on his face, dead.

A second later another black-suited figure rushed down the corridor and as he passed, McGarvey reached out and yanked the man back into the shadows, putting the muzzle of his Walther to the man’s temple.

“Tell your people to back off,” McGarvey said in German. “Or I will kill you now.

Do it!”

The man McGarvey was holding didn’t move a muscle. He was obviously a well-disciplined professional.

“Mr. McGarvey,” someone called in English from the darkness above on the stairs.

“I am pointing my pistol at your head. I want you to release Frank, and step away from him.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Ed Lipton. I’m a U.S. Navy lieutenant. We’re SEALS here to rescue your wife and daughter.”

Spranger? the thought immediately occurred. McGarvey wouldn’t put this past the man.

“How did you find me?” he called.

“The walkie-talkie you were given in Paris was modified to include an EPIRB. Do you know what this device is?”

“Yes,” McGarvey said. “Who gave it to me?”

“Mr. Littel on Mr. Lynch’s instructions,” Lipton answered.

“What else have you been told about me?”

“That you’re one tenacious son of a bitch,” the man McGarvey was holding said. “My name is Tyrell, and if you don’t mind I’d like to be set free. My back is killing me.”

McGarvey moved the gun away from Tyrell’s head, released his grip around the man’s neck and stepped out into the middle of the corridor. He was covered from the hatches at both ends of the corridor, as well as from Lipton on the stairs.

“Any sign of your wife and daughter,” Tyrell asked.

“No, but I didn’t have the chance to look,” McGarvey said. “I think this ship is about to blow.”

“Then we’d better hurry,” Lipton said, coming down the stairs. “Frank, take Bryan, Tony and Bob, and start with the bilges and engine room. Jules and McGarvey will come with me on this deck and above.”

“Everything is set here,” Diirenmatt said, laying the remote control detonator on the table.

Spranger had been looking out to sea in the direction he knew the Thaxos was lying, although in the darkness he could not actually see the ship. He turned.

“Very well. Who is watching the landing area?”

“Bruno.”

“Take Walther and Otto with you and join him. Once the ship blows we’ll watch with the starlight scopes.”

“How long do you want to wait before we get out of here?” Durenmatt asked. He was a very large bear of a man. His specialty with the STASI had been killing men with his bare hands, slowly and with great relish.

“However long it takes for Mr. McGarvey to come to us,” Spranger said turning back to the open window.

“He’s probably dead out there, or else he will be soon.”

“I don’t think so, Peter. No, I think Mr. McGarvey is more resourceful than that.”

“We can stand off, and when he comes up here … if he comes up here… we can blow this place.”

“No,” Spranger said with finality. “I want to see his face when he knows he’s lost.”

“Insanity,” Durenmatt said, half under his breath.

Spranger looked at the man, his left eyebrow slightly arched, his lips pursed. “Peter,”

he said softly. “If you ever talk to me like that again, I shall have you nailed to a post and skinned alive. Is that clear?”

“Jawohl, Herr General,” Durenmatt said, chastised. Even he realized that he had gone too far. “I am sorry.”

“See to your duties, then.”

“Yes, sir,” the bigger man said. He clicked his heels and left.

Liese came in from the adjacent room that had once been a small chapel. She had overheard everything, and she was smiling.

“What if he doesn’t lose, Ernst?” she asked. “Perhaps he’s coming here not only to free his women, but also to see the look on your face when you know that you’ve lost.”

Spranger didn’t bother rising to her bait.

After a moment or two she chuckled, the sound low and soft. “How long before the ship explodes?”

“Less than three minutes,” Spranger said, and he glanced back at Liese headed for the door. “Where are you going?”

“I want to see the look on Elizabeth’s face. She’s more interesting to me.”

“Stay away from them.”

“No,” Liese said flatly. “We’re going to kill them in any event. Perhaps I’ll do the mother now. I’d like to see the little girl’s reaction.”

A slight flush had come to Liese’s cheeks.

“You’re disgusting.”

She laughed out loud. “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”

Chapter 51

“I count six dead so far,” Lipton said coming out of the crew’s dining area. “Every one of them has been shot in the back of the head at close range. This STASI outfit are a bunch of bastards.”

McGarvey was at the end of the corridor at the stairwell which led to the lower decks and engine room. “There’s at least one more on the bridge. I think you’d better get your people off this ship before it’s too late.”

“They know what they’re doing,” Lipton said crossing the corridor and poking his head into the galley.

“So does Spranger.”

Chief Petty Officer Jules Joslow came around the corner. “All clear in the crews’

quarters,” he reported.

“Any sign of the hostages?” Lipton asked.

“Negative. If they were ever aboard they left no traces that I could see.”

“They’re on the island,” McGarvey said, one ear cocked at the stairway.

“You get that from the one we neutralized?”

“He said they’d been taken to the monastery where Spranger’s waiting for me to show up. I think he was telling the truth.”

“Spranger has got to know that you came out here…“

Lipton said, but then he realized that he and his men had probably walked into the middle of a trap that had been set for McGarvey. A trap that McGarvey was expected to escape from. And for the first time Lipton began to get the feeling that he and his people might be out of their league here.

“Lieutenant,” McGarvey prompted.

“Right,” Lipton said. “I think it’s time we get the hell out of here. There’s no one left alive.” He turned to Joslow. “Get our raft away from this ship. I’ll pull Frank and the others out.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Joslow said.

“Cut the fishing boat loose too,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to need her.”

Lipton hesitated for just an instant, but McGarvey disappeared down the stairwell.

“Do it,” he told Joslow, and he hurried after McGarvey, a sinking feeling in his stomach that somebody was about to get hurt.

It was pitch-black below. Lipton pulled out his flashlight and switched it on, just catching a glimpse of McGarvey’s back rounding a corner on the stairs one deck below.

The man was fifteen years older than the oldest SEAL on his team, but he was just as quick, if not quicker, than any of them.

Lipton followed him, nearly stumbling over another body at the foot of the stairs.

Like the others this one too had been shot in the head at close range. He wore greasy coveralls. He’d probably been one of the engine room crew.

A flashlight beam bobbed from an open hatch aft at the end of a corridor. Lipton started back when a series of four quick explosions from somewhere below rocked the ship, sending him sprawling.

When he scrambled back to his feet the light he’d seen in the open hatch was gone, and he could hear water rushing into the ship. A lot of water!

“Mission red! Mission red!” he shouted the emergency recall signal as he headed in a dead run for the open hatch.

Already the Thaxos was beginning to list hard to port. It would only be a matter of minutes, perhaps less, before she rolled over. They’d all be trapped down here with little or no chance for survival.

Bryan Wasley and Tony Reid, soaked with seawater and diesel oil, clambered through the open hatch just as Lipton reached it.

“The bottom’s gone,” Wasley gasped. He was shook up, but neither of them appeared to be injured.

“Get out of here,” Lipton ordered, shoving them aside.

“Frank is down there with McGarvey.”

“What about Bob?” Lipton demanded.

“He just disappeared,” Wasley answered.

“Go,” Lipton snouted and he braced himself against the list and shined the beam of his flashlight down into the big engine room.

Water was pouring in from the port and starboard bulkheads and from somewhere aft.

Whoever had placed the charges knew what they were doing. There was no possibility of saving the ship.

Frank Tyrell was hanging on the ladder about eight feet below the open hatch. Already the water had risen to the rung he was standing on, and it was coming up fast.

“Frank,” Lipton shouted down to him over the waterfall roar.

Tyrell, who was covered in diesel fuel and engine oil, looked up. “Get away!” he hollered.

“Where’s Bob?”

“He got caught on the way up. McGarvey has gone down for him.”

“Christ,” Lipton swore, and was starting to swing out onto the ladder when Tyrell shouted.

“Here! He’s got him!”

Lipton shined his light on the water as McGarvey surfaced with a sputtering Bob Schade.

Tyrell grabbed the man by the arm but Schade shook it off.

“I’m okay,” he shouted, coughing. “Get the hell out of here. Go, go-go!”

Already the water was up to Tyrell’s waist and rising even faster. The ship would go in less than a minute.

He scrambled up the ladder and at the top Lipton hauled him through the hatch. “Jules is off with the raft and the fishing vessel. Don’t hang around.”

“Aye, aye,” Tyrell said, and he headed down the corridor for the stairwell.

A moment later Schade hauled himself up, and Lipton helped him through.

“Come on,” Lipton shouted, but Schade turned back.

“Mr. McGarvey is coming,” he answered, and McGarvey’s bulky form appeared in the hatchway. Schade helped him the rest of the way up.

“Is that everybody?” McGarvey asked.

“Yes, sir,” Schade said. He was a solidly built twenty-seven-year-old.

“Then what the hell are we waiting for? I don’t want to go swimming down here again.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Schade said, and Lipton led the way back up as the ship continued to list to port.

At the top, the angle of the list was so severe they couldn’t make it to the high side to starboard. Instead they slid down the corridor and had to dive under the water in order to clear the hatch to the outside, and then swim another thirty yards or so to make sure they would be well clear of the ship’s superstructure when she rolled.

Lipton broke the surface and turned back in time to see the ship roll completely over and immediately start down by the stern. McGarvey had already surfaced and he was watching the distant shoreline of the island, not the ship, although it was nearly impossible to see much of anything. The weather had completely closed in over the past few minutes and a light drizzle had begun to fall.

Tyrell and the others were treading water a dozen yards away, and Schade remained a few feet behind and to McGarvey’s left.

Lipton swam over to them. “Let’s go.”

The Dhodhdni was a hundred yards off to the northeast, the rubber raft in tow, and she was beginning to swing around toward them.

“Just a second, sir,” Schade answered. He too was watching the shoreline.

Lipton followed their gaze, but he couldn’t make out much of anything, except that the island seemed to be a darker mass that rose up out of the near-blackness of the sea.

“There,” McGarvey said softly. He studied the shoreline for another moment or two, then turned around.

“What is it?” Lipton asked. “I didn’t see a thing.”

“There was a light showing high up on one of the cliffs.”

“So?”

“It went out,” McGarvey said.

Lipton shook his head, not understanding, but then his attention was diverted back to the ship. The bows were rising very fast now, up out of the water. For a long second or two the Thaxos seemed to hang on her tail, until she slipped quietly beneath the sea, the waves and eddy currents washing past the men, bouncing them in the water.

For a very long time, it seemed, the night was absolutely still, until they began to hear the hiss of the falling rain and in the distance the faint burble of the Dhodhoni’s engine turning over at idle speed as she headed toward them.

On McGarvey’s insistence they kept the Dhodhdni between them and the island as they boarded her, which further puzzled Lipton. But for the moment he was willing to go along with almost anything. His respect was growing by leaps and bounds. He’d been told about McGarvey, but nothing he’d heard had prepared him for the actual man. Besides, they owed him.

“No lights,” McGarvey whispered. “And keep out of sight.”

“What are you talking about?” Lipton asked.

“Spranger’s people on the island were waiting for the Thaxos to go down, and now they’re watching us through starlight scopes.”

