Diamond Solitaire

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Wedged into seat 1 IB in the Concorde, Diamond was about as comfortable as a stout person may expect to be on an aircraft noted for its slim contour. Eleven-B was immediately behind the serving bay, providing the dual advantage of increased legroom and a tray arrangement that allowed him to stand his champagne glass on a level surface rather than having it on a slope created by his stomach.

Rapid decisions were responsible for his being on the flight. Around 5:30 P.M., he had learned from Immigration at Heathrow that someone remembered a Japanese woman and child passing through the departure gate about 1:00 P.M. More importantly, the woman had been wearing what was described as gray sportsgear and the child a red corduroy dress, black tights and trainers. Soon after this, British Airways check-in staff had confirmed that a Mrs. Nakajima, accompanied by her daughter Aya, had boarded flight BA177 at 1415, due at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York, at 1705, local time.

New York. This wasn't a game for faint hearts, but Diamond was totally committed. By using his former police rank, he succeeded in extracting a promise from the Immigration Service at JFK that Mrs. Nakajima and daughter would be detained for up to an hour. From British Airways he had already learned that by taking the last Concorde flight of the day at 1900, he could be in New York fifty minutes after BA177 arrived-the sort of schedule that would have him looking at his watch all the way across. He'd booked a passage immediately, quoting Yamagata's Gold Card number. The thought crossed his mind that he ought to have called the Albert Hall to get his sponsor's approval, but he decided against it. "Mr. Yamagata is a rich man. He will pay," the interpreter had promised when they had met, and presumably Mr. Yamagata, the man of honor, wouldn't quibble over a mere five thousand and thirty pounds. Diamond preferred not to inquire at this stage.

Remembering just in time that he was a considerate husband, he did phone Stephanie to let her know that he was leaving the country. She wasn't quite as devastated as he'd expected. "See if you can get me a pair of genuine New York sneakers while you're over there. White, of course. Remember I take a seven, but that's eight and a half in their size." How did she know these things? he wondered.

He checked his watch again, thinking ahead. The U.S. Immigration officials would be the first test They were trained to spot conmen. He'd need to be sharp to convince them that he was on an official investigation. Then there was the Nakajima woman, who had thoroughly outfoxed the formidable Mrs. Straw. She was a real challenge. Even if she folded under questioning and admitted to abducting the child, there was still the matter of what action could be taken, and where. Extradition law had never been his forte.

A stewardess came along the aisle and handed him a note that must have been transmitted to the cockpit.

To: Supt. Diamond

From: US. Immigration

Time: 1721NYT

Will meet you on arrival. Ms. Nakajima and child detained.

A tingling sensation, a mixture of relief, anticipation and champagne, spread through Diamond's veins.

"Good news, sir?" the stewardess inquired.

He gave a dignified smile. "Just confirming an appointment" In truth, it deserved a fanfare. For one indulgent moment, he likened himself to Chief Inspector Dew, the man who had crossed the Atlantic in 1910 to arrest Dr. Crippen and his mistress. A telegraph message, a dash across the ocean, and Crippen had been copped.

There the comparison ended. Crippen had been a murderer. Mrs. Nakajima was guilty, at most, of abduction.

The Concorde had already started its descent. The "fasten seatbelts" order came over the public address.

They touched down five minutes before schedule at 1750.

When the doors were opened, a woman immigration officer was waiting. Diamond introduced himself.

"May I see your ID?" she asked, taking stock of him. He didn't fit the stereotype of a British detective, judging by the way she eyed his waistline.

"Will my passport do?" Helpfully, it had been issued four years ago and still listed his profession as police officer.

"Would you come with me, sir?"

The "sir" was encouraging. Stiff from the journey and slightly disorientated, but eager to see Naomi, he was taken through a roped barrier and along a corridor lined with filing cabinets. Another door, another corridor, and into an office looking like a scene out of a television police series with its sense of stage-managed activity as people walked through, stopped, exchanged words, presumably to develop different plotlines in the story, and moved on. A black officer in tinted glasses carved a way around a couple of desks and said, "You've got to be the guy from Scotland Yard."

"Peter Diamond," he said, offering his hand without going into the matter of where he was from. "You still have these people detained, I hope?"

"Sure have." The man didn't need to give his name. He had a tag hanging from his shirt that identified him as Arthur Wharton.

"Are they giving any trouble?"

"No, sir."

"What have you told them?"

