To Free a Spy (25 page)

When they returned home from the bath house that night, Jotaro and his dog Yuki-Yuki got into a wrestling bout on the floor and Fumio went to his own room and opened the Harvest file. He could recite every detail of the plan from memory, but holding the file in his hands made it more real. Things were falling into place now. It was true that he’d come to despise the Russian Boris Petrevich, but if he completed his project on time Yoshida would pay him the second half of the fee they’d agreed on.

Fumio had paid Seth his ten million upon his delivery of Petrevich and the uranium, but, still, he had no stomach for whores like Seth who sold their services to the highest bidder. Seth was a man with no values, no morals. Pay a man like him enough money and he would sneak up behind his own mother in the kitchen, surprise her with a hug, slit her throat from ear to ear, and then sit down and eat the meal she had cooked for him. But if the deal he made with Seth produced the result Fumio demanded, then using even scum like him was justified.

* * *

Hangar 23 was one of several hangars at Narita reserved for the exclusive use of Ministry of Transport and came under administrative control of Fumio’s Civil Aviation Bureau. MOT records indicated it was vacant and unused so there was no reason for anyone to go there, but since the time Yoshida set it up as the place where Boris Petrevich and his two Russian assistants would work, he had driven himself there perhaps a hundred times. And even though Hangar 23 was located in an untraveled and secluded corner of Narita Airport, Yoshida worried the traffic would make someone curious.

Fumio felt at peace around planes and loved most the behemoth airliners like the 747, but his executive duties at the CAB were to be endured. They involved aviation, but nothing was like being out there on the tarmac looking up at the jetliners that were to him so beautiful, and climbing into the cockpit where he could experience the power that came with being at the controls of a machine that could lift four-hundred tons and transport them to some place thousands of miles away before it touched Earth again.

Fumio’s most cherished memories of his father were of him in the military. He had a photo of him standing by the wing of a small airplane Fumio imagined was the one that carried his father and, Fumio hoped, many American soldiers to a fiery death. Back then Fumio had known only that his father was a pilot. It was many years later that he found a letter his father wrote to Fumio’s mother on the last day of his life. Today his plane would be given enough fuel for a one-way trip. He was proud to have been selected by his leaders to fly it into the enemy. When all his bullets were spent and bombs released, he would still have one weapon left: Himself, as part of his plane. He would do it again and again for the defeat of the hated America if he could.

Fumio Yoshida had many times closed his eyes and imagined those last glorious seconds of his father’s life. He had not dropped like a rock onto his target. He came in low, almost like he was landing, and took out a long swath of planes on the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier. The burning planes. Every one of them filled with fuel. American sailors on deck, unable to escape below in time to avoid slow and painful death, many of them jumping into the Pacific Ocean to escape the flames and perishing there. The screams for help. The joy, the pride his father must have felt in those moments before things went blank for him.

To Fumio, the Americans were the root cause of the war. His own hate stemmed from that. The Americans had claimed not only his father and mother, it had left his brother forever dependent on others, never to be free of health problems, never able to make decisions for his own life. Fumio sometimes had wondered if Jotaro, by some miracle given a few minutes of lucidity in which to consider his circumstances, would choose to continue the life determined for him even before he was born, or would he prefer death? Jotaro would never have that moment of contemplation, and Fumio had made the decision for him.

Fumio’s responsibility to Jotaro had robbed him of a career of flying the world, perhaps as an airline pilot or in the military. Jotaro could never be left alone for more than a few hours during the day. But the positions Fumio held at CAB at least put him on the periphery. For a period of time he had direct responsibility for pilot certification standards and spent every possible moment analyzing and redesigning training manuals, configuring cockpits for better safety and revolutionizing flight simulators, the stationary virtual cockpits used to train and test pilots. Fumio Yoshida became recognized around the world as a leading authority in civil aviation training and safety.

He looked for every opportunity to fly, climbing out over Japan’s snow-capped mountains to the north or above the silver ripples of the ocean, forgetting for those precious minutes about Jotaro and the responsibilities that would still be there for him when he returned that evening. He became certified on every type of aircraft used by the Japanese airlines and spent hundreds of hours in the simulators, often choosing to conduct the test sessions for pilots himself.

