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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass
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“But Mowry knows nothing about this?”
“That's right.”
McGarvey had to shake his head. “When do I leave?”
“Immediately,” Carrara said.
IT WAS DAWN. IGARSHI PARKED THE BLUE AND WHITE POLICE van at the end of the block from the apartment building on Sakurada-dori Avenue, and watched the activity on the street for a few moments. Already traffic was getting heavy. In another hour the area would be a madhouse, and therefore anonymous.
He studied the apartment building through binoculars. The shutters on the second-story windows were still tightly closed and there was no sign of activity yet. But Mowry would be showing up sometime this morning. He wouldn't be able to leave his whore for long. At least in that aspect all Americans were alike.
A uniformed police officer came up the street on foot from the direction of the Imperial Palace. Igarshi started the van's engine. He did not want to be caught here.
“What's wrong?” Kozo Idemitsu asked from the back.
“A policeman is heading toward us.”
“Ido?”
“I think so, but I'm not sure,” Igarshi said. He raised the binoculars and studied the approaching figure. At first he couldn't quite tell, but then the cop raised his head, and Igarshi had him. “It's Ido.”
“Something must have gone wrong. Contact Tanaka again and see if there has been any change.”
As of ten minutes ago their observers near the American embassy in Minato-ku had reported that Mowry was still inside. There was little likelihood that he could have gotten
out without being spotted, but if he was on his way now it could make things difficult.
Igarshi picked up the bulky secure walkie-talkie lying on the seat next to him, and keyed the READY TO TALK button.
“Tiger, this is lion,” he said. “Has hummingbird departed yet? We may have a developing situation.”
He pressed the TRANSMIT button, and his digitally-recorded words were encrypted, compressed into a one-microsecond burst, and sent out.
“Stand by, lion. It looks as if his people have just pulled up out front.”
“Any sign of hummingbird?”
“Not yet. Are you in position?”
“Yes, but Ido has broken his cover and is approaching us.”
“See what the idiot wants, then get rid of him.”
“Stand by,” Igarshi radioed. Ido Meiji was the
koban
police officer assigned to this neighborhood. He was supposed to have provided them with a diversion if they ran into trouble. Later he would give his superiors false descriptions of the assailants he'd so bravely tried to stop. But his story wouldn't hold up if someone remembered seeing him talking with the officers in the van.
Igarshi rolled down his window as the cop stopped to check the locked security shutter in front of a shop. He turned and came over to the van.
“I thought it was important for you to know that the woman left the apartment early this morning,” Ido Meiji said breathlessly.
“Are you sure?” Igarshi asked.
“Yes, of course. I watched the entire thing. She went around the corner to the telephone box and made a call of twenty-seven seconds duration, and then returned to the apartment.”
“She's back now?”
“Yes. But maybe she suspects something. Perhaps she telephoned a warning.”
“Return to your position,” Igarshi ordered, making his
decision. Mowry was the prime target. They couldn't let anything get in the way.
“You mean to continue?”
“Yes. Now, go.”
The cop half bowed, then turned and walked off. Igarshi snatched the walkie-talkie and hit the READY TO TALK button.
“Tiger, this is lion. Ladybird left the apartment this morning and made a brief telephone call to an unknown party.”
“Never mind that,” Tanaka radioed. “Hummingbird is getting into his car now. We'll be on our way in under a minute.”
“The woman may have seen something. She might have warned him.”
“In that case she would have remained inside the apartment and used that telephone,” Tanaka shouted. “Remain at your position. I'll advise you of any change in plans.”
“Roger,” Igarshi said, and he tossed the walkie-talkie aside in disgust. They were dealing with a deadly business here. There was no room for mistakes, and even less room for blindness.
“This won't be so good if the girl warned somebody,” Idemitsu said.
“Don't be a fool,” Igarshi countered impatiently. “What does it matter?”
“You said yourself that she got a good look at you.”
“I was mistaken.”
“How can you say that?”
“Are you ready back there?” Igarshi shouted.
“Yes,” Idemitsu said after a moment. “I am ready now.”
“Then nothing has changed.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“She's just an empty-headed whore. After today she will be dead.”
 
Kelley Fuller watched the street through the slats in the bamboo shutters that covered the window in the tiny living
room. The cop had crossed the street from the police van and was heading past the apartment back to the corner. It was the same
koban
cop who'd followed her to the telephone, she was certain of it.
Which meant what? she asked herself, trying to think it out. That the Tokyo Police had mounted a surveillance operation on her? Or more likely on the apartment?
Phil Carrara had warned her that the Japanese authorities were extremely agitated over Shirley's assassination. It wasn't so much the brutal nature of the killing that was disturbing them as it was the fact he'd been CIA. Communist China and North Korea were just across the narrow Sea of Japan. No one wanted a new battle in the old Cold War to erupt here with those enemies so close at hand.
