“Do you believe him, Chance?”
“Business is war.”
“Yes, I know that you learn well. But do you believe the man?”
It was difficult for her to concentrate. He slid her pantyhose and panties down together, and she held his shoulder as she lifted one foot at a time so that he could pull them all the way off. “I don't know,” she murmured. “I mean, I'm not sure ⦔
He was kneeling in front of her, looking up, his eyes smiling. She took his head in her hands and gently pulled him forward until his lips found her vagina, and she arched her back and sighed with pleasure, all other thoughts gone from her head.
Â
“Do you know who this is?”
The voice was muffled, and McGarvey could hear traffic noise in the background, but he knew it was Carrara. “I'm not at a secure number.”
“Doesn't matter. Have you made any progress out there since you were fired?”
“I have a couple of leads,” McGarvey said, not
surprised that Carrara had found out. “They're good people, but they're running scared. Sunday's a big day. Do you know about it?”
“More than I did yesterday. But you may be better off out of Portland, unless your leads are solid. I spoke with some of the ⦠principals. They're behind you now, one hundred percent. Understand?”
“Might be too little too late. What about your end?”
“Nothing officially, but I'm told Guerin is going to ask the Bureau for help.”
“Will they get it?”
“No. Can you get out of there clean?”
“Sure.”
“I'll meet you where you met Viktor. Tomorrow, 8:00.”
“Take care,” McGarvey said.
“You too.”
Â
Reid picked Mueller up at Dulles, but neither of them said much until they were safely in the car heading away from the airport. Reid was extremely tense, and he kept searching in the rearview mirror as if he suspected they were being followed. His actions were as unsettling as his telephone message.
“Is the Sterling house still safe for us?” Mueller asked.
“Yes, of course it is,” Reid answered sharply. But then he backed off. “I think it's as safe as it's always been. Nobody's been out there snooping around.”
“Then what's the problem? Is it our young friend, Louis?”
“You can say that again. He built an extra repeater, and he placed it at Andrews Air Force Base. I didn't know about it until yesterday.”
“Andrews ⦔ Mueller was drawing a blank, but then suddenly he had it. “The President's airplane, Air Force One, operates from there. It's a Guerin 522.”
“That's right. The sonofabitch is gunning for the President.”
Mueller shrugged. “It fits your plans.”
“No!”
“You are willing to kill the Vice President.”
“Larry Cross is a twit. Lindsay is different. He can be predicted. Besides, I'm scheduled to be on that flight. I'm going with the President to Tokyo.”
“When?”
“Sunday.”
Mueller could barely suppress a laugh. In addition to being a sociopath, he had no sense of humor. But the irony of Reid's predicament was too rich to ignore. “Make your excuses.”
“Don't you see that by jumping on Lindsay's bandwagon the Bureau will have to drop its investigation of me.”
“Didn't help your President Nixon.”
“That was different. Wasn't the FBI brought him down. It was the media. Thank God they're not after me.”
Mueller thought it over, looking for the advantage. “We could convince Louis to exclude Andrews on his program.”
“We can't trust him. He could bury the command in his computer somewhere. We'd never know for sure.”
“
You'd
never know,” Mueller corrected. “I'll kill him before Sunday.”
“Still couldn't be sure. His programs could be automatic.”
“How did he find out that Air Force One would be flying on Sunday?” Mueller asked.
“I don't know. But you'll have to go out to Andrews to retrieve the repeater.”
“It might be difficult to find. It could be anywhere or nowhere. Maybe he is lying.”
“I don't think so,” Reid said.
“Did he say why he did it?”
“Just that if we were going to do a job, then let's do it all the way.”
“He's right,” Mueller replied, but Reid said nothing else.
A light in the kitchen of the farmhouse spilled out into
the hallway, and one in an upstairs room partially lit the second-floor corridor. There was a fire on the grate in the living room that gave the place a comfortable, homey feel. It struck even Mueller odd that from such a setting mass murder was being arranged.
Louis was drinking a glass of white wine in front of the fire. An empty bottle, and one half full, were on the floor next to the couch. He was drunk. He looked up bleary-eyed. “Are you done already?”
“Just the West Coast.” Mueller perched on the arm of the couch. “Mr. Reid thought I should come back and have a chat with you.”
“I don't know what the big fucking deal is. He wants to stick it to the Japs. Let's do it.”
“Killing the President may be a bit extreme.”