“Shit,” Lipton swore half under his breath. He should have seen it earlier. “The lights on the monastery went out so that they could use the night optics. It proved that they were watching.”

“That’s what I figure,” McGarvey said. “But they couldn’t have seen you or your people dressed the way you are, and so long as they don’t spot a lot of movement aboard this boat they’ll never suspect that you’re here.”

“But they’ll know that someone survived. Why not the one we neutralized?”

“There were two of them,” McGarvey said. “And by now they would have radioed their mission accomplished.”

“So Spranger knows that you’re alive.”

McGarvey nodded.

Lipton and Tyrell exchanged glances. They, along with McGarvey and Schade, were huddled on the bridge, Joslow still at the wheel. The engine was at dead idle, and they were barely moving against the swells.

“It doesn’t look as if we’ll be able to do much for you in that case, Mr. McGarvey,”

Lipton said. “My orders specifically forbid me to engage in any action on Greek soil.

We cannot go ashore. And considering what has already happened, and the fact the Spranger has set a trap for you, I would suggest you go no further. Washington can handle it diplomatically.”

“It’s my wife and daughter on that island, Lieutenant,” McGarvey said mildly, but the expression on his face, in his eyes, made Lipton shiver involuntarily.

“I understand, but I won’t be able to help you.”

“Can you communicate with Washington via your ship? Or did you come in from a base on the mainland?”

“We’re off the Nimitz group just southwest of Crete.”

“Have they got a LAMPS III up for you?”

Again Lipton and Tyrell exchanged glances. The man knew a lot for someone no longer on the regular payroll. But then to survive as long as he had, McGarvey would have to have the knowledge.

“Yes, sir.”

“Get a message to Langley that Spranger and K-1 are holding my wife and daughter on the island in the monastery… give them map coordinates if you would. Tell them I’m returning to the port of Thira, and from there overland to the monastery.”

“Sir?” Schade asked, but Lipton motioned him off.

“What can we do?” Lipton asked.

“Stand by out here in case they try to make a run for it.”

Lipton thought it out for a second or two. They’d have to stay on station probably until dawn. In the rain they would be wet and miserable. But he nodded.

“It’s going to take me a couple hours to get ashore, and maybe that long to make it back to the monastery. In the meantime your people can give you updates on my position. I’ll carry the walkie-talkie with me.”

“As soon as you’re in position we’ll start looking for the fireworks.”

“Something like that,” McGarvey replied, smiling wryly.

“I’d like to come with you, sir,” Schade said.

“Negative,” Lipton said immediately.

“Sir, Mr. McGarvey will have big odds against him on the island. I’ll leave my ID, and go as a civilian. I’ll take full responsibility.”

“Goddamnit, Bobby. I’ve got my orders.”

“I’ll go AWOL if necessary, sir.”

“I’ll do it alone,” McGarvey cut him off. “It’s my fight, not yours.” “You heard the man,” Lipton said. He stuck out his hand and McGarvey took it. “Good luck.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant, but I prefer to make my own.”

Chapter 52

The narrow stairway that led five hundred feet down to the stone dock from the monastery had been cut from the living rock late in the seventeenth century, and countless pairs of sandal-shod feet had worn grooves into the steps. It followed the inside of a huge crack in the cliff face that wasn’t visible from the sea.

Durenmatt and the other three men were huddled out of the rain just within a ten-yard-wide overhang. A starlight scope set up on a tripod was trained out to sea.

“Any sign of him yet?” Spranger asked when he reached the bottom.

The four men looked up, startled. They hadn’t heard him coming. Nobody said a thing.

“How far off is he?” Spranger asked. He was excited now that he was about to come face-to-face with McGarvey.

“Something’s gone wrong, General,” Durenmatt said worriedly.

“What are you talking about?”

“The Thaxos went down, but the fishing vessel is heading away from, not toward us.”

“Impossible!”

“See for yourself, Herr General,” Lessing said, stepping away from the starlight scope.

Spranger hesitated for a moment. He didn’t want to believe what he was hearing.

He couldn’t believe it.

McGarvey’s ex-wife and daughter were here. The man knew they were here. He had to respond. He had to come here to rescue them.

“Nothing from the boat?” he asked.

“If Karamanlis and that other fool had been successful we would have heard from them by now,” Durenmatt said. He glanced out toward the dark horizon. “If that sonofabitch is going for help we’ll be cornered here.”

“The chopper is ready to fly.”

“Pardon me, General, but if the CIA puts pressure on the Greek government we might be grounded.”

Spranger forced himself to calm down. This had become too personal, he decided. McGarvey was not the dark man, he was nothing more than an ex-CIA field officer. A good one, an assassin, but just another man for all of it. An impediment to the main plan, nothing more. And he would be eliminated tonight, one way or another.

Looking through the starlight scope he felt just a moment’s unease, recalling his conversation with Yegenni Radvonska in Rome. “I’d go one-on-one with him,” Spranger had told the KGB resident. “You would lose,” the man said.

At first he could make out little or nothing in the drizzle and mist.

“To the left,” Lessing prompted at his shoulder.

Then he had it. The Dhodhdni was definitely heading away from them, back toward the north point of the island.

Spranger slowly swept the powerful night-vision scope across the open water to the approximate position where the Thorns had gone down in two hundred feet of water.

The scope was Russian-made, but the light-intensifying electronic circuitry had come from M.I.T.

There was nothing to be seen in the darkness. But the scope was just a machine and could not perform miracles. McGarvey could be out there in the water, perhaps in a rubber raft, heading this way.

He swept the scope back toward the departing Dhodhoni, which had altered course to clear the headland. Somebody had to be piloting it.

McGarvey was returning to Thira.

Spranger straightened up. “He’s returning to port,” he said.

“Let’s go to the chopper now, General,” Diirenmatt said.

“Are you frightened of this man? All of you, against one man?”

“After what the Russians told us, and what he did in Tokyo, and now…“ Durenmatt let it trail off.

“He’s going for help, Herr General,” Lessing said.

Everyone was looking at Spranger. He shook his head. “He won’t ask for help. He’ll show up in Thira, and then come here by land.”

“Call the port. Warn Theotokis.”

“I think not,” Spranger smiled and shook his head. “The Greek owns this island. He’s told us often enough. Let’s leave it to him. If he kills McGarvey for us, well and good. If not, we’ll do the job ourselves when he shows up here.”

Durenmatt started to protest, but Spranger held him off.

“He will come here, Peter. Tonight. And we will kill him. I don’t want a big fuss made in town.”

Again Durenmatt looked out to sea. “The sooner we are off this island and safely in Athens where we can disperse, the better I will feel.”

“We’ll all feel better when we’ve taken care of this irritation,” Spranger said, and he ignored the odd look the other man gave him. “I want one man down here, and the rest up top.” He too glanced out to the dark sea. “He’s received a two-or three-hour stay of execution, and given us a rest, nothing more.”

The only light in the small cell came from the open door to the corridor. Liese Egk, wearing a dark, one-piece nylon jumpsuit, the front zipper pulled low, leaned against the doorframe, an indolent expression on her face. She’d been standing there, unmoving, unspeaking, for the past ten minutes, and Kathleen, huddled on her bunk, had become agitated. Elizabeth, however, standing by the small window, understood that the woman wanted to provoke them. It was a game.

“What do you want?” Kathleen asked in a shaky voice, finally breaking the silence.

Liese grinned, her teeth perfectly even, dazzlingly white. “Your daughter. She and I are lovers, didn’t you know?”

Kathleen’s hands went to her mouth. She was shivering.

“The drugs have cleared out of my system,” Elizabeth said, matching the German woman’s grin. It was bravado, but the gesture made her feel a little better.

Liese’s smile broadened. “I’m glad to hear it, little girl. I like a partner with, what do you call it? With spunk.”

“You’ll need to kill me first.”

“Elizabeth!” her mother cried.

“Not you,” Liese said. She took a nine-inch stiletto from under her jumpsuit at the nape of her neck. “But if I killed your mother…

If I threatened to carve my name on her chest then you might cooperate. Maybe?”

“My God,” Kathleen screeched. “Are you a monster? Are you crazy?”

Liese eyed her calmly. “Yes. I think I probably am both, and more. So, you see, I wouldn’t hesitate to carry out my threat.”

Elizabeth stepped away from the window, placing herself between her mother and Liese.

“You’ll have to go through me first.”

“Little girl, you can’t imagine how easy that would be for me.”

Spranger entered the great hall section of the father superior’s residence and was headed for the stairs to the dormitory area where the women were being held when he heard his name being called. The sound came from a distance, distorted.

He stopped in mid-stride and turned around, cocking his head to listen.

“Spranger, I’m coming for you.”

His walkie-talkie lay on the table, its processing light winking red.

“Spranger, do you copy? I’m coming for you.”

It was McGarvey. Spranger cautiously approached the table. He’d never heard the man’s voice, he’d never met the American, but he knew it was McGarvey. He started to reach out, but his hand stopped almost of its own volition.

“Do you hear me, you son of a bitch? I’m on my way.”

Spranger picked up the walkie-talkie and keyed the talk switch. “I’m waiting,” he said softly, and he hit the transmit button.

Chapter 53

Any lingering doubts McGarvey may have entertained about Kathleen and Elizabeth being on the island left him with Spranger’s two words. He resisted the urge to get back on the walkie-talkie and warn the man what would happen if any harm came to them.

The German knew of him; undoubtedly he still had connections with the KGB, which maintained an extensive file.

Impatiently he advanced the throttle all the way forward to its stop, and the fishing boat surged ahead, her bows crashing into the rising seas as they rounded the north point.

He’d been stupid to radio them. By now the Germans would have to know that he was on his way back to Thira. They had undoubtedly been watching from the monastery.

They would warn Theotokis, who would be preparing a reception committee on the docks.

For a few moments he toyed with Lipton’s suggestion that he stand off and call for help. Spranger and his people could be isolated on the north end of the island. They would not be able to escape.

But Spranger was capable of revenge. He would not allow himself to be captured, and before he was cut down he would make certain that Kathleen and Elizabeth died.

McGarvey’s jaw tightened. It would do no good to send Lipton’s assault force onto the island. Spranger had set this trap to lure McGarvey out of Japan and kill him. This would be a one-on-one fight. Which suited McGarvey just fine.

Ten minutes later, the seas calmed as he came into the temporary lee of a small uninhabited volcanic island to the west, and McGarvey lashed the wheel amidships so that the boat would maintain its course unattended for a minute or so.

Retrieving his leather overnight bag from a corner of the wheelhouse, he took out a spare clip of ammunition and reloaded his Walther.

Next he took the walkie-talkie out onto the narrow starboard walkway and without hesitation tossed it overboard. There would be no farther communication between him and the STASI leader, nor would the Agency be able to track him any longer.

He was on his own, and it was better like this. “Excess baggage is the bane of the field officer.” It was axiomatic.

Back inside, he caught a glimpse of Thira’s lights to the southeast. He unlashed the wheel, made sure the throttle was all the way forward, and steered directly for the port, every muscle in his body, every fiber of his being girding for the upcoming fight.

