Dragon

“Stiff competition,

Pitt said as he raised the hood and wiped down the engine. “I’ll be lucky to take a third in my class.”

“When is the judging?”

“Any time.”

“And the races?”

“After the concours, winners are announced and the awards passed out.”

“What car will you race against?”

“According to the program, the red Hispano next to us.”

Loren eyed the attractive Paris-built drop-head cabriolet. “Think you can beat it?”

“I don’t know. The Stutz is six years newer, but the Hispano has a larger engine and a lighter body.”

Giordino approached and announced, “I’m hungry. When do we eat?”

Loren laughed, gave Giordino a light kiss on the cheek, and produced a picnic basket from the back seat of the Stutz. They sat on the grass and ate mortadella and brie with sourdough bread, accompanied with a pate and fruit and washed down by a bottle of Valley of the Moon zinfandel.

The judges came and began examining Pitt’s car for the contours. He was entered in Class D, American classic 1930 to 1941 closed top. After fifteen minutes of intense study, they shook his hand and moved off to the next car in his class, a 1933 Lincoln V12 Berline.

By the time Pitt and his friends had polished off the zinfandel, the winners were announced over the public announcement system. The Stutz came in third behind a 1938 Packard sport coupe and a 1934 Lincoln limousine.

Pitt had lost one and a half points out of a perfect hundred because the Stutz cigarette lighter didn’t work and the exhaust system did not strictly adhere to the original design.

“Better than I expected,” said Pitt proudly. “I didn’t think we’d place.”

“Congratulations,” said Frank Mancuso.

Pitt stared blankly at the mining engineer who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. “Where did you pop from?”

“I heard through the grapevine you’d be here,” said Mancuso warmly, “so I thought I’d drop by, see the cars, and talk a little shop with you and Al.”

“Time for us to go to work?”

“Not yet.”

Pitt turned and introduced Mancuso to Loren. Giordino simply nodded and passed the newcomer a glass of wine from a newly opened bottle. Mancuso’s eyes widened when he was introduced to Loren.

He looked at Pitt with an approving expression, then nodded at Loren and the Stutz. “Two classic beauties. You have excellent taste.”

Pitt smiled slyly. “I do what I can.”

“That’s quite a car,” Mancuso said, eyeing the lines of the Stutz. “LeBaron coachwork, isn’t it?”

“Very good. You into old automobiles?”

“My brother is a car nut. I soaked up what little I know about them from him.” He motioned up the aisle separating the line of cars. “Would you care to give me a guided lecture on all this fine machinery?”

They excused themselves to Loren, who struck up a conversation with the wife of the owner of the Hispano-Suiza. After they strolled past a few cars, Giordino grew impatient.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

Mancuso stared at him. “You’ll probably hear about it from Admiral Sandecker. But Team Mercedes has been put on hold. Your project to salvage any remains of the ship that carried the bomb cars has been scrubbed.”

“Any particular reason?”

“The President decided it would be best if we kept hands off for now. Too many problems. Soviet propaganda is already trying to lay the blast on our doorstep. Congress is talking about launching investigations, and the President is in no mind to explain an undercover salvage operation. He can’t afford discovery of your Soggy Acres venture. That went against international laws governing mining of the seafloor.”

“We only took samples,” said Pitt defensively. “It was purely an experimental program.”

“Maybe so, but you got the jump on the rest of the world. Third-world nations especially would howl their heads off at the UN if they thought they were being cut out of an undersea bonanza.”

Pitt stopped and studied a huge open car. “I’d love to own this one.”

“A Cadillac touring?”

“A Cadillac V-Sixteen phaeton,” Pitt corrected. “They’re bringing close to a million dollars at the auctions.”

Giordino nodded. “Right up there with the Duesenbergs.”

Pitt turned and looked at Mancuso steadily. “How many cars with warheads have they found?”

“Only your six so far. Stacy and Weatherhill haven’t sent word of their progress on the West Coast yet.”

“The Japanese must have a fleet of those things scattered around the country,” said Pitt. “Jordan will need an army to nail them down.”

“There’s no lack of manpower, but the trick is to do it without pushing the Japs into a corner. If they think their nuclear bomb project is threatened, they might overreact and set one off man.”

“Nice if Team Honda can penetrate the source and snatch a map of the locations,” Giordino said quietly.

“They’re working on it,” Mancuso stated firmly.

Pitt leaned over and peered at a Lalique crystal head of a rooster that adorned the radiator of a Pierce-Arrow roadster. “In the meantime we all sit around with our fingers in our ears.”

“Don’t feel left out. You accomplished more in the first four hours than the entire team in forty-eight. We’ll be called when we’re needed.”

“I don’t like waiting in the dark for something to happen.”

Giordino switched his attention from the cars to a girl walking past in a tight leather skirt and said vaguely, “What could possibly happen at a concours?”

They seemed an unlikely group, but there they were, seriously observant in their dark suits and attaché cases amid the casually dressed classic car owners and spectators. The four Japanese men gazed studiously at the cars, scribbling in notebooks and acting as though they were advance men for a Tokyo consortium of collector car buyers.

It was a good front. People noticed them, were bemused by their antics, and turned away, never suspecting they were a highly trained team of undercover operatives and their attaché cases were arsenals of gas grenades and assault weapons.

The Japanese team had not come to admire the automobiles, they came to abduct Loren Smith.

They combed the area around the concours, noting the exits and placement of armed security guards. Their leader, his dark face glistening in the midday sun, noted that Pitt’s Stutz was parked in the center of the field of classic automobiles, making it next to impossible to spirit Loren away without causing an outcry.

He ordered his three men to return to their stretch limousine that was parked by the track while he hung around keeping an eye on Loren’s movements. He also followed Pitt, Giordino, and Mancuso for a short distance, examining their clothing for any telltale bulge of a handgun. He saw nothing suspicious and assumed all three were unarmed.

Then he wandered about patiently, knowing the right moment would eventually arrive.

A race steward informed Pitt that he and the Stutz were due on the starting line. With his friends going along for the ride, he drove along the grass aisle between the rows of cars and through a gate onto the asphalt one-mile oval track.

Giordino raised the hood and gave a final check of the engine while Mancuso observed. Loren gave Pitt a long good-luck kiss and then jogged to the side of the track, where she sat on a low wall.

When the Hispano-Suiza pulled alongside, Pitt walked over and introduced himself as the driver stepped from behind the wheel to recheck his hood latches.

“I guess we’ll be competing against each other. My name is Dirk Pitt.”

The driver of the Hispano, a big man with graying hair, a white beard, and blue-green eyes, stuck out a hand. “Clive Cussler.”

Pitt looked at him strangely. “Do we know each other?”

“It’s possible,” replied Cussler, smiling. “Your name is familiar, but I can’t place your face.”

“Perhaps we met at a party or a car club meet.”

“Perhaps.”

“Good luck,” Pitt wished him graciously.

Cussler beamed back. “The same to you.”

As he settled behind the big steering wheel, Pitt’s eyes scanned the instruments on the dashboard and then locked on the official starter, who was slowly unfurling the green flag. He failed to notice a long white Lincoln limousine pull to a stop in the pit area along the concrete safety wall just in front of Loren. Nor did he see a man exit the car, walk over to her, and say a few words.

Giordino’s attention was focused on the Stutz. Only Mancuso, who was standing several feet away, saw her nod to the man, a Japanese, and accompany him to the limousine.

Giordino lowered the hood and shouted over the windshield, “No oil or water leaks. Don’t push her too hard. We may have rebuilt the engine, but she’s over sixty years old. And you can’t buy spare Stutz parts at Pep Boys.”

“I’ll keep the rpm’s below the red,” Pitt promised him. Only then did he miss Loren and glance around. “What happened to Loren?”

Mancuso leaned over the door and pointed at the white stretch Lincoln. “A Japanese businessman over there in the limo wanted to talk to her. Probably some lobbyist.”

“Not like her to miss the race.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” said Mancuso.

Giordino reached in and gripped Pitt’s shoulder. “Don’t miss a shift.”

Then he and Mancuso stepped away to the side of the track as the starter positioned himself between the two cars and raised the green flag over his head.

Pitt eased down on the accelerator until the tachometer read 1,000 rpm’s. His timing was on the edge of perfect. He second-guessed the starter official and popped the clutch the same instant the flag began its descent. The turquoise Stutz got the jump and leaped a car length ahead of the red Hispano-Suiza.

The Stutz eight-cylinder engine featured twin overhead camshafts with four valves per cylinder. And though the horsepower was comparable, the Hispano’s six-cylinder displacement was eight liters against five for the Stutz. In chassis and body weight, the big town car gave away a 200-kilogram handicap to the cabriolet.

Both drivers had removed the cutout that allowed the exhaust to bypass their mufflers and thunder into the air just behind the manifolds. The resulting roar from the elderly engines as the cars accelerated from the starting line excited the crowd in the stands, and they shouted and applauded, urging on the beautiful but monstrous masterworks of mechanical art to higher speeds.

Pitt still led as they surged into the first turn in a haze of exhaust and a fury of sound. He shifted through the gears as smoothly as the old transmission let him. First gear was worn and gave off a banshee howl, with second coming much quieter. Given enough time and distance, both cars might have reached a speed of 160 kilometers (100 mph), but their accelerating velocity did not exactly snap necks.

Pitt kept a wary eye on the tach as he made his final shift with the Warner four-speed. Coming onto the backstretch, the Stutz was pushing a hundred kilometers, with the Hispano pressing hard and gaining in the turn.

Onto the straightaway, the Hispano moved up on the Stutz. Cussler was going all out. He pushed the big French car to the limit, the noisy valve train nearly drowning out the roar of the exhaust. The flying stork ornament that was mounted on the radiator crept even with the Stutz’s rear door handle.

There was nothing Pitt could do but keep the front wheels aimed straight, the accelerator pedal mashed to the floorboard, and hurtle down the track at full bore. The tach needle was quivering a millimeter below the red line. He dared not push the engine beyond its limits, not just yet. He backed off slightly as the Hispano drew alongside.

For a few moments they raced wheel to wheel. Then the superior torque of the Hispano began to tell, and it edged ahead. The exhaust from the big eight-liter engine sounded like a vulcan cannon in Pitt’s ears, and he could see the trainlike taillight that waggled back and forth when the driver stepped on the brakes. But Cussler wasn’t about to brake. He was pushing the flying Hispano to the wall.

When they sped into the final turn, Pitt slipped in behind the big red car, drafting for a few hundred meters before veering high in the curve. Then, as they came onto the homestretch, he used the few horses the Stutz had left to give and slingshotted down to the inside of the track.

With the extra power and momentum, he burst into the lead and held off the charging Hispano just long enough to cross the finish line with the Stutz sun-goddess radiator ornament less than half a meter in front of the Hispano stork.

It was a masterful touch, the kind of finish that excited the crowd. He threw back his head and laughed as he waved to them. He was supposed to continue and take a victory lap, but Giordino and Mancuso leaped from the pit area waving their hands for him to stop. He veered to the edge of the track and slowed.

Mancuso was frantically gesturing toward the white limousine that was speeding toward an exit. “The limousine,” he yelled on the run.

Pitt’s reaction time was fast, almost inhumanly so, and it only took him an instant to transfer his mind from the race to what Mancuso was trying to tell him.

“Loren?” he shouted back.

Giordino leaped onto the running board of the still-moving car. “I think those Japs in the limousine snatched her,” he blurted.

Mancuso rushed up then, breathing heavily. “They drove away before I realized she was still in the car.”

“You armed?” Pitt asked him.

“A twenty-five Colt auto in an ankle holster.”

“Get in!” Pitt ordered. Then he turned to Giordino. “Al, grab a guard with a radio and alert the police. Frank and I’ll give chase.”

Giordino nodded without a reply and ran toward a security guard patrolling the pits as Pitt gunned the Stutz and barreled past the gate leading from the track to the parking lot behind the crowd stands.

He knew the Stutz was hopelessly outclassed by the big, newer limousine, but he’d always held the unshakable belief that insurmountable odds were surmountable.

He settled in the seat and gripped the wheel, his prominent chin thrust forward, and took up the pursuit.

30

PITT GOT AWAY FAST. The race official at the gate saw him coming and hustled people out of the way. The Stutz hit the parking lot at eighty kilometers an hour, twenty seconds behind the white Lincoln.

They tore between the aisles of parked cars, Pitt holding the horn button down in the center of the steering wheel. Thankfully, the lot was empty of people. All the spectators and concours entrants were in the stands watching the races, many of whom now turned and stared at the turquoise Stutz as it swept toward the street, twin chrome horns blasting the air.

Pitt was inflamed with madness. The chances of stopping the limousine and rescuing Loren were next to impossible. It was a chase bred of desperation. There was little hope a sixty-year-old machine could run down a modern limousine pulled by a big V-8 engine giving out almost twice the horsepower. This was more than a criminal kidnapping, he knew. He feared the abductors meant for Loren to die.

Pitt cramped the wheel as they hit the highway outside the racetrack, careening sideways in a protesting screech of rubber, fishtailing down the highway in chase of the Lincoln.

“They’ve got a heavy lead,” Mancuso said sharply.

“We can cut it,” Pitt said in determination. He snapped the wheel to one side and then back again to dodge a car entering the two-lane highway from a side road. “Until they’re certain they’re being chased, they won’t drive over the speed limit and risk being stopped by a cop. The best we can do is keep them in sight until the state police can intercept.”

Pitt’s theory was on the money. The charging Stutz began to gain on the limousine.

Mancuso nodded through the windshield. “They’re turning onto Highway Five along the James River.”

Pitt drove with a loose and confident fury. The Stutz was in its element on a straight road with gradual turns. He loved the old car, its complex machinery, the magnificent styling, and fabulous engine.

Pitt pushed the old car hard, driving like a demon. The pace was too much for the Stutz, but Pitt talked to it, ignoring the strange look on Mancuso’s face, urging and begging it to run beyond its limits.

And the Stutz answered.

To Mancuso it was incredible. It seemed to him that Pitt was physically lifting the car to higher speeds. He stared at the speedometer and saw the needle touching ninety-eight mph. The dynamic old machine had never been driven that fast when it was new. Mancuso held on to the door as Pitt shot around cars and trucks, passing several at one time, so fast Mancuso was amazed they didn’t spin off the road on a tight bend.

Mancuso heard another sound above the exhaust of the Stutz and looked up from the open chauffeur’s compartment into the sky. “We have a helicopter riding herd,” he announced.

“Police?”

“No markings. It looks commercial.”

“Too bad we don’t have a radio.”

They had drawn up within two hundred meters of the limousine when the Stutz was discovered, and the Lincoln carrying Loren immediately began to pick up speed and slip away.

Then to add to the growing setback, a good ole farm boy driving a big Dodge pickup truck with two rifles slung across the rear window spotted the antique auto climbing up his truck bed and decided to do a little funnin’ to keep the Stutz from passing.

Every time Pitt pulled over the center line to overtake the Dodge, the wiry oily-haired driver, who grinned with half a mouth of vacant teeth, just cackled and veered to the opposite side of the road, cutting the Stutz off.

Mancuso pulled his little automatic from its ankle holster. “I’ll put one through the clown’s windshield.”

“Give me a chance to bulldog him,” said Pitt.

Bulldogging was an old-time race driver’s trick. Pitt eased up on the right side of the Dodge, then backed off and came at the other. He repeated the process, not trying to force his way past, but taking control of the situation.

The skinny truck driver swerved side to side to block what he thought were Pitt’s attempts to pass. Holding the Stutz at bay after numerous assaults, his head began to swivel to see where the old classic car was coming from next.

And then he made the mistake Pitt was hoping for.

He lost his concentration on a curve and slipped onto the gravel shoulder. His next mistake was to oversteer. The Dodge whipped wildly back and forth and then hurtled off the road, rolling over in a clump of low trees and bushes before coming to rest on its top and crushing a hornet’s nest.

The farm boy was only bruised in the crash, but the hornets almost killed him before he escaped the upside-down truck and leaped into a nearby pond.

“Slick work,” said Mancuso, staring back.

Pitt allowed a quick grin. “It’s called methodical recklessness.”

The grin vanished as he swerved around a truck and saw a flatbed trailer stopped on the blind side of a curve. The truck had lost part of its cargo, three oil barrels that had fallen off the trailer. One had burst and spread a wide greasy slick on the pavement. The white limousine had missed striking the truck but lost traction in the oil and made two complete 360-degree circles before its driver incredibly straightened it out and darted ahead.

The Stutz went into a sideways four-wheel drift, tires smoking, the sun flashing on its polished wheel covers. Mancuso braced himself for the impact against the rear of the truck he was sure would come.

Pitt fought the skid for a horrifying hundred meters before the black tire marks were finally behind him. Then he was into the oil. He didn’t touch his brakes or fight the car but shoved in the clutch and let the car roll free and straight over the slippery pool. Then he eased the car along the grass shoulder beside the road until the tires were rid of the oil, then resumed the chase only a few seconds now behind the Lincoln.

After the near miss, Mancuso was amazed to see Pitt blithely carry on as if he was on a Sunday drive.

“The helicopter?” Pitt asked conversationally.

Mancuso bent his head back. “Still with us. Flying above and to the right of the limo.”

“I have a gut feeling they’re working together.”

“Does seem strange there are no markings on the bird,” agreed Mancuso.

“If they’re armed, we could be in for a bad time.”

Mancuso nodded. “That’s a fact. My pea shooter won’t do much against automatic assault weapons from the air.”

“Still, they could have opened up and shut off our water miles back.”

“Speaking of water,” said Mancuso, pointing at the radiator.

The strain on the old car was beginning to tell. Steam was hissing from the filler cap under the sun goddess, and oil was streaking from the louvers of the hood. And as Pitt braked before a tight turn, he might just as well have raised a sail. The brake lining was overheated and badly faded. The only event that occurred when Pitt pushed the pedal was the flash of the taillights.

Pitt had visions of Loren tied and gagged in the plush rear seat of the limousine. Fear and anxiety swept through him like a gust of icy wind. Whoever abducted her might have already murdered her. He pushed the terrible thought from his mind and told himself the kidnappers could not afford to lose her as a hostage. But if they harmed her, they would die, he vowed ruthlessly.

Driving as if possessed, he was consumed with determination to rescue Loren. Using every scrap of his stubborn spirit, he pursued the Lincoln relentlessly.

“We’re holding on to them,” Mancuso observed.

“They’re toying with us,” Pitt replied, eyeing the road between the sun goddess hood ornament and the rear bumper of the white limousine racing only fifty meters ahead. “They should have enough power to leave us in their fumes.”

“Could be an engine problem.”

“I don’t think so. The driver is a professional. He’s maintained an exact distance between us since the oil spill.”

Mancuso looked at his watch as the sun’s rays flashed through the trees branching over the road. “Where in hell are the state police?”

“Chasing all over the countryside. Giordino has no way of knowing which direction we took.”

“You can’t keep up this pace much longer.”

“Al will smell out our trail,” Pitt said with complete confidence in his longtime friend.

Mancuso tilted his head as his ears picked up a new sound. He rose up on his knees and looked back and upward through the overhanging trees. He began waving madly.

“What is it?” Pitt asked, decelerating around a sharp turn and over a short bridge that spanned a narrow stream, his foot pushing the near useless brake pedal to the floor.

“I think the cavalry has arrived,” Mancuso shouted excitedly.

“Another helicopter,” Pitt acknowledged. “Can you see markings?”

The speeding cars raced out of the trees and into open farmland. The approaching helicopter banked to one side, and Mancuso could read the wording on the cowling under the engine and rotor blades.