"The usual. A small technical problem over their passport. They're yours." Arthur Wharton nodded to the woman who'd brought Diamond this far and she beelined determinedly between two people crossing the office from different directions and into another corridor. Diamond realized that he was meant to go with her. Striving to go the same way, he found that he wasn't so adept at dodging people.

He caught up with her by an open doorway. A uniformed member of the airport police was sitting outside, drinking coffee from a paper cup.

Diamond looked into the room.

He stared.

A woman and child were in there, certainly, but the child wasn't Naomi.

She was at least two years younger. Seated on a steel-framed chair, swinging her legs, this little girl still had a baby face, tiny features and chubby cheeks. She wasn't even dressed like Naomi. She had a blue dress, white socks and black shoes made of some shiny material like patent leather. She was Japanese, admittedly, but there the resemblance ended.

The Japanese woman who looked up anxiously at Diamond didn't match the description he'd been given either. She was in a red skirt and jacket and she was wearing rimless glasses.

At a loss, he turned to his escort, but she'd already gone.He spoke to the man at the door. 'Those aren't the people. There's some mistake."

The cop shrugged.

He found his way back to the hub of the Immigration Department, and vented his frustration on Officer Wharton. "You detained the wrong people. I've never seen that kid before and they're wearing different clothes, for Christ's sake."

"Hold on, Mac," Wharton told him, pointing a finger. "Don't give lip to me. We held the people you wanted. You gave us no description, just a name. That's Mrs. Nakajima in there, no mistake. You want to see the passport?" He handed one across.

Diamond opened it No question: these people were called Nakajima. "But they don't match the description," he said.

"You mean this passport belongs to some other woman?"

"No. What I mean is that the people who were seen at Heathrow were dressed differently from Mrs. Nakajima and child." Even as he spoke the words, the mistake he'd made dawned on him. "Oh, no!"

Wharton eyed him dispassionately.

"I assumed because Mrs. Nakajima and her daughter were Japanese and traveling alone that they had to be die woman and child seen going through the departure gate at Heathrow. After BA came up with these people, I just didn't check the other airlines. They must have taken some other flight. They could have gone anywhere-any damned place in the world." Mad with himself for being so obtuse, he ended by thumping his fist down so hard on Officer Wharton's desk that paper clips jumped.

Three thousand five hundred miles on the Concorde chasing the wrong people. What a pea-brain! "Listen," he said to Wharton, "it may be too late, but I want to contact Terminal Three at Heathrow. I want to fax every airline to check their passenger lists for a Japanese woman traveling alone with a child sometime after one P.M. today. Could you arrange that for me?" Sensing that die request was too stark, he added, "Arthur?"

"You want me to authorize those faxes?" Wharton's expression didn't look promising.

"You have the facilities here," Diamond told him frankly.

"But you want me to handle this?"

"Exactly. If my name is given, there's so much to explain. If the request comes from U.S. Immigration, they'll act on it promptly. No explanation needed. Speed is the key here."

"Checking passenger lists? You've got to be joking, man."

"They're computerized," Diamond pointed out. He'd not often thought of modern technology as an ally, but he had no scruples in this emergency. "It's just a matter of tapping a few keys."

Wharton rubbed the side of his face.

"Listen," Diamond steamed on, "while you're doing this for me, I'll go back to Mrs. Nakajima and make your apologies. Fair enough?"

It wasn't fair, and he knew it. Wharton knew it, too, but the urgency in the way it was put to him was compelling. "You'd better write down the message you want me to send," he said with a sigh.

The crucial reply from London came in forty minutes later. By mat stage of the exercise, Officer Wharton had been thoroughly briefed about the quest to find Naomi and now he identified himself totally with the challenge. "Hey, man, this is it" He held up the fax he had just taken from the machine. "You want some good news? She's here after all!"

Diamond was galvanized. "Here? In New York, you mean?"

"Right on. They flew in this afternoon on a United flight A Japanese woman and a kid."

"Brilliant! When did they land?"

"Seventeen-twenty. About an hour ago."

"An hourl" Diamond's elation withered and died. "By now they must have cleared customs and left the airport."

But Wharton gave a reassuring grin. "Not this airport. Takes a while to get through Immigration in JFK. The United flight?" He looked at his watch. "I figure they could be as far as the customs hall by now, but I wouldn't bet on it"

Diamond was on his feet. "Which way?"

"Hold on, Peter," Wharton told him. "You're in serious danger of doing yourself an injury. We can check from here." He pointed upwards to a set of eight television monitors mounted on the ceiling. "Video surveillance. See if you can spot your people. I'm going to see if I can raise the crew of that flight."

