End of Enemies

29

Tanner’s report of Sumiko’s death got an immediate reaction from Dick Mason, who ordered them out “We’ve done all we can, Briggs,” Dutcher told them. “Come on home.”

He and Cahil had anticipated the order and agreed to withhold their discovery of the submarine. The more they discussed it, the more they doubted its significance; mentioning it would be the proverbial last straw. As it turned out, Sumiko’s murder fulfilled that role itself.

According to Ieyasu, the police were calling her death a robbery gone bad. Her empty purse had been found a few blocks from the Takagi headquarters. The coroner’s report was expected to support what Ieyasu’s contacts reported: Sumiko’s throat had been slit. So severe was the wound that her larynx had been severed, as had the carotid artery and jugular vein. It wasn’t the signature of a strong-arm robber, Tanner thought Cutting a throat is neither easy nor clean. She’d either been ambushed from behind or been subdued while the attacker worked on her.

The police, led by none other than Inspector Tanaka, were not able to explain how the alleged assailants eluded Takagi’s security force or why a mugger would go to such lengths when easier targets were walking the streets of Kobe. Not that it mattered; Tanner knew who was responsible.

This felt more personal than ever. He’d gotten Sumiko killed. He was in dangerous water, he knew, but he refused to quit until Takagi and Noboru answered for what they had done. First, however, he had to deal with Mason’s order.

“Leland, I don’t—”

“I know you don’t, Briggs. But look at this from his perspective,” Dutcher said. “He’s got one dead agent, a dead stringer he was sleeping with, another missing from the shipyard, and a gutted network. This is the CIA’s show. It’s their call.”

“What about Sumiko’s last delivery? From the looks of it, Takagi has his hands in dozens more conglomerates, including several in the Mideast.”

“It’ll be analyzed. Listen: Don’t let this get personal. This is what we get paid for. We go in, we do the job, we get out. Unless you’ve got some angle we haven’t considered, we’re done.”

Tanner recognized his boss’s tone of voice: You don’t have to like it, but accept it and move on…. Unless you’ve got some angle we haven’t considered. But there would be a proviso: They would have to produce results, and quickly. Dutcher could run interference for them for a few days at most.

“The salvage ship,” Tanner replied. “She doesn’t exist on paper; a Takagi engineer who worked on her is gone; and until she skulked out of port, she was hidden away next to a ship that was more destroyer than freighter. If that doesn’t interest Mason, okay, but what’s to stop us from checking it out?”

“Better question is, why bother?” Dutcher asked.

“Why sell her to a company on whose board you hold a secret majority? Why murder a man because he’s nosing around her? It stinks, Leland, from top to bottom, and I want to know why.”

“This sounds a lot like a pitch I got from Walt last week.”

“Oh?”

“You have any idea what you’re asking for? Do you know what it takes to retask a satellite for that kind of search?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. But I doubt there’d be much retasking involved.”

“Explain.”

“The Russians are scrapping some of their boomers at Pavek. I’m sure we’ve got some eyes on them.”

“And the Eastern Siberian Sea is right next door.”

“Worst case, we get some side-lobe images. It’s a place to start.”

Dutcher was silent for a few moments. “Okay, you two sit tight and stay low. I’ll turn Walter loose on Toshogu.”

Oaken settled into one of the theatre-style seats and opened his notepad. Aside from him and the AV technician sitting at the control podium near the back, the theater was deserted. Oaken rolled down his sleeves against the chill.

“What’s your name, by the way?” he called over his shoulder.

“Skip, sir.”

“Why the deep freeze in here, Skip?”

“Computers. We’ve got a couple Crays running for image enhancement. Okay, sir, where to?”

Good question, Oaken thought Finding a ship of Toshogus dimensions in the expanse of the Arctic Ocean was a daunting task.

The real work had started back at Holystone as he first checked with the Coast Guard for sightings that might correspond to Toshogu. He was amazed at the number of distress reports they had on file. As cold and forbidding as the Arctic Ocean was, it saw a brisk traffic, and in any given month a good 10 percent of them radioed Guard stations for help.

Oaken knew the Arctic Ocean held a special place in the nightmares of seamen since the first keel was laid centuries ago. Once submerged in those waters, the average human life expectancy was less than ten minutes, the last six of them spent unconscious as the body’s systems were overwhelmed by the numbing cold.