“Henrico County Sheriff’s Department!” he yelled above the heavy thump of the rotor blades. Then he recognized Giordino waving from an open doorway. The little Italian had arrived, and not a minute too soon. The Stutz was on its last breath.

The pilot in the strange copter flying above the limousine saw the new arrival too. He suddenly veered off, dropped low, and headed northeast at full throttle, quickly disappearing behind a row of trees bordering a cornfield.

The Lincoln appeared to slowly drift to one side of the road. Pitt and Mancuso watched in helpless horror as the long white limo angled onto the shoulder, soared over a small ditch, and surged into the cornfield as if chasing the fleeing helicopter.

Pitt took in the rapid change of scene in one swift, sweeping glance. Reacting instantly, he twisted the wheel, sending the Stutz after the Lincoln. Mancuso’s mouth hung in shock as the dry and brittle cornstalks, left standing after husking, whipped the windshield. Instinctively he ducked down in the seat with his arms over his head.

The Stutz plunged after the limousine, bouncing wildly on its ancient springs and shock absorbers. The dust clouds flew so thick Pitt could hardly see past the sun goddess, yet his foot remained jammed flat on the accelerator.

They burst through a wire fence. A piece of it clipped Mancuso on the side of the head, and then they were out of the cornfield almost on top of the limousine. It had shot into the open at an incredible rate of speed in a direct line toward a concrete silo with the Stutz right behind.

“Oh, God,” Mancuso murmured, seeing disaster.

Despite the shock of witnessing an approaching crash that he was helpless to prevent, Pitt jerked the steering wheel violently to his right, throwing the Stutz in a spin around the other side of the silo, and missed piling into the Lincoln by an arm’s length.

He heard rather than saw the convulsive crush of metal tearing apart followed by the crackled splash of shattered glass against concrete. A great cloud of dust burst from the base of the silo and shrouded the devastated limousine.

Pitt was out of the Stutz before it stopped and running toward the crash site. Fear and dread spread through his body as he came around the silo and viewed the shattered, twisted car. No one could have lived after such a terrible impact. The engine had pushed through the firewall and was shoved against the front seat. The steering wheel was thrust up against the roof. Pitt could not see any sign of the chauffeur and assumed his body must have been thrown to the other side of the car.

The passenger compartment had accordioned, raising the roof in a strange peak and bending the doors inward, jamming them shut so tightly nothing less than an industrial metal saw could cut them away. Pitt desperately kicked out the few glass shards remaining in a broken door window and thrust his head inside.

The crumpled interior was empty.

In numbed slow motion Pitt walked around the car, searching under it for signs of bodies. He found nothing, not even a trace of blood or torn clothing. Then he looked at the caved-in dashboard and found the reason for the vacant ghost car. He tore a small instrument from its electrical connectors and studied it, his face reddening in anger.

He was still standing by the wreckage as the chopper landed and Giordino ran up, trailed by Mancuso, who was holding a bloodied handkerchief to one ear.

“Loren?” Giordino asked with grim concern.

Pitt shook his head and tossed the strange instrument to Giordino. “We were hoodwinked. This car was a decoy, operated by an electronic robot unit and driven by someone in the helicopter.”

Mancuso stared wildly about the limo. “I saw her get in,” he said dazedly.

“So did I,” Giordino backed him up.

“Not this car.” Pitt spoke quietly.

“But it was never out of your sight.”

“But it was. Think about it. The twenty-second head start when it left the track and drove under the stands to the parking lot. The switch must have been made then.”

Mancuso removed the handkerchief, revealing a neat slice just above his ear lobe. “It fits. This one was never out of our sight once we hit the highway.”

Mancuso broke off suddenly and looked miserably at the demolished limo. No one moved or said anything for several moments.

“We lost her,” Giordino said as if in pain, his face pale. “God help us, we lost her.”

Pitt stared at the car unseeing, his big hands clenched in anger and despair. “We’ll find Loren,” he said, his voice empty and cold as Arctic stone. “And make those pay who took her.”

Part 3

Ajima Island

31

October 12, 1993

Bielefeld, West Germany

THE FALL MORNING was crisp with a biting wind from the north when August Clausen stepped out of his half-timbered house and gazed across his fields toward the slopes of the Teutoburg Forest near Bielefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia. His farm lay in the valley, bordered by a winding stream that he had recently dammed up. He buttoned up his heavy wool coat, took a few deep breaths, and then walked the path to his barn.

A big hardy man just past seventy-four, Clausen still put in a full day’s work from sunup to sundown. The farm had been in his family for five generations. He and his wife raised two daughters, who married and left home, preferring city living in Bielefeld to farming. Except for hired hands during harvesting, Clausen and his wife ran the farm alone.

Clausen pushed open the barn doors and mounted a large tractor. The tough old gas engine turned over and fired on the first revolution. He slipped the transmission into top gear and moved into the yard, turning on a dirt road and heading toward the fields that had been harvested and cultivated for the next spring planting.

Today he planned to fill in a small depression that appeared in the southwest corner of a lettuce field. It was one of the few outdoor chores he wanted to get out of the way before the winter months set in. The evening before, he had set the tractor up with a front-end scoop to move dirt from a mound near an old concrete bunker left from the war.

One section of Clausen’s land was once an airfield for a Luftwaffe fighter squadron. When he returned home after serving in a Panzer brigade that fought Patton’s Third Army through France and half of Germany, he found a junkyard of burned and destroyed aircraft and motor vehicles piled and scattered over most of his fallow fields. He kept what little was salvageable and sold the rest to scrap dealers.

The tractor moved at a good speed over the road. There had been little rain the past two weeks and the tracks were dry. The poplar and birch trees wore bright dabs of yellow against the fading green. Clausen swung through an opening in the fence and stopped beside the depression. He climbed down and studied the sinking ground close-up. Curiously, it seemed wider and deeper than the day before. He wondered at first if it might be caused by underground seepage from the stream he had dammed. And yet the earth in the depression’s center looked quite dry.

He remounted the tractor, drove to the dirt pile beside the old bunker that was now half hidden by bushes and vines, and lowered the scoop. When he’d scraped up a full load, he backed off and approached the depression until his front wheels were on the edge. He raised the scoop slightly with the intention of tilting it to drop the dirt load, but the front of the tractor began to tip. The front wheels were sinking into the ground.

Clausen gaped in astonishment as the depression opened up and the tractor dove into a suddenly expanding pit. He froze in horror as man and machine fell into the darkness below. He was mute with terror, but he instinctively braced his feet against the metal floor and clutched the steering wheel in a tight grip. The tractor hurtled a good twelve meters before it splashed into a deep underground stream. Huge clods of soil struck the water, churning it into a maelstrom that was soon blanketed by clouds of falling dust. The noise echoed far into unseen reaches as the tractor sank into water up to the top treads of its high rear tires before coming to rest.

The impact drove the breath from Clausen’s body. An agonizing pain shot through his back, and he knew it meant an injured vertebra. Two of his ribs, and perhaps more, cracked after his chest impacted against the steering wheel. He went into shock, his heart pounding, his breath coming in painful gasps. Bewildered, he hardly felt the water swirling around his chest.

Clausen blessed the tractor for landing right side up. If it had tumbled on one of its sides or top, in all probability he’d have been crushed to death or pinned and drowned. He sat there trying to comprehend what had happened to him. He looked up at the blue sky to get a grasp of his predicament. Then he peered around through the gloom and the drifting layers of dust.

The tractor had fallen into the pool of a limestone cave. One end was flooded but the other rose above the pool and opened into a vast cavern. He saw no signs of stalactites, stalagmites, or other natural decorations. Both the small entry cave and the larger chamber appeared to have low six-meter-high flat ceilings that were carved by excavation equipment.

Painfully he twisted out of the tractor seat and half crawled, half swam up the ramplike floor leading into the dry cavern. Knees sliding, hands slipping on the slimy coating covering the cave’s floor, he struggled forward on all fours until he felt dry ground. Wearily he hauled himself up into a sitting position, shifted around, and stared into dim recesses of the cavern.

It was filled with aircraft, literally dozens of them. All parked in even rows as if waiting for a squadron of phantom pilots. Clausen recognized them as the Luftwaffe’s first turbojet aircraft, Messerschmitt-262 Schwalbes (Swallows). They sat like ghosts in their mottled gray-green colors, and despite almost fifty years of neglect, they appeared in prime condition. Only mild corrosion on the aluminum surfaces and flattened tires suggested long abandonment. The hidden air base must have been evacuated and all entrances sealed before the Allied armies arrived.

His injuries were temporarily forgotten as Clausen reverently walked between the planes and into the flight quarters and maintenance repair areas. As his eyes became adjusted to the darkness, he became amazed at the neat orderliness. There was no sign of a hurried departure. He felt the pilots and their mechanics were standing at inspection in the field above and expected back at any time.

He entered a state of rapture when it struck him that all the wartime artifacts were on his property, or under it, and belonged to him. The worth of the aircraft to collectors and museums must have ranged in the millions of deutsche marks.

Clausen made his way back to the edge of the underground pool. The tractor looked a sorry sight with only the steering wheel and upper tires rising out of the water. Once more he gazed up at the hole to the sky. There was no hope of climbing out on his own. The opening was too high and the walls too steep.

He wasn’t a tiny bit worried. Eventually his wife would come looking for him and summon neighbors when she found him standing happily in their newly discovered subterranean bonanza.

There had to be a generator somewhere for electrical power. He decided to search out its location. Perhaps, he thought, he might be able to fire it up and light the cavern. He squinted at his watch and figured another four hours would pass before his wife became curious over his prolonged absence.

He hesitated, thoughtfully staring into the far end of the cave that sloped into the forbidding pool, wondering if maybe another cavern waited in the darkness beyond the flooded depths.

32

“IF THE PUBLIC only knew what goes on behind their backs, they’d burn Washington,” said Sandecker as the Virginia countryside flashed past the heavily tinted and armored windows of the customized mobile command center disguised as a nationally known bus line.

“We’re in a war right up to our damned teeth,” the MAIT team’s Deputy Director, Donald Kern, grumbled. “And nobody knows but us.”

“You’re right about the war,” said Pitt, contemplating a glass of soda water he held in one hand. “I can’t believe these people had the guts to abduct Loren and Senator Diaz on the same day.”

Kern shrugged. “The senator stepped from his fishing lodge at six o’clock this morning, rowed out into a lake not much bigger than a pond, and vanished.”

“How do you know it wasn’t an accidental drowning or suicide?”

“There was no body.”

“You dragged and searched the entire lake since this morning?” Pitt asked skeptically.

“Nothing so primitive. We diverted our newest spy satellite over the area. There was no body floating on or below the water.”

“You have the technology to see an object as small as a body underwater from space?”

“Forget you heard it,” Kern said with a slight grin. “Just take my word for the fact that another Japanese team of professional operatives snatched Diaz in broad daylight along with his boat and outboard motor, and they managed it within sight of at least five other fishermen who swear they witnessed nothing.”

Pitt looked at Kern. “But Loren’s abduction was witnessed.”

“By Al and Frank, who guessed what was going down, sure. But the spectators in the stands were concentrating on the race. If any of them happened to glance in Loren’s direction during the excitement, all they saw was a woman entering the limo under her own free will.”

“What screwed up the abductors’ well-laid plan,” said Sandecker, “was that you men knew she was being seized and gave chase. Your alert action also confirmed the Japanese connection behind Senator Diaz’s kidnapping.”

“Whoever masterminded the separate plots was good,” Kern admitted. “Too good for the Blood Sun Brotherhood.”

“The terrorist organization,” said Pitt. “They were behind it?”

“That’s what they want us to think. The FBI received a phone call by someone who said he was a member and claiming responsibility. Strictly a red herring. We saw through the facade in less than a minute.”

“What about the helicopter that controlled the limousine?” Pitt asked. “Did you track it?”

“As far as Hampton Roads. There it blew up in midair and fell in the water. A Navy salvage team should be diving on it now.”

“A bottle of scotch they won’t find bodies.”

Kern gave Pitt a canny look. “A bet you’d probably win.”

“Any trace of the limousine that got away?”

Kern shook his head. “Not yet. It was probably hidden and abandoned after they transferred Congresswoman Smith to another vehicle.”

“Who’s in charge of the hunt?”

“The FBI. Their best field agents are already forming investigative teams and assembling all known data.”

“You think this is tied to our search into the bomb cars?” asked Giordino, who along with Pitt and Mancuso had been picked up by Kern and Sandecker a few miles from the accident site.

“It’s possible they could be warning us to lay off,” answered Kern. “But our consensus is they wanted to shut down the Senate investigating committee and eliminate the legislators who were ramrodding a bill to cut off Japanese investment in the U.S.”

Sandecker lit one of his expensive cigars after clipping the end. “The President is in a hell of a bind. As long as there’s a chance Smith and Diaz are alive, he can’t allow the abductions to leak to the news media. God knows what hell would erupt if Congress and the public found out.”

“They have us over the proverbial barrel,” Kern said grimly.

“If it isn’t the Blood Sun Brotherhood, then who?” Giordino asked as he lit a cigar he’d stolen from Admiral Sandecker’s supply in Washington.

“Only the Japanese government has the resources for an intricate abduction operation,” Pitt speculated.

“As far as we can determine,” said Kern, “Prime Minister Junshiro and his cabinet are not directly involved. Very possibly they have no idea of what’s going on behind their backs. Not a rare occurrence in Japanese politics. We suspect a highly secretive organization made up of wealthy ultranationalist industrialists and underworld leaders, who are out to expand and protect Japan’s growing economic empire as well as their own interests. Our best intelligence from Team Honda and other sources points to an extremely influential bastard by the name of Hideki Suma. Showalter is certain Suma is the kingpin behind the bomb cars.”

“A very nasty customer,” Sandecker added. “Shrewd, earthy, a brilliant operator, he’s pulled the strings behind Japanese politics for three decades.”

“And his father pulled them three decades before him,” said Kern. He turned to Mancuso. “Frank here is the expert on the Sumas. He’s compiled an extensive file on the family.”

Mancuso was sitting in a large swivel chair drinking a root beer, since no alcoholic beverages were allowed on the National Security Agency’s command bus. He looked up. “Suma, the father or the son? What do you wish to know?”

“A brief history of their organization,” answered Kern.

Mancuso took a few sips from his glass and stared at the ceiling as if arranging his thoughts. Then he began speaking as if reciting a book report to an English class.

“During the Japanese conquest of World War Two, their armies confiscated an immense hoard of loot from religious orders, banks, business corporations, and the treasuries of fallen governments. What began as a trickle from Manchuria and Korea soon became a flood as China and all of Southeast Asia, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines fell before the onslaught from the empire of the rising sun. The total of the stolen gold, gems, and priceless artifacts can only be speculated, but estimates have put it as high as two hundred billion, repeat, billion, dollars at current values.”

Sandecker shook his head. “Inconceivable.”

“The gold bullion alone was figured at over seven thousand tons.

“It all went to Japan?” asked Giordino.

“Up until nineteen forty-three. After that, American warships, and especially our submarines, interrupted the flow. Records indicate more than half of the total hoard was sent to the Philippines for inventory and forwarding to Tokyo. But toward the end of the war it was buried in secret locations around the islands and became known as ‘Yamashita’s Gold.’ “

“Where do the Sumas fit in?” Pitt inquired.

“I’m coming to them,” said Mancuso. “Japanese underworld societies quickly moved in after the occupation troops and helped themselves to the deposits in banks, national treasuries, and the wealth of private citizens, all in the name of the Emperor. Two minor agents of a criminal organization known as the Black Sky, which dominated Japan’s underworld after the turn of the century, deserted and launched their own society, naming it the ‘Gold Dragons.’ One was Korori Yoshishu. The other was Koda Suma.”

“Koda being the father of Hideki,” Sandecker concluded.

Mancuso nodded. “Yoshishu was the son of a temple carpenter in Kyoto. He was kicked out of the house by his father when he was ten. He fell in with the Black Sky and rose in its ranks. In nineteen twenty-seven, at the age of eighteen, his bosses arranged for him to join the Army, where he craftily advanced to the rank of captain by the time the Imperial Army seized Manchuria. He set up a heroin operation that brought the gang hundreds of millions of dollars that was divided with the Army.”

“Hold on,” said Giordino. “You’re saying the Japanese Army was in the drug business?”

“They ran an operation that would be the envy of the drug kings of Colombia,” Mancuso replied. “In concert with Japanese gang lords, the military ran the opium and heroin trades, forced the occupied citizenry to participate in rigged lotteries and gambling houses, and controlled the sale of black market goods.”

The bus stopped at a red light, and Pitt looked into the face of a truck driver who was trying in vain to see through the darkened windows of the bus. Pitt may have been staring out the window, but his mind followed Mancuso’s every word.

“Koda Suma was the same age as Yoshishu, the first son of an ordinary seaman in the Imperial Navy. His father forced him to enlist, but he deserted and was recruited by Black Sky mobsters. At about the same time they put Yoshishu in the Army, the gang leaders smoothed over Suma’s desertion record and had him reinstated in the Navy, only this time as an officer. Dispensing favors and money into the right hands, he quickly rose to the rank of captain. Being agents for the same criminal outfit, it was only natural that they work together. Yoshishu coordinated the heroin operations, while Suma systemized the looting and arranged shipments on board Imperial naval vessels.”

“A monumental ripoff to end all ripoffs,” Giordino observed moodily.

“The full scope of the network can never be documented.”

“More expensive even than the plunder of Europe by the Nazis?” Pitt asked, opening another bottle of soda water.

“By far,” Mancuso replied, smiling. “Then as now, the Japanese were more interested in the economic side—gold, precious gems, hard currency—while the Nazis concentrated on masterworks of art, sculpture, and rare artifacts.” His expression suddenly turned serious again. “Following the Japanese forces into China and then the rest of Southeast Asia, Yoshishu and Suma proved themselves to be archcriminal plotters. Like characters out of Heller’s book Catch-22, they worked beneficial deals with their enemies. They sold luxury goods and war materials to Chiang Kai-shek, becoming quite chummy with the generalissimo, an arrangement that paid handsome dividends after the Communists swept over China and later when the Chinese government moved to Formosa, which became Taiwan. They bought, sold, pillaged, smuggled, extorted, and murdered on an unheard-of scale, bleeding every country dry that came under their heel. It goes without saying that Suma and Yoshishu played a ‘one for you, two for me’ game when the loot was inventoried and divided with the Imperial forces.”

Pitt rose from his chair and stretched, easily touching the ceiling of the bus. “How much of the total plunder actually reached Japan?”

“A small percentage made it into the Imperial War Treasury. The more easily transportable treasure hoard, the precious gems and platinum, Suma and Yoshishu safely smuggled into Tokyo on board submarines and hid them on a farm in the country. The great mass of the bullion stayed behind on the main island of Luzon. It was stored in hundreds of kilometers of tunnels dug by thousands of allied POWs used as slave labor, who were either worked to death or executed to secure the hidden locations for recovery after the war. I excavated one tunnel on Corregidor that contained the bones of three hundred prisoners who had been buried alive.”

“Why is it this was never brought to the public attention?” asked Pitt.

Mancuso shrugged. “I can’t say. Not until forty years later was there mention of the barbarism in a few books. But by then, the Bataan death march and the armies of American, British and Philippine soldiers who perished in POW camps were only dim memories.”

“The Germans are still haunted by the holocaust,” mused Pitt, “but the Japanese have remained mostly unstained by their atrocities.”