“Bullshit.” Louis slurred the word. “We're all fucked anyway. What difference one murder or a thousand? The sonofabitch is in bed with the Japs anyway.”
Mueller glanced at Reid but the older man wouldn't meet his eyes.
“We'd like you to tell us where you placed the repeater, Louis,” Mueller said patiently. “I'll go out tomorrow and get it.”
“Not a chance. On Sunday Air Force One is a dead duck. Boom.”
“Mr. Reid may be on that flight with the President.”
Louis giggled. “It wasn't on the White House program.”
“We need your help.”
Zerkel looked up, his eyes flashing. “You've got my help! You finish placing the repeaters, and on Sunday airplanes will fall out of the sky on signals that will definitely be traceable back to Japan!”
Mueller waited a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough,” he said evenly. “Is the signal train in place?”
“Just about.”
“You'll show me how to work it?”
Again Louis's eyes flashed. “Why? So you can kill me?”
“You have your safeguard in place. It would be stupid
of me to harm you. I value my freedom as much as you do yours. When we're finished Sunday I want to be well away from this place. I want to know how the system works in case you are incapacitated, or for some reason cannot get to your computers.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If this farmhouse were to be stormed, let's say, and we had to get out. If we were separated I would want to make sure the signals were sent.”
Louis was breathing through his mouth, his complexion pale. He looked as if he were about to be sick. “All right,” he said. “I'll show you.”
“In the morning,” Mueller said.
“What about me?” Reid asked.
Mueller looked at him. “You'll make all the preparations you need for Tokyo on Sunday with the President. Unfortunately on the way out to the airport you will have an automobile accident that will be investigated by the Highway Patrol. You will have a perfect excuse, and a solid alibi.”
“What do you think about that?” Zerkel said.
Â
McGarvey stood on the engineering gallery looking down at
America.
This was a favorite haunt of everyone in the company with enough rank to get in. His security badges had not been yanked. That would probably happen by tomorrow morning, so he'd been able to drive in without subterfuge. He wanted to see the airplane one last time before he headed out.
“You're not supposed to be up here, Mr. McGarvey,” Saul Edwards, the Gales Creek operations manager, said.
“I know, I just had to see it again.”
“She's a beauty,” Edwards agreed. He was a short, swarthy man with thick dark hair and wide dark eyes. Like the others he'd been working around the clock and looked it.
“Tighten up your security. Even without a pass I could have gotten in here easily.”
“I'll see what I can do.”
“At least until Sunday.”
“For what it's worth, Mr. McGarvey, I think you have been a real gentleman around here. I don't know why you got the ax, but if we have a problem it's not going to disappear when you're gone. You know what I mean?”
McGarvey nodded. “I'll do what I can, Saul. Just watch your security until Sunday.”
“Will do,” Edwards said. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. You too.”
M
cGarvey showed up at Kennedy's tomb in Arlington National Cemetery at 8:00 sharp. Phil Carrara, wearing a light gray jacket and dark flannel trousers, was waiting for him, head bowed as if he were praying. The morning was gray, and damp, the wind off the Potomac raw. Very few visitors were in the cemetery at this hour.
“Working spooks are supposed to be dressed in suits and ties on weekdays,” McGarvey said, coming up to him. “How's your field work?”
“I'm clean, if that's what you mean.” Carrara looked up. “But I'm no longer an employed spook. I've been placed on administrative leave.”
“Internal Affairs?”
“They're not that far yet. It was Ryan. He convinced the General that I no longer have the spirit of my position firmly in mind.”
“You have questionable friends.”
“That too,” Carrara answered, staring at the flame.
“How long have you known about my parents?”
“Couple of days. I went digging and came up with a few things.”
“They were murdered.”
“No proof of that,
compar
.”
McGarvey faced his friend. “They spied for the Russians. What made you dig that far back, Phil? Those were OSS days. Ancient history. Was it a case of nerves?”
“I had to be sure about you. There are a lot of accusations flying around. Lots of coincidences, dead bodies here in Washington, out on the West Coast, and in Japan. All the time you were in and out, talking with your Russian ⦠friend.”
“Control officer.”
“That's right. But you came up clean.”
“You so sure the son hasn't followed in the father's footsteps?”
“You came up clean.”
“Are you sure enough about that to risk your career?”
Carrara's face fell a little. “I already have, compar. I'm here.”