Cameras were in positions where they could pan slowly over the entire queue snaking around the system of barriers towards the kiosks where their passports were examined and stamped. Diamond studied each screen keenly, looking for a child. Some were tantalizingly half obscured by adults.

Wharton was busy on the phone. "I've spoken to the chief steward on the United flight," he presently informed Diamond. "There's no question they were on board. He remembers Naomi in the red corduroy, and the woman in the gray Rohan jacket."

"That's wonderful, but where are they now, I'd like to know," said Diamond. "I can't see them in the queue."

"You won't. Seems the United flight has cleared Immigration. Take a look at the baggage claim hall-the monitors to your right. They should be in mere somewhere. I'm trying to establish which of our officers dealt with them."

He would rather have been in the baggage hall himself instead of staring at the gray screens. The figures grouped by the baggage carousel looked about as remote and unfocused as the pictures of the first moon landing. True, he could just about make out enough to distinguish one individual from another.

"If you think you spot them, we have a zoom facility," Wharton explained, taking the phone away from his ear for a moment "We can take a closer look."

"Thanks." But he hadn't spotted them, and the possible explanations were depressingly simple to supply. They may have collected their luggage and gone. Or the woman may have owned a U.S. passport, in which case they would have passed through at least half an hour ago. Or they'd carried everything as hand luggage.

Then Wharton started talking earnestly on the phone. He told Diamond, "Okay, they just passed through Immigration. The woman's name is Tanaka-get that?-Mrs. Minori Tanaka, Japanese passport holder. The kid is traveling on her passport, name of Emi."

"Amy?"

Wharton spelled it. "Mrs. Tanaka put down the Sheraton, Park Avenue, as her address. We can check with the hotel whether they have a reservation."

Diamond's eyes hadn't left the monitors and a moment later he was rewarded by the image of two grainy figures of a woman and small girl approaching the carousel with a cart. The child appeared to have Naomi's fringe and black hair.

He pointed. "That one. Second from the end. The child." Wharton reached for a remote control and pressed a button to operate the zoom. The child's face increased in size until it filled the screen, placid in expression, gazing nowhere in particular, as if preoccupied in thought.

Naomi, without question.

"Let me see the woman with her," Diamond requested.

"In close-up?"

The screen blurred momentarily, then he had his first sight of Minori Tanaka, a keen-eyed, intelligent face with prominent cheekbones and a small nose. The mouth, defined with an intense lipstick, was wider than usual in a Japanese, giving a suggestion of waywardness, or sexiness, according to interpretation. She was probably in her thirties.

"Attractive," was Arthur Wharton's opinion.

Unexpectedly, the face slid out of shot.

"Can you pull back?" Diamond asked, and as the camera was being adjusted to give the longer view, even before it was complete, he saw that the woman was stooping over the carousel. "Christ, she's collecting her suitcase! She'll be gone."

Watching the screen, they had been lulled into a near- disastrous passivity. In seconds, Mrs. Tanaka could wheel her cart through customs to the cab area and be driven away with Naomi.

"How do we get to them?" Diamond demanded.

"You need a stamp on your passport first," Wharton told him.

"Oh, for crying out loud! That child has been abducted."

"Passport."

He handed it across. Wharton opened it, selected a rubber stamp from the drawer of his desk, adjusted the date and made the imprint in the passport. "Now that you're legal we can go find them, Peter."

Diamond was speechless. Speechless, then breathless, as Wharton led him at a jog along a moving walkway and down two sets of stairs. Through a door and they emerged into the main concourse of the air terminal, opposite the arrivals gate. It was busy with friends and relatives crowding the barrier for«a first glimpse as the passengers wheeled their carts through.

They were in time to see Mrs. Tanaka emerge, pushing one large blue suitcase on a cart. At her side-and there could be no doubt anymore-was Naomi.

The little girl appeared uninterested in the new scene unfolding in front of her, the mass of faces turned their way. She walked mechanically at Mrs. Tanaka's side. They passed the point where the drivers stood with notices displaying people's names.

"You gonna stop them?" asked Wharton, giving him a shove. "You'd better go now, man."

Diamond started forward, and it was brought home to him forcibly-for the second time-that he wasn't in shape for dodging and weaving. A man in a wheelchair skidded to a stop and yelled at him to watch where he was going. He didn't have time to point out that he was doing exactly mat-it was the stretch between that he'd ignored.

Just as he found a clear way through, he hesitated.