Giordino’s face was grim. “Did the Japs recover any of the treasure after the war?”

“Some was dug up by Japanese construction companies, who claimed to be helping the Philippines rise from the ravages of the conflict by developing various industrial building projects. Naturally, they worked on top of the burial sites. Some was dug up by Ferdinand Marcos, who shipped several hundred tons of gold out of the country and discreetly converted it to currency on the world bullion markets. And a fair share was retrieved by Suma and Yoshishu twenty years later. Maybe as much as seventy percent of it is still hidden and may never be recovered.”

Pitt looked at Mancuso questioningly. “What happened to Suma and Yoshishu after the war ended?”

“No fools, these guys. They read defeat in their tea leaves as early as nineteen forty-three and began laying plans to survive the end in grand style. Not about to die in battle during MacArthur’s return to Luzon, or commit ritual suicide in the humiliation of defeat, Suma ordered up a submarine. Then with a generous helping of the Emperor’s share, they sailed off to Valparaiso, Chile, where they lived for five years in lavish comfort. When MacArthur became occupied with the Korean war, the master thieves returned home and became master organizers. Suma devoted his genius to economic and political intrigue, while Yoshishu consolidated his hold over the underworld and the new generation of Asian wheeler-dealers. Within ten years they were the major power brokers of the Far East.”

“A real pair of sweethearts,” Giordino said caustically.

“Koda Suma died of cancer in nineteen seventy-three,” Mancuso continued. “Like a couple of prohibition Chicago gangsters, Suma’s son, Hideki, and Yoshishu agreed to divide up the massive organization into different areas of activity. Yoshishu directed the criminal end, while Hideki built a power base in government and industry. The old crook has pretty much retired, keeping his fingers in various pies, guiding the present crime leaders of the Gold Dragons, and occasionally cutting a joint venture with Suma.”

“According to Team Honda,” Kern informed them, “Suma and Yoshishu joined forces to underwrite the weapons plant and the Kaiten Project.”

“The Kaiten Project?” Pitt repeated.

“Their code name for the bomb-car operation. Literally translated into English it means ‘a change of sky.’ But to the Japanese it has a broader meaning: ‘a new day is coming, a great shift in events.’ “

“But Japan claims to ban the introduction of nuclear weapons,” Pitt ventured. “Seems damned odd that Suma and Yoshishu could build a nuclear weapons facility without some knowledge or backing from the government.”

“The politicians don’t run Japan. The back-room movers and shakers behind the bureaucracy pull the reins. It was no secret when Japan built a Liquid Metal Fast Breeder reactor. But it wasn’t general knowledge that besides functioning as a power source it also produced plutonium and converted lithium into tritium, essential ingredients for thermonuclear weapons. My guess is Prime Minister Junshiro gave his secret blessing to a nuclear arsenal, however reluctantly because of the risk of public outcry, but he was purposely cut out of the Kaiten Project.”

“They certainly don’t run a ‘government like we do,” said Sandecker.

“Has Team Honda located the weapons plant?” Pitt asked Kern.

“They’ve narrowed it to a sixty-square-kilometer grid around the subterranean city of Edo.”

“And they still can’t find it?”

“Jim Hanamura thinks the city has deep tunnels that connect to the facility. An ingenious cover. No aboveground buildings or roads as a giveaway. Supplies entering for the thousands of people who live and work in Edo, and their trash exiting. Most any nuclear equipment or material could be smuggled in and out.”

“Any leads to the detonation command?” asked Giordino.

“The Dragon Center?”

“Is that what they call it?”

“They have a name for everything.” Kern smiled. “Nothing solid. Hanamura’s last report said he was onto a lead that had something to do with a painting.”

“That makes a hell of a lot of sense,” Giordino carped.

The door opened to a cramped communications compartment in the rear of the bus, and a man stepped out and handed three sheets of paper to Kern.

As his eyes flicked over the wording, his face became stricken. Finally, after coming to the end of the third page, he rapped his knuckles against the arm of his chair in shock. “Oh, my God.”

Sandecker leaned toward him. “What is it?”

“A status report from Mel Penner on Palau. He says Marvin Showalter was abducted on his way to the embassy. An American tourist couple reported seeing two Japanese men enter Showalter’s car when he stopped for a stalled truck a block from the embassy. The husband and wife only happened to report it to embassy officials because of the U.S. license tags and the surprise shown by the driver as the intruders leaped into the car. They saw nothing more, as a tourist bus pulled alongside them and blocked their view. By the time they could see the street again, Showalter’s car had disappeared in traffic.”

“Go on.”

“Jim Hanamura is late reporting in. In his last report to Penner, Jim said he had confirmed the location of the weapons plant three hundred fifty meters underground. The main assembly area is connected to Edo City, four kilometers to the north, by an electric railway that also runs through a series of tunnels to arsenals, waste disposal caverns, and engineering offices.”

“Is there more?” Sandecker gently persisted.

“Hanamura went on to say he was following a strong lead to the Dragon Center. That’s all.”

“What word on Roy Orita?” Pitt asked.

“Only a brief mention.”

“He vanished too?”

“No, Penner doesn’t say that. He only says Orita insists on sitting tight until we can sort things out.”

“I’d say the visitors have outscored the home team by three to one,” said Pitt philosophically. “They’ve snatched two of our legislators, cut Teams Honda and Cadillac off at the knees, and last but easily the worst, they know what we’re after and where we’re coming from.”

“Suma is holding all the high cards,” Kern conceded. “I’d better inform Mr. Jordan at once so he can warn the President.”

Pitt leaned over the back of his chair and fixed Kern with a dry stare. “Why bother?”

“What do you mean?”

“I see no need to panic.”

“The President must be alerted. We’re not only looking at the threat of nuclear blackmail but political ransom for Diaz and Smith. Suma can drop the axe any moment.

“No he won’t. Not yet anyway.”

“How do you know?” Kern demanded.

“Something is holding Suma back. He’s got a fleet of those bomb cars hidden away. All he needs is one driving the streets of Manhattan or Los Angeles to put the fear of God into the White House and the American public. He’s literally got the government by the scrotum. But what does he do? He plays petty kidnapper. No, I’m sorry. Something’s not going down the right chute. Suma isn’t ready for prime time. I say he’s stalling.”

“I think Dirk has a case,” said Mancuso. “It’s possible Suma’s agents smuggled the bomb cars into position before they could bring the detonation command on line.”

“It fits,” Sandecker concurred. “We might still have time to send in a new team to find and neutralize it.”

“At the moment everything hinges on Hanamura.” Kern hesitated apprehensively. “We can only hope he’s unearthed the Dragon Center. But we also have to consider the very real possibility he’s either dead or captured by Suma’s security force.”

They went quiet as the Virginia countryside rolled past the windows of the bus. The leaves on the trees gleamed gold under the fall sun. Few people walking beside the road paid any attention to the passing bus. If any had seen the charter sign above the driver’s windshield, they’d have simply thought it was a group of vacationers touring Civil War battlefields.

At last Sandecker spoke the thought that was on all their minds “If only we knew what thread Jim Hanamura was unraveling.”

33

AT THAT MOMENT, halfway across the world, Jim Hanamura would have given his new Corvette and his Redondo Beach bachelor pad’s state-of-the-art sound system to trade places with any man on that bus in Virginia.

The cold night rain soaked his clothes and skin as he lay covered by mud and rotting leaves in a drainage ditch. The police and the uniformed security force that were hunting him had canvassed the area and moved on ten minutes earlier, but he lay there in the slime trying to rest and formulate a plan of action. He painfully rolled over on his good elbow and peered up and across the road. The only sign of movement was a man in the garage of a small house who was bent under the open hood of a small delivery truck.

He dropped back in the ditch and passed out for the third time since being shot during his escape from Edo City. When Hanamura regained consciousness, he wondered how long he had been out. He held up his right wrist, but the watch had stopped, broken when he wrecked his car. It couldn’t have been very long, however, because the driver of the delivery truck was still tinkering with its engine.

The three slugs from the security guards’ automatic rifles had caught him in the left arm and shoulder. It was one of those flukes, a thousand-to-one unforeseen incident that catches a professional operative from a blind side.

His plans had been precise and exactingly executed. He’d forged the security clearance pass of one of Suma’s chief structural engineers by the name of Jiro Miyaza, who closely resembled Hanamura in face and body.

Entering Edo City and walking through the checkpoints leading to the design and construction department had been a piece of cake. None of the guards saw anything suspicious about a man who returned to his office after hours and worked on past midnight. All Japanese men put in long hours, seldom working a normal eight-hour day.

The inspection was loose, yet tighter than what it takes to walk into the Pentagon Building in Washington. The guards nodded to Hanamura and watched as he slipped his pass card into the electronic identity computer. The correct buzz sounded, a video camera’s light flashed green, and the guards waved him through, satisfied that Hanamura was cleared to enter that section of the building. With so many people passing in and out all hours of the day and night, they failed to recall that the man Hanamura was impersonating had only left for home a few minutes previously.

Hanamura tossed three offices in an hour and a half before he struck pay dirt. In the rear of a drawer of a draftsman’s table he found a rolled cylinder of rough sketches of a secret installation. The sketches should have been destroyed. He could only assume the draftsman had neglected to drop them in a nearby shredder. He took his time, ran the drawings through a copy machine, inserted them in an envelope, and put the originals back in the drawer exactly as he found them. The envelope he curled and taped to the calf of one leg.

Once he passed the guards on the way out, Hanamura thought he was home free. He walked out into the vast atrium and waited his turn to take an elevator that opened on a pedestrian tunnel leading to the parking level where he’d left his Murmoto four-wheel-drive pickup truck. There were twenty people packed in the enclosure, and Hanamura had the misfortune of having to stand in the front row. When the doors opened on his parking level, fate dealt him a bad hand.

Pushed ahead by the crowd behind him, Hanamura stepped right into Jiro Miyaza.

The engineer, whose identity Hanamura borrowed, had exited the adjacent elevator with his wife and two children. They were headed for the same parking level for an evening drive aboveground. Inexplicably, Miyaza’s eyes were drawn to the clearance pass clipped to Hanamura’s pocket.

For a moment he simply stared, then his eyes widened and he looked into Hanamura’s face with disbelieving eyes.

“What are you doing with my pass?” he demanded indignantly.

“Internal security,” Hanamura answered calmly with an air of authority. “We’re examining security areas to see if the guards are alert and pick us out. I happened to be issued your name and ID number.”

“My brother is assistant head of security. He never mentioned such an inspection to me.”

“We don’t advertise,” Hanamura said, glaring at Miyaza, who refused to back down.

Hanamura tried to edge his way past Miyaza, but the engineer grabbed his arm.

“Wait! I want to verify this.”

Hanamura’s lightning move was almost undetectable. He rammed his palm into Miyaza’s chest, breaking the sternum. The engineer gasped for air, clutched his chest, and sank to his knees. Hanamura pushed him aside and calmly walked toward his vehicle, which he had backed into its stall. He quickly threw open the unlocked door of the Murmoto V-6 four-wheel-drive, slipped behind the wheel, and turned the ignition key. The engine started on the second turn, and he shoved the shift lever into drive and headed for the exit ramp and the gate only one level above.

He might have made it if Miyaza’s wife and children hadn’t screamed their heads off and pointed frantically toward Hanamura. A nearby security guard rushed over and questioned them. He barely made any sense of their hysterical jabbering, but he was smart enough to use his portable radio to alert the guards manning the main entry gate.

Nothing went Hanamura’s way. He was a fraction of a second too late. A guard stepped from the gatehouse and raised his hand for Hanamura to stop. Two of his comrades posted on opposite sides of the exit tunnel lifted their weapons at the ready position. And then there was the heavy steel barrier shaft across the drive.

Hanamura took in the scene with one trained glance. There was no stopping in an attempt to bluff his way past. He braced himself for the impact, slammed his foot against the gas pedal, and crouched down in the seat as far as he could go. He struck the shaft partly on the raised bumper of the truck and partly across the headlights, smashing them back into the fenders and pushing the grillwork against the radiator.

The shock was not as bad as Hanamura expected, just a crunch of metal and glass and a twisting screech as the momentum of the truck snapped the steel barrier off where it hinged into a concrete piling. Then the windows vanished in a spray of slivers as the guards opened up with their automatic rifles. It was the only small bit of luck that came his way. The guards aimed high instead of blasting the engine compartment and gas tank or blowing out the tires.

The firing abruptly ceased as he broke clear of the tunnel and raced through a stream of cars entering the underground city from the other, incoming road. Hanamura paid as much attention to the view in his rearview mirror as he did to the road and traffic ahead. He didn’t doubt for a second that Suma’s security people were alerting the police to set up roadblocks. Throwing the Murmoto into four-wheel-drive, he cut off the pavement and shot down a dirt road muddied by a pouring rainstorm. Only after bumping through a forested area for ten kilometers did he become aware of a burning pain in his shoulder and a sticky flow of fluid down his left side. He pulled to a stop under a large pine tree and examined his left shoulder and arm.

He’d been struck three times. One bullet through the biceps, one that cut a groove in his collarbone, and another through the fleshy part of his shoulder. They were not killing injuries, but if not cared for they could become extremely serious. It was the heavy loss of blood that worried Hanamura. Already he felt the early stages of light-headedness. He tore off his shirt and made a couple of crude bandages, stemming the blood flow as best he could.

The shock and the pain were slowly replaced with numbness and the haze that was seeping into his mind. The embassy was a hundred and sixty kilometers away in the heart of Tokyo. He’d never make it through the multitude of busy streets without being stopped by a policeman, curious about the bullet-riddled truck, or by Suma’s network of armed forces, who would block every major road leading into the city. Briefly he considered making for the safety of the MAIT team’s inn, but Asakusa was on the northeast of Tokyo, opposite Edo City on the west.

He looked up through the shattered windshield at the rainy sky. The low clouds would hinder an air hunt by helicopter. That was a help. Relying on the rugged Murmoto’s four-wheel traction, Hanamura decided to drive cross-country and travel the back roads before abandoning the pickup and hopefully stealing a car.

Hanamura drove on through the rain, detouring around streams and rice paddies, always headed toward the lights of the city, glowing dimly against the overcast sky. The closer he came to the metropolitan mainstream, the more densely populated it became. The open country ended almost immediately, and the small back roads soon widened into busy highways and expressways.

The Murmoto was faltering too. The radiator was damaged from the collision with the barrier, and steam hissed from under the hood in growing wisps of white. He glanced at the instrument panel. The heat gauge needle was quivering into the red. It was time to find another car.

Then he blacked out from the loss of blood and slumped across the wheel.

The Murmoto drifted off the road and sideswiped several parked cars before crashing through the thin wooden wall of a house. The jolt brought him back to consciousness, and he stared dazedly around a small courtyard the Murmoto had demolished. He was thankful the inhabitants of the house were away and he’d missed any furnished rooms.

The one headlight still threw a beam, illuminating a gate in back of the courtyard. Hanamura stumbled through it into an alley behind the house as the shouting of startled neighbors erupted behind him. Ten minutes later, after staggering across a small park, he dropped in exhaustion and hid in a muddy ditch.

He lay there listening to the sirens screaming toward his wrecked pickup truck. Once, after he felt strong enough, he began to move deeper into one of Tokyo’s secluded neighborhoods, but a security vehicle drove slowly up and down the road beaming searchlights into the park and surrounding narrow streets. It was then he lost consciousness again.

When the wet cold woke him, he fully realized he was too weak to steal a car and go on. Slowly, stiffly, and clenching his teeth against the pain that returned in agonizing waves, he swayed across the road and approached the man working on the engine of his truck.

“Can you please help me?” Hanamura begged feebly.

The man turned around and stared dumbly at the injured stranger weaving before him. “You’re hurt,” he said. “You’re bleeding.”

“I was in an accident up the street and need help.”

The man put his arm around Hanamura’s waist. “Let me get you in the house, my wife can aid you while I call an ambulance.”

Hanamura shook him off. “Never mind that, I’ll be all right.”

“Then you should go directly to a hospital,” the man said sincerely. “I will drive you.”

“No, please,” Hanamura evaded. “But I’d be most grateful if you will deliver a packet for me to the American embassy. It’s quite urgent. I’m a courier and was on my way from Edo City when my car skidded and ran off the road.”

The owner of the delivery truck stood uncomprehending as Hanamura scribbled something in English on the back flap of the envelope and handed it to him. “You want me to take this to the American embassy instead of taking you to the hospital?”

“Yes, I must return to the scene of my accident. The police will see to an ambulance.”

None of it made any sense to the delivery truck driver, but he accepted the request without argument. “Who do I ask for at the embassy?”

“A Mr. Showalter.” Hanamura reached in his pocket and pulled out his wallet and handed the driver a large wad of yen notes. “For any inconvenience. Do you know where to go?”

The driver’s face lit up at his unexpected windfall. “Yes, the embassy is near the junction of number three and four expressways.”

“How soon can you leave?”

“I have just finished rebuilding the truck’s distributor. I can leave in a few minutes.”

“Good.” Hanamura bowed. “Thank you very much. Tell Mr. Showalter that he is to double what I paid you upon receiving the envelope.” Then Hanamura turned and walked shakily into the rain and the black of the night.

He could have ridden with the truck driver to the embassy, but he dared not risk passing out or even dying. In either event the driver might have panicked and driven to the nearest hospital or hailed a policeman. Then the precious drawings would have probably been confiscated and returned to Suma’s headquarters. Better that he trust in luck and the delivery truck driver’s honor while he led the manhunt in another direction.

Hanamura, on little more than guts and willpower, hiked nearly a kilometer before an armored vehicle rolled out of the darkness inside the park, swung onto the street, and sped after him. Too exhausted to run, he sank to his knees beside a parked car and groped in his coat for a dispatch pill. His fingers had just closed around the poison capsule when the armored car with military markings and red lights flashing stopped with its headlights painting Hanamura’s shadow on the wall of a warehouse a few meters beyond.

A silhouetted figure stepped from the car and approached. Incongruously, he was wearing an odd-looking leather overcoat cut like a kimono and carrying a samurai katana sword whose polished blade glinted under lights. When he stepped around so his face was visible from the headlight beams, he looked down at Hanamura and spoke in a smug voice.

“Well, well, the famous art sleuth, Ashikaga Enshu. I hardly recognized you without your wig and false beard.”

Hanamura looked up into the rattlesnake face of Moro Kamatori. “Well, well, he echoed. “If it isn’t Hideki Suma’s waterboy.”

“Water boy’?”

“Stooge, you know, ass kisser, brown nose.”

Kamatori’s face went livid and his gleaming teeth bared in anger. “What did you find in Edo?” he demanded.

Hanamura didn’t give Kamatori the benefit of an answer. He was breathing quickly, his lips in a hard grin. Suddenly he popped the dispatch pill in his mouth and bit down on it with his molars to eject the fluid. The poison was instantly absorbed in the gum line through the tissue. In thirty seconds his heart would freeze and he’d be dead.

“Goodbye, sucker,” he muttered.

Kamatori had only a moment to act, but he raised the sword, gripping the long hilt with both hands, and cut a wide arc with every ounce of his strength. The shock of disbelief flashed in Hanamura’s eyes a brief instant before it was replaced with the glaze of death.

Kamatori had the final satisfaction of seeing his sword win the race with the poison as the blade sliced Hanamura’s head from his shoulders as cleanly as a guillotine.