Big swells were running into the harbor, making all the fishing boats on moorings and at the docks work hard against their restraining lines. Even the sleek 180-foot Athens morning ferry tied up along the main quay moved nervously, the car tires dangling from her port side protecting her hull from damage against the concrete dock.

It was very late. No traffic, vehicular or pedestrian, moved along the quay, or along the main street that led up into the town proper. The rain had intensified, and as McGarvey closed with the quay a hundred yards to the north of the big ferry boat, he could see the drops bouncing off the cobblestones and the red tile roofs.

Unaccountably the rain made him sad, and even frightened; not for himself, for his own personal safety, but for Kathleen and Elizabeth and what this experience would do to them.

Their lives would forever be altered. He was less concerned about Elizabeth’s mental well-being. If anyone could bounce back it would be she. She was very strong, her will almost as fierce as his own. But Kathleen wasn’t so strong. She had been incapable of staying married to him because of the tension his absences caused her. Now she was in the middle of an operation, her life and the life of her daughter in jeopardy.

She wouldn’t fare so well, no matter the outcome, and he was frankly worried about her.

The rising wind was out of the east, shoving the boats against the docks. Twenty yards out, McGarvey cut the engine, revved it in reverse to slow his rate of approach, then shut the engine off, allowing the

Dhodhoni to drift the rest of the way. He didn’t bother with dock lines, or with the rubber tires stacked on deck, ready for fending off.

On deck he braced himself as the boat slammed into the quay with a sickening crunch.

She bounced away; and immediately the wind and swells smashed her into the concrete dock again. Within an hour she would probably batter herself to death. But it didn’t matter; Karamanlis was dead, and McGarvey wouldn’t be coming back this way.

Timing his move with the motion of the boat, he leaped up onto the dock and darted directly across the quay into the shadows along the line of warehouses. Nothing moved.

There were no shots. Only the wind moaning in the rigging of the boats, the protesting squeal of rubber tires being crushed against the docks, and the Dhodhoni

beating herself against the unyielding concrete, disturbed the night.

Keeping to the shadows but moving fast, McGarvey made his way the block and a half to the taverna where Karamanlis had taken him to see Uncle Constantine. It was the only establishment open on the docks so far as McGarvey was able to tell. No lights showed from any of the windows here, and only a hazy yellow glow spread from the open taverna door.

McGarvey turned and hurried around the block behind the taverna where he found an unlocked gate into a long, narrow courtyard beside what appeared to be an apartment building. The courtyard was muddy and filled with trash. He picked his way down its length, where he had to force another tall gate that opened into a passageway exposed to the sky. A trough had been set into the cobblestones, no doubt for use as an open sewer in ancient times, and, by the smells, still being used for the same purpose today.

Stepping across the trough, he tried the back door into the taverna. It opened silently on well-oiled hinges, as he’d hoped it would. During his interview with Theotokis, McGarvey had watched the comings and goings of the Mafia boss’s people. More than half of them had used the back door. It was a regular route for them, apparently, when they wanted to come or go unnoticed by an observer on the docks.

He found himself in a tiny kitchen area, a pantry to his left and a stone urinal trough in a tiny room to the right. A dim light came from behind the copper bar through a swinging door.

McGarvey watched for a moment. Constantine Theotokis was seated alone at a back table.

He was reading a newspaper, a bottle of red wine and a single glass in front of him.

Obviously he was waiting for someone. Probably Karamanlis and Papagos to return and tell him what had happened.

A thick-necked man with an enormous belly leaned against the bar, apparently reading over Theotokis’s shoulder. A double-barrel sawed-off shotgun, its pistol grip stock well used and shining dully in the light, lay on the bar at the man’s back. These two were waiting for trouble.

McGarvey took out his Walther, switched the safety catch to the off position, cocked the hammer and stepped through the swinging doors.

The big man spun around and started to grab for the shotgun, but McGarvey was across to him in two steps, the Walther pointed directly at the man’s face.

“Stand down,” McGarvey said softly.

Theotokis was looking over his shoulder at them, his body absolutely still.

“If need be I’ll kill you both. Believe me, I don’t care one way or the other.”

“Do as he says, Georgios,” Theotokis instructed his bodyguard. “I believe Mr. McGarvey is a man who will listen to reason.”

Chapter 54

McGarvey rode in the back seat of the battered Land Rover, bracing himself as best he could as they bounced slowly over the extremely rough dirt track. Theotokis sat in the front passenger seat while his bodyguard drove. As the crow flew it was barely three and a half miles from Thira to the monastery, but the track led over the spine of the island, rising to an elevation of more than 1,600 feet.

It had been simple to convince them to betray Spranger by bringing McGarvey out here.

It was either that or be killed. Theotokis had had the intelligence to read that much from McGarvey’s eyes.

Georgios the bodyguard, however, had watched McGarvey very closely for any sign of weakness, for an opening, no matter how small, that he could take advantage of. He wasn’t a Santorinian. McGarvey would have been willing to bet that the man had learned his trade on the streets and back alleys of Athens or some other big city.

Over the central massif, the stoney path plunged into a valley, and then started immediately up again to the crest of a much lower hill. They were nearing the top.

“How much farther?” McGarvey asked.

Georgios glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror, but then turned back to his driving, which was difficult along the narrow track and made more dangerous by the wind and rain.

“The church is just on the other side of this hill,” Theotokis said.

“We will drop you off at the summit, and from there it is only a small walk of perhaps less than a half kilometer.”

“Turn off the headlights, and stop here,” McGarvey said.

Again Georgios looked at him in the rearview mirror. “What?” he grumbled.

McGarvey jammed the barrel of his pistol into the side of the big man’s head. “Do it now,” he ordered.

Georgios complied immediately, and as they lurched to a halt, their lights out, they could suddenly hear the wind shrieking around the volcanic rock outcroppings just above them, and the driven rain hammering against the car.

“Do you mean to kill us?” Theotokis asked.

“If I see you again, I will,” McGarvey said. “Now you and your friend are returning to Thira.”

“As you wish…“

“On foot,” McGarvey said. “You’re both getting out on the passenger side.”

Georgios started to turn, but McGarvey jabbed harder with the pistol barrel. “Keep your hands in plain sight, and your eyes forward.”

“Do as you’re told,” Theotokis sighed. “The little walk will certainly be uncomfortable, but considering the alternatives…“

McGarvey opened his door on the passenger side and directed Theotokis to do the same.

“Carefully now.”

“We will do exactly as you tell us, Mr. McGarvey, you may believe that.” Theotokis got out of the car, and his bodyguard slid across the seat behind him and climbed out.

McGarvey got out and stepped a few feet off the track. “Take off your shoes and socks.”

He had to shout to be heard over the wind.

“That’s inhuman,” Theotokis protested.

“It’s late,” McGarvey shouted. “I’m tired. I’m out of patience. And I’m going to kill again for what has been done to my wife and daughter.”

“I see your point,” the Greek said and he and Georgios removed their shoes and socks.

“Now, go,” McGarvey said.

Georgios stared at him for a long time, as if he were trying to memorize McGarvey’s face, his eyes narrowed, his lips compressed. “Ernst and his people will kill you,”

he said. “And in the morning I shall piss on your body.”

The rain seemed to intensify as the two Greek mafioso picked their way down the rock-strewn path. McGarvey watched until they disappeared into the darkness. In another age he might have killed them for their part in Spranger’s operation. But they were only little people; petty hoods who had no conception of the larger issues, or any desire to know. And McGarvey was finding that he was finally losing his stomach for the business.

He turned and looked up the hill in the direction the Land Rover was pointed. He had lost his stomach for the kill except for Spranger and men of his ilk. He’d been told repeatedly that wherever he turned up trouble would almost certainly develop.

Well, Spranger had lured him here. And this night there would be trouble. The man had stepped over the line. Way over the line.

McGarvey holstered his gun, and got behind the Land Rover’s wheel. The engine ticked over softly, and for a second longer he hesitated, watching in the rearview mirror for any sign that Georgios or his boss had doubled back. A fleeting thought passed through his head: He wondered how he had gotten to this point in his life from where he had started on his parents’ ranch in Kansas.

There were no simple answers, he told himself. Or at least none that he wanted to face just now. But they would come. They would come.

The crest of the hill was about two hundred yards farther up the final slope. He drove to a spot just below it, and picked his way to the top on foot. They knew he was coming and they would be watching for him. He didn’t want to be spotted just yet. But there was little or nothing to be seen except for what appeared to be an indistinct mass below.

He checked his watch. It was a few minutes after four, dawn still about two hours off. Even then, if the weather continued overcast and rainy, he’d have an additional half hour or more of covering darkness.

Back at the Land Rover, he popped the hood and, working by feel alone, found the ignition coil and removed the wire between it and the distributor cap. He pocketed it and the keys. Now no one would be able to take the vehicle, but on the way out he could get it started in less than a half minute if need be. There was no telling what shape Kathleen and Elizabeth might be in. It was possible, even likely, that they would not be able to travel very far on foot.

Out of Thira they had driven slowly to the northeast, which meant the sea was now straight ahead and to the right. Coming around the headland earlier this evening with Karamanlis and Papagos, before the weather had completely closed in, he’d seen the tall cliffs that rose directly out of the sea along this section of the island’s coast. The monastery was perched on the edge of the cliffs. There would be a path down to the sea, but Lipton’s team would be blocking that egress, and the weather was too bad for them to be picked up by air. Which left by land.

They’d be expecting him to show up over the hill along the track, which meant they’d probably be waiting in the darkness on either side of the path. It was time then to even the odds.

He screwed the can-type silencer on the end of the Walther’s barrel, made certain a round was in the firing chamber and, keeping well below the crest of the hill, struck off to the east, directly toward the edge of the cliffs.

In terms of vegetation very little grew up here. The ground was mostly broken-up volcanic rock and pebbles ranging in size from a marble to a basketball. Picking his way carefully across the debris field he was reminded of another night in Iceland.

The weather was warmer here, but the landscapes were similar; barren, apparently lifeless, almost lunar.

About fifty yards off the track he scrambled silently back up to the crest of the hill, and keeping low peered over the top.

He remained crouched in the darkness for a full two minutes slowly sweeping the darkness left to right for any sign whatsoever that anyone was down there; a noise, the glowing tip of a cigarette, the beam of a flashlight. But these men were STASI-trained professionals.

They did not make such mistakes, especially not under Spranger’s command. But they were out there. He could almost sense them.

Something moved behind him, and he froze. A rock against a rock. A pebble rolling down the hill, the noise almost immediately swallowed by the shrieking wind.

The sound did not come again, but McGarvey knew it hadn’t been his imagination. Someone was back there all right. Probably Theotokis or his bodyguard. Possibly one of Spranger’s people.

Still keeping low, but making no indication that he had heard something, he slipped over the crest of the hill, and a few yards on the other side, flattened himself behind an outcropping of rock, his pistol at his side.

A half minute later a figure dressed in black appeared at the top of the hill, hesitated just a moment, then started down.