“Ah, shit.” McGarvey looked away for a moment. He felt like hell. “You didn't deserve that. Sorry.”
“You don't deserve the treatment you're getting either. But Ryan is right about one thing: you are a dinosaur. Things aren't done your way these days. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, I don't know. What I do know is that no matter what happens this time, when the dust finally settles you'll be cut completely adrift from the Company. No more assignments, no more favors, no bending the rules.”
“Are you telling me to retire?”
“
Compar
, I'm calling in all my markers, and I'm going to get some of my old friends to do the same. All out this time, but it'll be the last time.
Comprendes?”
“Let's go for a walk,” McGarvey said. They headed away from Kennedy's grave as McGarvey lit a cigarette, the smoke whipped away by the wind. The trees were bare, and there was still snow on the ground. The place seemed desolate.
“I explained the situation to David Kennedy, and I think he understands,” Carrara said.
“Is he here in Washington?”
“He's going to ask the Bureau for help this morning. I don't think he's going to get very far, but he'll try. Business as usual. In the meantime he'll do whatever you want, short of grounding the fleet or canceling Sunday's flight.”
“Then that's the timetable,” McGarvey said. He didn't like it, but only a major disaster would stop Guerin now, which was exactly what it was heading for. “You're going to have to help me get Dominique out of the firing line.”
“Already done. I took her to one of our safe houses in Falls Church last night.”
“She's agreed to keep her head down?”
“Until Sunday night. I talked to her and Kennedy at the same time. She understands the situation just as well, if not better, than he does.” Carrara managed a slight grin. “She's something else.”
“She's that, all right,” McGarvey agreed. “Anybody watching her?”
“The manpower would be missed. But the place is secure. No leaks from our end. As long as she doesn't do something foolish, she'll be okay. It's only a few days.” Carrara gave him the location.
“No chance you were followed?”
“Even Ryan wouldn't dare. She's safe for the moment. The ball's in our court now. You said you had a couple of leads in Portland.”
“Arimoto Yamagata. He works for Mintori's Sokichi Kamiya, the man I was maneuvered into meeting with outside Tokyo.”
“What'd he say to you?”
“Not much that made a lot of sense. But he said that destroying Guerin was only part of some grand plan.”
“Is the government involved?”
“He said it wasn't, and at this point there's no reason to disbelieve him.”
“Except that the submarine that sank the Russian destroyer in the Tatar Strait is on the loose in the East China Sea. Apparently with the same skipper and crew.”
“Where are they headed?”
“Okinawa.”
“Any connection between Kamiya and the navy?”
“None that I could pin down. But, Mac, he's in tight with practically everyone in their government. Hell, half of them owe him big favors. He's got the power base to do whatever he wants.”
“If he were to be taken out it might slow them down,” McGarvey speculated.
“What about
Abunai?
Do you trust Yemlin?”
McGarvey was startled. “Did someone get to Viktor's blind number?”
“Ryan's got the transcript, but everybody upstairs is discounting the Russians. But if
Abunai
is right, then we've got another problem on our hands. Who brought down the plane at Dulles and why? The Russians?”
“They'd be shooting themselves in the foot. Without Guerin they'd lose a billion-dollar assembly plant.”
“How about a separate Japanese groupâassuming that Mintori was responsible for the crash in '90?”
“Kamiya is too powerful for that to happen. He'd know about it. But it's one of the things I'm going to ask Yamagata.”
“Why did you wait?”
McGarvey looked at his old friend and smiled wryly. “Still a few doubts?”
Carrara held his silence.
“Yamagata is having an affair with David Kennedy's wife.”
“Christ,” Carrara said. “Does he know about it?”
McGarvey nodded. “I wanted to give him a shot at getting her out of there. Could get ugly.”
“Still leaves Dulles. Whoever engineered it wants Guerin to take the fall.”
“Either that or blame the Japanese for it,” McGarvey said. “If it was a second group that caused the Dulles crash why did they go through the trouble of making it happen exactly the same as the American Airlines crash?”
“I don't know, but if the two groups never worked together it could mean that more than one Guerin
airplane was fixed at some point for the engine to fail. Maybe all of them.”
“If that's the case they're smarter than all of Guerin's and Rolls-Royce's engineers put together. Those planes have been pulled apart piece by piece, and no one has come up with a thing.”
“Hide the thimble,” Carrara muttered.