34

THE FERTILIZER-BROWN MURMOTOS were parked in a loose line behind the ramp leading up to the cavernlike interior of the big semitrailer. George Furukawa was greatly relieved these four cars were the last shipment. The release documents he’d found as usual under the front seat of his sports car included a short memo notifying him that his part of the project was finished.

He also received new instructions to examine the cars for homing devices. No explanation was given, but he concluded that Hideki Suma had become belatedly worried his last shipment might be followed by some unspecified group. The thought that they might be federal investigators made Furukawa extremely uneasy. He walked quickly around each car while studying the digital readout of an electronic unit that detected transmitted radio signals.

Satisfied the sport sedans with their ugly brown paint schemes were clean, he gestured to the truck driver and his helper. They bowed slightly without an acknowledging word and took turns driving the cars up the ramps into the trailer.

Furukawa turned and walked toward his car, happy to be rid of an assignment he felt was beneath his position as vice president of Samuel J. Vincent Laboratories. The handsome fee Suma had already paid him for his effort and loyalty would be wisely invested in Japanese corporations that were opening offices in California.

He drove to the gate and handed the guard copies of the release documents. Then he aimed the sloped nose of his Murmoto sports car into the busy truck traffic around the dock terminal and drove toward his office. There was no curiosity this time, no looking back. His interest in the auto transport’s secret destination had died.

Stacy zipped up her windbreaker, snapping it tight across her throat. The side door of the helicopter had been removed, and the cool air from the ocean whistled inside the control cabin. Her long blond hair whipped in front of her face, and she tied it back with a short leather band. A video camera sat in her lap, and she lifted it and set the controls. Then she turned sideways as far as her seat belt would allow and focused the telephoto lens on the tail of the Murmoto sports car exiting the dock area.

“You get the license number?” asked the blond-haired pilot as he held the copter on a level course.

“Yes, a good sharp shot. Thank you.”

“I can come in a little closer if you like.”

“Stay well clear,” ordered Stacy, speaking into her headset microphone while peering through the eyepiece. She released the trigger and laid the compact camera in her lap again. “They must be alerted to the fact somebody’s onto them, or they wouldn’t have swept the cars for homing devices.”

“Lucky for old Weatherhill he wasn’t transmitting.”

Bill McCurry made Stacy cold just looking at him. He only wore cutoff denim shorts, a T-shirt advertising a Mexican beer, and sandals on his feet. When they were introduced earlier that same morning, Stacy saw him more as a lifeguard than as one of the National Security Agency’s top investigators.

Long sun-bleached hair, skin dark-tanned by the Southern California sun, and his light blue eyes wide open behind red plastic rimmed sunglasses, McCurry’s mind was half on tailing the auto transport truck and half on a volleyball game he’d promised to play later that evening on the beach at Marina del Rey.

“The truck is turning onto the Harbor Freeway,” said Stacy. “Drop back out of the driver’s sight and we’ll follow on Timothy’s beam.”

“We should have better backup,” McCurry said seriously. “With no team following in vehicles on the ground, and no copter to replace us in case we have engine problems, we could lose the chase and endanger Weatherhill.”

Stacy shook her head. “Timothy knows the score. You don’t. Take my word for it, we can’t risk using ground vehicles or a flight of helicopters milling about. Those guys in the truck have been alerted and are watching for a surveillance operation.”

Suddenly Weatherhill’s Texas drawl came through their earphones. “You up there, Buick Team?”

“We read you, Tim,” answered McCurry.

“Safe to transmit?”

“The bad guys did a bug sweep,” replied Stacy, “but you’re okay to send.”

“Do you have visual contact?”

“Temporarily, but we’re dropping a few kilometers back so we won’t be spotted from the driver’s cab.”

“Understood.”

“Don’t forget to keep transmitting on the fixed frequency.”

“Yes, mamma,” said Weatherhill jovially. “I’m leaving this sweat box now and going to work.”

“Keep in touch.”

“Will do. I wouldn’t think of running out on you.”

Removing the false panel from behind and below the rear seat and unraveling his body from its contorted position, Weatherhill crawled into the enclosed luggage area of the third Murmoto loaded in the trailer. He sprung the lock from the inside and swung the rear hatch up and open. Then he climbed out, stood up, and stretched his aching joints.

Weatherhill had suffered in his cramped position for nearly four hours after a special team of customs agents helped conceal him in the car before Furukawa and the truck arrived. The sun beating on the roof and the lack of ventilation—the windows could not even be cracked for fear of arousing suspicion by the truck drivers—soon had him drenched in sweat. He never thought he would find himself sick of a new car smell.

The interior of the trailer was dark. He took a flashlight from a pouch he carried on the belt of a nondescript auto mechanic’s uniform and beamed it around the cars tied down inside the trailer. Two were on ramps above the two on the floor below.

Since the truck was traveling over a level California freeway and the ride in the trailer was smooth, Weatherhill decided to examine the Murmotos on the upper ramp first. He climbed up and quietly opened the hood of the one nearest the driver’s cab. Then he removed a small radiation analyzer from the pouch and studied the readout as he circled it around the auto’s airconditioning compressor unit.

He wrote the readings on the back of his hand. Next he laid out a set of compact tools on the fender. He paused and spoke into the radio.

“Hello, Team Buick.”

“Come in,” Stacy answered.

“Beginning exploratory operation.”

“Don’t slip and cut an artery.”

“Never fear.”

“Standing by.”

Within fifteen minutes, Weatherhill had disassembled the compressor case and examined the bomb. He was mildly disappointed. The design was not as advanced as he predicted. Clever, yes, but he could have devised and built a more efficient and destructive unit by himself.

He froze as he heard the sound of the air brakes and felt the truck slow. But it was only taking an off-ramp to another freeway and soon speeded up again. He reassembled the compressor and signaled Stacy.

“Still with me’?” he asked briefly.

“Still here,” answered Stacy.

“Where am I?”

“Passing through West Covina. Heading east toward San Bernardino.”

“I’ve withdrawn the account and have no more business at the bank,” he radioed. “What stop should I depart the bus?”

“One moment while I check the schedule,” Stacy acknowledged. After a few moments she came back. “There’s a weight station this side of Indio. It’s mandatory. The drivers will have to stop for inspection. If for some reason they turn off, we’ll plan on having them pulled over by a sheriff’s car. Otherwise you should arrive at the weight station in another forty-five or fifty minutes.”

“See you there,” said Weatherhill.

“Enjoy your trip.”

Like most undercover agents, whose adrenaline pumps during the critical stages of an operation, now that the difficult part was behind him, Weatherhill quickly relaxed and became bored with nothing to do. All that remained now was for him to climb through the fume ventilators on the roof and drop down behind the trailer out of view of the drivers’ side mirrors.

He opened the glove box and pulled out the packet containing the car’s warranty papers and owner’s manual. Switching on the interior lights, Weatherhill idly began thumbing through the manual. Though his prime expertise was nuclear physics, he was always fascinated by electronics. He turned to the page displaying the Murmoto’s electrical diagram with the intention of tracing out the wiring.

But the page in the manual was no electrical wiring diagram. It was a map with instructions for placing the cars in their designated positions for detonation.

Suma’s strategy became so boldly obvious to Weatherhill that he had to force himself to believe it. The car bombs were not simply part of a threat to protect Japan’s economic expansionist plans. The fear and the horror were real.

They were meant to be used.

35

AT LEAST TEN years had passed since Raymond Jordan forced an entry, certainly not since he worked up through the ranks as a field agent. On a whim he decided to see if he still had the touch.

He inserted a tiny computer probe into the wires on the security alarm system of Pitt’s hangar. He pressed a button and backwashed the combination into the probe. The alarm box recognized the code and gave it to him on an LED display. Then with a deceptive ease and nonchalance, he punched the appropriate combination that turned off the alarm, picked the lock to the door, and stepped soundlessly inside.

He spied Pitt kneeling in front of the turquoise Stutz, back toward him, at the far end of the hangar. Pitt seemed intent on repairing a headlight.

Jordan stood unobserved and gazed over the collection. He was astonished it was so extensive. He’d heard Sandecker speak of it, but verbal description failed to do it justice. Softly he walked behind the first row of cars, circled around, and approached Pitt from under the apartment side of the hangar. It was a test. He was curious as to Pitt’s reaction to an intruder who suddenly appeared within arm’s reach.

Jordan paused before he closed the final three meters and studied Pitt and the car for a moment. The Stutz was badly scratched in many areas and would require a new paint job. The windshield was cracked and the left front headlight seemed to be dangling by a wire.

Pitt was dressed casually, wearing a pair of corduroy pants and a knit sweater. His black hair was wavy and carelessly brushed. There was a decisive look about him, the green eyes were set under heavy black eyebrows and had a piercing quality that seemed to transfix whatever they were aimed at. He looked to be screwing the headlight lens into a chrome rim.

Jordan was in midstep when Pitt suddenly spoke without turning. “Good evening, Mr. Jordan. Good of you to drop in.”

Jordan froze, but Pitt went on with his work with the indifferent air of a bus driver expecting the correct change from a fare.

“I should have knocked.”

“No need. I knew you were on the premises.”

“Are you hyperperceptive or do you have eyes in the back of your head?” asked Jordan, moving slowly into Pitt’s peripheral vision.

Pitt looked up and grinned. He lifted and tilted the old headlight’s reflector that revealed Jordan’s image on its silver surface. “I observed your tour of the hangar. Your entry was most professional. I’d judge it didn’t take you more than twenty seconds.”

“Missed spotting a back-up video camera. I must be getting senile.”

“Across the road on top of the telephone pole. Most visitors spot the one hanging on the building. Infrared. It activates an alert chime when a body moves near the door.”

“You have an incredible collection,” Jordan complimented Pitt. “How long did it take you to build it?”

“I began with the maroon forty-seven Ford club coupe over there in the corner about twenty years ago, and collecting became a disease. Some I acquired during projects with NUMA, some I bought from private parties or at auctions. Antique and classic cars are investments you can flaunt. Far more fun than a painting.” Pitt finished screwing the headlight rim around its lens and rose to his feet. “Can I offer you a drink?”

“A glass of milk for an overstressed stomach sounds good.”

“Please come up.” Pitt gestured toward the stairs leading to his apartment. “I’m honored the head man came to see me instead of sending his deputy director.”

As Jordan reached the first step, he hesitated and said, “I thought I should be the one to tell you. Congresswoman Smith and Senator Diaz have been smuggled out of the country.”

There was a pause as Pitt slowly turned and glared at him through eyes suddenly filled with relief. “Loren is unharmed.” The words came more as a demand than a question.

“We’re not dealing with brain-sick terrorists,” Jordan answered. “The kidnap operation was too sophisticated for injury or death. We have every reason to believe she and Diaz are being treated with respect.”

“How did they slip through the cracks?”

“Our intelligence determined she and Diaz were flown out of the Newport News, Virginia, airport in a private jet belonging to one of Suma’s American corporations. By the time we were able to sift through every flight, scheduled or unscheduled, from airports within a thousand-square-kilometer area, trace every plane’s registration until we nailed one to Suma, and track its path by satellite, it was heading over the Bering Sea for Japan.”

“Too late to force down on one of our military bases by a military aircraft?”

“Way too late. It was met and escorted by a squadron of FSX fighter jets from Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force. Aircraft that were built in partnership between General Dynamics and Mitsubishi, I might add.”

“And then?”

Jordan turned and gazed at the gleaming cars. “We lost them,” he said tonelessly.

“After they landed?”

“Yes, at Tokyo International. Little need to go into details why they weren’t intercepted or at least followed, but for reasons known only to the idiot mentality at the State Department, we have no operatives in Japan who could have stopped them. That’s all we have at the moment.”

“The best intelligence minds on the face of the earth, and that’s all you have.” Pitt sounded very tired. He went into his kitchen, opened the refrigerator and poured some milk, then handed the glass to Jordan. “What about all your big specialty teams in Japan? Where were they when the plane touched down?”

“With Marvin Showalter and Jim Hanamura murdered—”

“Both men murdered?” Pitt interrupted.

“Tokyo police found Hanamura’s body in a ditch, decapitated. Showalter’s head, minus the body, was discovered a few hours ago, impaled on our embassy’s fence. To add to the mess, we suspect Roy Orita is a sleeper. He sold us out from the beginning. God only knows how much information he’s passed to Suma. We may never be able to assess the damage.”

Pitt’s anger softened when he read the sadness along with the frustration in Jordan’s face. “Sorry, Ray, I had no idea things had gone so badly.”

“I’ve never had a MAIT team take a battering like this.”

“What put you onto Orita?”

“A couple of broad hints. Showalter was too clever to be snatched without inside help. He was betrayed by someone who had his confidence and knew his exact movements. And there was Jim Hanamura—he expressed bad vibes on Orita but had nothing solid to go on. To add to the suspicion, Orita has dropped out and gone undercover. He hasn’t reported to Mel Penner since Showalter vanished. Kern thinks he’s hiding under Suma’s skirts in Edo City.”

“What of his background?”

“Third-generation American. His father won the Silver Star in the Italian campaign. We can’t figure what bait Suma used to recruit him.”

“Who handled the execution of Hanamura and Showalter?”

“The evidence isn’t in yet. It appears a ritual killing. A police pathologist thought their heads were taken off by a samurai sword. Suma’s chief assassin is known to be a lover of ancient martial arts, but we can’t prove he did it.”

Pitt sank slowly into a chair. “A waste, a damned waste.”

“Jim Hanamura didn’t go out a loser,” Jordan said with sudden doggedness. “He gave us our one and only lead to the detonation control center.”

Pitt looked up expectantly. “You have a location?”

“Nothing to celebrate yet, but we’re half a step closer.”

“What information did Hanamura turn up?”

“Jim penetrated the offices of Suma’s construction designers and found what looks to be rough drawings of an electronic control center that fits the layout we’re looking for. Indications suggest it’s an underground installation reached by a tunnel.”

“Anything on the whereabouts?”

“The brief message he wrote on the back of an envelope that was delivered to the embassy by the driver of an auto parts delivery truck is too enigmatic to decipher with any accuracy.”

“The message?”

“He wrote, ‘Look on the island of Ajima.’ “

Pitt made a slight shrug. “So what’s the problem?”

“There is no Ajima Island,” Jordan answered defeatedly. He held up the glass and examined it. “This is skim milk.”

“It’s better for you than whole milk.”

“Like drinking water,” Jordan muttered as he studied a glass case of trophies. Most were awards for outstanding automobiles at concours shows, a few were old high school and Air Force Academy football trophies, and two were for fencing. “You a fencer?”

“Not exactly Olympic material, but I still work out when I get the time.”

“Epée, foil, or saber?”

“Saber.”

“You struck me as a slasher. I’m into foil myself.”

“You prefer a deft touch.”

“A pity we can’t have a match,” said Jordan.

“We could compromise and use the epée.”

Jordan smiled. “I’d still have the advantage, since touches by the foil and epée are made with the points, while the saber is scored by hits on the edges.”

“Hanamura must have had a good reason for suggesting Ajima as the control center site,” said Pitt, returning to business.

“He was an art nut. His operation to plant bugs in Suma’s office was designed around his knowledge of early Japanese art. We knew Suma collected paintings, especially works by a sixteenth-century Japanese artist who produced a series on small islands surrounding the main isle of Honshu, so I had one forged. Then Hanamura, posing as an art expert, sold it to Suma. The one island painting Suma does not own is Ajima. That’s the only link I can think of.”

“Then Ajima must exist.”

“I’m sure it does, but the name can’t be traced to any known island. Nothing on ancient or modern charts shows it. I can only assume it was a pet name given by the artist, Masaki Shimzu, and listed as such in art catalogs of his work.”

“Did Hanamura’s bugs record any interesting talk?”

“A most informative conversation between Suma, his butcher Kamatori, old Korori Yoshishu, and a heavy hitter named Ichiro Tsuboi.”

“The financial genius behind Kanoya Securities. I’ve heard of him.”

“Yes, he was in a heated debate with the senator and congresswoman during the select subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill a few days before they were seized.”

“And you say he’s tied to Suma?”

“Tighter than a banjo string,” answered Jordan. “Thanks to Jim’s bugs in Suma’s office, we learned Tsuboi juggled the funding for the construction of the nuclear arsenal behind the backs of Japan’s political leaders, and most certainly their people. We also heard the code name Kaiten Project for the first time.”

Pitt poured a cup of old, cold coffee and stuck it in the microwave. He stared through the glass window at the cup as it revolved, his eyes narrowed in thought.

Jordan broke the spell. “I know what you’re thinking, but I haven’t been given the manpower to rescue Diaz and Smith and break up the Kaiten Project in one operation.”

“I can’t believe the President is turning his back on them.”

“He’s not about to go public and threaten a war over the abductions when he’s at a distinct disadvantage. Our first priority is to dismantle the Kaiten Project. Once we’ve accomplished that matter, only then will the President give us his blessing to use whatever force it takes to free Smith and Diaz.”

“So we’re back to mystical Ajima Island,” Pitt said harshly. “You say it’s the only painting of the series Suma doesn’t own?”

“Yes,” Jordan replied. “Hanamura said he acted almost desperate to get his hands on it.”

“Any clue to where it might be?”

“The Ajima painting was last seen in the Japanese embassy in Berlin just before Germany fell. Old OSS records claim it was included with art the Nazis plundered from Italy, and transported by train to northwestern Germany ahead of the advancing Russian Army in the last weeks of the war. Then it disappeared from history.”

“No record at all of it having been recovered?’

“None.”

“And we have no idea as to the island’s general location or its appearance?”

“Not a scrap.”

“Unfortunate,” Pitt commented. “Find the painting, match the shape of the shoreline portrayed by the artist, and you have the location of Hideki Suma’s extortion hideaway, or so it says in a bedtime story.”

Jordan’s eyes narrowed. “It happens to be the best lead we’ve got going for us.”

Pitt wasn’t convinced. “Your spy planes and satellites should easily detect the installation.”

“The four main islands of Japan—Honshu, Kyushu, Hokkaido, and Shikoku—are surrounded by nearly a thousand smaller islands. Finding the right one can hardly be called easy.”

“Then why not isolate only those that can be connected by a tunnel to any of the four main islands?”

“Give us some credit for brains,” Jordan said irritably. “We’ve already eliminated any island farther than ten miles offshore and concentrated on the rest. First of all, no suspicious activities or structures appear above their surfaces. Not unusual when we assume the entire installation must be deep underground. And lastly, almost all the islands’ geology is made up of volcanic rock our sensors can’t penetrate. Have I answered your question?”

Pitt dug in. “No one can excavate a tunnel without hauling away dirt and rock.”

“Apparently the Japanese have. Analysis of our satellite photos shows no signs of a coastal tunnel excavation or roads leading into an entrance.”

Pitt shrugged his shoulders and waved the white flag. “So we’re back to a painting somewhere in the great beyond.”

Jordan suddenly leaned forward in his chair and stared hard at Pitt. “This is where you earn your pay.”

Pitt could see it coming, but not quite. “You’re going to send me to Japan to dive around islands, is that the pitch?”

“Wrong,” said Jordan with a patronizing smile Pitt didn’t like one bit. “You’re going to Germany and dive in a Luftwaffe bunker.”

36

“THEY SIMPLY DOVE in and vanished.”

Pitt crouched on one knee and stared past the half-submerged tractor into the black ominous water. He was tired from jet lag, and he’d barely slept a couple of hours on the plane from Washington. How rotten not to have time to enjoy a good breakfast at a local inn and sleep past noon, he wallowed in self-pity.

“Their safety lines were sliced apart.” The young officer who led the German naval dive team held up a nylon line whose end appeared razor-severed. “By what? We can’t begin to guess.”

