“She is a lovely woman, Senator, and quite open to experimentation.”
“What do you want?”
“First of alclass="underline" These photos were taken from a videocassette. If you fail me, copies of the video will be sent to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the four major news networks, a few of those trendy tabloid magazines, and finally to the FBI.
“Within days, three things will happen. One, I will disappear. Two, America will know that Senator Herb Smith is not man enough to keep his wife. And three, the FBI will begin asking questions about your relationship with your wife’s lover, a man who will eventually be linked to several European terrorist groups.”
“Don’t do that,” Smith whispered. “Don’t. Tell me what you want.”
“Information. Once you provide it, you get all originals and copies of the videos and photos, and you’ll never be bothered again.”
“How can I trust you?”
“If you cooperate, I’ll keep my word. The sooner you deliver what I want, the sooner this will be over.”
Smith considered the alternatives. He could go to the FBI. He had dozens of contacts, people who owed him favors. But how could he be sure the news wouldn’t leak? He also had plenty of enemies. He could imagine the gossip: If Smith doesn’t have the power over his wife, how can he possibly hold a seat in the United States Senate? He would be emasculated. He would be the laughingstock of the country!
And if he cooperated? All the man wanted was information. That was the real currency of power in Washington, after all. Trading information was something Smith understood. It was how things got done. Plus, after this nightmare was over, there would be plenty of time for payback. And she would pay. Stupid bitch.
He turned to the man. “Tell me what you want.”
19
Walter Oaken stared bleary-eyed at the stacks of reports and computer printouts on his desk. Had he been able to tell Beverly about the project, she would have accused him of obsessing. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d missed something. What was it? There had to be good reason why Ohira had switched his attention to Takagi Maritime.
For Oaken, research was an adventure full of hidden facts, buried leads, and dead ends. As far as he was concerned, the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot were nothing compared to a fact that didn’t want to be found.
The more he dug into Takagi’s operations, the more he realized Toshogu and Tsumago were aberrations. Takagi had delivered on hundreds of contracts, and each one had been handled identically, from purchase agreement and blueprint design to owner’s acceptance trials. Until now.
He’d started with maritime insurance. With Toshogu and Tsumago’s price tags in the millions of dollars, he felt certain Takagi would have underwritten them against loss or damage. He found nothing.
Next he turned to customers. Tsumago’s warshiplike characteristics made the Japanese MSDF the most likely buyer, but Oaken could find no open marine contracts between Takagi and the Japanese government.
That left two options. One, Toshogu and Tsumago were not only Takagi-built, but Takagi-owned as well, which probably meant Takagi had either bonded them or underwritten them with Lloyd’s of London.
This theory also went nowhere. He found no listing in Lloyd’s Shipping Index, and none of Sumiko’s information indicated Takagi Industries was itself carrying the financial burden.
The second possibility was the ships had been commissioned for a foreign company, which again meant they would be bonded by the purchaser or underwritten by Lloyd’s. Another dead end.
And then, out of the blue, he got his break.
He ran across two entries in Lloyd’s Shipping Index, the first of which described a Belgian shipbuilder who, after conducting sea trials for a South African client, had delivered the ship to Capetown, at which point the client — a subsidiary of the Belgian shipbuilder — took possession. This was a simple and perfectly legal cost-saving device, in which the builder and purchaser — in truth the same entity — split the cost of underwriting the vessel. Could this be what Takagi had done?
The second Lloyd’s entry described an oil tanker, but gave only the company’s name, a synopsis of the contract, the vessel’s dimensions, and the method of delivery. There was no mention of the builder’s name. Oaken scanned for similar entries and found dozens.
This gave him a trail to follow. In less than an hour he found what he wanted.
Like most industrialists, Takagi had his fingers in hundreds of businesses around the world, either as a shareholder, an investor, or a board member. His interests ranged from textiles and mining to entertainment and auto parts. Most of these ventures were well-documented, but some were not. Among the dozens of boards on which Takagi secretly sat, Oaken found one, a Norwegian company named Skulafjord Limited, that dealt exclusively in marine salvage and mining.
Now in the tenth hour of his hunt, he logged onto to the Lloyd’s Shipping Index and the United Nations International Maritime Bureau’s databases, then ran a keyword search using the word Skulafjord. The response came back in less than a minute:
SKULAFJORD LIMITED (BUYER)
DATE OF BID ACCEPTANCE: 10/10/98
DATE OF PURCHASE AGREEMENT: 12/1/98
DATE KEEL LAID: 2/9/99
VESSEL OF RECORD: UNNAMED ICEBREAKER, MARINE SALVAGE; 410 FEET/ 55 FEET/GWD 12,500 TONS
The dimensions seemed to match those of Toshogu. Oaken kept scrolling:
PROPOSED METHOD OF DELIVERY: AT-SEA BUILDER’S TRIALS; BUYER REP ABOARD; VESSEL DELIVERED TO BUYER-DESIGNATED POINT.
“Come on….” Oaken muttered, scrolling. “Gimme the delivery date…. Gotcha!” He glanced at the wall calendar, then back at the screen. “What the hell…?”
“So you lost them,” Hiromasa Takagi said.
“Yes, sir,” said Noboru.
Takagi now knew Tanner was more than a simple tourist. Nor was he working alone. Despite this, Noboru’s men could not pin down their activities, let alone maintain surveillance. The pair was wandering about Honshu and Shikoku, and no one could tell him what they were doing. That wasn’t quite true, though. While their activities were a mystery, the identity of one of their contacts was not. That would be settled soon enough.
“What did they do after leaving the ferry?” Takagi asked.
“We know they went south—”
Takagi shot forward in his chair. “Toward Anan? Toward the shipyard?”
“Yes, but past it, south toward Mugi. We lost them on the coast road.”
Takagi grunted. “Did they return the same way?”
“No. We’re not sure how, but they returned to the hotel just before sunrise.”
“And this is where Tanner met her?”
“Yes, sir. She had been waiting for him.”
His watchers recorded the name of the taxi company she’d used, Noboru explained. The rest had been simple. From the hotel she was taken to a neighborhood in Kobe and dropped off outside a shokudo owned by an elderly couple named Yokeisha, the maternal grandparents of one Sumiko Fujita.
This answered many questions for Takagi, first of which was: What had sparked Ohira’s interest in the shipyard? In her position, she certainly had access to the right kind of information, but thankfully, not enough to derail the transaction.
What should be done about Ms. Fujita and her partners in crime? Takagi wondered. They were the only remaining loose ends. So close to Tsumago’s departure, could he afford the complication? The Arabs were already skittish. Any hint of trouble, and they might pull out He could not allow that. He had invested too much, and the stakes were too high.