“I want you to go over to my hotel and wait for me in the coffee shop, or the lobby.
Anyplace that’s public, where there are a lot of people.”
Kelley’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? You mean right now?”
“Yes. Take a cab.”
“What about you…?” She looked closely at him. “You’re going to wait here for them?”
“One of them is already dead, and I may have wounded the second. Which leaves two more, possibly three. I’d like to even the odds a bit, and then have a little chat with whoever is left.”
“You’re crazy.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“You saw what they did to Mowry. God, they did the same thing to Shirley.”
The red Mercedes slid to a halt a hundred feet away on Harumi-dori Avenue. McGarvey spotted it out of the corner of his eye and pulled Kelley back out of sight behind the gate as a slightly built man got out of the back and started up the broad pedestrian walkway. He was limping. The car left immediately, but not before McGarvey saw that the driver was now the sole occupant.
“He’s the one from the van,” Kelley said. “At least I think so. But he was wearing a uniform then.”
“It’s the same one,” McGarvey said. “But one of them is missing. He’s probably somewhere behind us, and this one means to drive us into him.”
Kelley looked wildly from the approaching figure, back down the treelined concourse that led into the garden. Already the park was beginning to fill up. “We have no idea what he looks like.”
McGarvey had gotten a vague impression of a bulky man in the front passenger seat, but he had not gotten a clear look. “No, but he shouldn’t be so hard to spot once this one tells me what he looks like.”
The driver of the Mercedes would probably abandon the car and come in from the west, boxing them in, leaving them only one direction to run. The killers were taking a big risk of being spotted by the police, which meant they considered McGarvey and Kelley very important.
“We can let him pass and duck out behind him,” Kelley said.
The police imposter was less than fifty feet away, his right hand stuffed into the light brown jacket he wore now. Passers by didn’t look directly at him; the Japanese were too polite to stare. But it was clear that his presence, blood on one leg of his trousers, was causing a stir. It would be only a matter of a few minutes before the alarm was sounded and the police showed up.
“As soon as he comes through I want you to do just that,” McGarvey said. “Grab a cab and get out of here.”
“I don’t want to leave you here like this, not with three-to-one odds,” she argued, and McGarvey looked at her with a new respect. She was frightened half out of her mind, but she was willing to stay and help.
“Are you armed?”
“No.”
“Then go to the hotel and wait for me there.”
The killer was nearing the gate, and McGarvey pulled Kelley farther back behind the portal, so that they were completely hidden for the moment.
“What if you don’t show up?” she whispered urgently.
McGarvey took out his pistol and switched the safety off. This was the last of the ammunition he had with him. But he was going to avoid at all costs any kind of a shootout here in a public park.
“If I’m not back by noon, make contact with Phil Carrara, he’ll know what to do,”
McGarvey said. “Now get ready to go.”
“This is stupid,” she whispered in desperation.
“You can say that again,” McGarvey agreed.
The man came through the gate, and as soon as he was past, McGarvey stepped out from around the portal and fell in behind him. Kelley darted around the corner and out the gate.
“I don’t want to kill you, but I will unless you do exactly as I say,” McGarvey said in a conversational tone.
Igarshi practically jumped out of his skin. His step faltered and he started to withdraw his hand from his pocket.
“I killed your friend back there, I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in your spine,” McGarvey warned.
“Who are you? What do you want here?” Igarshi demanded, his English very bad but understandable.
“My questions,” McGarvey said. “But first I want to know who hired you to kill Shirley and Mowry…
Igarshi was incredibly fast. With his right elbow he knocked McGarvey’s gun hand aside, and then spun around, smashing three well-aimed blows into McGarvey’s chest and throat within the space of barely one second.
On instinct alone, McGarvey was just able to fall back, sidestepping the killer’s next blows, and smash the butt of his pistol into the back of the man’s neck. Igarshi went down with a grunt.
Several people stopped and turned to see what the commotion was all about, and McGarvey stepped back, bringing up his gun as the Mercedes driver came down the broad path on the left in a dead run.
Tanaka fired three shots, one of them hitting a bystander, one smacking into a tree and the third plucking at McGarvey’s sleeve.
McGarvey turned sideways to present less of himself as a target, and squeezed off two measured shots, both hitting the oncoming Japanese in the chest, driving him to his knees and then down.
A woman was screaming and another woman was down on her knees beside the bystander who’d been shot, wailing and wringing her hands.
McGarvey hauled the dazed Igarshi over on his back. “Who hired you to kill Shirley and Mowry?” he demanded. There wasn’t much time. Already in the distance there were more sirens.
Igarshi snarled something in Japanese and lunged upward, grabbing the barrel of McGarvey’s pistol. The gun discharged, the bullet entering the man’s forehead, his head bouncing off the gravel path and his eyes filling with blood.
He’d committed suicide!
McGarvey recoiled and then looked up as a heavyset man built like a Sherman tank came charging down the main concourse. He looked like a wild animal.
Stepping back, McGarvey brought up his pistol in both hands and crouched in the shooter’s stance. Heidinora stopped in his tracks ten feet away. He was unarmed, an expression of pure hatred on his round, rough-featured face. The sirens were much closer now, and it was clear that he heard them.
“I don’t want to kill you, but I will not leave Tokyo until I have answers,” McGarvey said.
Heidinora backed up, his hands spread in a gesture of peace.
“Remember my face,” McGarvey said, lowering his pistol. “I’ll want answers to my questions.”
Heidinora nodded once, then turned on his heel and walked off. Holstering his pistol, McGarvey turned in the opposite direction and headed out the gate to Harumi-dori Avenue.
BOOK THREE
Chapter 30
A gentle sea breeze ruffled the potted flowers on the veranda of the villa that overlooked the Principality of Monaco and the azure Mediterranean. Surrounded by fragrant eucalyptus trees, the expansive, low, stuccoed house was enclosed within a tall concrete fence topped with glass shards. Doberman pinschers patrolled the grounds at night, and along with a sophisticated system of extremely low-light-capable closed-circuit television monitors, the Villa Ambrosia was a relatively secure fortress without being ostentatiously so.
Ernst Spranger, dressed in sandals, white slacks and a bright yellow short-sleeved Izod, came out to the veranda to greet his guest who’d just been announced. The short, slightly built man stood at the low rail, looking at a half-dozen sailboats in the distance. It was just eight in the morning, and Spranger was in a pensive mood in part because of the events, or lack of events, over the past few days, and in part because of this man’s unexpected presence.