“Communication line too?” Pitt slowly sipped at a cup of coffee. He picked up a small stone with his free hand and idly tossed it in the water, observing the ripples that spread from the splash.

“The phone line connected to the lead diver was also cut,” admitted the German. He stood tall and well muscled. His English carried only a slight trace of an accent. “Soon after the two man team dropped into the pond, they discovered an underwater tunnel leading to the west. They swam a distance of ninety meters before reporting the tunnel ended at a small chamber with a steel door. A few minutes later the phone and safety lines went slack. I sent another team in to investigate. They disappeared like the others.”

Pitt turned his head and looked at the men of the German Navy dive team who stood helpless and saddened at the loss of their friends. They were clustered around the folding tables and chairs of a portable command post manned by a group of police underwater rescue divers. A trio of men in civilian clothes, who Pitt assumed were government officials, questioned the divers in low voices.

“When did the last man go in?” Pitt asked.

“Four hours before you arrived,” said the young dive officer, who had introduced himself as Lieutenant Helmut Reinhardt. “I had a devil of a time keeping the rest of my men from following. But I’m not about to risk another life until I know what’s going on in there.” He paused and tipped his head toward the police divers, who were attired in bright orange dry suits. “Those idiot police, however, think they’re invincible. They’re planning to send one of their teams inside.”

“Some people are born for suicide,” said Giordino with a yawn. “Take me for example. I wouldn’t go in there without a nuclear submarine. No daredevil ventures by Mrs. Giordino’s boy. I intend to die in bed entwined with an erotic beauty from the Far East.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him, ” said Pitt. “Put him in a dark place and he hallucinates.”

“I see,” murmured Reinhardt, but obviously he didn’t.

Finally Pitt rose and nodded in Frank Mancuso’s direction. “Booby-trapped,” he said simply.

Mancuso nodded. “I agree. The entrances to the treasure tunnels in the Philippines were packed with bombs rigged to go off if struck by digging equipment. The difference is the Japs planned to return and retrieve the treasure, while the Nazis intended for their booby traps to destroy the loot along with the searchers.”

“Whatever trapped my men in there,” said Reinhardt bitterly, unable to say the word “killed,” “was not bombs.”

One of the official-looking men walked over from the command post and addressed Pitt. “Who are you, and whom do you represent?” he demanded in German.

Pitt turned to Reinhardt, who translated the question. Then he refaced his interrogator. “Tell him the three of us were invited.”

“You are American?” the stranger blurted in broken English, his face blank in astonishment. “Who gave you authorization to be here?”

“Who’s this mook?” Giordino inquired in blissful ignorance.

Reinhardt couldn’t suppress a slight grin. “Herr Gert Haider, Minister of Historic Works. Sir, Herr Dirk Pitt and his staff from the American National Underwater and Marine Agency in Washington. They are here at the personal invitation of Chancellor Lange.”

Haider looked as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He quickly recovered, straightened to his full height, half a head short of tall, and attempted to intimidate Pitt with a superior Teutonic demeanor. “Your purpose?”

“We’ve come for the same reason as you,” replied Pitt, studying his fingernails. “If old interrogation records of Nazi officials in your Berlin archives and our Library of Congress are correct, eighteen thousand works of art were hidden in excavated tunnels under a secret airfield. This could very well prove to be that secret airfield with its art depository chamber extending somewhere beyond the water barrier.”

Haider wisely realized he couldn’t bluster the tough, purposeful-looking men dressed in loose blue-green Viking dry suits. “You know, of course, any art that is found belongs to the German Republic until it can be traced and returned to the original owners.”

“We’re fully aware of that,” said Pitt. “We’re only interested in one particular piece.”

“Which one?”

“Sorry, I’m not allowed to say.”

Haider played his last card. “I must insist the police dive team be the first to enter the chamber.”

“Fine by us.” Giordino bowed and gestured toward the dark water. “Maybe if one of your deputies is lucky enough to make it in and back, we’ll find out what’s eating people in that hell hole down there.”

“I’ve lost four of my men.” Reinhardt spoke solemnly. “They may be dead. You cannot allow more men to die through ignorance of the unknown.”

“They are professional divers,” Haider retorted.

“So are the men I sent in there. The finest divers in the Navy, in superior condition and more extensively trained than the police rescue team.”

“May I suggest a compromise,” said Pitt.

Haider nodded. “I’m willing to listen.”

“We put together a seven-man probe team. The three of us because Mancuso here is a mining engineer, an expert on tunnel construction and excavation, while Al and I are experienced in underwater salvage. Two of Lieutenant Reinhardt’s Navy men, since they’re trained in defusing any demolitions we might encounter. And two of the police divers as rescue and medical backup.”

Haider stared into Pitt’s eyes and saw only grim tenacity. It was a solid proposal fortified with logic. He forced a smile. “Who goes in first?”

“I do,” Pitt said without hesitation.

His two short words seemed to echo in the cavern for long seconds, and then the tension suddenly evaporated and Haider stuck out his hand.

“As you wish.” He shook Pitt’s hand and puffed out his chest to regain an image of authoritative dignity. “But I hold you responsible, Herr Pitt, if you trip any explosive devices and destroy the artworks.”

Pitt gave Haider a contemptuous grin. “In that case, Herr Haider, you may have my head—literally.”

Pitt set the time on the microelectronic computer attached by a line to his air tank and made a final check of his regulator and buoyancy compensator. For the fiftieth time since dropping down the ladder from farmer Clausen’s field he stared into the beckoning black pool.

“Your gears are turning,” observed Giordino as he adjusted the straps to his tank pack.

Pitt rubbed his chin thoughtfully without replying.

“What do you think is going on in there?” asked Mancuso.

“I think I’ve solved half the puzzle,” answered Pitt. “But the cutting of the lines? Now that’s downright puzzling.”

“How’s your acoustic speaker?” asked Mancuso.

Pitt inserted the regulator’s mouthpiece and spoke into it. “Mary had a little lamb…” The words came out muffled but understandable.

“I guess it’s time, fearless leader,” grunted Giordino.

Pitt nodded at Reinhardt, who was accompanied by one of his men. “Ready, gentlemen? Please try to stay within two meters of the man in front of you. Visibility appears to be four meters, so you should have no trouble keeping the distance. My team will communicate with you through our acoustic speakers.”

Reinhardt acknowledged with a wave and turned, relaying instructions in German to the police divers behind him. Then he threw a brief military salute to Pitt. “After you, sir.”

There was no delaying it any longer. Pitt held out both hands at arm’s length, index fingers pointing outward. “I’ll take the center point. Frank, two meters behind and to my left. Al, you take the right. Keep a sharp watch on any unusual mechanisms sticking out of the walls.”

With nothing more to be said, Pitt switched on his dive light, gave a tug on his safety line to make sure it was clipped, and launched himself facedown into the water. He floated for a moment, and then very slowly ducked his head and dove toward the bottom, his dive light held ahead of him.

The water was cold. He glanced at the digital readout of the computer. The water temperature stood at 14 degrees Celsius or 57 degrees Fahrenheit. The concrete bottom was covered with green slime and a thin layer of silt. He was careful not to drag his fins or kick them into the sediment, raising clouds that would block the vision of the men behind.

Pitt actually enjoyed it. Once again he was a man totally at home in his own element. He aimed the dive light upward and stared at the ceiling of the bunker. It had sloped downward, becoming fully submerged and narrowing into a tunnel as expected. The water along the bottom was murky, and the particles that floated past his mask dropped the visibility down to three meters. He stopped and advised the men behind to close up a bit. Then he continued, swimming easily and smoothly as the ghostly outline of the floor gradually dropped until it leveled out and became swallowed by the dark.

After covering another twenty meters, he paused again and hung suspended for a minute while he twisted around and looked for Giordino and Mancuso. They were only shadowy figures behind the dull glow of their lights, but they faithfully held their instructed positions. He checked his computer. The pressure readout indicated a depth of only six meters.

A short distance later the underwater tunnel seemed to narrow, and the bottom began to rise. Pitt moved cautiously, his eyes straining into the gloom. He lifted his free hand above his head and felt it break the surface. He rolled over on his back and shined the light. The surface flashed and rolled like unleashed mercury from his movements a few centimeters in front of his face mask.

Like some unspeakable creature rising from the deep, his rubber-helmeted head with mask and regulator, eerily illuminated by the dive light, broke the cold water into the musty damp air of a small chamber. He lightly kicked his fins and softly bumped into a short flight of concrete stairs. He crept up and pulled himself onto a level floor.

The sight he feared did not materialize, at least not yet. Pitt found no bodies of the German Navy dive team. He could see where they had scraped their fins across the slime of the concrete floor, but that was the only sign of them.

He carefully examined the walls of the chamber, finding no protrusion that appeared threatening. At the far end, the dive light lit up a large rust-coated metal door. He stepped awkwardly up the steps in his fins and approached the door. He leaned against it with his shoulder. The hinges turned in their pins with incredible ease and silence, almost as if they were oiled sometime in the past week. The door swung inward, and then quickly returned as Pitt released the pressure, forced back by springs.

“Hello, what have we got here?” The words were audible, but Mancuso sounded as if he was gargling through the acoustic speaker on his breathing regulator.

“Guess what’s behind door number one, and you win a year’s supply of Brillo pads,” said Giordino in a masterpiece of dry-rot humor.

Pitt pulled off his fins and knelt down and cracked the door a few more centimeters. He studied the threshold for a moment and gestured at the bottom edge of the rust-encrusted door. “This explains the severed phone and safety lines.”

Giordino nodded. “Cut by the sharp bottom edge of the door after the divers entered and the spring system slammed it closed.”

Mancuso looked at Pitt. “You said you solved the other half of the puzzle.”

“Yeah,” muttered Giordino, “the choice part, like what killed the German Navy’s finest.”

“Gas,” Pitt answered curtly. “Poison gas, triggered after they passed beyond this door.”

“A sound theory,” agreed Mancuso.

Pitt flashed his light on the water and saw the approaching air bubbles of Reinhardt and his teammate. “Frank, you stay and keep the others from entering. Al and I will go it alone. And whatever happens, make damn sure everyone breathes only the air from their tanks. Under no circumstance are they to remove their regulators.”

Mancuso held up an acknowledging hand and turned to greet the next team.

Giordino leaned against a wall, crooked one leg, and removed a fin. “No sense traipsing in there like a duck.”

Pitt removed his fins too. He scraped his rubber boots across the rough concrete floor to feel what little grip they had across the slick surface. The friction was nil. The slightest loss of balance and he’d go down.

One final check of his tank pressure on the computer. Enough breathing time at atmospheric pressure for another hour. Free of the cold water, the air temperature stood at a point where he was reasonably comfortable in his dry suit.

“Mind your step,” he said to Giordino. Then he pushed the door half open and stepped inside as lightly as though he was walking a tightrope. The atmosphere went abruptly dry, and the humidity dropped off to almost zero percent. He paused and swept the light beam on the concrete floor, carefully searching for trip-strings and cables leading to explosive detonators or poison gas containers. A thin broken fish line, gray in color and nearly invisible in the dim tight, lay snapped in two almost under his toes.

The light beam followed one end of the line to a canister marked PHOSGENE. Thank God, Pitt thought, deeply relieved. Phosgene is only fatal if inhaled. The Germans invented nerve gas during World War II, but for some reason lost in the dim past, they failed to rig it here. A fortunate stroke for Pitt and Giordino and the men who followed them. The nerve-type agent could kill on contact with flesh, and they all had skin exposed on their hands and around their face masks.

“You were right about the gas,” said Giordino.

“Too late to help those poor seamen.”

He found four more poison gas booby traps, two of them activated. The phosgene had done its deadly work. Bodies of the Navy divers lay in contorted positions only a few meters apart. All had removed their air tanks and breathing regulators, unsuspecting of the gas until it was too late. Pitt did not bother trying for a pulse. Their blue facial color and unseeing eyes gave evidence they were stone dead.

He played the light into a long gallery and froze.

Nearly eyeball to eyeball a woman stared back at him, her head tilted in a coquettish pose. She smiled at him from an adorable face with high cheekbones and smooth pink skin.

She was not alone. Several other female figures stood beside and behind her, their unblinking eyes seemingly locked on Pitt. They were naked, covered only by long tresses that fell almost to their knees.

“I’ve died and gone to Amazon heaven,” Giordino muttered in rapt awe.

“Don’t get excited,” Pitt warned him. “They’re painted sculptures.”

“I wish. I could mold them like that.”

Pitt stepped around the life-size sculptures and held the dive light over his head. Gold gleamed in an ocean of gilded picture frames. As far as the light could reach and beyond, way beyond, the long gallery was filled with tier upon tier of racks containing an immense cache of fine paintings, sculpture, religious relics, tapestries, rare books, ancient furniture, and archeological antiquities, all stored in orderly bins and open crates.

“I think,” Pitt murmured through his acoustic speaker, “we’ve just made a lot of people very happy.”

37

THE GERMANS WERE characteristically efficient. Within four hours, decontamination experts arrived and set up pumping equipment and laid hose into the treasure gallery. The poisoned atmosphere was quickly and safely drawn into a chemical tank truck parked on the surface. While the cleanup process was in operation, Reinhardt and his men deactivated the phosgene release mechanisms and turned the canisters over to the decontamination crew. Only then did the Navy divers carry their dead to waiting ambulances.

Next, a large aluminum pipe was fed through the opening in the ground like a giant straw and attached to a huge suction pump that soon began draining the water from the subterranean tunnel into a small nearby stream. An excavating crew appeared with their equipment and began digging into the original entry ramp leading down to the bunker that had been filled in at the end of the war.

Mancuso paced the bunker impatiently, stopping every few minutes and peering at the instruments that measured the decreasing levels of the poison gas. Then he’d move to the edge of the ramp and stare at the rapidly receding water. Back and forth, watching the progress, counting the minutes until he could safely enter the gallery containing the Nazis’ plundered loot.

Giordino, true to form, slept the whole time. He found a musty old cot in a former Luftwaffe mechanic’s quarters and promptly sacked out.

After Pitt made his report to Haider and Reinhardt, he killed time by accepting an invitation to a home-cooked meal prepared by Frau Clausen in her warm and comfortable farmhouse. Later he roamed the bunker examining the old aircraft. He stopped and circled one of the Messerschmitt 262s, admiring the slim cigar shape of the fuselage, the triangular vertical stabilizer, and the ungainly jet pods that hung from the razor knifelike wings. Except for the black crosses outlined in white on the wings and fuselage, and the swastika on the tail, the only other marking was a large numeral 9 painted just forward of the cockpit.

The world’s first operational jet fighter, it was produced too late to save Germany, though it scared hell out of the British and American air forces for a few short months.

“It flew as though the angels were pushing.”

Pitt turned at the voice and found Gert Haider standing behind him. The German’s blue eyes were wistfully gazing at the cockpit of the Messerschmitt.

“You look too young to have flown her,” said Pitt.

Haider shook his head. “The words of one of our leading aces during the war, Adolf Galland.”

“Shouldn’t take much work to get them airworthy.”

Haider gazed at the fleet of aircraft that sat in spectral silence in the vast bunker. “The government rarely provides funding for such a project. I’ll be lucky if I can keep five or six of them for museum display.”

“And the others?”

“They’ll be sold or auctioned off to museums and collectors around the world.”

“I wish I could afford to place a bid,” Pitt said yearningly.

Haider looked at him, the arrogance was gone. A canny smile curved his lips. “How many aircraft do you count?”

Pitt stood back and mentally totaled the number of jet craft in the bunker. “I make it forty even.”

“Wrong. It’s thirty-nine.”

Pitt re-counted and again came up with forty. “I hate to disagree, but—”

Haider waved him off. “If one can be removed when the entry ramp is cleared and transported across the border before I take the official inventory…”

Haider didn’t need to finish his sentence. Pitt heard, but he wasn’t sure he interpreted the meaning. A Me-262 had to be worth over a million dollars in good restorable condition.

“When do you expect to take inventory?” he asked, feeling his way.

“After I catalog the contents of the plundered art.”

“That could take weeks.”

“Possibly longer.”

“Why?” Pitt put to Haider.

“Call it penitence. I was most rude to you earlier. And I feel obligated to reward your courageous effort in reaching the treasure, saving perhaps five lives and preventing me from making a blue-ribbon ass of myself and quite probably losing my job.”

“And you’re offering to look the other way while I steal one.”

“There are so many, one won’t be missed.”

“I’m grateful,” Pitt said sincerely.

Haider looked at him. “I asked a friend in our intelligence service to run a file on you while you were busy in the tunnel. I think a Messerschmitt two-six-two will make a nice addition to your collection and complement your Ford trimotor.”

“Your friend was very thorough.”

“As a collector of fine mechanical relics, I think you will give it the proper respect.”

“It will be restored to original condition,” Pitt promised.

Haider lit a cigarette and leaned casually against a jet pod as he exhaled blue smoke. “I suggest you see about renting a flatbed truck. By tonight the bunker entrance will have been widened enough to tow a plane to the surface. I’m certain Lieutenant Reinhardt and his surviving team will be happy to assist you in removing your latest acquisition.”

Before a stunned and thankful Pitt could say another word, Haider had turned and walked away.

Another eight hours passed before the massive pump suctioned off most of the water and the air in the gallery of wartime loot was safe to breathe. Haider stood on a chair with a bullhorn, briefing his staff of art experts and historians and a gathering of German government officials and politicians who wanted to be in on the discovery. An army of TV and newspaper correspondents was building in Clausen’s now ravaged lettuce field, demanding to enter the bunker. But Haider was under orders from his superior in Bonn. No entry by the news media until the hoard was surveyed.

Beginning at the steel door, the gallery stretched a good half a kilometer. The racks and bins were filled to the far wall and rose four meters high. Despite the water in the tunnel, the entry door had been sealed tightly and the concrete construction was of top quality, so no moisture had penetrated inside. Even the more delicate objects had survived in excellent condition.

The Germans immediately began setting up a photo and conservation laboratory, a workshop, and a records area. After the briefing, Haider moved into the art chamber and directed the activities from a prefabricated office hurriedly assembled and furnished complete with telephones and fax machine.

Unconsciously almost, Pitt shook his head and walked through the now dry tunnel with Mancuso, marveling that so much had been accomplished in less than twenty-four hours.

“Where’s Al?” asked Mancuso.

“Off scrounging a truck.”

Mancuso stared at him with an arched eyebrow. “Not thinking of absconding with a load of masterpieces, are we? If so, I don’t recommend it. The Krauts will shoot you down before you’ve cleared the farm.”

“Not when you have friends in high places.” Pitt smiled.

“I don’t even want to know about it. Whatever your evil scheme, do it after I leave.”

They passed through the entry door into the gallery and stepped into Haider’s closet office that was set off to one side. Haider waved them in and motioned to a pair of camp stools as he conversed in German over one of four telephones. He hung up as they sat down.

“I fully realize you have permission from Chancellor Lange to search for whatever it is you’re after, but before you begin digging through the bins and crates, I’d like to know what it is.”

“We’re only interested in art objects removed from the Japanese embassy in Berlin,” Pitt answered.

“You think they’re here?”

“There was no time to transport them to Japan,” Mancuso explained. “The Russians were encircling the city. The ambassador locked up the building and barely escaped with his staff into Switzerland. Historical records show the antique art that decorated the interior of the embassy was entrusted to the Nazis for safekeeping, and they hid it under an airfield.”

“And you think it may be included with the cache discovered here.”