McGarvey tensed. He wanted this one alive if possible. If he could learn the layout of the monastery and exactly where Kathleen and Elizabeth were being held it would be extremely helpful.

He pressed himself farther back into the deeper darkness as the black-suited figure came even with him. When the man passed, McGarvey stepped out, hooked his free arm around the man’s neck and pulled him down, laying the muzzle of the silencer against his cheek.

“Make a noise and I’ll kill you…“ McGarvey was saying, when he recognized Bob Schade, Lipton’s man who’d wanted to tag along.

McGarvey released him, pointing the Walther away as he uncocked the hammer.

“Where is the rest of the team?”

“On the water where you left them,” Schade said, sitting up.

“How the hell did you get here?”

“I stowed away on the fishing boat.”

McGarvey’s eyes narrowed. “You followed me to the taverna?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How about up the mountain? How’d you find a vehicle?”

“I didn’t,” the young man said.

“Well how the hell did you get up here?”

“I ran.”

McGarvey sat back on his heels. “You ran,” he said, amazed. The kid wasn’t even out of breath.

“Yes, sir. But I met the two men who took you up here. They were barefoot and pretty well pissed off. Especially the big one.”

“Did you let them pass?”

“I would have, Mr. McGarvey, except I wasn’t expecting them, and they spotted me.

The old man ordered the other one to kill me. They both seemed to think it was important.”

McGarvey glanced reflexively toward the crest of the hill. “What happened?”

“I had to… eliminate them, sir.”

McGarvey looked sharply at the young man. “I didn’t hear any shots.”

“My weapon is silenced, sir. But I didn’t use it. I had to take them out by hand.

There wasn’t any time, or room.”

“I see,” McGarvey said, impressed. The kid was like a dangerous puppy: Innocent and eager, but deadly. “What about your military ID?”

Schade shrugged. “I must have lost it somewhere, I guess.”

“Lipton will have your ass.”

Again Schade shrugged. “I owe you one.”

“Well, there’s no doubt that you can take care of yourself,” McGarvey said. “But I want you to listen up now. Spranger is holding my wife and daughter to get at me.

But he’s not a stupid man. He’s kept his life and his freedom this long by meticulous planning and ruthlessness. Which means that he’s convinced himself that he’s going to kill me tonight, and then make his escape. He’s stacked the odds in his favor, and we’ve got no idea what preparations he’s made.”

“Yes, sir.” Schade looked very serious.

“But he’s going to make a mistake.”

“Sir?”

“He’s made this personal. He wants to kill me himself. Or he wants to be right there when I know I’ve lost.”

Sudden understanding dawned on Schade’s face. “You tossed the walkie-talkie overboard.

You talked to him?”

McGarvey nodded. “You still want in?”

“You bet,” Schade said eagerly.

“I want to take them out if we can do it without raising the alarm. Otherwise we’ll skirt their positions and take care of them on the way back out. Wherever they’re holding my wife and daughter will be booby-trapped. I want to get them out of there first.”

Schade nodded. He took out a long, wicked-looking dagger, the blade serrated along both edges, blood at the base of the haft, and headed out a few yards to McGarvey’s right, down the hill toward the cliffs. A second or two later McGarvey followed.

Within a couple hundred yards they were able to distinguish the deconsecrated church and a half-dozen other buildings, all of them substantially constructed of native stone, with steeply pitched roofs and battlements. In ancient times people took their religion seriously. This monastery was as much a fortress as it was a church. Faith had been defended here, and now the place was being used for the opposite purpose.

McGarvey pulled up short, motioning for Schade to do the same. He’d heard a muffled cough off to the left. For several long seconds he waited and watched, finally picking out a figure standing behind a pile of rocks that formed a ten-foot-tall obelisk.

The guard raised a rifle, equipped with what appeared to be a very large spotting scope, and pointed it up the hill toward the track from town.

Schade edged silently to McGarvey’s side and watched for a second or two. The guard’s position was about thirty feet from where they crouched.

“A night spotting scope?” he asked softly.

“I think so,” McGarvey whispered. “I want him out of there. Can you get in close enough to take him with your knife?”

“Yes, sir,” Schade said.

“Keep to his right. I’ll cover you from here. But I won’t fire unless there’s no other choice.”

“Right,” Schade replied, and he headed across, slowly, silently, like a night animal on the prowl with deadly intent.

There might be others watching, but this one had to be taken out. The starlight scope-equipped rifle made him too dangerous.

McGarvey switched the safety off, cocked the Walther’s hammer and centered his sights on the guard’s back. The pistol was silenced, but the sound could be heard and recognized for what it was at a respectable distance.

Fifteen feet out, Schade froze.

The guard stepped back, looked toward the church for a moment, then shook his head and leaned up against the obelisk. It was clear he was nervous, but he was probably also cold, wet, tired and bored.

Schade was stuck. The guard had only to turn his head slightly and he would be looking right at the young man.

But they had a second, potentially even more serious problem. The guard had looked up toward the church, as if he’d been looking for someone.

Another guard watching from a vantage point in the church? Even now that one could be taking a bead on Schade, who would show up in a night scope like a duck in a shooting gallery.

The guard behind the obelisk scratched his nose and started to turn away, when he evidently saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned abruptly and looked directly at Schade.

For a second he was too startled to move, but the moment Schades knife hand began to come up, the spell was broken and the man opened his mouth to shout a warning as he brought the Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifle around.

McGarvey jumped up and fired two shots in rapid succession, the first hitting the guard in the throat, blood erupting from an artery in a long spurt, and the second hitting his chest, driving him off his feet before he had a chance to utter a sound.

Dropping down, McGarvey immediately switched his aim toward the church, in the direction the downed guard had looked.

Schade did the same, flattening himself against the rock-strewn ground, his silenced .22 automatic pistol in hand.

Nothing moved, and there was no answering fire. If someone had been there, they were gone now, or incredibly, they had seen or heard nothing.

Only the wind and the pattering rain made any noise, until McGarvey started to rise when he heard the distinctive pop of an unsilenced automatic weapon from somewhere in the distance. Below, possibly at the base of the cliffs beneath the church.

“What the hell was that?” he muttered as he and Schade headed in a dead run the last fifty yards or so to the main doors into the church’s nave.

Chapter 55

“What the hell was that?” Lipton demanded. He’d been on the radio copying the latest weather report from Meteorology aboard the Nimitz

when the sea twenty yards out erupted in a dozen miniature geysers.

“We’re under fire,” Tyrell answered urgently.

Tony Reid hurriedly started the outboard. Everyone else had their weapons out. Tyrell was studying the base of the cliffs one thousand yards away.

“Belay the motor, Tony,” Lipton whispered. “Even with a night spotting scope they can’t be sure they see us, but they might be able to hear something.”

A little closer, the water to their left, geysered again. This time Lipton estimated fifteen or twenty rounds had been fired, perhaps a few more.

“If he’s firing a Kalashnikov, we’re at his extreme range,” Tyrell said.

“He might get lucky,” Lipton said. “Can you spot him?”

“No, but I’d say he was low, maybe right on the water at the base of the cliff.”

“A dock?”

“Probably.” Tyrell looked up. “It’s your call, Ed, but we can’t stay here like this.

Either pull back, or…”

“Or go ashore,” Lipton finished it for his number two. They’d been sitting out here for hours waiting for something to happen and now that it had, it was the wrong thing. If Spranger’s group was trying to break out, they’d be on the water, a hell of a lot closer, and they’d be using a lot more firepower.

Whoever was firing at them was probably a lookout stationed on the dock. A chance increase in the ambient light level had come at the same moment the guard was looking in their direction, and he’d spotted something. Or thought he had.

They came under fire again, this time the hits coming in a wide pattern off to their right, but much closer. The shooter was finding their range.

They’d received word from Operations aboard the Nimitz that the EPIRB signal from McGarvey’s walkie-talkie had began to fade before he had reached the port of Thira, and less than a minute later it had cut off completely.

Commander Rheinholtz’s best guess was that McGarvey had tossed the device overboard.

“If the sonofabitch wants to do it on his own, then let him,” the chief of Air Operations had radioed.

“I’d like to remain on station for a bit longer,” Lipton had asked.

The airwaves were silent for a long moment, as Rheinholtz pondered his request. Of course he hadn’t told his boss that Schade was missing. There would be hell to pay if the Nimitz CAO knew.

“I want you out of there well before dawn, Lieutenant,” Rheinholtz radioed. “Acknowledge.”

“Aye, aye, Commander,” Lipton replied.

“Keep us posted.”

“Will do.”

Lipton checked his watch. Dawn was less than two hours from now. They were running out of time. Obviously McGarvey had reached the port, but what then? Had he and Schade found a way out to the monastery? Had they attacked from the land side?

The possibilities were nearly endless. But it was very likely that his ex-wife and daughter were still being held. That situation had not changed.

“Ed?” Tyrell prompted.

Another spray of fire from the shooter on the island hit the water, this time close enough to get them wet.

“Bob is probably with McGarvey over there,” he said. “We can’t leave them.”

His men were watching him closely, grim, expectant expressions on their faces.

“We’re going in,” Lipton said, making his decision. “Secure your weapons and check your rebreathers.”

Spranger couldn’t see a thing.

He looked up from the starlight scope and glared at Bruno Lessing, who’d done the shooting. The man was a professional; steady, reliable. It wasn’t like him to fire at phantoms. But there was nothing out there.

“I’m telling you, General, that I saw a small dark boat, perhaps a rubber raft, about nine hundred meters out. Three… maybe four men.”

“I don’t see them now,” Spranger said, glancing again across the dark sea. If anything the night had deepened as the rain increased, though dawn would be here in less than two hours. He wanted to be gone by then. The pilot had assured him that despite the weather, as long as they had a little daylight he could get them up to Athens. The chopper was ready to fly. All that was needed was to remove the camouflage canopy covering the machine, and undo the tie-downs on the undercarriage and the rotor blades.

“They could be American Special Forces,” Lessing was saying nervously. “McGarvey could have called for help.”

“Not him,” Spranger disagreed. “We saw the Dhodhoni heading back to Thira. He’s definitely coming here overland.”

“Pardon me, Herr General, but you cannot possibly know enough about the man to form such a judgment. Not so soon after you first learned of him.”

Spranger had handpicked his people from the survivors of East Berlin. They were the best of the best. All of them, Lessing included, were respectful of his authority, but no one was frightened or intimidated by him, which was as it should be.

But with this now, Lessing could not be right. Because if he was, they were in very deep trouble.

Once again he bent over the scope and peered through the eyepiece. The light intensification circuitry gave the surface of the sea a gray, ghostly cast. But as before there was nothing out there. Absolutely nothing.

“You may be right, Bruno, but it does not alter the fact I can’t see a thing now,”

Spranger said. He stepped aside. “Take a look for yourself.”

After a moment, Lessing bent to the scope, and studied the distant darkness for several long seconds. When he looked up he still did not seemed convinced. “I’m truly sorry, Herr General. You are correct, there is nothing out there now. But I did see something.”

