“Is that how they fuck with the engines?” Glen asked. “By sending an overriding signal to burn out the diodes and then the thermocouples?”
Louis looked at his brother with new respect. “Nice idea, and it'd work, but I don't think that's going to happen here. The sensor wires are also electrically isolated from the frame. In fact they've gone to a lot of trouble to completely isolate the frame.”
“Go on.”
“Think about it. Every electrical circuit needs a two-way path. The hot side and a common ground. The frame, in this case, should be the common ground. But it's not. It's electrically isolated for some reason.”
“Why?”
“I don't know,” Louis admitted. “But I'm going to find out as soon as I finish running down the rest of these connections.”
“How long before you will be ready?” Reid asked from the stairs.
“Few hours,” Louis said, glancing over.
“I mean with everything. With the entire detonating setup.”
“Depends on what I find out when I test the frame with the monitor and my circuits. I'll probably do that later today, maybe tonight.” Zerkel grinned. “Don't worry, Mr. Reid. Won't be long now and you'll get what you want. More than you want.”
“Very well,” Reid said, and he and Mueller went back upstairs.
“No use in putting the repeaters in place until he's ready,” Mueller said.
“I agree.” Reid poured a drink of Irish whiskey at the sideboard in the living room. “The chances of discovery would be too great if we had to wait long.” He took a deep drink. “February ninth is the day we go. Guerin is sending its new airplane on a flight from Portland to Honolulu. A lot of VIPs will be aboard, including the Vice President of the United States.”
“That will create a lot of attention.”
Reid smiled. “Indeed it will, my friend. Indeed it will.”
Â
“What's going on with Ed Reid?” U.S. Representative John Davis asked on the phone. He'd become increasingly worried about his own vulnerability since speaking with the former deputy undersecretary of state.
“You've got to see Harding on that one,” Dwight Coster said. He was legal counsel for the Bureau, and a friend of Davis's.
“Ed's damned worried about what's going on over there. Someone put the bug in his ear that it had to do with his stand on the Japanese. Either State or the White House is trying to sit on him.”
“Come on, you know I can't discuss an ongoing investigation with anyone outside the shop. Not even you.”
“Then you're saying it's true that Reid is under investigation? What the hell's he done?”
“Nothing, so far as I know. His name just popped out of nowhere in another investigation.”
“What kind of an investigation? Does it have anything to do with the Japanese? Because if it does it's going to look damned suspicious when the dust settles that someone was out to put the ax to Reid.”
“I wouldn't answer that even if I could, John. All I can say is what I've already told you.”
“This is counterespionage, right?”
The line was silent for a long time. Davis almost thought he had lost the Bureau lawyer. But when Coster came back his voice was guarded. “Where'd you get that?”
“Does the name Kirk McGarvey mean anything to you? Former CIA spook on contract to Guerin Airplane Company. Does a deal Guerin's cutting with the Russians have anything to do with it? Or a French Action Service inquiry into the whereabouts of a couple of former East German spies?” It was all the stuff Harding had given him in confidence, but Davis figured Coster didn't need to know his source.
“I'm not going to talk about this on the phone.”
“Fine. Name a time and place.”
“Ten minutes. The atrium bar at the Grand Hyatt Washington Center. It's public enough that nobody'll notice.”
“Ten minutes.” Davis took a cab over to the hotel and arrived just as Coster was sitting down at a table near the front where everybody could see that they had nothing to hide.
“I could get my ass in a major jam here,” Coster said.
“When we signed on the dotted line for this town we took that responsibility. Nixon found out the hard way. You don't beat the system, you just play the odds.”
When their drinks came, Coster eyed his old friend speculatively. “Is that what this is all about, John? Odds? You owe Ed Reid a favor?”
“Sort of. But I also want to cover my own ass. If he's in trouble I want to know about it.”
“Where'd you get all that information?”
“Harding. Said it was confidential.”
“Why the hell don't you go back to him?”
“Because I figure he's already given me as much as he's going to give. And two calls in one week will start him wondering.”
“And I'm the boy who's got to play ball with you and lie to his own director.”
“We're friends.”
“Yeah,” Coster said. “In this town that's more expensive than a mistress. McGarvey is under investigation for industrial espionage, selling or trading secrets to the enemy, and murder. That's just for starters. The CIA called today to turn up the heat. They want him burned. Somebody over there has a grudge.”
“What's Reid's involvement?”
“Nobody knows, but he's on the top of the hit list because of State's queries, the White House's interestâand by rights I should throw your name onto the list.”
“That's his only connection?”
“One more. When Reid was stationed in Germany in the sixties he knew Karl Schey, who was a deep-cover East German intelligence agent working for the West German Secret Service.”
“Did Reid know that he was a double agent?”
“I don't know. But Schey is one of the East Germans who is missing.”
Davis sat back with his drink. “Shit,” he said softly. Knowingly or not, Reid was up to his elbows in this one. The question was what to do about it?
Â
CIA Director Roland Murphy rode his limousine to the White House. The President had agreed to see him immediately. He wasn't going to like what Murphy was bringing over, not so soon before the Tokyo Summit. But that's what being President was all about: making the tough decisions when no matter what you did was wrong. This one, Murphy thought, was doing a better job than most.