“We do, yes.”

“Can I ask why the American government is so interested in lost works of Japanese art?”

“I’m sorry,” Pitt said honestly. “We can’t give out that information. But I can assure you our search poses no problems for the German government.”

“I’m thinking of the Japanese. They’ll demand their property be returned.”

“Possession is not our intent,” Mancuso assured Haider. “We only wish to photograph a few pieces.”

“All right, gentlemen.” Haider sighed. He gave Pitt a hard stare. “I trust you, Herr Pitt. We have an agreement. Do what you say, and I’ll guarantee to look the other way.”

As they left Haider’s office, Mancuso whispered, “What was he talking about? What agreement?”

“Recruitment.”

“Recruitment?” Mancuso repeated.

Pitt nodded. “He talked me into joining the Luftwaffe.”

They found the rack containing the inventory from the Japanese embassy about fifty meters back of the sculptured figures that once graced the museums of Europe. The Germans had already installed a string of lamps that ran off a portable generator, throwing light on the great hoard that seemed to stretch into infinity.

The Japanese section was easy to identify, the packing boxes having been marked by kana characters and handcrafted with far more finesse than the crude crates knocked together by the Nazi looters.

“Let’s start with that one,” said Mancuso, pointing to a narrow container. “That looks to be about the right size.”

“You spent time prospecting in Japan. What does it read?”

” ‘Container number four,’ ” Mancuso translated. ” ‘Property of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan.’ “

“That’s a big help.” Pitt went to work and carefully lifted the lid with a hammer and pry bar. Inside was a small, delicate folding screen depicting birds flying around several mountain peaks. “Definitely not an island.” He shrugged.

He opened two more, but the paintings he pulled into the dim light were of a later period than the sixteenth-century master Masaki Shimzu. Most of the smaller crates were carefully packed with porcelain. There was only one more crate in the rear of the rack that might conceivably hold a painting.

Mancuso showed signs of stress. Sweat was glistening on his forehead and he nervously fidgeted with his pipe. “This better be it,” he muttered. “Or we’ve wasted a lot of time.”

Pitt said nothing but went about his work. This box seemed more heavily constructed than the others. He pried the lid and peered inside. “I see water. I think we’ve got a seascape. Better yet, it’s an island.”

“Thank God. Pull it out, man, let’s see it.”

“Hold on.” There was no ornate outer frame, so Pitt gripped the painting under its rear support and painstakingly eased it out of the crate. Once free, he held it up under the light for inspection.

Mancuso hurriedly pulled a small catalog showing color plates of Masaki Shimzu art from his pocket and flipped through the pages, comparing the photos with the painting. “I’m no expert, but that looks like Shimzu’s style.”

Pitt turned the painting around and studied the other side. “There’s some writing. Can you make it out?”

Mancuso squinted. ” ‘Ajima Island by Masaki Shimzu,’ ” he burst out triumphantly. “We’ve got it, the site of Suma’s command center. Now all we have to do is match its shoreline with satellite photos.”

Mechanically, Pitt’s eyes traveled over the picture Shimzu had painted four hundred and fifty years ago of an island then called Ajima. It would never make a tourist paradise. Steep volcanic rock cliffs towering above pounding surf, no sign of a beach, and almost total absence of vegetation. It looked barren and forbidding, grim and impregnable. There was no way to approach and make a landing from sea or air without detection. A natural fortress, Suma would have it heavily defended against assault.

“Getting inside that rock,” Pitt said thoughtfully, “is going to be damn near impossible. Whoever tries it will surely die.”

The triumphant expression on Mancuso’s face quickly vanished. “Don’t say that,” he murmured. “Don’t even think it.”

Pitt looked into the mining engineer’s eyes. “Why? Gaining entrance is not our problem.”

“But you’re wrong.” He made a weary swipe at the sweat from his forehead. “With teams Cadillac and Honda down the dumper, Jordan has no choice but to send in you and me and Giordino. Think about it.”

Pitt did, and Mancuso was right. It was all too clear now. Wily Jordan had been saving the three of them in reserve for a covert strike on Suma’s nuclear bomb detonation center.

38

THE PRESIDENT STARED down at the open file on his desk. His face had a bleak expression as he looked up. “They really intend to set these things off? It’s not a bluff?”

Jordan’s face was impassive as he nodded. “They’re not bluffing.”

“It’s unthinkable.”

Jordan did not answer, but let the President gather his own thoughts. The man never seemed to change. He looked exactly as he did the first day Jordan was introduced to the newly elected senator from Montana. The same lean build, bright blue eyes, the same warm, outgoing personality. The incredible power never fazed him. He was polite and cordial to the White House staff, and seldom missed remembering a birthday.

“It’s not like we’ve ringed their islands with an invasion fleet, for God’s sake.”

“They’ve become paranoid because global opinion has suddenly come down on them,” said Donald Kern. “With China and Russia embracing democracy, the Eastern Bloc countries going independent, South Africa holding free elections, and the Middle East simmering on the back burner, world focus has fallen on the Japanese for going too far too fast.”

Kern nodded. “Their economic aggressiveness hasn’t exactly been tempered with subtlety. The more markets they conquer, the more hard-nosed they become.”

“But you can’t blame them for creating an economic world the way they want it to be,” said Jordan. “Their business ethics are not the same as ours. They see nothing immoral in exploiting commercial opportunities and taking advantage of trade weaknesses, regardless of the flak. The only crime in their eyes is any attempt to prevent their systematic progress. Frankly, we were no different in our overseas trade practices after World War Two.”

“I can’t argue with you,” conceded the President. “Few of our past and present business leaders will ever qualify for sainthood.”

“Congress and the European Market countries are on an anti-Japanese business kick. If they vote for trade embargoes and nationalization of Japanese corporations, Tokyo will attempt to negotiate, but Suma and his cronies are dead set on retaliation.”

“But to threaten nuclear death and destruction…”

“They’re playing for time,” explained Jordan. “Their worldwide commercial thrust is only part of a broader plan. The Japanese live under terrible conditions of high density. A hundred and twenty-five million people on a land mass the size of California, with most of it too mountainous to live on. Their unadvertised long-range goal is to export millions of their best-educated people into other countries and form colonies while maintaining loyalty and strong ties to Japan. Brazil is a case in point, and so is the United States when you consider their mass immigration into Hawaii and California. The Japanese are obsessed with survival, and unlike us, they plan decades into the future. Through economic trade they’re building a vast economic global society with Japanese traditions and culture as the hub. What even they don’t realize is that Suma intends to set himself up as executive director.”

The President glanced at the open file again. “And he protects his criminal empire by strategically placing nuclear bombs in other nations.”

“We can’t blame the Japanese government or the great mass of their people,” Jordan qualified. “I’m firmly convinced Prime Minister Junshiro was misled and duped by Hideki Suma and his cartel of industrialists, financiers, and underworld leaders who secretly built a nuclear arsenal and expanded it into the Kaiten Project.”

The President opened his hands. “Perhaps I should set a meeting with Junshiro and inform him of our intelligence revelations.”

Jordan shook his head. “I don’t recommend it just yet, sir. Not until we have a chance at cutting off the Kaiten Project at its head.”

“When last we met, you didn’t have the location of the command center.”

“New information has put us in the neighborhood.”

The President looked at Jordan with renewed respect. He understood his chief intelligence gatherer, the dedication to his country, the many years of service beginning when he was still a few years shy of high school and already entered into training for the intelligence fieldwork. The President also saw the toll that years of incredible stress had taken. Jordan consumed a steady stream of Maalox tablets as if they were popcorn.

“Do you know yet where the car bombs are to be placed for detonation?”

Kern answered. “Yes, sir, one of our teams discovered the plan while tracking a shipment of the cars. Suma’s engineers have created a diabolic and well-contrived disaster.”

“I assume they’ll be parked in densely populated areas to slaughter the largest number of American citizens possible.”

“Dead wrong, Mr. President. They will be strategically located for a minimal loss of life.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Throughout the United States and the industrialized world,” Kern briefed, “the cars will be staged in systematic grids in deserted areas so their synchronized explosions will set off an electromagnetic pulse on the ground that rises into the atmosphere. This will create an umbrellalike chain reaction that shuts down uplinks to worldwide satellite communications systems.”

“All radio, television, and phone networks simply cease to exist,” added Jordan. “Federal and local governments, military commands, police and sheriff departments, fire departments, ambulances, and all transportation will roll to a halt because they can’t operate deaf.”

“A world without communication,” murmured the President. “It’s unimaginable.”

“The picture gets worse,” Kern continued ominously. “Much worse. You know, of course, Mr. President, what happens when you wave a magnet near a computer disk or a cassette tape.”

“They’re erased.”

Kern nodded slowly. “The electromagnetic pulse from the nuclear explosions would do the same thing. For hundreds of miles around each explosion the memories of every computer would be totally erased. Silicon chips and transistors, the backbone of our modern computerized world, are defenseless against a pulse running through electrical and telephone circuits and aerials. Anything made of metal would carry the pulse from pipes to rails to microwave towers and steel supports inside of buildings.”

The President stared at Kern with unbelieving eyes. “We’re talking total chaos.”

“Yes, sir, a complete national breakdown with catastrophic results that are beyond recovery. Any and every record ever programmed into a computer by banks, insurance companies, giant corporations, small businesses, hospitals, supermarkets, department stores—the list is endless—would vanish, along with all stored scientific and engineering data.”

“Every disk, every tape?”

“In every home and office,” said Jordan.

Kern kept his eyes on the President to reinforce his dire commentary. “Any computer electronics that runs on memory, and that includes ignition and carburetion on modern autos, operation of diesel train engines, and controls on aircraft in flight, would stop functioning. The aircraft especially could suffer horrible consequences, since many would fall to the ground before their crews could take manual command.”

“And there are also the mundane everyday devices we take for granted,” said Jordan, “that would also be affected, such as microwave ovens, video cassette recorders, and security systems. We’ve come to rely so heavily on computer chips that we’ve never considered how vulnerable they are.”

The President picked up a pen and tapped it nervously on the desk. His face was drawn, his expression distraught. “I cannot allow that curse to paralyze the American people well into the next century,” he stated flatly. “I have to seriously consider a strike, nuclear if necessary, on their warhead arsenal and detonation command center.”

“I advise against it, Mr. President, said Jordan with quiet conviction, “except as a last resort.”

The President looked at him. “What’s your angle, Ray?”

“Suma’s installation won’t be on-line for another week. Let us try to devise a penetration plan to destroy it from within. If successful, it will save you enormous fallout from a hailstorm of international condemnation for what will be looked upon as an unprovoked attack on a friendly nation.”

The President was silent, a thoughtful look on his face. Then he said slowly, “You’re right, I’d be forced into making excuses no one would believe.”

“Time is on our side as long as no one but our MAIT team and the three of us knows what’s going down,” Jordan continued.

“Good thing,” Kern muttered. “If the Russians knew their landscape was littered with foreign warheads, they wouldn’t hesitate to threaten a full-scale invasion of Japan.”

“And we don’t need that,” the President said quietly.

“Nor do the innocent Japanese, who have no idea of Suma’s insane threat,” said Jordan, hammering in another nail.

The President came to his feet, ending the briefing. “Four days, gentlemen. You have ninety-six hours.”

Jordan and Kern exchanged tight smiles.

The assault on Suma had been planned before they walked into the Oval Office. All it took was a phone call to set it in motion.

39

AT FOUR O’CLOCK in the morning the small landing strip on a government reservation near Woodmoor, Maryland, looked to be deserted. There were no lights bordering the narrow band of asphalt. The only guide to a pilot making a night landing was a triangle of blue mercury vapor streetlights arched over an intersection of two dirt roads that pointed to the south end of the runway.

Then the early morning stillness was broken as the whine of throttled-back jet engines cut the still air. A pair of headlights flashed on, their beams falling across the center of the landing strip. The Gulfstream jet transport with CIRCLEARTH AIRLINES painted across the top of the fuselage touched down and taxied to a stop beside a Jeep Grand Wagoneer station wagon.

Less than three minutes after the passenger door opened and two men and their luggage were on the ground, the plane rolled toward the end of the runway and was airborne again. As the roar faded in the black sky, Admiral Sandecker shook hands with Pitt and Giordino.

“Congratulations,” he said warmly, “on a very successful operation.”

“We haven’t heard the results,” said Pitt. “Did the photos of the painting Mancuso transmitted match an existing island?”

“Right on the money,” replied Sandecker. “Turns out the island was called Ajima by fishermen after one of them became stranded on it in the seventeen-hundreds. But it remained on the charts as Soseki Island. And like many geographical sites connected with local folklore, the name Ajima was eventually lost.”

“Where’s the location?” asked Giordino.

“About sixty kilometers off the coast due east of Edo City.”

Pitt’s face suddenly became etched with anxious concern. “What word of Loren?”

Sandecker shook his head. “Only that she and Diaz are alive and hidden in a secret location.”

“That’s it?” Pitt said, irritated. “No investigation, no operation to free them?”

“Until the bomb-car threat is eliminated, the President’s hands are tied.”

“Bed,” mumbled Giordino, cagily changing the subject to cool Pitt down. “Take me to my bed.”

Pitt dipped his head at the little Italian. “Get him. His eyes haven’t been open since we left Germany.”

“You made good time,” said Sandecker. “Have a pleasant flight?”

“Slept most of it. And with the jet lag working in our favor flying west, I’m wide awake.”

“Frank Mancuso remained with the art objects’?” Sandecker inquired.

Pitt nodded. “Just before we took off, he received a message from Kern ordering him to pack up the Japanese embassy art and fly it to Tokyo.”

“A smoke screen to pacify the Germans.” Sandecker smiled. “The art is actually going to a vault in San Francisco. When the time is ripe, the President will present it to the Japanese people as a goodwill gesture.” He gestured to the seats of the Jeep. “Get in. Since you’re so bright and bushy-tailed, I’ll let you drive.”

“Fine by me,” Pitt said agreeably.

After they threw their bags in the luggage compartment, Pitt slid behind the steering wheel as the admiral and Giordino entered from the opposite side. Sandecker took the front passenger seat, Giordino the back. Pitt shifted the running engine into drive and wheeled the Jeep down a dark road to a gatehouse that stood hidden in a grove of trees. A uniformed security guard stepped out, peered inside the car a moment, then saluted Sandecker and waved them through to a back-country highway.

Three kilometers later, Pitt turned the Jeep onto the Capital Beltway and headed toward the lights of Washington. Traffic at that time of morning was almost nonexistent. He set the cruise control on 110 kilometers and sat back as the big four-wheel-drive rolled effortlessly over the pavement.

They drove in silence for several minutes. Sandecker stared absently through the windshield. Pitt didn’t need a strong imagination to know the admiral didn’t leave a warm bed to meet them without a good reason. The huge Havana was strangely missing from his mouth, and his hands were clasped across his chest, sure signs of inner tension. His eyes were like ice cubes. He definitely had something heavy on his mind.

Pitt decided to give him an opening. “Where do we go from here?” he asked.

“Say again,” Sandecker mumbled in mock distraction.

“What does the great eagle have in store for us next? A nice week’s vacation, I hope.”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Probably not, but you’re going to tell me, right?”

Sandecker yawned to prolong the agony. “Well, I’m afraid you two are off on another airplane ride again.”

“Where?”

“The Pacific.”

“Where exactly in the Pacific?”

“Palau. The team, or what’s left of it, is to assemble at the Information Gathering and Collection Point for new instructions from the Director of Field Operations.”

“Without the bureaucratic title crap, what you’re saying is we’re meeting with Mel Penner.”

Sandecker smiled, and his eyes softened considerably. “You have a deft manner of slicing to the gut of the matter.”

Pitt was wary. He could see the axe was about to fall. “When?” he asked quickly.

“In precisely one hour and fifty minutes. You’re taking a commercial airline out of Dulles.”

“A pity we didn’t land there,” Pitt said sourly, “and saved you the drive.”

“Security reasons. Kern thought it best if you arrive at the terminal by car, pick up the tickets, and board like any other tourists flying to the South Seas.”

“We could use a change of clothes.”

“Kern sent a man to pack clean things in suitcases. They’ve already been checked through.”

“Very thoughtful of him. I must remind myself to change my security alarms when I return—”

Pitt broke off and studied the reflection in his rearview mirror. The same pair of headlights had been on the Jeep’s tail since they swung onto the beltway. For the last several kilometers they had maintained an exact distance. He punched off the cruise control and increased speed slightly. The lights dropped back and moved forward again.

“Something wrong?” asked Sandecker.

“We’ve picked up a tail.”

Giordino turned and peered through the big rear window. “More than one. I make out three vans in a convoy.”

Pitt stared thoughtfully into the mirror. The beginning of a grin drew across his face. “Whoever is after us isn’t taking any chances. They’ve sent a full platoon.”

Sandecker snatched a car phone and dialed the MAIT team safe line. “This is Admiral Sandecker!” he snapped, ignoring any attempt at procedural codes. “I’m on the Capital Beltway heading south near Morningside. We are being followed—”

“Make that pursued,” Pitt interrupted him. “They’re closing fast.”

Suddenly a burst of gunfire tore through the roof of the Jeep just above their heads. “Correction,” Giordino said in utter calm. “Change pursued to attacked.”

Sandecker slouched down on the floor and spoke rapidly into the car phone’s mouthpiece, giving location and instructions. Pitt had already slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The high torque of the big 5.9-liter V-8 kicked in, and the Jeep swiftly leaped down the beltway at 150 kph.

“The agent on duty is sending out a call for the highway patrol,” announced Sandecker.

“Tell them to put on some speed,” Pitt urged, whipping the big Jeep back and forth across the three lanes of highway to throw off their pursuers’ aim.

“They’re not playing fair,” Giordino said contritely. He dropped down on the floor between the seats as another burst sprayed the rear window’s glass over him, passed through the car, and took out half the windshield. “They’ve got guns, and we don’t.”

“I think I can fix that.” Pitt spared him a quick glance down and back.

“How?”

“By getting off this damn highway, where we make a perfect target, and taking every bend in the next road I can find until we hit a town.”

“The turnoff for Phelps Point is coming up,” advised Sandecker, peeping over the dashboard.

Pitt stole a quick look in the rearview mirror. He could see now that the vans were painted in the color scheme of ambulances. Even as he observed them, their red and blue flashing lights blinked. Their sirens remained mute, however, as the drivers pulled abreast of each other, covering the entire southbound lanes of the beltway to increase their firepower.

Pitt could make out men clad in black aiming automatic weapons out the side windows. Whoever planned the assassination had covered every base. There must have been four men to a van. Twelve who were armed to the teeth against three who probably had only one Swiss Army knife between them.

Pitt had an idea for evening the odds a bit. The off-ramp to Phelps Point was still two hundred meters ahead. No time. The next barrage of massed fire would blow them off the road. Without touching the brakes and warning the pursuing killers of his intention by flashing red taillights, he abruptly threw the Jeep into a crabwise slide and shot across two lanes and down an embankment.

The timing was perfect. A hail of gunfire missed the big Grand Wagoneer as it swept over the landscaped grass and surfed through a shallow ditch filled with half a meter of water. Then all tires bounced free of the ground as it soared over the other edge of the ditch, landing with a screeching of rubber on a frontage road that paralleled the beltway.

The pursuers lost time as they skidded to a stop in confusion. Pitt gained almost ten seconds before they regrouped and roared down the off-ramp onto the frontage road and resumed the chase.