* * *

Fumio parked the motor pool car behind Hangar 23. He bounced out of the car and strode past the summer weeds that grew along the side of the hangar to the personnel door. Boris Petrevich sat in his makeshift office across the hangar. Yoshida stopped for a second before he crossed under the belly of the splendid Boeing 747-400 sitting in the hangar and looked up at it.

Dr. Boris Petrevich saw Yoshida coming and gathered up the Guido’s Pizza boxes from the office floor and stuffed them into a trash can. Fumio had never been satisfied with the Russian’s housekeeping habits and had directed him to shape up. How could the clear, precise knowledge of nuclear physics coexist with such slovenliness within the same mind?

“You are still on schedule?” Fumio demanded, scowling at the messy office.

Petrevich had imported two men he’d trained in Russia—Mikhail, a nuclear technician, and Ivan, an aeronautical engineer—to help him with the project. He’d asked Yoshida for local labor to do grunt work but Yoshida refused. Too risky, he’d said, thinking of his project’s necessary secrecy. Petrevich managed to keep on schedule by working long hours. He and his crew did a lot of things he would have assigned to flunkies in his exalted position back at Kremlyov.

“I think so,” he answered. “Even if something goes wrong we should meet the required schedule at the end.”

Fumio Yoshida’s eyes blazed as his body became rigid. “Give me your attention!” he barked, and waited for Petrevich to face him. “You will allow nothing to go wrong! Everything will be exactly as agreed, precisely on schedule. There will be no delay.” Fumio did not wait for an answer and did a right face to leave, clicking his heels together as he’d done as an officer in the military, then abruptly stopped three steps away. “Anyone asking you questions?”

“Questions…?”

“Where you live. Why you are in Japan.”

“
Nyet
.”

“Met anyone from Russia who knows you?”

The Russian stiffened and looked at the floor. “Nyet.”

Fumio Yoshida’s face was the look of death as he moved closer and put his finger in the Russian’s face. “Do not lie to me, Petrevich,” he screamed.

Petrevich had never forgiven himself for the way he allowed this little Jap bastard intimidate him. He backed away as much as he could in the small cubicle and said, “There is one slight possibility, Comrade. I saw a man I knew from Russia. Some sort of military officer then, but I am sure he is retired by now so I do not believe he is in Tokyo in any official capacity.”

Fumio roared from some place deep inside his chest, “Where were you?”

Petrevich hesitated, then, “A bar.”

“Your Moscow club again!” Yoshida snapped.

Petrevich said nothing. Yoshida kicked the trash can across the floor and paced around for a few seconds.

“You are not to be seen. You risk this project,” he spewed.

“It will not happen again,” Petrevich said.

Fumio turned to leave but then whirled around and fired a final rocket. “One other thing Petrevich. Never call me
comrade
again.”

* * *

Petrevich reeled. It took all of his inner strength to overcome the impulse to go for Fumio then and there. Moments later, after Yoshida was gone, the Russian realized his men had witnessed his humiliation. To make it worse his hands trembled from unspent adrenaline. They saw what happened and now he would look weak to the aggressive Ivan. Boris Petrevich hated Yoshida now more than ever.
The little sawed-off Jap rooster.
That was his favorite description of Yoshida. He wouldn’t care if he’d killed him except that so much money was at stake. Good thing he kept his T-33 under his pillow instead of in his pocket, he thought. The temptation might have been too great.

Now he had to calm Ivan, who could screw up the whole deal. Petrevich never liked Ivan much back in Russia but brought him in because of the skills he possessed. He was a brilliant young engineer seven years out of the university, but brash and resentful of authority.

Ivan had boarded Fumio Yoshida’s train near the Ministry of Transport building after work one day and tailed him through the labyrinth of Tokyo subway tunnels and all the way to Yoshida’s home. Once he saw where he lived he didn’t know what he’d ever do about it, he told Petrevich later. It was part of knowing your enemy, and Ivan considered Yoshida just that.