Someone had moved in to speak to Mrs. Tanaka, a white man, tall, with cropped, dark hair and a distinctive nose that made Diamond think of Charlton Heston, though the resemblance ended there. He was in a black leather jacket and white jeans. He spoke to Mrs. Tanaka and she nodded and frowned, apparently startled by the approach.

Naomi was looking past the man, straight at Diamond. But it was the stone-faced autistic stare that he knew so well. Nothing to suggest she recognized him, no reaction of surprise, or pleasure, or dislike, come to that. She simply let her eyes focus on him for a moment and then she was distracted by the electronic chime that signaled an announcement on the public address. She turned her face upwards towards the source of die sound.

A decision born of professional experience trailing suspects had made Diamond stop that split second before going up to them. The man might be some predator muscling in to "help" with the luggage for an exorbitant fee-easy bucks when the victims were women with children in tow. Yet his presence could be more significant So the right move was to go straight past them, veering off to the left, and stand close to the queue at an information desk and keep tabs on what happened next.

Mrs. Tanaka's body language suggested she was agreeing to whatever the man was proposing, yet not without some reluctance. After some head-shaking and spreading of the arms, she twice took a step away from him. Finally she allowed him to take over the cart and wheel it towards the nearest exit, so quickly that Naomi had to trot to keep up.

Diamond followed closely, secure in the knowledge that neither of the adults knew him and Naomi was unlikely to react. Allowing them to get this far without being challenged was something of a risk, yet he reckoned their movements were going to be limited by the cart, whatever they did next.

They were heading towards the taxi area. If necessary, Diamond decided, he would let them get into a cab and drive off, and he'd follow in the next vehicle. If the man in the leather jacket traveled with Mrs. Tanaka, one question would be answered: he'd be involved in this business.

Outside was the line of yellow cabs, superintended by a man with a whistle in his mouth. But Leather-jacket wheeled the cart straight past and across the road. The air-shuttle buses, then? Apparently not. They were going into the short-stay parking lot, which was a possibility Diamond hadn't considered, and he clapped his hand to his face in self-rebuke. He wasn't thinking sharply at all since arriving here; he put it down to the flying.

He had to cross the road quickly, zigzagging through traffic, following them into the ground floor of the parking lot, where his problems increased. Leather-jacket and Mrs. Tanaka weren't more than twenty-five yards ahead with Naomi when they turned right and entered the elevator. The doors had closed before he got to them.

What now?

There were stairs close by. He had no idea whether to go down to the basement or up to the decks above. There was no indicator to tell him which floor the elevator had reached.

He'd have to plump for one and hope they were still in sight when he got there. One direction was as likely as any other, so he went down, taking die stairs two at a time and bursting through the swinging doors at the bottom.

No one was in sight among the ranks of cars.

Behind him, the elevator doors opened. Nobody was inside. He was certain now that he should have tried one of the upper levels. He got in and pressed the second-floor button, cursing the delay before the doors slid across.

He'd be fortunate if he hadn't lost them completely. The cage moved upwards, the doors opened and he stepped out and started running. No point in stalking the quarry now. If they stepped into a car and drove away, he hadn't the slightest chance of pursuing them. There were no taxis up here. But he had spotted them. They were three or four aisles to his right, about eighty yards ahead. So he ran, shouting to them.

"I say! Mrs. Tanaka!"

She turned to look.

Leather-jacket also turned. He was in the act of unlocking a car door.

Diamond was still thirty yards from them.

Mrs. Tanaka said something Diamond couldn't pick up and opened a door herself and bundled Naomi into the car.

"I'd like a word," called Diamond.

But he didn't get a word. Instead, he got the cart slammed into him as he advanced. Leather-jacket used it like a battering ram, driving it at him viciously. It had the weight of the suitcase behind it, and the full force of a large, young man.

Diamond's ankles could have suffered ugly damage if he hadn't reacted a split second before the impact and jumped six inches off the ground-about as high as a man of his size could hope to achieve. He pitched forward, making the suitcase take the main impact. His head crunched against the metal basket mounted at the top of the cart. But for the cushioning caused by the suitcase, he might have ended with his head in the basket like a victim of the guillotine.

As it was, he rolled aside, tipping the cart over and denting the wing of a car with his left shoulder. He was in no condition to spring up and fight

Leather-jacket wasn't staying. He grabbed the suitcase (now split across the center) from under the cart, swung it into the back of the car, slammed the door, and got into the front with Mrs. Tanaka.

A faceful of exhaust fumes didn't help Diamond's condition one bit. The car-a large, white Buick with red strips along the side-roared. The tires shrieked and it powered away.