There was trouble enough without McGarvey's meddling, which was on a much larger scale than ever before. Despite the fact that Howard Ryan could be an asshole at times, he was essentially correct in his fears about McGarvey screwing up the works. Negotiations with the Japanese were at a critical stage. A wrong move on our part could push the United States one step closer to bankruptcy. Not in any real sense, but in the sense that
trying to pay down the national debt would cut even further into such basic services as health care, entitlement programs, and aid to states.
Murphy was damned glad that he wasn't President. In fact he thought any man who aspired to the job had to be certifiably nuts.
“Go right in,” the President's Appointments Secretary, Steve Nichols, said.
“Ask Harold Secor to join us,” Murphy said.
“He's already inside.”
“Good.” Murphy entered the Oval Office. The President and his National Security Adviser were hunched over a series of documents spread out on the desk. They looked up.
“Hello, Roland.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. President. Harold.”
“What crisis are we facing this afternoon?”
“The situation with the Japanese military. It looks as if it's beginning to heat up.”
The President exchanged glances with Secor. “What have you got for me this time?”
“National Reconnaissance Offfice satellite photographs, along with the latest batch from our own KH-15.”
Secor moved the documents he and the President had been studying.
Murphy opened his briefcase and spread out a dozen high-resolution photos on the desk. “These are Japanese Air Self Defense and Maritime Self Defense bases. Atsugi, Iwakuni, Komatsujima, Shimofusa, Hachinowe, and Tanegashima.”
“What am I looking at here?” the President asked.
“It would appear that there's a lot of activity,” Secor suggested. “An exercise?”
“That's right,” Murphy replied. “Every base we've looked at is on alert, only no one is calling it that.”
“What do you mean?” the President asked.
“When the Japanese military stages an exercise it always informs us well in advance. More often than not
we're invited to participate, or at the very least, observe. Not this time. Seventh Fleet Intelligence at Yokosuka spotted this for us.”
“All right, Roland, spell it out for me.”
Murphy took another series of photographs out of his briefcase and laid them on top of the first. “Russian naval and air force bases at Korsakov, Kholmsk, and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island. Svetlaya, Sovetskaya-Gavan, and Vladivostok on the mainland. And Kurilsk on Iturup Island in the Kurils. All on alert, all gearing up for an exercise.”
The President was stunned. “You mean to say that they're going to shoot at each other over the Tatar Strait thing? The Russian ambassador sat in this room last week, and there was no mistake that he understood perfectly what I told him.”
“I don't know if it'll come to that, Mr. President, but something else has caught our attention.”
“What?”
“Half the Japanese bases that are on alert are in the south and east. Nowhere near the Russian threat.”
“What's that supposed to indicate?” Secor asked.
“The same submarine that sank the Russian frigate in the strait is now heading toward Okinawa in the East China Sea. One of our ships is shadowing it, but we were overflown by a pair of fighter/interceptors from Tanegashima.”
“What do the Japanese have to say about it?” Secor demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Let's put a different spin on this, Roland,” the President said. “The Japanese and Russians have apologized to each other for the incident in the strait. But we've upgraded Seventh's readiness status to a DEFCON FOUR. Perhaps the Japanese forces are simply following suit, which has made the Russians wary. We've heard nothing from Moscow?” the President asked Secor.
“Not a word.”
“Are any of their other bases on alert?”
“We've had no indications of that,” Murphy said.
The President nodded. “As far as the submarine is concerned, the East China Sea is its home waters. It's got every right to send a patrol down there. Isn't that correct?”
“Yes, sir. But this time is different. We ought to keep an eye on it.”
“I agree,” Secor said.
“Very well. We need to hold the status quo for another nine days, that's all.”
“Sir?” Murphy said.
“I'm going to Tokyo several days before the summit is scheduled to begin. Prime Minister Enchi and I have several things to work out between us before we get started. I'll discuss this with him.”
“We won't make an announcement until the last minute,” Secor said. “Sunday, February ninth.”
Â
“The conspirators appear before me.”
“Do not be so certain in your judgment, or so quick to make it,” Sokichi Kamiya said. He and Hiroshi Kobayashi, who'd come from Kobe for the meeting, sat across the low table from Hideyoshi Nobunaga, the director of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and Tadashi Ota, the Deputy Director General of Defense. They met in a private room at Fukudaya, Tokyo's premier
rotei
restaurant.
Nobunaga, a short thin man with a deep bass voice, took a thick envelope from his coat pocket and tossed it imperiously on the table in front of Kamiya. The rude gesture was an insult. “Your connection to Rising Sun and what we have managed to gather so far about your project Morning Star is there.”
Kamiya did not even look at the envelope. “Shall we meet with the Prime Minister,
Nobunaga-san?
Or debate before the Diet?”
“I forbid this insanity.”
“Amusing, coming from a man who directs spy efforts against the United States and every other Western industrialized nation. Your efforts would be better spent
against China and North Korea. Leave the real work to those of us who have the intelligence and the stomach for it.”