“Could have been a piece of flotsam, or even a glitch in the little black box.” Still Spranger’s eyes were drawn to the sea, a slight edge of fear creeping into his head.

With McGarvey, you should expect the unexpected.

He’d carried the walkie-talkie down with him in case McGarvey decided to make contact again. Durenmatt came on.

“Ernst, where are you?”

Spranger unslung his comms unit. “On the dock. Bruno thought he saw something, so he fired at it.”

“McGarvey is here,” Durenmatt responded so quickly he stepped on some of Spranger’s transmission.

“Say again, Peter.”

“I said, McGarvey is here. Walther is down. I left my position for less than a minute to take a piss and when I returned, he was down. From where I’m standing I can see that he took at least one hit.”

“I’m on my way,” Spranger shouted. The detonator was still upstairs in the great room.

“What about me?” Lessing demanded.

“We’re getting out of here. If you don’t hear from me in the next ten minutes, go to the chopper. But Gott im Himmel, Bruno, keep your eyes open down here.”

Lipton and his five SEALS were in the water. They’d deflated their boat, and buoyed it just beneath the surface with a sea anchor. Tyrell carried a portable LORAN set, which, although it weighed less than twelve ounces, could bring them back to within fifty feet of the exact spot so they could retrieve their gear.

The antenna mast on Lipton’s communications radio was fully extended for maximum range. The LAMPS III chopper would be on station out of visual range somewhere just over the horizon to pick up his radio transmissions and relay them to Operations aboard the

Nimitz.

“Saturn, Saturn, this is Mercury, acknowledge,” he radioed.

Commander Rheinholtz responded immediately. “This is Saturn.”

“We’re going in.”

“Negative, Mercury. Negative.”

“We’re taking fire, so we must assume that Brightstar is in trouble and the subjects are in jeopardy. We have no other choice.”

The radio was silent. Lipton could imagine Rheinholtz on the horn with Washington trying to get a reading on this latest development. But that would take time: Too much time.

Lipton keyed his radio. “Will advise,” he said. “Mercury out.” He switched off the transmitter, sealed it in its waterproof case, and on signal, he and his four SEALS

submerged to a depth of ten feet, and on his lead made their way directly to the island.

At least they didn’t have the German woman to contend with, Elizabeth thought as she tried to pick out something, anything, in the black night from her window. But there was nothing out there, nor had there been any further shooting.

Their leader, the one they called Ernst, had taken the woman away. But that had been hours ago. Until the gunfire over the past two or three minutes there had been nothing.

They had not been given food or water, but they had not been bothered again.

“Do you see anything, Elizabeth?” her mother asked, in a weak, frightened voice.

Elizabeth shook her head and came away from the window. Her heart was hammering and she was having a little trouble catching her breath. It was her father they’d been shooting at, she was convinced of it. Just as she knew that she was going to have to warn him about the explosives planted in the wall just below their cell.

She put her ear to the door and held her breath to listen. But there were no sounds from the other side. Nothing. No more shooting, no sounds of running footsteps, no shouting, not a sound.

Stepping back she bunched up her fists and hammered them against the thick, wooden door. “Father,” she screeched. “Father! Are you there?”

Chapter 56

The sudden cessation of gunfire seemed even more ominous than its start. The first shots had echoed off the church walls nearly two minutes ago, but now there was nothing, no returning gunfire.

McGarvey and Schade pulled up just within the apse where the altar had once stood and looked out the narrow window into a broad courtyard area, what might have been the monastery’s kitchen garden in ancient times.

Two men were hurriedly removing a camouflage tarp from a large helicopter with Greek markings. Their weapons, a pair of Kalashnikov assault rifles, were propped against a fuel drum eight or ten feet behind them.

So far as McGarvey could tell there were no others standing guard with them, but it was clear that they were in a big hurry to get out of here despite the rain and the strong winds which tore at the big sheet of canvas. Flying would be an iffy proposition at best.

“Could it have been your team doing the firing?” McGarvey asked.

Schade shook his head. “That was no M-16, sir. Maybe a Kalashnikov. Besides, we’ve got specific orders to conduct no operations on Greek soil.”

The helicopter looked like a stretched version of the old Bell Ranger. She would be capable of carrying a dozen people in addition to her pilot and copilot, and with luck and a skilled crew she’d make Athens, or almost any point along the nearly deserted Turkish coast to the northeast.

“If their lookouts are equipped with low-light optics they might have spotted the raft and opened fire,” Schade said.

McGarvey looked at him. “What would Lieutenant Lip ton do in response?”

“That’s hard to say.” Schade shrugged. “But I’d guess that he would probably go into the water and come ashore. At least I think he would.”

“If that’s the case, this chopper is the only way out,” McGarvey said. “It’d be too bad if something happened to it.”

“It would probably upset them a whole lot.”

“Enough to kill us, if they get the chance. It’s not your fight, kid.”

“It is now, sir,” Schade said. “Ill go right, you take left?”

McGarvey nodded. “Watch yourself.”

They slipped out of the church through a side door off the nave. The chopper was at least a hundred feet from them across the courtyard. The wind and rain continued to worsen, and the two men who were nearly finished removing the camo tarp were completely absorbed in their task.

Keeping low, Schade moved away from the church wall, angling around to the right, keeping his attention completely on the two men at the helicopter.

McGarvey started to the left, holding back against the wall until he got to a point directly behind the men, but his internal alarm system was going off like a fire bell. Something was wrong here. Some inner sense was telling him to pull Schade back.

Then he had it. The guard outside by the obelisk had looked back toward the church.

Somebody was here. On an upper floor. With a clear sight line not only toward the path, but down here into the courtyard as well!

He was about warn Schade when a Kalashnikov opened fire from above and behind, exactly where he had just realized they were most vulnerable, and the young man went down in a heap, taking at least two hits.

The two men by the helicopter dropped what they were doing and spun around. They’d been well trained. Neither of them hesitated for an instant. One sprinted for the weapons leaning against the fuel barrel, making himself a moving target, while the other dropped sideways, to present less of himself as a target, and dug into his shoulder holster for his pistol.

McGarvey shot him first, one round in the man’s right hip, sending him sprawling off-balance with a cry, and the second in the side of his head, smashing his mouth so that he aspirated his shattered teeth.

Immediately switching his aim, McGarvey fired again, the bullet smacking into the second man’s chest just as he was snatching up one of the Kalashnikovs.

The force of the hit shoved him backwards, the bullet disintegrating inside his heart, killing him instantly.

Except for the wind the night fell silent.

McGarvey moved farther along the wall. The shooter would have spotted his approximate position.

Schade half rolled over and groaned.

“Stay where you are, Bob,” McGarvey called urgently, and Schade stopped moving. It was impossible to tell from here exactly how badly he was hurt, but McGarvey figured he couldn’t be in very good shape. By rights with two hits he should have been dead.

“Come out into the open, Mr. McGarvey, or I will kill your friend,” someone said from above.

“Ernst Spranger?” McGarvey called, but he didn’t think it was. The accent was German but the voice was different.

“Do as I say or I shall kill him.”

“In that case I would destroy your helicopter,” McGarvey shouted.

“You might damage the machine with a pistol, but repairs could be made,” the East German said. He had moved too. Now his voice came from directly overhead.

“You would be delayed.”

“That is of no consequence, Mr. McGarvey. You would be dead, and we would leave.”

“You’re forgetting something,” McGarvey said, leaning out away from the wall in an effort to catch a glimpse of the man above. But he was able only to see a section of open archway.

“It’s you who are forgetting something. There is only you against all of us. In addition we have your wife and daughter.”

McGarvey said nothing. Instead he hurried back to the right to a spot just behind Schade. The younger man lay on his side, his gun hand stretched out ahead of him, his left hand clutched to his chest. He seemed to be saying something, but McGarvey couldn’t make it out.

“Step out into the open, Mr. McGarvey, and I promise that your wife and daughter will not be harmed. We will have no further need of them once we have you.”

A door on the far side of the courtyard opened with a crash and a man carrying an assault rifle burst outside.

“Peter,” the man shouted at the same instant he spotted Schade, who had started to rise up on one elbow.

“Don’t,” McGarvey shouted.

Schade had pulled something from inside his jumpsuit and was tossing it toward the helicopter with his left hand when the man above opened fire and the man across the courtyard started to fall back.

In the last possible instant, realizing what was about to happen, McGarvey threw himself against the church wall, burying his face in the dirt and covering his head with his arms.

A tremendous thunderclap burst in the courtyard, and McGarvey was lifted off the ground two feet by the force of the explosion, the night sky lighting up as if a thousand suns had suddenly switched on.

Chapter 57

Spranger managed to fall back inside the corridor as the helicopter exploded. Nevertheless a spray of burning fuel burst through the open door, scorching his left arm to the shoulder, the sleeve of his nylon jumpsuit instantly melting, his skin turning an angry red and even black in big patches.

He howled in pure, blinding agony, the searing, white-hot pain rebounding inside his head, threatening to blow off the top of his skull.

Through the momentary haze that clouded his vision, making rational thought all but impossible, he focused on Liese and the others who’d followed him up here. They were bunched in a knot, staring in horrified fascination at him, waiting for him to collapse.

But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that their general was human.

He couldn’t allow it, because if he did they would no longer follow him, especially not where he was leading them and the others when they got off this island.

For a flat-footed instant, standing in the church corridor, the heat from the burning helicopter making sweat pop out all over his body, he found himself wondering if he wasn’t making a colossal mistake. He’d been married once, and had one child. But that seemed like another lifetime. They had fled to the West, leaving him to face his suspicious superiors and his contemptuous colleagues.

He had no explanation, he’d told them. But even if they had crossed to the West to trade secrets for their asylum there was nothing to worry about.

Arbeit macht frei.

Work makes one free. It had been the inscription over the gates of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, and it had become the unofficial motto of the STASI.

Thirty-six hours after his wife and child had crossed the border into West Berlin, they were dead. It was winter, and the chimney of the heater in the apartment where they’d been temporarily housed by the West German authorities had backed up, deadly carbon monoxide quickly filling the rooms.

Spranger had never looked back. Never, until now, for just this moment.

He shook himself out of it, conscious that the lapse had lasted only an instant, and must have gone unnoticed by the others under the extreme circumstances. Now, because of the pain, his awareness had become almost preternatural.

“My God, Ernst, is it the helicopter?” Liese cried.

“Yes, it’s gone,” Spranger croaked, his voice ragged. He struggled to control himself.

“But it doesn’t matter. McGarvey is dead.”

“Ernst, are you there?” Durenmatt’s voice came from the walkie-talkie slung over Spranger’s unburned shoulder.

With difficulty he pulled it around and keyed the talk button. “We’re in the dormitory corridor across from you.” He pushed the transmit button.

“… thought you were dead. The fire… it’s everywhere. Did you see him?”

Spranger’s gaze turned to his rifle which he had dropped when he’d been burned. Its stock was scorched. “What are you talking about, Peter? Where are you?”

“You don’t know?” Diirenmatt screamed. “It’s McGarvey, he brought someone with him.

