“No word from McGarvey?” Murphy asked. “Not so much as a sign?”
“I’m afraid not, General,” Carrara said. “She told us that he went into the water around twenty-hundred hours their time, about four hours ago, with the intention of somehow getting aboard a ship tied to the Fukai docks, and from there getting ashore.”
“What do we have on the boat?” Murphy asked, turning to Doyle, his Deputy Director of Intelligence. Doyle had worked with the National Photo Reconnaissance Office over the past days. He opened a file folder and withdrew a satellite shot of the Fukai compound. He passed it to Murphy.
“She’s the Grande Dame II, one of the two Feadship pleasure yachts in Fukai’s fleet.
The other, sister ship, the Grande Dame,
has been sailing in the Mediterranean for the past year. Evidently number two is being made ready to replace number one for the fall and winter season. They’re identical; 243 feet at the waterline, twin MTV diesels, state-of-the-art electronics. Either ship is capable of crossing any ocean in style at cruising speeds in excess of twenty knots.”
“Impressive toys,” Ryan mumbled taking the photograph from the DCI. “The bomb, if one exists, could easily be transported aboard either ship.”
“Of course,” Doyle said. “But I don’t think it’s likely. By now Fukai has to realize that he’s come under suspicion.”
“Especially with McGarvey poking around,” Ryan put in.
“If he has the bomb parts there in Nagasaki where his technicians are putting them together, he’ll want to get rid of the device as quickly as possible.”
“He could load it aboard the ship at his dock in under an hour, I would suspect,”
Murphy said.
“I don’t mean just get it out of Japan, General. I meant deliver it to its target and… fire it … as soon as possible.”
“By air,” Carrara said. “Fukai Semiconductor maintains a fleet of jetliners. They’ve even got a pair of Boeing 747s.”
“One of which is currently on the ground at Fukai, for routine maintenance,” Doyle said. “Kiyoshi Fukai himself is scheduled to fly out to Paris in a few hours.”
“Paris as a target?” Murphy said. “That doesn’t make sense. Nor would he risk riding on the same plane with a bomb. He’ll want to keep his distance.”
“Pardon me, General, but I don’t agree,” Carrara said, sitting forward. He turned to Doyle. “He’s going to Paris by what route Tommy? East or west?”
“East,” Doyle replied. “With a stopover for fuel in San Francisco.”
“Where the bomb would be off-loaded,” Carrara said, turning back to the DCI. “A customs check on a man such as Fukai would be perfunctory at best. He could drop the bomb off, set on a timer to explode after he was well on his way to Paris. There’d be no evidence left behind to connect him with the device.”
“Then we stop the plane from taking off,” Murphy suggested.
“That wouldn’t be so easy,” Ryan cautioned. “As you say, Fukai’s stature puts him above that of an ordinary citizen.”
“I can convince the President.”
“And if we were wrong, what then?” the Agency’s general counsel asked. “Maybe McGarvey’s presence has been detected and the bomb would not
be loaded aboard that plane. There’d be an international stink if we convinced the Japanese government to go after its richest man and nothing was found. I suggest we wait until the plane lands on U.S. soil and make a routine but thorough customs check. If a bomb is aboard, we’ll not only find it, but we’ll have Fukai himself in custody.”
“Unless he’s insane,” Carrara said softly. “If he’s cornered mightn’t he trigger the bomb anyway?”
“That’s a cheery thought,” Doyle said. “But it’s a possibility we should consider.”
“What do you suggest?” Murphy asked.
“Let me call my office first,” Doyle said. “There’s been a satellite pass within the past few minutes. Photo Recon has got a realtime link.” Doyle picked up the phone and called his chief of Analysis. He had his answer almost immediately.
“Well?” Murphy demanded impatiently.
“The 747 that was parked on the apron has been moved to a hangar near the Research and Administration complex. We caught a view of her tail section, but nothing else.”
Doyle looked at the others then back to Murphy. “Call the President, Mr. Director, and lay it out for him. Our alternatives, as I see them, are to stop the plane on the ground now, before it leaves Japan; let our customs people take care of it in San Francisco; or… Doyle hesitated a moment. “Or divert the flight to a deserted airport somewhere well away from any civilian population so that if the bomb is triggered, casualties will be at a minimum.”
“If the pilot refuses?” Ryan asked.
“Then we’d better be ready to shoot it down over the ocean.”
Kelley Fuller called two minutes later from a roadside phone three miles from the main gate into the Fukai compound, but still within sight of the airfield. She sounded bad.
“There is still no sign of him,” she said, obviously at the edge of panic. “I think he must have drowned. There were small boats swarming all over the harbor until just a little while ago.”
“Listen to me, I want you to do one more thing for us,” Carrara said. The call was on the speaker phone so everyone could hear.
“Yes, I’m listening,” she said.
“Can you see that big airplane from where you are?”
“Yes,” she answered uncertainly.
“I want you to keep watching it. The moment it moves toward the runway I want you to call us. Then you can get out of there. But only then. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do,” Kelley said. “But what about Kirk?”
“We’ll help him,” Carrara said. “Trust me.”
Chapter 75
One hundred yards from the intersection, the corridor ended at an elevator that could only be operated with a key. There were no indicators on the outside telling if the car was on the way down or up, or even if the elevator went both ways.
McGarvey figured it was a fair bet that the car only went to some lower level where he supposed the bomb was being assembled now. But there was no indication of any radioactive source nearby, nor could he hear anything from below by putting his ear to the elevator door. It was as if no one had ever come this way, yet the technicians with the cart had to have used this elevator. There were no other doors in the corridor.
Which meant that unless there was some other underground passage out, which he doubted, the assembled bomb would have to be brought out this way.
He looked back the way he had come. His position was exposed here. If someone else came down the corridor from the freight elevator, he would have nowhere to run. He would have to shoot his way out, which would alert Fukai’s security people that he was here.
He had found what he had come looking for; evidence that Fukai Semiconductor had in its possession material that was radioactive. Enough evidence to launch an immediate investigation.
All he had to do was turn around now, and retrace his steps. He didn’t think he would have much trouble swimming down the bay, past the Fukai perimeter to where Kelley Fuller was waiting.
Together they could return to the hotel, or even Tokyo, and take refuge in the U.S. Embassy.
But that wasn’t enough. The look in Liz’s eyes, and the expression in her voice back in Washington was still very fresh in his mind. Fukai and Spranger were going to be held accountable for what they’d done. He was going to make sure of it.
It was past 2:30. The technicians had been down here at least a half hour. To do what? Make some final assembly? Perhaps install the initiator into the bomb itself, assuming that the sewage lift pump contained it. Unless he misunderstood the relatively simple construction of a nuclear device, he didn’t think that sort of an operation would take very long. A few minutes at the most.