If Mowry were being identified as CIA—which was entirely possible given the present apparent state of security at the embassy—then his coming here to a secret apartment would raise some embarrassing questions.
It would also mean that her effectiveness would be at an end. They might never find Shirley's killers, or their real reason for targeting the CIA, beyond the public speculation that the incident had been an act of anti-American terrorism.
Again the ghastly picture of his body on fire rose up in her head and she closed her eyes.
A bullet in the head would have been one thing. But the way Shirley had been murdered had been a message. A strong message. But from whom?
From the man on the motorcycle who'd followed them here? His eyes had been hauntingly familiar to her. And she'd felt in her heart that he'd been one of the two in front of the Roppongi Prince that night.
“Help me,” she said softly. She didn't know what to do.
The man Carrara had sent from Washington had touched down at Narita Airport earlier this morning. By now he'd be in place at the ANA Hotel Tokyo near the embassy. He would have to be warned, as would Mowry. But then what?
Mowry had no real idea what he was up against. None of them did.
From her vantage point she could just make out a figure behind the wheel of the van, but little else. It was obvious they were waiting for something, or somebody.
She picked up the phone and dialed the embassy's number. When the operator answered she asked for Mowry's extension. his secretary came on.
“Three five eight.”
“Please, may I speak with Mowry-san. This is Yaeko Hataya.”
“I'm sorry Miss Hataya, but Mr. Mowry is not here.”
“I see,” Kelley said. “Can you tell me, is he in the embassy, or has he left?”
“He's gone,” Mowry's secretary said.
“I see. Thank you,” Kelley said. She broke the connection and called the ANA Hotel Tokyo. “Please connect me with the room of Mr. Kirk McGarvey. He is a registered guest of yours who was due this morning.”
“I'm sorry, madame, but Mr. McGarvey has not yet arrived,” the hotel operator said after a moment. “Would you care to leave a message?”
“No. That will not be necessary.”
Kelley hung up and looked out the window again. The police van was still in place. Mowry was undoubtedly on his way here, which didn't give her much time. But the only thing she could do now would be lead the police away from the apartment. Everything could be sorted out later.
THE TAXI DROPPED MCGARVEY OFF IN FRONT OF THE IMPERIAL Palace's Outer Garden East Gate, the morning coming alive with traffic. Already the first of the joggers were starting their three-mile runs around the palace. Everyone ran the course counterclockwise. It was tradition, on which the Japanese were very big.
Although he'd gotten plenty of rest on the long flight over the Pacific, his body clock was still telling him that it should be the middle of the evening, not first thing in the morning. He'd taken a shuttle bus from the airport to catch the train into Tokyo's Keisei-Ueno Station, and from there a cab to his hotel where he dropped off his bag with the bellman.
His gun had come through customs in a diplomatic pouch, the package returned to him on the other side of the barrier. The weapon was a comfortable weight at the small of his back, though if the local authorities discovered he was armed, he would face immediate arrest and deportation.
He crossed the moat and entered the relative peace of the garden. There were so many people packed in such close quarters in Tokyo that parks and gardens were places revered almost at a religious level.
Reading between the lines of Carrara's report, McGarvey had come to the conclusion that Jim Shirley had been the only effective field officer here, but that even he had been suspect in the end.
Mowry was an administrator and Kelley Fuller, A.K.A. Yaeko Hataya was starting to fall apart, which left a very big and dangerous blind spot when it came to Japan. He couldn't
help compare the situation to the days before Pearl Harbor, when there'd been another serious lapse in hard intelligence on what the Japanese were up to.
Rightly or wrongly there was a growing paranoia about exactly just where the Japanese were headed these days. As Carrara pointed out, it wasn't so much that they seemed to want to buy everything they could get their hands on in the States—the British owned nearly twice as much property in the U.S. as the Japanese did. But it was
what
the Japanese were buying, and how they were going about it.
Owning a building in midtown Manhattan was one thing, but buying out a major communications industry, including a movie production company and a major book publisher, was another. As was a rumored move to buy out a major U.S. aircraft company. In each case the Japanese promised not to make any changes in company policy. That, of course, was forgotten the moment the ink was dry on the contracts.
“We can't afford anti-Japanese sentiment, but neither can we afford a Japanese buyout of what's vital to this country,” Carrara said.
Finding out who was behind the assassination of Shirley, and how that connected to Carrara's sweeping generalizations was a tall, if not an impossible order. One which McGarvey had his doubts about being able to fulfill. And there was still the nagging suspicion at the back of his mind that somehow the Japanese were connected with Spranger and his group of ex-STASI officers.
At the south end of the gardens the ornate Sakuradamon Gate crossed another moat to the end of Sakurada-dori Avenue. A couple dozen joggers were warming up in the courtyard between the portals of the gate. McGarvey stopped just inside the garden.