As Ivan was about to leave the area and head back to the hangar that day, he’d seen Fumio Yoshida and another man emerge from his home. He decided to follow them and this time ended up at a bath house a few blocks away. “Looked like some sort of little retard that went with him to that swimming pool place,” he told Petrevich then.

Petrevich had reacted in anger that day. “You’re a fool, Ivan. He sees you, I have a lot of questions to answer.” Petrevich had considered eliminating Ivan then, or maybe getting one of the Russians at the Moscow East who would do anything for money to do it for him, but Ivan was creative and Petrevich needed him. Like no other engineer Petrevich had ever seen, Ivan could design a nuke delivery system to satisfy the most demanding situation. This one wasn’t so bad but it was unique. The job could be done best by Ivan, and Petrevich decided that day to keep him on the team but ordered him to stay away from Yoshida.

Petrevich gave himself a pat on the back for not exploding all over Yoshida. His
comrade
outburst was the straw that almost pushed him over the edge. Once he had the rest of the money Yoshida owed him maybe he’d let his impulses loose, but until then he would manage to control both himself and Ivan.

A far more worrisome problem to Petrevich was Aleksei Antonov, the Russian general he’d spotted at the Moscow East Social Club. He figured Antonov saw him too but he’d lied to Yoshida about it. Petrevich always knew that sooner or later someone would come. He could take no chances now. Antonov had to be dealt with.

Petrevich summoned the two Russians to his office. “No more trips to the Moscow East. Understand? We are almost finished here, anyway. And you, Ivan, if there is any more trouble, I will wrap you up in more chains than you can swim with and throw you in the ocean! Clear?” He was standing toe-to-toe with Ivan, venting his built-up rage when he noticed the Guido’s Pizza boxes that scattered when Yoshida kicked the trash can. “And keep your trash out of my office.”

* * *

That evening Petrevich left his makeshift living quarters at Hangar 23 without telling his men where he was going. Wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, he sat at a corner table in deep discussion with another Russian at the Moscow East for an hour. He returned to Hangar 23 after midnight.

The sun reflecting off
the shimmering blue waters of the north Pacific woke Warfield. The captain announced the plane would be on the ground at Tokyo’s Narita Airport in thirty minutes. After sixteen hours on the plane, Warfield was anxious to get out and stretch. Better yet, he’d go for a run if there were time.

He asked a flight attendant for something with caffeine and pulled both of General Antonov’s e-mail messages up on his iPhone. In the first one, Antonov notified him he had new intelligence about their “common interest” and said he would contact him again when he had more information. That message was dated two days before Warfield left Washington to visit Macc in Arizona and he had missed it.

Now it was impossible to think of that trip without a flash of the reason he went. He had fixed everything that could be fixed. His condo mortgage was now in good standing again and he’d paid the other bills for which he’d been irresponsible. He drove to Ticcio’s, owned up to the damage in the men’s room and wrote Ticcio a check for double the repair cost even though Ticcio told him to forget it. And Fleming. Why had she even tolerated him? He’d ignored the lifelines she threw out to him, like everything else. On the evening of his return from Arizona they talked about the darkest episode of his life. He groped around for explanations—as much for himself as for Fleming—and Fleming told him the guy he was trying to explain was passing through and wouldn’t be returning. “So don’t look back any more,” she said. He had felt tears on her cheek that night as they made love for the first time in months.

The next day after that he couldn’t wait to start putting his condo back in shape. Fleming had cleaned the place and he spent his time finally unpacking the Lone Elm boxes and setting up his office. When he got around to checking his e-mail that day he found the two messages from General Antonov. The general said in the second one that he was in Tokyo and Warfield should join him there if he was interested.

If he was interested?
Antonov knew something about this Russian who was a threat to humanity and who on a professional level had impacted Warfield’s life. Catching up with this man was almost as important to Warfield as life itself.

As the plane began its final approach to Narita, Warfield reflected on the smaller and simpler American plane that flew over Japan some seventy years ago and introduced weapons of mass destruction to the world. He saluted the Japanese for overcoming the disastrous effects of World War II by way of intelligent economic policies and assistance from the United States. Now, Japan, an island smaller than California but with as much as half the population of the U.S., was a top-tier economic engine and America’s solid ally in that part of the world.