At the top of the stairs he found Marilyn seated on a platform floor, her back against the curved wall of the cone of the ship. She was trying to look calm, self-composed, this he could tell; but he knew she was still frightened. Nikita settled in next to her, putting his good arm around her protectively, drawing her close to give them both warmth against the chill of the night.
“We’ll be safe here,” she repeated, her voice muffled against his bare chest.
“Yes, here we are safe.”
She yawned. “Oh… sorry. I’m just… so tired…”
“Now you will sleep,” he said.
But he would not. He would stay wide awake. Because as he’d climbed he had seen, out of one tiny window, the Oriental assassin in black, the bastard who had shot at them in Mr. Frog’s castle, coming down a pathway into Tomorrowland.
And in time, the man would find the broken boards on the ground, and discover their hiding place.
So he let the young woman nestle against him and sleep, and he kept guard — razor at the ready.
Chapter Fourteen
This Happy Place
Within minutes of the disclosure by May Reis in bungalow number seven — and the phone call from the Anaheim police chief, on behalf of Walt Disney — three black sedans streamed out of the Beverly Hills Hotel driveway and onto Sunset Boulevard, little traffic in the pre-dawn morning hours to hinder them, as they sped toward the Santa Monica Freeway.
Each vehicle carried its own swiftly-formed posse of State Department agents, Secret Service men, and Khrushchev’s own guards — minus, of course, the two (deceased) KGB traitors; none had been briefed in detail, although the attempt on the premier’s life was known by all. Jack Harrigan, behind the wheel, with CIA agent Munson on the rider’s side, took the lead, as the sedans chased each other, keeping a reckless pace, along the highway to Disneyland.
Harrigan had left a Secret Service agent he trusted, Chuck Simmons, to stay behind and handle the slain Russians… and to maintain a strict press blackout. While Harrigan had been organizing the interdepartmental posse, FBI Special Agent Sam Krueger — who at the moment was in the sedan just behind Harrigan’s — had dealt on the phone with the Anaheim police, instructing them to be waiting at the gates of the amusement park, to enter only if they heard gunfire, and not to disclose details of the situation to anyone except the top personnel involved on the call itself.
And no sirens!
Among the short list of crucial things Harrigan wanted to avoid was attracting public attention, or springing a leak to the press, or arriving at the scene of a Wild West Show already in progress by some rinky-dink out-in-the-boondocks police force.
As Harrigan swung the sedan, its tires squealing, off the freeway and onto the asphalt road to the park, he could see the round domes of the black and white squad cars flashing red up ahead, streaking the night scarlet.
Harrigan brought his vehicle to a jerking halt in front of the three black-and-whites and one unmarked vehicle parked in a semicircle, noses in but headlights off, pointed toward the locked gates of the darkened Disneyland, the park’s train station looming beyond. Behind him, the brakes of the other sedans screeched, then car doors slammed like sarcastic hand claps in the night.
A uniformed policeman — a captain, according to his badge — approached Harrigan, as the State Department man scrambled out of his car. Big, burly, bucket-headed, the officer presented a comfortingly businesslike demeanor. At his side was a smaller, thinner cop, a lieutenant whose narrow face with close-set eyes and mouth-breather expression gave Harrigan no confidence at all.
In the background, milling around the squad cars, were half a dozen other uniformed officers, their casualness telling Harrigan that they were more than literally in the dark.
From out of the unmarked vehicle, a navy-blue Chevrolet, stepped a tall, rangy plainclothes officer in his fifties, his brown hair cut short and flecked with gray. He wore a brown suit and crisp, darker brown tie and looked like an executive, his badge holder tucked into the breast pocket of his suit coat, the shield gleaming in the moonlight. He, like the captain, had a reassuring air of professionalism.
Harrigan stepped forward to meet the man halfway. “Chief Coderoni, I presume.”
“You must be Agent Harrigan.”
They shook hands; the two had spoken a number of times on the phone, previously about the planning and then cancellation of the Khrushchev visit, more recently — less than half an hour ago — about the situation here at the park.
“How much do your men know, Chief?”
“My Captain here, Ed Keenan, and Lt. Willits, have been fully briefed. The other men, not at all. We get calls out this way from time to time, you know.”
“Yes, I understand there’s no security force at Disneyland.”
“Not after closing, not even a night watchman. We keep a pretty close eye, though — park’s a real boon to Anaheim.”
Harrigan had no time for small talk. “Gather everyone around,” he ordered.
The chief seemed to have no compunctions about relinquishing his leadership to Harrigan — that, at least, was a relief. Wasting time jockeying for position, pissing on trees to mark territory, was out of the question.
In a circle hastily formed in front of the locked gates of the amusement park — beneath a sign that read: To all those who come to this happy place, welcome… Walt Disney — Harrigan quickly told the diversified group about the attempt on Khrushchev’s life, and Marilyn Monroe’s involvement.
“We have good reason to believe they’re inside,” Harrigan finished. “And we have excellent reason to believe two assassins — probably Chinese — are inside, as well.”
“One of them is Lee Wong,” Munson added, and showed around a picture of the angular faced, dead-eyed Chinese hit man. “He’s freelance — ruthless as hell. He will kill you in a heart-beat, gentleman — your last. We don’t know who the other one is, but it’s not unusual for assassins to work in teams.”
The government agents took in all of this in stride, but the local cops, for the most part, looked like non-swimmers contemplating being thrown into the deep end. The chief and his captain, however, revealed nothing but a coolly competent manner.
That mouth-breather lieutenant, on the other hand, responded by dropping his jaw further, an appropriate enough response to the critical state of things, but then the man belatedly stammered, “You… you mean, the Marilyn Monroe?”
The captain stepped up, perhaps to draw attention away from his dopey crony. “Unless they climbed over, I don’t think anybody’s got inside this way,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the gate. “Lock’s intact.”
Harrigan nodded. “Is there another way into the park?”
“Uh, there’s a road goes around the back,” the lieutenant responded, attempting to redeem himself. “It’s a service entrance and some of the employees use it, too.”
Harrigan dispatched Krueger to go in the back way and keep in touch via walkie-talkie; that efficient, burly captain — “I know this park inside out” — volunteered to go along, and the FBI agent and a carload of support headed off, just as Chief Coderoni slipped up alongside the State Department man.
Speaking sotto voce, Coderoni said, “We may have another problem, Agent Harrigan.”
“Which is?”
The Chief grimaced, then whispered, “Mr. Disney was supposed to meet us here — to let us in… and there’s no sign of him.”
Harrigan processed that for a moment, then got Krueger on the walkie-talkie and informed him of the stray movie mogul who was somewhere inside the park, along with two assassins, a sex bomb, and the premier of Russia.