“Any sign of hummingbird?”
“Not yet. Are you in position?”
“Yes, but Ido has broken his cover and is approaching us.”
“See what the idiot wants, then get rid of him.”
“Stand by,” Igarshi radioed. Ido Meiji was the koban police officer assigned to this neighborhood. He was supposed to have provided them with a diversion if they ran into trouble. Later he would give his superiors false descriptions of the assailants he’d so bravely tried to stop. But his story wouldn’t hold up if someone remembered seeing him talking with the officers in the van.
Igarshi rolled down his window as the cop stopped to check the locked security shutter in front of a shop. He turned and came over to the van.
“I thought it was important for you to know that the woman left the apartment early this morning,” Ido Meiji said breathlessly.
“Are you sure?” Igarshi asked.
“Yes, of course. I watched the entire thing. She went around the corner to the telephone box and made a call of twenty-seven seconds duration, and then returned to the apartment.”
“She’s back now?”
“Yes. But maybe she suspects something. Perhaps she telephoned a warning.”
“Return to your position,” Igarshi ordered, making his decision. Mowry was the prime target. They couldn’t let anything get in the way.
“You mean to continue?”
“Yes. Now, go.”
The cop half bowed, then turned and walked off. Igarshi snatched the walkie-talkie and hit the READY TO TALK button.
“Tiger, this is lion. Ladybird left the apartment this morning and made a brief telephone call to an unknown party.”
“Never mind that,” Tanaka radioed. “Hummingbird is getting into his car now. We’ll be on our way in under a minute.”
“The woman may have seen something. She might have warned him.”
“In that case she would have remained inside the apartment and used that telephone,”
Tanaka shouted. “Remain at your position. I’ll advise you of any change in plans.”
“Roger,” Igarshi said, and he tossed the walkie-talkie aside in disgust. They were dealing with a deadly business here. There was no room for mistakes, and even less room for blindness.
“This won’t be so good if the girl warned somebody,” Idemitsu said.
“Don’t be a fool,” Igarshi countered impatiently. “What does it matter?”
“You said yourself that she got a good look at you.”
“I was mistaken.”
“How can you say that?”
“Are you ready back there?” Igarshi shouted.
“Yes,” Idemitsu said after a moment. “I am ready now.”
“Then nothing has changed.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“She’s just an empty-headed whore. After today she will be dead.”
Kelley Fuller watched the street through the slats in the bamboo shutters that covered the window in the tiny living room. The cop had crossed the street from the police van and was heading past the apartment back to the corner. It was the same koban cop who’d followed her to the telephone, she was certain of it.
Which meant what? she asked herself, trying to think it out. That the Tokyo Police had mounted a surveillance operation on her? Or more likely on the apartment?
Phil Carrara had warned her that the Japanese authorities were extremely agitated over Shirley’s assassination. It wasn’t so much the brutal nature of the killing that was disturbing them as it was the fact he’d been CIA. The Soviet Union, Communist China and North Korea were just across the narrow Sea of Japan. No one wanted a new battle in the old Cold War to erupt here with those enemies so close at hand.
If Mowry were being identified as CIA-which was entirely possible given the present apparent state of security at the embassy-then his coming here to a secret apartment would raise some embarrassing questions.
It would also mean that her effectiveness would be at an end. They might never find Shirley’s killers, or their real reason for targeting the CIA, beyond the public speculation that the incident had been an act of anti-American terrorism.
Again the ghastly picture of his body on fire rose up in her head and she closed her eyes.
A bullet in the head would have been one thing. But the way Shirley had been murdered had been a message. A strong message. But from whom? From the man on the motorcycle who’d followed them here? His eyes had been hauntingly familiar to her. And she’d felt in her heart that he’d been one of the two in front of the Roppongi Prince that night.
“Help me,” she said softly. She didn’t know what to do.
The man Carrara had sent from Washington had touched down at Narita Airport earlier this morning. By now he’d be in place at the ANA Hotel Tokyo near the embassy. He would have to be warned, as would Mowry. But then what?
Mowry had no real idea what he was up against. None of them did.
From her vantage point she could just make out a figure behind the wheel of the van, but little else. It was obvious they were waiting for something, or somebody.
She picked up the phone and dialed the embassy’s number. When the operator answered she asked for Mowry’s extension, his secretary came on.
“Three five eight.”
“Please, may I speak with Mowry-san. This is Yaeko Hataya.”
“I’m sorry Miss Hataya, but Mr. Mowry is not here.”
“I see,” Kelley said. “Can you tell me, is he in the embassy, or has he left?”
“He’s gone,” Mowry’s secretary said.
“I see. Thank you,” Kelley said. She broke the connection and called the ANA Hotel Tokyo. “Please connect me with the room of Mr. Kirk McGarvey. He is a registered guest of yours who was due this morning.”
“I’m sorry, madame, but Mr. McGarvey has not yet arrived,” the hotel operator said after a moment. “Would you care to leave a message?”
“No. That will not be necessary.”
Kelley hung up and looked out the window again. The police van was still in place.
Mowry was undoubtedly on his way here, which didn’t give her much time. But the only thing she could do now would be lead the police away from the apartment. Everything could be sorted out later.
Chapter 28
The taxi dropped McGarvey off in front of the Imperial Palace’s Outer Garden East Gate, the morning coming alive with traffic. Already the first of the joggers were starting their three-mile runs around the palace. Everyone ran the course counterclockwise.
It was tradition, on which the Japanese were very big.
Although he’d gotten plenty of rest on the long flight over the Pacific, his body clock was still telling him that it should be the middle of the evening, not first thing in the morning. He’d taken a shuttle bus from the airport to catch the train into Tokyo’s Keisei-Ueno Station, and from there a cab to his hotel where he dropped off his bag with the bellman.
His gun had come through customs in a diplomatic pouch, the package returned to him on the other side of the barrier. The weapon was a comfortable weight at the small of his back, though if the local authorities discovered he was armed, he would face immediate arrest and deportation.
He crossed the moat and entered the relative peace of the garden. There were so many people packed in such close quarters in Tokyo that parks and gardens were places revered almost at a religious level.
Reading between the lines of Carrara’s report, McGarvey had come to the conclusion that Jim Shirley had been the only effective field officer here, but that even he had been suspect in the end.
Mowry was an administrator and Kelley Fuller, A.K.A., Yaeko Hataya was starting to fall apart, which left a very big and dangerous blind spot when it came to Japan.