He brought help.”

“Yes, I know this,” Spranger radioed, although he did not, although there had been a shout from across the courtyard, and not from the one who’d tossed the grenade.

Two of them out there? The one by the helicopter had surely been incinerated in the explosion. But the other…?

“I’m on my way,” Diirenmatt shouted breathlessly.

“We’ll meet you in front. We’ll have to slip out through Thira.”

“… stupid bastard! It’s McGarvey! He’s headed your way through the church!”

Down on the dock Bruno Lessing didn’t know what to do. He’d heard the explosion, of course, and had monitored the transmissions between Spranger and Diirenmatt, so he knew that escape by air would be impossible. But he was also convinced that someone or something was coming at them from the sea, although he couldn’t make out a thing from where he huddled out of the rain just within the rock alcove.

He had seen something on the water, maybe a thousand yards out, more or less, and he had fired at it.

He played with the Kalashnikov’s safety catch, switching it on and then off, the metallic snick barely registering in his ears.

But then what had looked to him like a small boat and several men had simply disappeared as if it had never existed. After Spranger had left, Lessing had searched the sea again with the starlight scope with no results.

“But it was there,” he muttered to himself, checking his watch again. The ten minutes were up. It was time to go, only now there was nowhere for them to go to. The chopper was no longer an option.

Spranger would get them out of this. He always had in the past, and this time would be no different. The man was nothing short of brilliant. Even though none of them had been able to figure out the real reason why they’d grabbed the two women or had brought them here, they were all equally convinced that the general knew what he was doing. With the Egk woman snapping at his heels, the man had no other choice.

Lessing grinned nervously thinking about her, and the nape of his neck prickled.

She was gorgeous, but looking into her eyes was like looking through windows into hell. She might be worth a roll in the hay, but he suspected that an ordinary man would be driven absolutely mad by the experience.

He flicked the rifle’s safety catch down, then up, no longer certain in which position the weapon was safetied.

East Berlin in the old days-hell, barely five years ago-had been simpler. There were safe havens. Even now they’d been offered the chance to come to Moscow, but no one was enticed. The Russians were having their problems. No safety there.

No safety anywhere, he thought glumly. Now they were even taking orders from the slant-eyed Japs. It was galling.

He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and he jerked to the left in time to see a man dressed all in black, water cascading from his head and shoulders, pulling himself onto the dock.

Lessing started to bring the Kalashnikov around when a noise to his right, like a walrus or a big fish flopping up onto the dock, made him jump nearly out of his skin, and he spun around.

The black-suited twin of the first man stood at the end of the stone dock, an M-16

rifle with a stainless steel wire stock in his hands.

Lessing was swinging the Kalashnikov to the right when a third figure dressed in black rose up onto the dock, a silenced pistol in his right hand.-

A thunderclap burst in Lessing’s head, and then nothing.

Smoke from the burning helicopter was obvious on the air even in the alcove behind the dock. And it was just as obvious to Lipton and his team that they were smelling burnt aviation gas.

About ten yards out they had surfaced long enough to spot the lone terrorist on the dock. Diving again to a depth of five feet, their oxygen rebreathers leaving no telltale bubbles, they’d split up; Tyrell left, Joslow right, and Lipton down the middle with Bryan Wasley and Tony Reid as backup. The sentry hadn’t had a chance.

Tyrell was bent over the man, feeling for a carotid pulse. He’d taken three hits in the head from Lipton’s suppressed .22, killing him instantly. The Kalashnikov’s safety catch was in the on position. Even if the terrorist had pulled the trigger, his weapon would not have fired.

Lipton and the others were hurriedly pulling off their wet suits and removing the rest of their weapons and equipment from waterproof carrying pouches. Reid and Joslow, weapons up, bracketed the narrow stairway that led steeply up through the cliff into the monastery. On signal Joslow rolled around the corner, his pistol sweeping upward in tight circles.

After a moment he shook his head and turned back. “Clear,” he called softly to Lipton.

He seemed almost disappointed.

“This one is dead,” Tyrell said, straightening up from Lessing’s body.

“There was no evidence of a landing strip at this end of the island on the survey maps and flyover shots I saw, which means what we’re smelling is probably a chopper,”

Lipton said.

“McGarvey and Bobby?” Tyrell asked.

“Probably. Which means the bad guys are caught between us, and they’re not going to take that lightly.” Lipton quickly surveyed the landing dock. “We’ll use this as our staging area as planned. We go for the hostages first. Everything else is secondary.”

None of his men said a thing.

“Once they’re released, Tony and Jules will bring them down here, and depending upon the situation we’ll either fetch the boat, or call for help. Commander Rheinholtz is standing by.”

“What if we run into heavy resistance and have to fight our way back here?” Tyrell asked quietly. They all wanted to be completely clear on their orders.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Lipton answered. “As I said, anything other than the hostages will be secondary. That includes McGarvey and Bobby. If we can get to them, we will. But the safety of the hostages comes first.” He looked at his men. “Questions?”

There were none.

“Toss that body over the side,” Lipton ordered, starting for the stairs. “The scope and rifle too. I don’t want to leave any evidence that we were here.”

The stairs were so steep and narrow that only one person could start up at a time.

They led five hundred feet into a long, narrow vestibule that opened onto a broad corridor which ran through the main residence and living areas of the monastery.

Lipton silently crossed the corridor and halted at the doorway into the great hall. No one was here, and there were no sounds other than the wind and rain lashing against the thick, lead-glass windows. But the smoke was much thicker up here, and the smell of burning aviation gas was very strong.

“Nobody home, sir?” Wasley asked.

Lipton turned and shook his head. “Go with Ried and Joslow. Check everything to the end of the corridor.”

They hurried noiselessly off as Lipton entered the great hall, Tyrell right behind him. They spread out, left and right, and halted for a moment, listening, watching, every sense alert for a sign of trouble.

Somebody had been here recently. There were glasses with dregs of wine still in them on the table. Plates with scraps of food. The Paris, Berlin, Athens and New York newspapers spread out. A sweater tossed over one chair, a black nylon jumpsuit over another.

“They’re dealing with the chopper,” Tyrell said softly.

Lipton nodded. “They wouldn’t have taken the hostages.”

“This is a big place, Ed.”

Lipton looked at him. “They’ll be isolated. Up high, away from everything else.”

Tyrell nodded his agreement, and the two of them hurried across the room to a corridor that ran at right angles to the first, deeper into the compound. Immediately to their right spiral stairs led upward.

“Get the others and follow me,” Lipton ordered. “But post Wasley down here.” He started up the stairs, keeping low and against the inner wall so that he would present less of a target to someone waiting above.

At the top, three stories above the level of the great hall, the stairs ended at a short, narrow corridor, three wooden doors on the right. Isolation cells.

He could hear the scuffle of soft-soled shoes coming up from below. Tyrell and the others. If anyone was up here, it would be the hostages, not the terrorists, he figured.

But something felt odd to him. No matter what trouble the East Germans were having they wouldn’t simply run off and leave the two women alone. They’d have to know that the hostages were their only real guarantee of success.

His pistol up, Lipton slipped into the corridor and put his ear to the first door.

There were no sounds from within and he was about to pull away when he thought he heard something. A murmur, perhaps. A single word spoken, or whispered … by a woman. A moment later another woman said something, her voice so low that the words were indistinct, but recognizable as a woman’s voice nonetheless.

Tyrell and the others came up, and Lipton motioned for them to check the other two rooms, as he holstered his pistol and gingerly inspected every square inch of the door and thick wooden frame around it for a wire, or any hint that there might be a pressure switch.

If the terrorists had left the woman here, they might have booby-trapped the room.

But Lipton found nothing. And the other two rooms were empty.

“Cover the stairs,” Lipton ordered. Reid complied and Lipton turned back to the door.

“Mrs. McGarvey,” he called.

There was no reply.

“Mrs. McGarvey, are you in there with your daughter? Are you all right?”

“Who’s there?” A young woman asked softly.

Lipton exchanged relieved glances with Tyrell. “Elizabeth McGarvey?”

“Who is it?” Elizabeth demanded.

“My name is Ed Lipton. U.S. Navy. I’m here with a team to rescue you. If you’ll stand back we’ll force the door.”

“Thank God,” Elizabeth cried. “But wait. There was gunfire, and an explosion. Is my father with you?”

“No, ma’am,” Lipton said. “Now, please stand back.”

Someone said something that Lipton couldn’t quite catch.

“Ms. McGarvey?”

“They’ve planted explosives,” Elizabeth said.

“Where?”

“In the stone wall about ten feet below our window.”

“Can you see any wires? Maybe something attached to this door?”

“There are wires outside on the wall, but not in here.”

Lipton looked over his shoulder at Tyrell. “A remote detonator?”

“Makes sense,” Tyrell said. “They wanted to lure McGarvey here. Maybe they figured to let him get this far and then blow the place.”

“But he’s not here yet,” Lipton said. “And Spranger’s people have their hands full at the moment.”

“Go for it,” Tyrell said softly, after just a moment’s hesitation.

“Ms. McGarvey,” Lipton called. “I want you and your mother to get as far away from the door as you possibly can. Have you got a bed in there?”

“Yes, yes, there are two beds here,” Elizabeth called.

“I want you to take the mattress off one of the beds, then crouch down in a corner and cover you and your mother with it. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll give you one minute and we’ll blow this door,” Lipton said, and he stepped aside for Joslow, who expertly placed a few ounces of plastique around the door lock, cracked a short acid fuse and stuck it in the explosive.

They all went to the end of the short corridor, and sixty-five seconds later the plastique blew with a respectable bang.

“Get them out of there, on the double,” Lipton ordered. They were at their most vulnerable at this point. If one of Spranger’s men had heard the explosion and had realized what was going on up here, he might push the button.

Tyrell and Joslow rushed into the cell, and Lipton called to Reid who was halfway down the stairs. “Clear, Tony?” he called softly.

“Clear,” Reid answered.

“We’re on our way.”

Tyrell and Joslow emerged from the cell leading the two very shaken women. For just an instant Lipton was taken aback by their appearance. Their shaved heads made them look bizarre, but they seemed to be relatively unharmed.

“We’re taking you out of here now,” he told them.

“You have to help my father,” Elizabeth cried. “I won’t leave without him.”

“We’ll help him,” Lipton promised. “But first we’re going to get you and your mother out of danger.”

Elizabeth shook her head bitterly. “You’re already too late for that,” she said.

Chapter 58

McGarvey crouched in the darkness of the visitor’s loft above the nave, his breathing ragged, smoke curling off his clothing. His heart was hammering and his vision wavered, but he was alive and he was sure he’d heard a small explosion, a long way off, perhaps somewhere above.

Flames from the still-burning helicopter illuminated the church with a flickering glow, the air temperature was up at least ten degrees, perhaps more.

It was hard to keep his thinking straight. The concussion when the chopper had blown had knocked the wind out of him. But he was aware enough to know what he’d just heard.