For the second time in nearly as many days, Pitt was driving as if he was competing in a Grand Prix road race. Professional drivers, though, had an advantage. They wore helmets with visors against the wind resistance. The cold morning air washed over Pitt’s face through the bullet-shattered windshield, and he was forced to turn his head sideways and squint against the icy gust.

They tore onto a long avenue flanked by oak trees before bursting into a residential area. He threw the Jeep into a series of sharp turns, left on one block of houses, left again, and then to the right. The drivers of the vans were well versed in the routine. They split up and attempted to cut him off at the intersections, but he always managed to get there ahead and dash past with scant seconds to spare.

The killers held their fire amid the populated homes, relentlessly closing the net and cutting off avenues of escape. When Pitt was able to make a turn before they came in sight from the previous block, he turned out his lights and sped through the darkness. Unfortunately, the streetlights gave him away. He tried every trick he knew, gaining a few meters here, a few seconds there, but he could not entirely shake the stubborn killers.

Pitt circled back and threw the Jeep onto the main avenue into the town. A gas station, a theater, and several small shops flicked past. “Watch for a hardware store,” he shouted above the scream of the protesting tires.

“A what?” asked Sandecker incredulously.

“A hardware store. There’s got to be one in town.”

“Oscar Brown’s Hardware Emporium,” announced Giordino. “I saw it on a sign right after we sailed off the beltway.”

“Whatever you’ve got in mind,” said the admiral steadily, “you better manage it quick. The red light on the gas gauge just flashed on.”

Pitt glanced at the dash instruments. The needle was pegged on “empty.” “They must have stitched the fuel tank.”

“Oscar’s Emporium is coming up on the right side of the street,” said Giordino, motioning through the open windshield.

“You have a flashlight?” Pitt snapped to Sandecker.

“There’s one in the glove compartment.”

“Get it out.”

Pitt took one final look in the mirror. The first van was sliding around a corner two blocks back. He steered the Jeep into the gutter on the left side of the street, and then cramped the wheel to the right.

Sandecker stiffened in shock.

Giordino croaked, “Oh, no!”

The Jeep spun sideways for an instant, then the four drive wheels dug in and it raced over the curb, across the sidewalk, and crashed through a huge plate-glass window into the hardware store. The Jeep bashed through the front counters, sending cash registers spinning into the darkness. An end display, a cluster of garden rakes on sale, burst up like toothpicks. The car careened down an aisle between shelves hurling plumbing fixtures and nuts, bolts, and screws in the air like grape and canister out of a cannon.

Insanely, it seemed to Giordino and Sandecker, Pitt didn’t stop. He kept his foot pressed on the accelerator, traveling up and down the aisles as though he was searching for something, leaving total destruction in his wake. The tumult as the Jeep ran wild was enhanced by the sudden whoop of the security alarm.

At last Pitt shoved the front bumper into a display case, resulting in a great spray of jagged glass. The one remaining headlight flickered dimly on twenty or thirty handguns scattered about the shattered case and stacked rows of rifles and shotguns in a large cabinet against the wall.

“You sneaky bastard,” Sandecker uttered in awe.

40

“CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS,” Pitt shouted over the banshee cry of the alarm as he kicked open the door.

Sandecker needed no urging. He was out of the Jeep and ransacking the cabinet for ammunition while clutching the flashlight under his arm. “What’s your pleasure, gentlemen?” he yelled out.

Pitt snatched a pair of Colt Combat Commander automatic pistols, one with blue finish, the other in stainless steel. He ejected the clips. “Forty-five automatic!”

Sandecker fumbled through the boxes in the cabinet for only a few seconds before he spotted the right caliber. He tossed two boxes to Pitt. “Winchester Silver Tips.” Then he turned to Giordino. “What do you need, Al?”

Giordino had pulled three Remington-1100 shotguns off the rack. “Twelve gauge, double-aught load.”

“Sorry,” Sandecker snapped back. He handed Giordino several boxes of shotgun casings. “Number-four magnum buckshot is the best I can do on short notice.” Then he crouched low and dashed over to the paint department.

“Hurry and douse your light,” Pitt warned him, smashing the remaining headlight with the butt of one Colt.

The vans had slammed to a stop up the block and out of sight of the men inside the store. The assassins flowed from the vehicles in their black ninja suits swiftly and smoothly. They did not rush toward the hardware store, but paused, taking their time.

Their rehearsed tactical operation to riddle the Jeep and its occupants to shreds had been fouled by Pitt’s unexpected dive from the beltway into Phelps Point. Now they were forced to formulate a new tactical operation on the spot. Coolly, they sized up the situation.

Overconfidence clouded their judgment. Because they had experienced no return fire from the three men in the fleeing four-wheel-drive, and were certain their intended victims were unarmed, they were overanxious to rush through the storefront and finish the job.

Their team leader was wise enough to gesture for caution. He stood in a doorway across the street and peered into the darkness inside the wrecked hardware store. He could see nothing beyond the debris as evidenced by the glow from a solitary streetlight. The Jeep was lost in the shadows. Nor could he hear sounds from the interior over the annoying wail from the alarm.

His analysis of the situation was rushed as lights blinked on in apartments above several of the stores. He could not afford to attract a crowd of witnesses. Then there was the local law enforcement agency. He could expect the sheriff and his deputies to charge on the scene within minutes.

Then he allowed a misjudgment to guide him into a fatal error. He wrongly assumed the men in the Jeep were badly injured in the crash or cowering in fear, and he failed to send a team of his men around to seal off the rear of the store.

He allowed three minutes to rush the Jeep, finish off his prey, and retreat in the vans. The kill should be quick and easy, he thought. As a precaution he shot out the streetlight, plunging the street into blackness and preventing his men from being outlined when they made the assault. He held a whistle to his lips and gave the signal to prepare weapons and insure that the selector switches were off “safe” on their 5.56-millimeter, 51-round Sawa automatic rifles. Then he blew three short chirps, and they began to move in.

They glided swiftly through the gloom, like water moccasins in a Georgia bayou, slipping through the shattered display window in pairs and quickly fading into the shadows. The first six men to enter froze in position, muzzles extended and sweeping back and forth, their eyes straining to pierce the blackness.

Then suddenly a five-gallon can of paint thinner with a burning cloth wick in its spout sailed between them and fell on the sidewalk, exploding in a maelstrom of blue and orange flame. In unison, Pitt and Giordino opened up as Sandecker hurled another can of the volatile fluid.

Pitt worked the Colts in both hands, pointing but not taking careful aim. He laid down a barrage that dropped the three men who were crouched to the right of the window almost before they realized they’d been hit. One of them had time to let off a short burst that smashed into a row of paint cans, leaving colored spurts of enamel gushing onto the shambles of merchandise broken and trashed on the floor.

Giordino blew the first man on the left back through the window and half into the street. The other two were only shadows in the darkness, but he blasted away at them until one Remington went empty. Then he dropped it and picked up another he’d preloaded and fired again and again until all return fire had ceased.

Pitt reloaded his cartridge clips by feel as he stared through the flame and smoke that swirled around the front of the store. The killers in the black ninja outfits had vanished completely, frantically seeking cover or lying in the gutter behind the thankful protection of a high curb. But they hadn’t run away. They were still out there, still as dangerous as ever. Pitt knew they were stunned but mad as hornets now.

They would regroup and come again, but more shrewdly, more cautiously. And next time they could see—the interior of the hardware store was brightly illuminated by the flames that had attacked the wooden storefront. The entire building and the men in it were only minutes away from becoming ashes.

“Admiral?” Pitt shouted.

“Over here,” answered Sandecker. “In the paint department.”

“We’ve overstayed our visit. Can you find a back door while Al and I hold the fort?”

“On my way.”

“You okay, pal?”

Giordino waved a Remington. “No new holes.”

“Time to go. We still have a plane to catch.”

“I hear you.”

Pitt took a final look at the huddled corpses of strangers he had killed. He reached down and pulled off the hood from one of the dead. Under the light of the flames he could see a face with Asian features. A rage began to seethe within him. The name Hideki Suma flooded his mind. A man he’d never met, had no idea of what he looked like. But the thought that Suma represented slime and evil was enough to prevent Pitt from feeling any remorse for the men he’d killed. There was a calculated determination in him that the man responsible for the death and chaos must also die.

“Through the lumber section,” Sandecker suddenly shouted. “There’s a door leading to the loading dock.”

Pitt grabbed Giordino by the arm and pushed his friend ahead of him. “You first. I’ll cover.”

Clutching one of the Remingtons, Giordino slipped between the shelves and was gone. Pitt turned and opened up one last time with the Colts, squeezing the triggers so hard and fast they fired off like machine guns. And then the automatics were empty, dead in his hands. He quickly decided to keep them and pay later. He stuffed them in his belt and ran for the door.

He almost made it.

The team leader of the assassins, more cautious than ever after losing six men, threw a pair of stun grenades in the now blazing store, followed by a sleet of gunfire that sent lead splattering all around Pitt.

Then the grenades went off in a crushing detonation that tore the ravaged heart out of what was left of Oscar Brown’s Hardware Emporium. The shock waves brought down the roof in a shower of sparks as the thunderous roar rattled every window in Phelps Point before rumbling out into the countryside. All that remained was a fiery caldron in the shell left by the still-standing brick walls.

The blast caught Pitt from behind and flung him through the rear door, over the loading dock, and into an alley behind the store. He landed on his back, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He was lying there gasping, trying to regain his breath, when Giordino and Sandecker hoisted him to his feet and helped him stagger through the backyard of an adjoining house into the temporary safety of a park bandstand across the next street.

The security alarm had gone dead when the electrical wires burned, and now they could hear sirens approaching as the sheriff and the volunteer fire department raced toward the flames.

Giordino had a talent for getting in the last word, and he rose to the occasion as the three of them lay there under the roof of the bandstand, exhausted, bruised, and just plain thankful to be alive.

“Do you suppose,” he wondered dryly, staring absently at the fire lighting the dawn sky, “it was something we said?”

41

IT WAS A Saturday night and the strip in Las Vegas was alive with cars crawling along the boulevard, their paint gleaming under the brilliant lighting effects. Like elegant old hookers blossoming after dark under expensive, sparkling jewelry, the aging hotels along Las Vegas Boulevard hid their dull exteriors and brutally austere architecture behind an electrical aurora borealis of blazing light that advertised more flash for the cash.

Somewhere along the line the style and sophistication had been lost. The exotic glitter and brothel-copied decor inside the casinos seemed as dull and indifferent as the croupiers at the gambling tables. Even the customers, women and men who once dressed fashionably to attend dinner-show spectaculars, now arrived in shorts, shirt-sleeves, and polyester pantsuits.

Stacy leaned her head back against the seat of the Avanti convertible and gazed up at the big marquees that promoted the hotel shows. Her blond hair streamed in the breeze blowing off the desert, and her eyes glinted beneath the onslaught of flashing lights. She wished she could have relaxed and enjoyed the stay as a tourist, but it was strictly business as she and Weatherhill acted out their instructed role of affluent honeymooners.

“How much do we have for gambling?” she asked.

“Two thousand dollars of the taxpayers’ money,” Weatherhill replied as he dodged the heavy traffic.

She laughed. “That should keep me going on the slot machines for a few hours.”

“Women and the slots,” he mused. “It must have something to do with grabbing a lever.”

“Then how do you explain men’s fascination with craps?”

Stacy wondered how Pitt might have replied. Acidly and chauvinistically, she bet. But Weatherhill had no comeback. Wit was not one of his strong points. On the drive across the desert from Los Angeles he had bored her almost comatose with unending lectures on the possibilities of nuclear space flight.

After Weatherhill had escaped from the truck that hauled the bomb cars, he and Stacy were ordered by Jordan to return to Los Angeles. Another team of surveillance experts had taken over and followed the car transporter to Las Vegas and the Pacific Paradise Hotel, where they reported it had departed empty after depositing the cars in a secure vault in an underground parking area.

Jordan and Kern then created an operation for Stacy and Weatherhill to steal an air-conditioning compressor containing a bomb for study, a feat that was deemed too risky during the break-in on the road. They also needed time to construct a replica replacement from the dimensions recorded by Weatherhill.

“There’s the hotel,” he finally said, nodding up the boulevard to a giant sign festooned with neon palm trees and flashing dolphins that soared around the borders. The main attraction featured on the marquee promoted the greatest water show on earth. Another sign stretched across the roof of the main building, blinking in glowing pink, blue, and green letters and identifying the huge complex as the Pacific Paradise.

The hotel was constructed of concrete painted light blue with round porthole windows on the rooms. The architect should have been flogged with his T-square for designing such a tacky edifice, Stacy thought.

Weatherhill turned in the main entrance and drove past a vast swimming pool landscaped like a tropical jungle with a multitude of slides and waterfalls that ran around the entire hotel and parking lot.

Stacy gazed at the monstrosity of a hotel. “Is there anything Hideki Suma doesn’t own?”

“The Pacific Paradise is only one of ten resort hotels around the world he’s got his hands in.”

“I wonder what the Nevada Gaming Commission would say if they knew there were four nuclear bombs under the casino.”

“They’d probably care less,” said Weatherhill. “So long as his dealers aren’t mechanics.”

“Mechanics?”

“Cheats for the house.”

He pulled the Avanti to a stop at the main entrance and tipped the doorman, who removed their luggage from the trunk. An attendant parked the car, and they registered at the front desk, Stacy looking starry-eyed and smiling demurely in an attempt to seem like a new bride, an event she had trouble remembering in her own past.

In their room, Weatherhill tipped the bellman and closed the door. He immediately opened a suitcase and removed a set of blueprints of the hotel and spread them on the bed.

“They’ve sealed the cars inside a large vault in a third-level basement,” he said.

Stacy studied the sheet showing the plan of the entire lower basement and a report from one of the surveillance team. ” ‘Double reinforced concrete with a steel overlay,’ ” she read aloud. ” ‘One large steel door that raises into the ceiling. Security cameras and three guards with two Dobermans.’ We won’t be breaking in from the front. Easy enough to beat the electronic systems, but the human factor and the dogs make it tough for just the two of us.”

Weatherhill tapped a section of the blueprint. “We’ll go in through the ventilator.”

“Lucky for us it has one.”

“A requirement in the construction code. Without ventilation to prevent expansion and contraction of the concrete, cracks could form and affect the foundation of the hotel.”

“Where does the vent originate?”

“The roof.”

“Too far for our gear.”

“We can make entry from a utility room on the second underground parking level.”

“Want me to go in?”

Weatherhill shook his head. “You’re smaller, but nuclear devices fall in my department. I’ll make the entry while you handle the lines.”

She examined the dimensions on the ventilator duct. “It’s going to be a tight fit. I hope you’re not claustrophobic.”

Carrying tote bags and rackets and dressed in white tennis togs, Weatherhill and Stacy passed unobtrusively as a couple going to play on the hotel courts. After waiting for an elevator free of people, they rode it down to the second-level parking garage, where Weatherhill slipped the lock on the door to the utility room in less than five seconds.

The small interior was laced with steam and water pipes and digital-dialed instruments that monitored temperatures and humidity. A row of cabinets held push brooms, cleaning supplies, and jumper cables for stalled cars in the parking area.

Stacy quickly unzipped their tote bags and laid out a variety of equipment as Weatherhill donned a nylon one-piece suit. He clipped on a Delta belt and body harness, attaching it around his waist.

Stacy then assembled a spring-powered piston tube with a wide-diameter barrel oddly called a “beanbag gun.” Then she attached it to a “hedgehog,” a strange object that was covered by round ball bearing-like wheels with a pulley in its center. Next she uncoiled three lengths of thin nylon line and connected them to the hedgehog and beanbag gun.

Weatherhill consulted the blueprint showing the ventilating system for the final time. A large vertical shaft falling from the roof joined smaller ducts that ran horizontally between the ceilings and floors of the parking areas. The duct running to the vault that held the bomb cars ran between the floor beneath their feet and the ceiling of the basement below.

He took a small battery-operated electric saw and began cutting a large hole in the thin sheet-metal wall. Three minutes later he set aside the cover, took out a tiny flashlight, and beamed it inside the duct.

“It drops about a meter before branching out toward the vault,” he said.

“Then how far?” Stacy asked.

“According to the blueprint, about ten meters.”

“Can you get through the elbow where the duct curves from vertical to horizontal?”

“Only if I hold my breath,” he replied with a slight grin.

“Radio check,” she said, setting a miniature microphone and receiver over her head.

He turned and whispered into a tiny transmitter on his wrist. “Testing, testing. Am I coming through?”

“Clear as crystal, and me?”

“Good.”

Stacy gave him a reassuring hug and then leaned into the ventilator and pulled the trigger on the beanbag gun. The springloaded piston shot the hedgehog into the darkness, where its momentum and roller bearing wheels took it smoothly around the bend. They could hear it sailing through the duct for a few seconds, dragging the three nylon lines behind it, before there was an audible clink, signaling that it had stopped on impact with the filter screen set in the vault’s wall. Then Stacy pulled another trigger, and twin rods shot out of the hedgehog against the sides of the duct and jammed it solidly in place.

“I hope you’ve been working out at the gym,” said Weatherhill as he slipped the rope through the clips in his harness. “Because your little old muscles will be taxed tonight.”

She smiled and pointed to a pulley she’d already attached to one line and a water pipe. “It’s all in the leverage,” she said slyly.

Weatherhill clamped the small but powerful flashlight around one wrist. He bent down and took what looked like an exact replica of an air-conditioning compressor out of his tote bag. He had constructed it to replace the one he was about to steal. Then he nodded. “Might as well get going.”

He leaned into the vertical shaft and slowly dropped down headfirst, extending the dummy compressor beyond his head as Stacy took up the strain on one line. There was plenty of room here, but when he came to the elbow into the horizontal duct, he had to contort his body like a snake and squeeze through. He entered on his back in order to bend his body around the narrow curve. And then he was in.

“Okay, Stacy, pull away,” he spoke into his wrist radio.

“How’s the fit?”

“Let’s just say I can hardly breathe.”

She pulled on a pair of gloves and began to heave on one of the nylon ropes that wound around the pulley on the hedgehog and attached to Weatherhill’s harness, pulling him through the narrow confines of the ventilation duct.

He could do little to help her, except exhale when he felt her tug on the rope. He began to sweat inside the nylon suit. There was no air-conditioning running through the ventilator, and the outside atmosphere that wafted down from the opening on the hotel roof was hot and stifling.

Stacy wasn’t enjoying mild temperatures either. The steam pipes that ran through the utility room kept the heat and humidity close to that of a steam bath.

“I can see the hedgehog and ventilator screen,” he reported after eight minutes.

Another five meters and he was there. The blueprints had not shown any TV cameras in the vault, but he peered into the darkened interior for signs of them. He also removed a small sensor from a sleeve pocket and checked for laser or heat-seeking scanners. His inspection thankfully came up dry.

He smiled to himself. The elaborate defense and alarm measures were all on the outside of the vault, a flaw that was common in many security systems.

He twisted off the screws, tied a small string to the screen and lowered it to the floor quietly. He slipped the lever that released the hedgehog anchor prongs and lowered it into the vault along with the bogus compressor. Then he slowly descended headfirst until he finally rolled onto the concrete floor.

“I’m inside,” he told Stacy.

“I read you.”

He shined the light around the vault. The bomb cars seemed doubly menacing, sitting ominously in musty blackness and surrounded by thick concrete walls. The awesome destruction in such a cloistered area was difficult to imagine.

Weatherhill came to his feet and detached his harness. He moved around the nearest bomb car and laid out a small packet of tools that had been tied around one leg and spread it on one fender. The replica compressor he set on the floor. Then without bothering to glance inside the car, he reached in and pulled the hood lever.