McGarvey looked at him.
“It's a game we played when we were kids. You take an ordinary object, like a sewing thimble, and while everyone is out of the room you hide it. The trick is to put the thimble out in the open, someplace so obvious that everyone who searches for it will see it but won't see it. Or won't recognize it. Might fool the best of them.”
“Did you tell that to Kennedy?”
“No, it just occurred to me. Maybe Guerin's engineers are looking in the right places, they're just looking too hard.”
“Knowing something's there in the open and finding it are two different things,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime what else do you have for me?”
“A long shot, but maybe it's worth something. Do you remember the Action Service query we got on Bruno Mueller?”
“The Stasi hit man.”
“There might be a connection between him and Edward Reid. It's thin, like I say. But Mueller was pals with a former West German intelligence officer by the name of Karl Schey. Schey and Mueller are both missing, but before the Bureau backed away from investigating Reid they found out he had some connection with Schey.”
“Why'd they back off?”
“State told them to, and the White House agreed,” Carrara said. “But the interesting thing is that Reid is rabidly anti-Japanese. Thinks that we're going to be at war with them any day now.”
“Would he have the connections to hear about Mintori Assurance?”
“Possibly.”
“If he somehow found out how Mintori brought down the American Airlines flight in '90, he might be planning on bringing down a bunch more and blaming them. It'd be a long time before Japan recovered.”
“Not only that,
compar
. Reid is very rich. Maybe he wants more. If Guerin planes go down, so does its stock. But if the Japanese take the blame, Guerin will recover. Someone who knew what was going on could make a bundle.”
“And come out the hero,” McGarvey said. “You're right. It's a long shot, but anything's possible. Can you get the FBI file on him?”
“I can try. In the meantime, where are you staying?”
“The Watergate. I lifted a spare key from Dominique's purse.”
Carrara managed a thin smile. “Sure is interesting back in the field.”
“That it is,” McGarvey agreed.
Â
“The timetable has been set, but for the moment there is no need for you to know the exact day and hour,” Russian Defense Minister Vyacheslav Solovyev said.
“Shall I be told the target?” SUR Director Karyagin had been summoned to the Defense Ministry in the evening. It was one of the stunts the military liked to pull on civilians.
“The Air Self Defense Force radar installation at Wakkanai.”
“I am not familiar with this place.”
Minister Solovyev handed him a sketch map of the Japanese north island of Hokkaido. Wakkanai was a small town on the island's extreme north end, at Cape Soya.
“That base is responsible for monitoring all traffic into the strait, a capability that we will deny them.”
Karyagin looked up. Solovyev was one of the new breed who'd been too young for the Great Patriotic War but who had proved himself as a tactical commander in Afghanistan. He had a firm grasp of Russia's military
strengths and weaknesses, but in Karyagin's estimation he was naive about almost everything else.
“Have you read my reports on Japan's military readiness?”
“It's why I called you here, Aleksandr Semenovich. I need an update, and I want your current assessment of the situation.”
“I'm not a military man.” Karyagin shrugged to mask his excitement. The Defense Minister's request was nothing short of extraordinary. It meant the military was sticking its neck out and wanted civilian endorsement.
“I mean the political situation.”
“Between us and Japan?”
“Yes,” Solovyev said. “And between us and the United States. What reaction will Washington have beside bluster?”
“That is very difficult to predict, Minister Solovyev. Nevertheless, I think that if we put our heads together we will come up with something. But first I will need more information. We cannot work blind.”
Â
Carrara had lunch with the new acting Deputy Director of Operations, Dick Adkins, at a Denny's restaurant in Bethesda. Dick was a short, husky man with pale skin and wavy hair. He'd always looked up to Carrara. Now he was nervous. Ryan had him on a short leash, so he had to be very careful.
“You're my only shot at staying on top of this,” Carrara said. It wasn't quite true, but he wanted to keep the need-to-know list small and compartmentalized. “Ryan is wrong and unless I can work independently he's going to maneuver us into making a colossal mistake.”
“He's got a one-track mind when it comes to McGarvey, all right. And you're on his short list too. He wants you out. Permanently.”
“I know. In the meantime I need your help. Arimoto Yamagata, Sokichi Kamiya, and Edward R. Reid. I want
all three of their files. You'll have to talk to someone over at the Bureauâanyone but John Whitman.”
“I can tell you right now that Reid's file is totally off limits.”