If Lipton’s team had come ashore they might have run into trouble by now. He didn’t want to give voice to what he feared most, but he couldn’t stop himself from working out the possible significance of the small blast.

The East Germans had expected him to rush blindly into the monastery complex in an effort to find Kathleen and Elizabeth. They wanted him to make a mistake so that they could corner him. No doubt they’d booby-trapped the area where they were holding the women, turning it into a killing ground.

With explosives?

But he hadn’t done what they wanted. Instead he’d climbed up to the second level and doubled back. Spranger’s people would be coming to see about their precious helicopter, and sooner or later they would have to enter the church.

McGarvey’s grip tightened on his pistol. The only way he could possibly win against such odds was to pick them off one at a time. Lead them into a blind rush. Cause them to make mistakes.

In the meantime, the one who’d fired on Schade was up here somewhere. He could almost feel the man’s presence. Killing him would be a pleasure.

Every joint in his body ached from the concussion, and the ringing in his ears was only just beginning to fade. It felt as if he’d been run over by a railroad locomotive.

But he was lucky to be alive. By some chance the primary force of the explosion had been directed away from him, sending burning fuel from the chopper’s port tanks spewing against the buildings on the opposite side of the courtyard, allowing him time to get out of there before he was too badly burned.

It was possible that Schade had calculated the effect that his grenade would have and had tossed it to just the right spot. Every Navy SEAL was trained in the use of explosives. But Schade had been critically wounded. If his toss hadn’t been lucky, it had been miraculous.

The kid hadn’t one chance in a million of getting out of there alive, of course.

The last McGarvey had seen of him, his body was completely engulfed in flames. He hoped the boy was dead before the fire reached him.

The door into the nave from the residence hall crashed open, the sound reverberating loudly in the cavernous hall, and McGarvey edged around a stone pillar so that he could see down onto the main floor.

Nothing moved for a long second or two. The space beyond the open door was in darkness, so McGarvey couldn’t see a thing.

He slipped a little farther around the pillar, giving himself a clear shot over the low balustrade at anyone coming through the doorway.

Someone appeared in the doorway for just an instant, and then immediately fell back out of sight.

McGarvey leaned his shoulder up against the pillar for support, and cupped the elbow of his right arm with his left hand, the Walther’s front sight lined up just ahead of the doorway. He had removed the silencer for the sake of increased accuracy. There was no longer much need for stealth.

Someone moved off to his left. The shuffle of shoe leather against the flooring planks?

McGarvey froze. Schade’s killer? Or had Spranger’s people slammed open the door below as a diversion, directing his attention away from the real attack?

The sound came again, and as McGarvey started to drop down and turn left, someone rushed through the door into the nave and disappeared beneath the loft.

A bullet smacked into the stone pillar an inch from McGarvey’s head, flying chips cutting his cheek and forehead.

He fired two shots into the darkness as he continued falling back around the pillar, answering fire coming immediately, but hitting just above him. Then he was down, flat on the floor behind the pillar.

At least two other people came into the nave downstairs. He could hear them rushing beneath the balcony. They meant to isolate him up here, and when they were lined up and ready they would rush him.

The problem for him was the two flights of stairs from below; one at either end of the loft. No matter which stairwell he covered, he would be exposed to anyone coming up the other one.

Adding to his immediate troubles was Schade’s killer up here pinning him down until the real attack could begin. That, he suspected, would come in a matter of seconds.

McGarvey took the silencer tube out of his jacket pocket, hesitated for just a second, then tossed it off to his left. Immediately he rolled to the right, to the opposite side of the stone pillar.

He got a brief impression of a large man, dressed in a black, jumpsuit, rising up from beneath an overturned pew, and he fired twice, both shots catching the man in the torso, driving him backwards to crash to the floor.

From where McGarvey was lying he could see the East German’s right shoulder and arm, the Kalashikov six inches from his outstretched hand. He was not moving.

McGarvey scrambled across to where the downed man lay and felt for a pulse but there was none. One down, time now to give the others something to think about.

Stuffing the Walther in his belt, McGarvey silently dragged the East German’s body over to the railing. Nothing moved below. By now they’d be waiting just under the balcony, wondering what was going on up here.

McGarvey heaved the German’s body up over the balustrade, balanced it there for just a moment, then rolled it over. It fell the twenty feet and hit the stone floor with a sickening thud. McGarvey wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard someone mutter the single sound, “Ah,” then nothing.

Seeing their comrade like that would slow them down, McGarvey hoped, just long enough for him to prepare himself for the coming assault. He had hoped to take out Schade’s killer, then pick off the others as they came into the nave. But they’d anticipated him.

He understood why when he retrieved the East German’s rifle. The same type of walkie-talkie he’d tossed overboard on his way into the port of Thira was propped up against the overturned pew. The others had been warned about the ambush.

His only hope now was that Lipton had brought his team ashore. Short of that he would hold them off here. The longer he did that, the longer they would remain away from Kathleen and Elizabeth.

He’d made a mistake coming up here. The bitter thought rankled as he dragged another solid oak pew over to the first, and muscled it over onto its side. The bench was at least fifteen feet long and had to weigh several hundred pounds. The thick seat bottom would stop just about anything short of a grenade or a LAW rocket, neither of which was beyond the STASI’s ability to acquire.

But he had run out of options by stupidly forgetting that Spranger was a professional.

His men would be well trained, well disciplined, well armed and well equipped. They would communicate.

Hunkering down between the pair of overturned pews which offered him protection from both stairwells, he ejected the Kalashnikov’s curved magazine and quickly counted the bullets. There were only eleven, and there were no spare clips lying around.

He had reloaded his pistol on the road, on the way up here from town. He ejected the clip. It was empty, which left only one round in the firing chamber.

Twelve rounds with which he not only had to defend himself, but with which he had to prevail and then rescue Kathleen and Elizabeth.

He smiled grimly as he holstered his pistol, and made sure the Kalashnikov’s safety was switched off, the selection lever in the single fire position.

Impossible odds, he thought. But still manageable.

Chapter 59

Lipton stood with the others at the head of the stone stairs to the dock, listening, but the gunfire had stopped for the moment. The young woman seemed to be in better condition than her mother, but neither of them would be able to withstand much more. They seemed weak, and more listless than they should under the circumstances.

Lipton suspected they’d been drugged.

“Tony and Jules will get you ladies off the island, and then call for help,” Lipton told them.

Elizabeth clutched his arm. “My father is here. He’s looking for us, but they know he’s coming. It’s a trap.”

“As soon as we get you to safety we’ll see what we can do to help him.”

Elizabeth looked at Lipton’s team, and laughed, the sound short and sharp. “I’m sorry, but I hope you brought more men with you than this.”

Lipton glanced at Tyrell. “Why is that, Ms. McGarvey?”

“Because there’s a lot more of them than there are of you. And they’re very good.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Lipton said. “But first, you and your mother are getting out of here.”

Elizabeth looked at him for a long time. “Then good luck,” she said, and she took her mother’s arm and they started single file down the stairs.

McGarvey held his breath as he tried to distinguish sounds other than the shrieking wind and the annoying ringing in his ears. He thought he’d heard someone on the stairs behind him, and he had looked over his shoulder, but there was nothing yet.

The flames from the burning helicopter in the courtyard had finally begun to die down, and there was much less light up here in the loft, which was just as well.

If he couldn’t see his attackers, then they couldn’t see him either.

Both stairwells were in darkness, and he kept switching his gaze from one to the other, his eyes barely above the level of the ever-turned pews, so that he almost missed the movement in the west stairwell.

His heart froze, then steadied, as he switched his attention to the opposite stairwell, bringing the Kalashnikov up and resting it lightly on the pew.

“Take a peek,” he muttered softly. “Just a little peek to see what’s going on up here.”

A head and shoulders appeared in the stairwell, and McGarvey fired once, driving the figure violently backward and out of sight.

Switching his aim immediately back to the west stairwell he was in time to see a figure dart left into the shadows toward one of the stone pillars.

He squeezed off a single shot, catching the man in the side, flipping him over the stairwell railing with a desperate cry, and McGarvey heard him crashing down the way he’d come.

Spranger could hardly believe what was happening. Durenmatt was dead, his body lying in a pool of blood on the stone floor where McGarvey had flipped it over the chorus loft balustrade. Scherchen was crumpled in a heap at the foot of the east stairwell.

And Magda was shaking and crying silently with rage over the body of her husband lying in the west stairwell.

Their chopper was destroyed, their pilot and maintenance man dead, and aside from Lessing down on the dock, that left only three: Him and Liese at the east stairwell and Magda on the opposite side.

Liese was staring at him, a slight smirk on her beautiful lips, as if she were saying, I told you so. He had the urge to reach out and slap the look off her face.

Tiny flashes of light were going off inside his head, like police cameras in a morgue, each burst illuminating some morbid scene in the recesses of his mind.

Radvonska’s warning in Rome about McGarvey kept coming back to him, and he kept pushing it away. This operation was falling apart at the edges. Monaco, Japan, the States … all unraveling. All because of one man.

He looked up into the darkness of the loft. The two shots that had been fired had come from a Kalashnikov. Diirenmatt’s, which in itself was so galling he could hardly stand it.

Who was he?

Intense pain from his burns threatened to blot out what little sanity was left to him. Only through sheer force of will was he able to hang on. To think.

They were going to have to leave this place soon. It wouldn’t be long before the Greek authorities began to sit up and take notice that something was going on out here. And Diirenmatt had said that McGarvey had not been alone in the courtyard.

Which meant the man had help. Who?

Maybe Lessing had seen something out in the water after all.

He pulled the walkie-talkie around and keyed the talk button. Liese was still staring at him, the same fixed expression on her face, in her eyes. She was, Spranger thought, an enigma even to him.

“Bruno, what is your situation down there?” he said softly into the microphone. “Have you seen anything else?”

He keyed the transmit button, and waited impatiently for Lessing’s reply. But there was no response.

“Bruno, do you copy?”

Still there was no answer.

“Bruno, come back,” he transmitted.

“What’s the matter, Ernst, are your friends deserting you?” McGarvey’s voice drifted down from the loft.

Spranger stepped back a half pace, as if he expected an apparition to appear at the head of the stairs, guns blazing. A ghost, incapable of being harmed, and yet supremely able to inflict death and destruction.

“Ernst…?” Liese said softly.

Magda was looking across at them, the big Russian assault rifle clutched in her arms.

Spranger dropped the walkie-talkie on the floor. “Get them,” he told Liese.

“The women?” she asked, blinking.

“Yes. Bring them here.”

Liese looked up toward the loft. “What do you mean to do, Ernst?” she asked. “Let’s leave now, while we still have the chance.”

“It would be the end of the project.”

“Fuck the Japanese,” Liese said urgently. “But we can take the women with us. At least the young one. She’s fit to travel.”

“Liese,” Spranger said. “Get them.”

She looked directly into his eyes for several long moments, a test of wills, but then her gaze dropped and she turned and hurried off.

When she was gone, Spranger laid his rifle down, took out the detonator, and motioned for Magda to take a position at the top of the stairs. She nodded her understanding and went up.

