“Call him,” he told Otto.
“All right,” Rencke said, relieved, and he turned back to his keyboard.
McGarvey turned to his secretary. “I’m still going to need you to cover for me here.”
A look of genuine anguish crossed her face. She shook her head, but then girding herself, finally nodded. “I can stall Murphy at least long enough for you to get out of here, but I’m going to have to tell Mr. Adkins something.”
“Use your own judgment.”
She nodded again. “We have a lot of military traffic heading east just now. Some of it out of Andrews. I know that because my nephew is a squadron commander over there.” Her lips compressed. “I can get you a ride at least to Okinawa without having to go through channels. And as DDO you carry a lot of weight.”
McGarvey smiled. “Will he keep quiet about it?”
“He will if I tell him to,” Ms. Swanfeld said. “Do you want Tokyo station alerted?”
“No,” McGarvey said.
She shook her head. “I think you’re being a foolish, reckless man,” she blurted.
“Aren’t we all?”
Otto looked up. “The call is going through.”
As soon as he got back up top Ripley knew that he was in trouble. The clean room’s lights were off and the door was open.
He jumped up onto the platform and flattened himself against the padded wall, feeling silly even as he did it. But his heart was beginning to pound, and he had the strong feeling again that he wasn’t alone up here. The only illumination came from the flashing red tower lights, which left most of the loading bay platform in shadow.
He took a quick peek around the corner. The elevator was gone. In the ten minutes he’d taken to ride down to the old satellite and return someone had been up here and then left again. That’s why the payload lift had been recalled to the clean room. They knew his car, and now they knew that he’d seen the old satellite.
But what’s the worst that could happen, he asked himself. Kimura would be pissed off, but he wouldn’t be surprised. He once told them that nothing about Americans surprised him now that he was working with a Tiger team. At the time Ripley and the others had been amused, but now he wasn’t so sure exactly what the payload manager had meant by the remark. Like the shadows up here, everything was beginning to seem ominous to him.
The fact that he was on his own and no one, not even Maggie, knew exactly where he was or what he’d just seen was getting to him. He took his satellite phone out of his pocket, extended the antenna and was about to enter Hartley’s number, when the display lit up and the phone chirped. No telephone number came up on the screen.
Ripley pushed the Talk button. “Hello?”
“Is this Major Frank Ripley?”
“Yes, it is. Who the hell are you, and how did you get this number?”
“Are you someplace right now where you can talk freely?”
“Who is this?”
“Listen to me, Frank, you could be in some danger. Can you talk?”
Ripley looked out again at the empty payload platform, trying to keep calm. “I can talk.”
“My name is Kirk McGarvey. I’m the deputy director of Operations for the CIA. I don’t know how I can prove that to you right now. But we think that something is going on over there that the Japanese government is trying to keep secret from us. And probably from you. It has something to do with the satellite they’re getting ready to launch.”
Ripley felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. This could be a Japanese trick, of course. He had to make sure. He forced himself to calm down, to concentrate. He sure as hell wasn’t going to tell what he knew to someone on the phone who identified himself as CIA.
“Okay, hold on,” Ripley said, getting his mental bearings. “Are you at the CIA now?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Hang up. I’ll call the switchboard, and ask for you—”
“Tell them you want Yellow Light,” McGarvey said, and the connection was broken.
For a moment Ripley stood there, his heart racing. Goddammit, he was an astronaut, not a spy. He entered the international numbers for the U.S., then the area code for Washington, D.C., and the number for information.
“What city, please,” an operator answered.
“I’m trying to call the Central Intelligence Agency. I don’t know if that’s a Washington listing.”
“No, sir, that’s Virginia. I have an 800 number for you.” The operator was replaced by a mechanical voice which gave the CIA’s 800 number.
Ripley broke the connection and dialed the number. It was answered on the first ring by a recorded woman’s voice. “You have reached the Central Intelligence Agency. If you want employment information please call—” She gave another 800 number. “If you have information of an intelligence value, please give your name and number.”
“Wait,” Ripley said. “I want Yellow Light. Yellow Light.”
Three seconds later McGarvey was on the phone. “Okay, Frank, at least you know that I work in the building. And since you called back, something’s going on over there that has you bothered.”
“You can say that again,” Ripley said, relieved that he was finally talking to someone from his own government. “What do you mean, I could be in some danger?”
“Where are you right now?”
“On top of the payload gantry, across from the rocket. But they know that I’m up here, so I’ve got to get back right now.”
“Go someplace where there are a lot of people, we’ll talk on the way,” McGarvey said.
Ripley stepped out of the clean room and pressed the elevator’s call button. “They switched satellites,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“I saw the one we worked on. It’s hidden in a room beneath the payload tower. The one they loaded in the rocket was a different color.” The elevator started up. He could hear it. His eyes happened to light on the railing where two of the bolts holding it in place were missing. His heart went bump and he stepped back.
“What do you mean, a different color?”
“The one we worked on is gold, the one I saw in the rocket was dark. Black maybe.” Ripley looked around. Someone was up here with him. He could almost feel the other presence.
“Anechoic tiles,” McGarvey said, and that caught Ripley’s attention.
“It would make the satellite invisible to radar.”
“That’s right. Whatever they’re going to launch tomorrow won’t rendezvous with Freedom—”
A dark figure shot from the deeper shadows at the back of the catwalk. Ripley reared back and raised his left hand to ward off a blow. “No,” he cried.
“Frank?” McGarvey shouted.
The man, dressed all in black, his face covered by a balaclava, batted the phone from Ripley’s hand, sending it flying out over the rail. Before Ripley could defend himself, the man shoved him backward, his hip catching the disconnected railing, which gave way with a metallic bang. Suddenly Ripley was falling backward off the catwalk in utter disbelief. It couldn’t be happening! He was an astronaut, goddammit, not a spy.
TWENTY-FIVE