A thick haze had settled over the Washington area as night fell, lending the city a mysterious air that Kelley Fuller found intimidating. She paid off her cab in front of an eight-story apartment building near Howard University Hospital, and hefting her single overnight bag, hurried into the lobby and impatiently punched the elevator call button.
She was a thin woman in her mid-thirties with long, dark hair, delicately proportioned Oriental features and a soft, yellow cast to her skin. She wore a white blouse, dark skirt and high heels, not exactly traveling clothes, but she’d been in a hurry.
The elevator was on the sixth floor, and as she waited for it to descend to the lobby, she put down her bag, went back to the glass doors and looked outside.
No one had followed her so far as she could tell. But she was certain that it would only be a matter of time before they came for her like they had Jim Shirley.
She closed her eyes tightly for just a moment, Shirley’s screams echoing in her head.
She’d seen everything from where she’d hidden in the shadows in front of the hotel, and when Dunee had calmly walked past, she’d been frozen, unable to take her eyes off the horrible spectacle below for more than a split instant.
Shirley had screamed for such a long time, but no one even attempted to help him or stop the two delivery men who’d simply gotten back into their truck and driven off. By the time someone brought a fire extinguisher from the hotel it was all over, Shirley’s body burned to an unrecognizable charred mass where it had fallen to the left.
She had run, and had kept running without sleep for the past forty-eight hours, hoping that once she reached Washington everything would be better, that she would be safely among friends. But now that she was here, she wasn’t so sure that anyplace would be safe for her ever again.
She’d gotten a clear, if brief, look at Dunee’s face as he’d passed. He’d been smiling.
Behind him, a man was being burned alive, his screams inhuman, and Dunee seemed to be enjoying himself.
The elevator dinged, but Kelley lingered at the glass doors for a moment longer, wondering if she’d done the right thing coming back. But she was so frightened she couldn’t go on. Not after what she’d witnessed. She needed to talk to someone. She needed to be among people she knew and trusted. She needed to be told what to do next.
Kelley had telephoned from the airport, and Lana Toy was waiting in the corridor as the elevator opened on the fifth floor, a look of puzzled concern on her small, round Oriental features. They’d been friends for a number of years, working together as translators for the State Department.
“What happened to you?” she demanded, taking Kelley by the arm and leading her back to her apartment.
“You didn’t tell anybody I’m back, did you?”
“No, but what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Tokyo. What happened?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Kelley said. “But I might have to stay with you for a little while, if that’s okay.”
“Of course it is. But are you in some sort of trouble?”
“Just lock the door, Lana, and get me a drink,” Kelley said. She put down her bag and went to the window where she carefully parted the curtain and looked down at the street.
The cab was gone, and as she watched, a city bus passed, but there was no other traffic.
No movement. But God, she could almost feel that someone was down there, watching from the darkness, and she shivered.
Jim Shirley’s screams would stay with her for the rest of her life. One of the reasons she’d not been able to sleep for the past two days was because she’d been on the run. But the other, even darker reason was because she was afraid to sleep. Afraid what her nightmares would be. She knew that she was going to relive the 75
experience. She was frightened that she might relive it from another point of view, from someone else’s perspective.
Lana Toy, a bottle of vodka in one hand and two glasses in the other, came back from the kitchen. She stopped short. “You are in trouble,” she said, her face serious.
“I’m going to need your help, Lana. But I don’t want you to ask me any questions.
Please. It’s for your own sake.”
The other woman nodded her reluctant agreement, then came the rest of the way into the small but nicely furnished living room and set the bottle and glasses on the coffee table.
“I need to use your phone.”
“Sure,” Lana Toy said, pouring the drinks as Kelley went to the phone and dialed a number.
It was answered on the first ring, by a man who simply repeated the number.
“This is Yaeko Hataya,” Kelley said softly. “I’m here in Washington.”
“We’ve been worried. Can we come for you?”
“No,” Kelley said sharply. She glanced at Lana Toy, who was watching her. “I’ll call back in… five minutes.”
“Are you safe?”
“For the moment,” Kelley said. “Five minutes.” She hung up. “Now I’ll take that drink,”
she told her friend.
Phil Carrara was one of four men in the small third-floor briefing room listening to Sargent Anders, the director of Technical Services, explain what they had learned from Tokyo. Actually, he thought, they had nothing concrete yet, and the way things were going they might never find Shirley’s killers or their actual motives.
Within three hours of the attack a team of four forensics people from Technical Services had been sent over, along with two of the best covert operations muscle currently in house and not on some field assignment somewhere.
During the thirteen-plus hours it took to get to Japan (they’d gone via commercial carrier to attract less attention) Tokyo Station had all but closed down. The Japanese were extremely sensitive about spies in their midst.
Shirley’s cover had been as a special economic affairs adviser to the ambassador, the actual day-to-day work of which fell naturally to his staff. The Japanese CIA and Federal Police accepted this ruse so long as there was no trouble. With this incident, everyone over there was keeping a low profile, and would continue to do so for at least the next few days.
The other three men with Carrara were his Assistant Deputy Director of Operations, Ned Tyllia, the Chief of the Far East Desk, Nicholas Wuori, and the Chief of Operations Covert Action Staff, Don Ziegler.
“The delivery truck has been found abandoned in a parking area near the Ikebukuro train station in northeast Tokyo. About five miles, as the crow flies, north of the Roppongi Prince,” Anders was saying.
It was something new. Carrara sat forward. “Who discovered the truck, Sargent, certainly not one of our people?”
“No, sir, it was Tokyo Police. The call came from a local koban after one of their officers stumbled across the truck. Its license tag had been removed.
A mistake on their part, I’d say. Naturally we monitored the call, as we do all police and military calls, and once the truck had been picked up and brought to the impound yard, one of my people got in for a quick look.”
Anders looked more like a bookkeeper than a cop, which is what he’d been with the New York City Police Department for eleven years before coming to the CIA. He was a precise little man, who sometimes affected a British accent because he thought it made him sound like James Bond. (Ian Fleming had been and still was the most widely read author by CIA employees.)
“Did we get anything?”
“Unknown yet, but there’s the possibility. According to eyewitnesses, the two bad guys wore hard hats and paper air filters. We recovered two used filters and one plastic hard hat from the truck. The items are enroute to our lab in Yokosuka where we should be able to come up with a DNA profile from hair out of the hat and from saliva off the filters. Won’t give us a name or names, but we’ll have something to match if they’re eventually bagged.”