Spranger gave her a half minute to get into place, and then called up to McGarvey.

“I’m going to come up the stairs, Mr. McGarvey. Unarmed. I want to talk to you about saving the lives of your ex-wife and daughter.”

“What do you want out of it?” McGarvey answered.

“There are only four of us left. We would very much like to walk away from here with our lives.”

“Then go. Turn around and walk away.”

“Ah, but it’s not going to be that easy,” Spranger said, much calmer now that he had a plan. He started up the stairs. “Here I come, and as I say, I am unarmed. But I am carrying a small electronic device in my right hand. My thumb is on the button.

If the button is pushed a powerful explosion will destroy the room in which your wife and daughter are being held. There would be no chance of their survival in such a case. Do you understand?”

“No,” McGarvey said harshly.

Spranger stopped halfway up. “Do you believe that I am not serious, Mr. McGarvey?”

“What do you get out of it? You still haven’t answered my question.”

“I propose to give you the detonating device in exchange for Peter’s rifle and your pistol,” Spranger replied, smiling.

“Then you’ll kill me.”

“On the contrary, we will need you alive to effect our escape past your friends.”

The church was silent for a long time. Even the wind howling around the eaves seemed to have calmed down for that instant.

“Mr. McGarvey?” Spranger called.

“Come,” McGarvey said.

“I need your assurances that…“

“Come,” McGarvey repeated.

Holding the detonator away from his body, Spranger went the rest of the way up to the loft. “Here I come.”

He hesitated for a beat on the last stair, then stepped up, out of the deeper darkness.

At first he couldn’t make out much except for a few vague shapes. Something had been piled up in the middle of the loft.

“Put the detonator down,” McGarvey’s voice came from the darkness, but Spranger couldn’t pinpoint it. Had he made another mistake with this man?

“I cannot see you. Show yourself.”

“Do it,” McGarvey said, and this time Spranger was sure that the American was at the far end of the loft where he would see Magda if she showed herself.

“All right, I’ll do it,” Spranger shouted hastily. He had to distract the man’s attention for just a crucial second or two. “I’m putting it down, but you must lay your weapons aside.” He started to crouch down to place the detonator on the floor when Liese shouted at him from the nave, her voice desperate.

“Ernst! They’re gone!”

Magda Schey rose up out of the dark stairwell at that moment and brought her rifle up.

“Nein…“”

Spranger cried when McGarvey fired once, driving Magda backward, her weapon discharging in a long burst, the bullets ricocheting dangerously off the stone walls.

Then McGarvey fired again, this shot hitting Spranger in the right shoulder before he had time to react, shoving him off balance down the stairs, every fiber in his being raging at the surprise and injustice. It wasn’t supposed to end up like this!

Chapter 60

Spranger’s horribly burned left arm and collarbone broke in the fall down the stairs, and at the bottom his face smashed into the stone floor, crushing his nose and both cheekbones with a grinding agony.

For a seeming eternity he just lay there, sounds echoing interminably in his head.

But he was alive and conscious, though just barely, his world spinning, a deep nausea rising up making him gag and almost vomit.

“Christus, Chrtstus,” he muttered wetly, spraying the floor with blood as he tried to push himself upright with his wounded right arm.

The instant shot of sharply localized pain was like a burst of adrenalin to his system, momentarily clearing his head and his vision.

The detonator, its plastic case cracked, lay on the stone floor about two yards away.

Spranger started to pull himself toward it, everything within his being concentrating on the one thing: On the electronic device, on revenge.

McGarvey had brought him to this. The one man. And he would suffer the consequences of his actions. If he was still alive. If Magda hadn’t killed him: She’d managed to shoot.

He cocked an ear, but there was no gunfire for the moment. If McGarvey were dead, killing his wife and daughter wouldn’t matter.

But he would do it anyway, and in the doing he would be striking a double blow-at McGarvey, and at that bitch Liese. If she’d simply kept her mouth shut about the women being gone…

Spranger stopped for just a moment and turned that stray thought over in his head.

Liese had said something about the women being gone. But that was impossible. They could not have escaped from their cell. And even if they had, they couldn’t have gone anywhere.

She was mistaken. It couldn’t be.

Suddenly Liese was there, above him, concern written all over her face. “We must get out of here now, Ernst,” she told him. “There are others coming.”

“Get the detonator,” Spranger croaked, blood slobbering down his chin and the front of his tattered jumpsuit.

“What are you talking about?” she cried, glancing nervously up the stairs.

“I want to blow the tower.”

“They’re gone, you fool!”

“No,” Spranger growled, the single word torn in anguish from the back of his throat.

“I won’t allow it.” He looked up into her eyes. “Liese, please. It’s all I ask. We’ll push the button and then we’ll get out of here. Together. We’ll regroup and finish the Japanese project. It’s all still possible, but you must help me.”

“I’ll help you,” Liese said, resignedly. She got the detonator and then helped him to his feet. “We’ll go overland, and hide in the mountains until it’s safe.”

“Do it, Liese. Do it!”

McGarvey huddled behind the overturned pews, the breath knocked out of him. He had taken two hits from behind, one in the left shoulder, the bullet exiting cleanly just below his collarbone, and the other, much more painful wound, in the meat of his right thigh.

Once again he understood that Spranger had outthought him, although he was certain that he’d hit the East German general at least once.

The ringing was back in his ears, and between that and his ragged breath whistling in his throat, it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything.

He wanted simply to close his eyes and sleep. He wanted peace, something he’d not had for a very long time.

As he went down he’d managed to get off a second burst before his weapon either jammed or ran out of ammunition. He was too tired to find out which. But he’d got the impression of Spranger falling back. At least that’s what he thought it had been, but lying here in the darkness he wasn’t sure of what he’d seen; or, in fact, if he’d seen anything.

He’d heard a woman’s voice. But just now it was difficult to recall exactly what she’d said.

“McGarvey,” someone shouted from below, on the floor of the nave. Spranger? It was a man’s voice.

McGarvey struggled to sit up. He pulled the Kalashnikov over to him. The ejector slide was locked in the open position, the breech empty.

“Mr. McGarvey?” someone else called from below. This time it was a woman. Her English had British intonations, but the accent was definitely German.

“Bastards,” McGarvey shouted, the effort causing a shooting pain in his side.

“Listen,” the man called. “Sagen Sle, aufwiedersehen.”

“Bastards,” McGarvey shouted again, when a huge explosion a long way off shook the very foundation of the church. Kathleen and Elizabeth. McGarvey was galvanized.

Dropping the Kalashnikov, he clawed the Walther from his holster, switched the safety off, cocked the hammer and clambered to his feet.

“Come back,” he shouted, lurching toward the balustrade.

Something crashed into one of the pews behind him, and he swung around, getting off a snap shot with his last round at a black figure rising up, as it fired its assault rifle on full automatic.

Chapter 61

A thirty-foot section of the residence building’s outer wall was simply gone, the upper floors of the tower, including the area in which the women had been held, gone also.

Lipton and Tyrell huddled behind a pile of smoking debris just off the great hall waiting for Wasley to report back. He’d gone down to the dock to make sure that no one had been hurt in the blast, and see if that avenue of escape was still open to them.

The gunfire they’d heard just after the explosion had stopped, and the only sounds now were the wind howling through the jagged opening and the sea crashing against the rocks five hundred feet below.

“I don’t like it,” Tyrell said. “McGarvey has to understand the significance of the explosion, if he heard it. But there’s been no response.”

“Don’t write him off yet, Frank,” Lipton replied. “You didn’t see his file. I did, and it’s damned impressive. Bob is no slouch either.”

“They’re only two.”

Wasley came through the corridor door and hurried across the great hall, crouching down beside them. He was winded from the climb. “A section of the dock was buried, but they’re okay,” he said. “Joslow said he’s going to hold up there, unless you tell him differently. He’s called Ops for help.”

“Good,” Lipton said. They’d decided against using walkie-talkies because they’d not counted on being separated, and they’d wanted to keep unsecured communications to an absolute minimum. He could see that it had been a mistake. “How are the women holding up?”

“Joslow and Reid have got their hands full, sir. The younger one says she’s not leaving the island until she finds out about her father.”

“What’s Ops’ ETA over the dock?”

“Unknown. Joslow thinks they’re waiting for authorization. Word from Athens is that the Greek authorities are beginning to stir.”

“Then we’d better get the hell out of here on the double,” Lipton said.

They crawled over the pile of debris, their weapons at the ready, and ducked into the corridor that ran the length of the monastery complex toward the courtyard and the desconsecrated church at the front.

Leapfrogging, Lipton first, Wasley second and Tyrell taking up the rear, they hurriedly worked their way forward. Every doorway, every corner, every set of stairs were places of possible ambush and had to be approached with extreme caution.

But nothing moved. There was no gunfire, no signs, except for the lingering stench of the burning chopper, that the monastery was anything but a abandoned center of study and worship.

Lipton held up at the final junction, the corridor ending in a T, the intersecting hallway much narrower. Directly across from where they crouched, a window looking onto the courtyard had blown out. The last of the flames were dying down, nothing identifiable left of the helicopter except for a section of the tail and tail rotor.

The heat had been so intense that lead holding the window panes in place had melted and formed small gray pools on the floor. Even the stone walls inside the corridor had been blackened, and the thick framing timbers in the walls and ceilings had caught fire and were still smoldering in places.

To the right the narrower hallway ended at a door that opened into the nave of the main church.

Lipton pointed that way, then keeping low, darted across the corridor, to a spot just beneath the window, and motioned for Wasley to follow.

Tyrell was the first at the doorway, and he held up until Lipton joined him, this time with Wasley acting as backup.

On signal the two of them rolled into the nave, left and right, Wasley immediately taking up a position to cover them from the corridor.

But nothing moved here either, except for the wind and rain that came through an open door at the front of the church.

Crouching in the darkness Lipton stared at the open door for a moment or two. Someone had left the church? In a hurry?

Turning back, he spotted the three bodies just beneath the balcony; one in the middle and one at the foot of the stairs on either side. It was obvious even from a distance of twenty-five or thirty feet that they were dead.

Lipton zigzagged to the east stairway. When he was in place he motioned for Tyrell to take the west stairway, and for Wasley to remain where he was.

Whatever had happened here was bloody and final. Lipton wasn’t at all sure he wanted to know what was upstairs on the balcony, but he figured that McGarvey had probably made his stand here… and lost?

He pointed up, and he and Tyrell started up the stairs at the same time; silently, their weapons at the ready.

The balcony was mostly in darkness now that the flames from the courtyard had died down, so it took Lipton several moments to regain his night vision. When he did he nearly staggered backward off-balance.

McGarvey, blood streaming from several wounds in his neck, face and body, stood in the shadows, the heavy Kalashnikov assault rifle held over his head like a club, ready to smash Lip ton’s head.

Slowly, he lowered the rifle, and managed a slight smile. “Kathleen and Elizabeth?” he asked, his voice barely audible.

“Safe,” Lipton said.

“Then let’s get out of here. I could use a drink.