That was then. Now that she was abandoning him, she’d come back to her original decision; to kill him, when the time was right, for everything he’d done to her. For everything he’d made her do.
She shivered again.
Spranger had taught her about sex-sex with men, that is-in East Berlin when she was still a teenager. And when he was finished with her, he’d used what he called her “certain charms” to help the STASI’s aims. She’d been ordered to sleep with Russians, with West Germans, Americans, and even Frenchmen.
The worst had been the most recent. She’d slept with Fukai himself on four different occasions, each time worse than the previous, because each time the old man had come to learn more and more about her body, exactly what made her respond, and she hated him and Spranger for it.
Stepping out of the garage, Liese moved silently across the courtyard and into the house. She halted just within the great room, a light breeze billowing the window shears at the open patio doors.
In the distance she heard a train whistle, and in back the pool pump kicked on. Other than those sounds the night was still. Not even insects were chirping, a fact that somehow did not register with her.
She was dressed in a short khaki skirt, a sleeveless blouse, and sandals without nylons. Reaching down she undid the sandal straps and stepped out of them.
The tile was cool on her bare feet as she moved across the great room, down a short corridor and stopped just outside the open door into the master bedroom wing.
This part of the house faced the opened veranda, and the glow of Monaco’s lights provided enough illumination so that she could see the big bed was empty, the sheets thrown back.
Going the rest of the way in, she went to the night table where she’d left the glass of water and sedatives. The water was down and the pills were gone, which meant he’d be unconscious by now. He’d probably gotten out of bed and had collapsed somewhere.
She hurriedly checked the bathroom and dressing alcove, but he wasn’t in either place and as she started back to the corridor, thinking he might have gone to the kitchen, she spotted him standing on the veranda at the low railing, his back to her.
Careful to make absolutely no noise she went back to the nightstand, opened the drawer and took out the big Sig-Sauer automatic he kept there. She switched the safety off, cocked the hammer, and went to the open glass doors.
Either he’d thrown the pills away, or he’d just taken them and the sedatives had not had a chance to effect him.
In any event he seemed awake and alert enough to still be a significant danger to her if he realized that she was planning on abandoning him.
She stepped out into the night and padded softly around the end of the pool, stopping barely three yards away from him. If she shot him now, his body would pitch over the rail and plunge three hundred feet onto the rocks and thick bush. If no one heard and pinpointed the shot, which she didn’t think they would, it might be a very long time before his body was discovered.
“Do you mean to shoot me now, and leave me for the carrion eaters?” he asked, his voice barely rising above the gentle breeze.
Liese was so startled that her hand shook and she nearly fired the pistol. But she got control of herself.
“You won’t be missed,” she said.
Spranger turned around to face her. He leaned back against the rail for balance and smiled wanly. “Haven’t you realized by now, my dear, that alone you are nothing?
Even less than nothing, because your sexuality gets in the way of any sort of rational thought?”
Liese raised the pistol and started to bear down on the trigger. Spranger’s smile broadened.
“You have been the means to many ends,” he said. “You must understand that you are only a very pretty tool; of no value without the hand of the craftsman to guide it.”
“I would rather it be Kiyoshi Fukai than you.”
“That’s not true,” Spranger said. “You hate the man even worse than you hate me.”
“He is a means to my end.”
“That’s possible. If you could leave here and catch the plane in Rome.”
“What’s to stop me… Liese asked when she suddenly realized what Spranger had done.
She pulled the trigger and the hammer slapped on an empty firing chamber. He’d foreseen what she would do, and had unloaded the gun.
He reached into the pocket of his robe and started to withdraw a pistol, when Liese suddenly came to her senses. With a small scream she leaped forward, raising her hands, her elbows stiff.
Because of his condition he was too slow to react. Liese hit him squarely in the chest with the palms of both hands, the Sig-Sauer still in her right hand, shoving him backwards over the low stone railing.
He fell without a sound, his body hitting the face of the cliff about ninety feet down, and, turning end over end, finally landing in the rocks at the bottom.
For a long time she just stared down at him, unsure of what she felt. But then she dropped the Sig-Sauer over the edge, turned and went back through the bedroom and out to the great hall where she retrieved her sandals.
Before she left the villa she washed her hands in the guest bathroom. One more job and Fukai would pay her. After that no man would ever touch her again.
Chapter 69
A polite young man in a three-piece business suit was sent over to escort McGarvey and Kelley from the main gates to the administration complex overlooking the bay.
They had to leave the rental car parked outside and take an electrically powered shuttle across the compound.
“We employ more than eighty thousand people at this location alone, Mr. Fine,” their escort explained. “Traffic would be worse than Tokyo’s if we allowed everybody to bring their personal vehicles inside.”
“Where do your employees park?” Kelley asked.
Their escort smiled. “Very few of our employees feel the need to drive, Ms. Fuller.
Fukai Semiconductor provides bus service for the majority of employees, limousine service for some, and helicopter shuttle service for others. It is very efficient.”
“How about Mr. Fukai himself?”
The young man’s smile broadened. “Ah, Mr. Fukai maintains a private residence here on the grounds.”
“Will we be able to meet with him this morning?” McGarvey asked.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Fine, but that will not be possible. Mr. Fukai will be involved with meetings all day.”
“Tomorrow, perhaps?” McGarvey pressed.
“Bad luck. Mr. Fukai will be out of the country tomorrow. Paris.”
“I see. Then I will have to try again the next time I come to Nagasaki. My company hopes to do much business with Mr. Fukai in the future.”
“Yes, I have seen the preliminary proposals. We are most anxious to do business with your firm.”
Evidently Fukai had contacted DataBase, and they’d upheld the legend. McGarvey made mental note to pass along his thanks through Carrara.
The world headquarters of Fukai Semiconductor was housed in a mammoth, sprawling building of glass, polished aluminum and native rock that seemed to be a hybrid design between traditfonal Japanese architecture and something off the drawing board of Frank Lloyd Wright, though there was almost nothing Western about the place. Situated along the shore of the bay, the massive structure rose in some places five stories above the water, each level cantilevered at a different angle thirty and sometimes fifty or sixty yards without apparent support. In other places the building was low, and followed the sinuously twisting shoreline as if it had grown out of the rock.
About a half-mile north, still along the bay, the end of the main runway was marked by a cluster of hangars, a 747 jetliner with Fukai’s stylized seagull emblem painted in blue on the tail, parked in front of one of them.