No thanks, Oaken decided. If he wanted that kind of adventure, he’d watch The Discovery Channel.

It had taken him half the night to sort through the list provided by the Coast Guard and determine none of the sightings matched Toshogu. That left two possibilities: Either she hadn’t been spotted, or she had taken an altogether different route to her destination.

“What have you got watching the Arctic?” Oaken asked.

“Two satellites. A Keyhole over the Kamchatka Peninsula watching Ivan dismantle some SLBMs, and a commercial LandSat bird doing topography for Exxon in the Chukchi Sea.”

“A LandSat? How’d we get access to that?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Oh. Okay, let’s see what the Keyhole’s got.” Based on Toshogu’s cruising speed and the weather conditions, Oaken recited the general coordinates where he felt she might be found. “Let’s start there.”

Five seconds later, the screen was filled with a black-and-white image of the eastern shore of Siberia and a portion of the Arctic Ocean. Oaken watched, fascinated, as the image moved ever so slowly as the Keyhole orbited the earth.

“This is real time,” said Skip. “Given the area and time frame, this is about as good as it’s going to get.”

“Okay. Can you freeze it and put a grid on it?”

“Sure.” Skip typed a command, and a moment later the computer superimposed an alphanumeric grid over the image. “Just call out the coordinates. The Cray will do the rest.”

For the next two hours, they checked each and every square of ocean. They found forty-three possible targets, twenty-two of which the computer decided were icebergs. That left twenty-one. After another hour, Oaken determined none of them matched Toshogu.

“How close are the computer’s size estimates?” asked Oaken.

“Give or take a meter, I guess. What now, sir?”

“Let’s see the LandSat.”

“Thermal or standard?”

“Standard.”

The LandSat images showed more of the Chukchi, Siberian, and Alaskan peninsulas. As with the Keyhole image, there were dozens of shiplike dots on the ocean’s surface. Of these, eighteen turned but to be ships, but after two more hours, the Cray eliminated all of them as possible matches.

Where is she? Oaken wondered. Given her speed, range, and the prevailing weather conditions, she could have only gone so far. “Well, we might as well take a look at the LandSat’s thermal pics,” Oaken said.

“I wouldn’t recommend it, sir. It’s like watching grass grow. The computer’s got to convert the digital pixels into the visible spectrum. Looking at them now would be like trying to make sense of a bad Jackson Pollack painting.”

“How long?”

“Five, six hours. Leave me your number. I’ll call you when they’re ready.”

True to his word, Skip called the moment the computers finished. Oaken got dressed, whispered an explanation to Bev, and drove to the NPIC.

It was even colder than before in the amphitheater. “AC still works, I see.”

Skip laughed. “Yep.”

“Don’t you have a home? I hate to think there’s a wife out there cursing me.”

“She’s the understanding type. Take a look. I think you’re going to like this.”

An image appeared on the screen. The background was uniformly black but was speckled with dozens of white, blue, and red dots.

“Each of the dots represents a surface anomaly… icebergs, ships, whatever,” said Skip. “While you were on your way over, I matched this plate against the Keyhole pics and eliminated ships we’d already checked. This is what I got.”

One by one, the computer began erasing dots until all that remained were a dozen white blobs and one tiny blue dot.

“The white ones are icebergs,” Skip said. “The blue one is—”

“A ship,” Oaken finished.

“You got it. Same dimensions as our target, too. Its temperature signature is just a couple degrees above the bergs. That’s why we missed it on the Keyhole pictures.”

“I’ll be damned. Her decks must be iced over, the engines shut down.”

“That’s my guess. At that latitude, if you haven’t got crews working constantly, you can get some serious buildup real quick.”

“So how do we know it’s the one we’re looking for?”

“I backtracked her using the six previous hours of LandSat shots. Up until hour four — when she started drifting — her course matched the one you gave me.”

“Skip, you’re a miracle worker. Bring up the rest of the shots.”

“That’s the problem. This is the last one. The LandSat’s out of angle now.”

Oaken stared at the blue dot. “How old is this image?”

“Nine hours.”

“Damn,” Oaken muttered. “Plenty of time for her to capsize under all that ice.”