He stared at the actual bomb unit for a moment, sizing it up. It was designed to explode from a coded radio signal. That much he knew. Activating the detonation mechanism by a sudden movement was doubtful. Suma’s nuclear scientists would have built a bomb that could absorb the shock from an automobile driven at high speeds over rough roads. But he wasn’t about to take chances, especially since the cause behind the blast on the Divine Star was still unknown.

Weatherhill brushed all dire thoughts from his mind and set to work removing the pressure hoses from the compressor. As he’d discovered earlier, the electrical leads to the evaporator coils that acted as an antenna were quite elementary. The electronics were exactly as he would have designed them himself. He delicately spliced off the leads and reconnected them to the fake compressor without breaking their circuits. He could now take his time to remove the bolts on the compressor’s mounting brackets.

“Bomb safely out of the car,” he reported. “Will now make the switch.”

Six more minutes and the fake compressor was in place and connected.

“Coming out.”

“Standing by to retrieve you,” Stacy answered.

Weatherhill stepped back to the ventilator opening and snapped on his harness. Suddenly he noticed something he’d missed in the darkness of the vault.

Something was sitting in the front seat of the car.

He flashed the light around the vault. He could now see that all four cars had some sort of mechanism seated behind the steering wheels. The vault was cool, but Weatherhill felt as if he was in a sweat-box. He was soaked inside the nylon suit. Still holding the flashlight in one hand, he wiped his face with a sleeve and crouched until his head was even with the window frame on the driver’s side of the car.

It would be ridiculous to call the thing behind the wheel a mechanical man. It was stretching things to even consider it a robot, but that’s what it was. The head was some sort of computerized visual system perched on a metal spine with a box full of electronics for a chest. Clawlike steel hands with three fingers gripped the steering wheel. The arms and legs were articulated at the proper joints like a human’s, but any remote resemblance stopped there.

Weatherhill took several minutes and studied the robot driver, fixing the design in his memory.

“Please report,” Stacy ordered, becoming anxious at his late return.

“I found something interesting,” he replied. “A new accessory.”

“You better get a move on.”

He was happy to leave. The robots that sat in dark silence waiting for a command to drive the car to their preprogrammed targets began to look to him like skeletons. He clipped the ropes to his harness and lay on the cold floor, raising his feet above his head, up the wall, back to the wall.

“Pull away.”

Stacy braced a leg against a pipe and began tugging on the rope that circled the pulley on the hedgehog. On the other end, Weatherhill’s feet reached the ventilator and he went in as he’d come out, on his back, except this time he was holding the compressor containing a nuclear bomb in outstretched hands beyond his head.

As soon as he was completely in the shaft he spoke over his headset. “Okay, stop while I replace the hedgehog and ventilator screen. Won’t do to leave a clue to our visit.”

Hand over hand, working around the bomb compressor, he raised the hedgehog and sprung its rods against the ventilator walls. Then he pulled the screen up by the string and quickly screwed it back in place. Now he allowed himself to relax and go limp. He could only lie there and be dragged up the shaft, leaving all physical effort to Stacy, staring at the bomb and wondering about his life expectancy.

“I can see your feet,” Stacy said at last. Her arm muscles were losing all feeling, and her heart was pounding from the exertion.

As he came out of the narrow horizontal shaft, he helped her as much as he could, pushing out and up. There was room now to pass the bomb over his shoulder to where she could reach down and pull it safely into the utility room. As soon as she wrapped a soft cloth around the cylinder and laid it in the tote bag, she finished hauling Weatherhill through the opening in the ventilator shaft.

He quickly released the nylon lines and shrugged out of his harness as Stacy actuated a second trigger releasing the jamming prongs on the hedgehog. Then she reeled it up through the shaft, curled the nylon lines around it, and set it in a tote bag. Next, while Weatherhill changed back into his tennis sweater and shorts, she used duct tape to reseal the panel over the forced opening.

“No interruptions?” Weatherhill asked her.

She shook her head. “A few persons walked by after parking their cars, but the hotel employees stayed clear.” She paused and pointed at the tote bag containing the compressor. “Almost impossible to believe we have a nuclear bomb in there.”

He nodded. “One with enough power to vaporize the entire hotel.”

“Any problems?” Stacy asked.

“None, but I did find that our friend Suma has come up with a new twist,” he said, stuffing his suit and harness in a bag. “The cars have robotic drivers. They don’t require humans to drive the bombs to their detonation points.”

“The bastard.” The tiredness and stress were gone, replaced with vehemence. “No human emotions to contend with, no second thoughts by a defector who refuses to deploy the bomb, no one to question or betray the source if police should stop the car.”

“Suma didn’t get where he is by being stupid. Using robots to do his dirty work is damned smart. Japan leads the world in robotics, and an investigation will undoubtedly prove his scientists and engineering facilities at Edo City are heavily into the design and manufacture.”

A shocked understanding came into Stacy’s eyes. Her voice came in whispered foreboding. “The detonation center, what if it’s manned and guarded by robots?”

Weatherhill gave a final zip of his tote bag. “That’s Jordan’s problem. But my guess is we’re going to find it next to impossible to penetrate.”

“Then we can’t stop Suma from coming on-line and priming the bombs.”

“There may be no stopping him,” he said with grim apprehension in his tone. “Our best resources fall far short of his.”

42

TOSHIE, WEARING A very brief ungeisha-cut kimono loosely tied at the waist with an obi sash, discreetly bowed her head and held up a large soft towel for Suma as he stepped from a tiled steam room. He wrapped the towel about his body toga style and sat on a low pillowed stool. Toshie dropped to her knees and began massaging his feet.

Toshie was the daughter of a poor fisherman, the fourth of eight children, when Suma first saw her. She had been a skinny, unattractive child whom the boys ignored until, that is, she began to develop a body that was beautifully proportioned, with breasts far more ample than most Japanese girls. Bit by bit her facial features became defined with prominent cheekbones that were enhanced by eyes that were large and dark.

Suma, walking alone at sunset, had spied her standing in the surf casting a net into the rolling breakers. She stood serene and golden under the rays of the dying sun. A thin shift was all she wore, dampened into transparency by the waves, revealing all and hiding nothing.

He was captivated. Without speaking to her, he sought out her name, and by the time the stars began to appear had struck a deal with her father and bought Toshie for a sum that suddenly turned the struggling fisherman into the wealthiest man on the island and the owner of a new fishing boat loaded with the latest in state-of-the-art electronics.

At first Toshie was hysterical with shock and sorrow at having to leave her family, but gradually she became awed by Suma’s wealth and power and soon became attracted to him. In her own way she enjoyed her subservient role as secretary and mistress. He had her tutored by the best teachers he could hire, trained in languages, business, and finance, taught the ins and outs of high fashion, and coached in the finer subtleties of lovemaking.

She knew he would never marry her. There were too many other women, and Hideki was incapable of loving only one. But he was kind to her, and when the time came for her to be replaced, she knew he would be generous.

Kamatori, wearing a yellow yukata lounging robe with indigo bird patterns, sat nearby at a low black lacquered table directly opposite Roy Orita and sipped tea. Out of respect to their superior, both men patiently waited for Suma to speak first.

Suma ignored them for several minutes as he enjoyed the pleasure of Toshie’s foot manipulations. Kamatori avoided Suma’s angry stare and kept his eyes lowered. He had lost face for the second time that week and was extremely humiliated.

“So your team of idiots failed,” Suma said at last.

“There was a mishap,” Kamatori replied, still looking down at the surface of the table.

“Mishap!” Suma snapped. “Disaster would be closer to the truth.”

“Pitt, Admiral Sandecker, and the man called Giordino were very lucky.”

“There was no luck. Your assassins merely underestimated the Americans’ canny ability to survive.”

“Professional operatives are predictable,” said Kamatori, making a lame excuse. “Civilians do not adhere to the rules.”

Suma signaled Toshie to stop. “How many men did you lose?”

“Seven, including the leader.”

“None were captured, I trust.”

“All bodies were recovered and the survivors escaped before the local authorities arrived. Nothing was left behind to leave a trail.”

“Raymond Jordan will know who was responsible,” said Roy Orita.

“A matter of no concern.” Kamatori’s face took on an expression of scorn. “He and his pathetic MAIT team are no longer an effective force. The Japanese end of his operation has been terminated.”

Suma ignored the tea and took a small cup of saki offered by Toshie. “Jordan can still be dangerous if his operatives root out the location of our command center.”

“Jordan and Kern were at a dead end when I broke off contact twenty-four hours ago,” Orita said with assurance. “They had no clue to the site.”

“They’re attempting to trace the bomb cars,” Suma argued. “That much we know.”

Kamatori shrugged indifferently. “Jordan is chasing shadows in a smoked mirror. The cars are securely hidden and guarded. Until an hour ago, none had been found and confiscated. And even if his operatives stumble on a few and neutralize their bombs, it will be a case of too little too late. We’ll still have more than required to produce an electromagnetic shield over half the earth.”

“Any news from the KGB or the European community intelligence agencies?” asked Suma.

“They’re completely in the dark,” answered Orita. “For reasons unknown to us, Jordan hasn’t revealed his investigation to them.”

Kamatori sipped at his tea and stared over the cup at Suma. “You have beaten him, Hideki. Our robotic technicians have nearly completed the weapon system electronics. Soon, very soon, you will be in a position to dictate terms to the decadent Western world.”

Suma’s face was a stone mask carved in self-satisfying evil. Like so many men who were stained by money, Suma had advanced far beyond wealth to the highest form of addictive corruption—the overwhelming thirst for absolute power.

“I think it’s time,” he said in a tone edged with sadistic pleasure, “to begin enlightening our guests of the purpose behind their presence here.”

“If I may suggest,” said Orita with a slight bow of the head.

Suma nodded without speaking.

“The gaijins are impressed with status and power. Their psychology is easily measured by their reverence of entertainers and wealthy celebrities. You are the most important financial expert in the world. Allow the congresswoman and the senator to simmer in suspense and confusion while you remain aloof and out of reach. Send others to torment their curiosity by feeding them small pieces of bait until their minds are ripe for your honored appearance and divine orders.”

Suma considered Orita’s advice. It was a childish game that played on his ego, but one that was also practical. He looked at Kamatori. “Moro, I leave it to you to begin our guests’ initiation.”

Loren was lost. She had never been so lost in her life. She had been drugged almost immediately after being seized at the classic car race and had clawed her way back to full consciousness only two hours ago.

When she finally cleared the drug-induced haze from her mind, she found herself in a beautifully furnished bedroom with a lavish bathroom complete with sunken marble tub and bidet. It was furnished in a sort of South Pacific island decor with bamboo furniture and a small forest of potted tropical plants. The floor was light polished cedar, and the walls seemed to be covered with woven palm fronds.

It reminded her of a village resort where she’d once vacationed in Tahiti—except for two unusual features. There was no inside handle to the door and no windows.

She opened an armoire that stood against one wall and peered inside. Several expensive silk kimonos hung there. She tried one on and was pleasantly surprised to discover it was almost a tailored fit. She pulled open the lower drawers. They contained feminine underwear that was also in her exact size, as were the matching sandals on the floor of the armoire.

It beats hell out of being chained in a dungeon, Loren thought. Whoever captured her did not seem intent on torture or execution. The question of why she was abducted was pushed to the back of her mind. Making the most of an unwinnable situation, she relaxed in the tub and took a bubble bath. Then she dried and set her hair with the necessary dryer and styling odds and ends that were thoughtfully laid out on the bathroom counter along with a select array of expensive cosmetics and perfumes.

She was just slipping into a white and rose flowered kimono when there was a soft knock on the door and Kamatori stepped quietly into the room.

He stood there in silence a moment, his arms and hands buried in the sleeves of his yukata, a haughty look of scorn on his face. His eyes rose slowly from Loren’s bare feet, lingered on her breasts, and then lifted to her face.

Loren pulled the kimono tightly around her body and knotted the belt and turned her back to him. “Do Japanese men always enter a lady’s room without being invited?”

“My profound apologies,” said Kamatori with a noticeable hint of sarcasm. “I did not mean to show disrespect to a renowned American legislator.”

“What do you want?”

“I was sent by Mr. Hideki Suma to see that you are comfortable. My name is Moro Kamatori. I am Mr. Suma’s friend, bodyguard, and confidant.”

She replied decisively, “I guessed he was responsible for my kidnapping.”

“The inconvenience is only temporary, I promise you.”

“Why am I held hostage? What does he expect to gain besides hatred and vengeance from the American government?”

“He wishes your cooperation in delivering a message to your President and Congress.”

“Tell Mr. Suma to insert a sharp stick up his rectum and deliver the message himself.”

Brassiness born from vulnerability, Kamatori mused. He was pleased. He decided to pierce Loren’s first line of defense. “How coincidental. Almost the exact words of Senator Diaz, except his terms were much saltier.”

“Mike Diaz?” Loren’s brave front suffered a widening crack. “You kidnapped him too’?”

“Yes, you were brought here together.

“Where is here?”

“An island resort off the coast of Japan.”

“Suma is insane.”

“Hardly,” Kamatori said patiently. “He is a very wise and perceptive man. And in a few days he will announce his rules for the Western economies to follow in the future.”

A tinge of red anger flushed Loren’s face. “He’s even a bigger lunatic than I gave him credit for.”

“I think not. No man in history has accumulated as much wealth. He did not accomplish this out of ignorance. Soon you will come to believe that he can also wield absolute control over your government and its economy.” Kamatori paused, and his eyes turned down, gazing at the rounded flesh of Loren’s breasts that were pressing against the upper folds of the kimono. “In view of the coming transition, you might do well to consider a new turn of loyalty.”

Loren could not believe she was hearing such gibberish. “If anything happens to Senator Diaz or me, you and Mr. Suma will suffer. The President and Congress will not stand by and do nothing while we’re held hostage.”

“Moslem terrorists have been taking American hostages for years and you do nothing.” Kamatori’s eyes showed amusement. “Your President was informed within an hour of your disappearance, and was told who was responsible. Trust what I say. He has ordered that no rescue attempt be made and no word be leaked to the news media. Your aides, relatives, and fellow congressmen—none are aware that you were flown secretly to Japan.”

“You’re lying. My friends wouldn’t keep quiet.”

“By friends, do you mean Dirk Pitt and Alfred Giordino?”

Loren’s mind was in a ferment. She was teetering off balance. “You know of them?”

“Yes, they meddled in affairs that were not their concern and had an accident.”

“Were they injured?” she stammered.

“I don’t know, but it’s safe to say they did not escape unscathed.”

Loren’s lips trembled. She searched for something to say. “Why me? Why Senator Diaz?”

“You and the senator are mere pawns in a strategic game of economic power,” Kamatori continued. “So do not expect deliverance until Mr. Suma permits it. An assault by your Special Forces would be a wasted effort, because your intelligence agencies haven’t the slightest clue to your whereabouts. And if they did, there is no way for an army to penetrate our defenses. In any case, you and the Senator will be free and on a flight to Washington the day after tomorrow.”

The bewilderment in Loren’s eyes was what Kamatori hoped for. He removed his hands from the wide sleeves of his yukata, reached out suddenly, and pulled Loren’s kimono down around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides.

Kamatori smiled sadistically. “I’ll do everything at my command to make your short stay enjoyable. Perhaps I might even give you a lesson on how women should defer to men.”

Then he turned and gave two heavy raps on the door. It opened from the outside by an unseen guard, and Kamatori was gone, leaving little doubt in Loren’s mind of what was in store for her before she would be released.

43

“THERE SHE IS,” said Mel Penner as he yanked the cover off a large table with the flourish of a magician, revealing a three-dimensional model of an island surrounded by a blue plaster-of-paris sea and inlaid with tiny trees and buildings. “Soseki Island, known in the past as Ajima,

“You did a marvelous job,” Stacy complimented Penner. “It looks so real.”

“I’m an old model railroad buff,” said the Director of Field Operations proudly. “My hobby is building dioramas.”

Weatherhill leaned over the table examining the steep realistic cliffs rising from the sea. “What’s its size?”

“Fourteen kilometers long by five at its widest point. About the same configuration as San Miguel, one of the channel islands off the coast of California.”

Penner pulled a blue bandanna from a hip pocket and dabbed at the sweat rolling down his temples. The air conditioner kept a comfortable temperature inside the small building, not much larger than a hut actually, that stood in the sand of a beach on Koror Island in Palau, but the 98 percent humidity could not be overcome.

Stacy, dressed in snug shorts and a halter top, walked around the table staring at Penner’s exacting model. The rocky crags spanned by miniature Oriental bridges and the twisted pine trees gave the island a mystical quality. “It must be… ” She hesitated, groping for the right description. “Heavenly,” she said finally.

“Hardly the word that leaps to mind,” Pitt muttered while swilling a glass half filled with tequila, lime, and ice from a bottle he’d carried from Washington. He wore swimming trunks and a NUMA T-shirt. His long tan legs were propped on the back of the chair in front of him, his feet in leather sandals. “A garden spot on the outside, maybe, but with a monster lurking inside.”

“You think Suma’s nuclear arsenal and detonation control center is under the island?” asked Frank Mancuso, who was the last of the five team members to arrive at the South Pacific Information Gathering and Collection Point.

Penner nodded. “We’re sure of it.”

Stacy reached out and touched the sheer palisades climbing almost vertically from the sea. “There’s no place to dock ships. They must have brought in construction equipment by air.”

“How was it possible they built it without our spy satellites detecting the activity?” Weatherhill wondered aloud.

With a smug expression of pride on his face, Penner lifted off a section of the sea that ran from the island to the thick edge of the table. He pointed at a tiny tube running through the gray plaster. “A tunnel,” he explained. “Suma’s engineers constructed a tunnel that begins under the deepest subterranean level of Edo City and travels ten kilometers to the coast, and then another fifty beneath the seafloor to Soseki.”

“Score one for Suma,” said Pitt. “Our satellites didn’t spot any unusual movement because the earth dug from the tunnel was removed along with that excavated during the building of the city.”

“A perfect cover,” said Giordino, bordering on a pun. He straddled a chair and stared pensively at the scaled model. He sat cool in cutoff jeans and nothing else.

“The longest bore in the world,” said Penner, “exceeding the one the Japs built beneath the ocean from Honshu to Hokkaido.”

Weatherhill shook his head from side to side in amazement. “An incredible undertaking. A pity the effort wasn’t put to a more peaceful purpose.”

As a mining engineer, Mancuso could appreciate the enormous problems involved in such a massive project. “Working only from one end, it must have taken a good seven years,” he said, highly impressed.

Penner shook his head negatively. “Working around the clock with newly designed boring equipment, Suma’s engineers finished the job in four.”

“All the more fantastic knowing it was accomplished in total secrecy.” Stacy’s eyes had never left the model since its unveiling.

Penner now lifted off a section of the island, revealing a miniature labyrinth of passageways and rooms, all spreading like spokes from one large spherical chamber.

“Here we have the interior layout of the facility. The scale may be slightly off, but I did what I could from the rough sketches Jim Hanamura got through to us.”

“I think you did a sensational job,” said Stacy, admiring Penner’s handiwork. “The detail is so precise.”

“A lot is pure guesswork, but Kern put a design and engineering team to work and they drafted the dimensions pretty close to what we expect from the original.” He paused to pass out a stack of folders to the four MAIT team members in the hut. “Here are the plans of the Edo City end of the tunnel and the control center as expanded and detailed by Kern’s people.”