On the corner was the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Building, and across the street was the Ministry of Justice housed in a nondescript old brown brick building. This area was the heart of the Japanese government. Within a few blocks were the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Education, International Trade and Industry.
The CIA's safehouse was in a building used by foreigners doing business with the government. Activities unusual for any other part of Tokyo were common here and raised few suspicions.
“So far Mowry hasn't officially told anyone that he's stashed Kelley over there,” Carrara had said.
“Which means he's got something to hide.”
Carrara shrugged. “The Station leaks, and he doesn't want to end up like Shirley.”
“What'd the girl tell him?”
“That she saw Jim Shirley's murder and that she's frightened she'll be next.”
“But he hasn't told any of that to your Technical Services team?”
“No, but they're keeping an eye on him twenty-four hours a day. They know he's got a girl there, but they don't know who she is.”
“And you haven't clarified the situation.”
Carrara shook his head.
“You really are a bastard after all,” McGarvey said, but the DDO hadn't responded.
It was the business, McGarvey thought, watching the street. When government policies became the primary consideration, people became expendable. It had happened to him, only he'd been tough enough—and lucky enough—to survive. So far.
Already the first of the clerks and bureaucrats were heading to work, and traffic was beginning to pick up. In another hour or less all of Tokyo would become a congested mass of humanity on the move. Half-hour taxi rides would take two hours or more. Buses and trains would be packed to overflowing. The city streets would become anonymous for the field officer as well as for the killer and his victim.
Crossing Harumi-dori Avenue with the light, McGarvey headed past the Police Headquarters keeping his eyes and ears open, trying to absorb what was the norm for this area; looking for the routine, the ordinary, the usual ebb and flow
so that he could pick out the odd, out of place person or vehicle.
In Europe he understood what he saw. Here, though, it was different: The people, the scenery, even the flavor and odors on the air were odd by Western standards.
“Between you and the girl you can keep an eye on Mowry,” Carrara had said. “If they do make a try on him, you'll get your lead.”
“Short of that?”
“Keep your eyes open,” Carrara said. “Something will come up. With you it always does.”
The safehouse was in the block beyond the Police Headquarters. Some shops were beginning to open, and traffic, especially pedestrian, was getting heavy.
At the near corner a uniformed police officer was speaking on a telephone at a police callbox outside a tiny cubicle. At the far end of the block a blue and white police van was parked on the opposite side of the street.
As McGarvey passed, the cop at the callbox glanced up at him, but then turned away.
Something was happening here. Or was about to happen. That much he could pick out.
Then he spotted her. Kelley Fuller had just emerged from a building in the middle of the block and was heading directly toward him. She was thirty yards distant, but he had no trouble recognizing her from the photographs Carrara had included in the briefing package.
Nor was there any doubt from the way she was moving that she was in trouble. Immediate trouble.
 
Igarshi could hardly believe his eyes. It was Mowry's whore. She was on the move. Now! Of all times! She must have seen something and warned the American. She'd probably spotted Ido. The bastard!
He grabbed the walkie-talkie, pushed the READY TO TALK button and screamed into the microphone. “Tiger, this is lion. The woman just left the apartment. She's getting away!”
He hit the TRANSMIT button and a moment later, Tanaka came back.
“Never mind her for now. We're just around the corner from you. Get ready.”
“We can't let her escape,” Igarshi shouted.
“Stand by. We're coming.”
Igarshi tossed the walkie-talkie aside, and started the van's engine, as Mowry's chauffeured Lincoln appeared in his rearview mirror, the opposite direction from where he'd expected it.
 
Ten feet from McGarvey, Kelley glanced over her shoulder, back the way she had come, and she pulled up short, almost stumbling over her own feet.
A big American car had just turned the corner at the end of the block and was barreling up the street. A light blue Toyota with two men inside was directly behind it.
The woman started back, but McGarvey caught up with her in two steps and grabbed her arm.
Something was starting to go down. The blue and white police van was pulling away from the curb, and a red Mercedes was squealing tires coming around the corner.
Kelley tried to yank her arm free, but McGarvey forcefully pulled her off to the side. “Miss Hataya, it's me. Kirk McGarvey!”
For a split second Kelley's face was screwed up in a grimace of terror and the raw animal reaction to being cornered. She looked back over her shoulder, wildly thrashing her free arm in an effort to escape as the Lincoln made a sudden U-turn and stopped in front of the apartment building.
“We have to warn him,” she cried.
The blue Toyota pulled over to the curb across the street, the police van and Mercedes right behind it.
“We're not going up against the Tokyo Police,” McGarvey said, hauling her into the shelter of a small used-book stall.
“Something is wrong, I tell you.”
“Wait,” McGarvey said forcefully. Something
was
wrong here, but he didn't know what it was. No matter how agitated
the Japanese authorities were because of the incident involving the CIA, arresting an American diplomatic officer was an extreme move.
The
koban
cop from the corner came past in a run, his pistol drawn, as the police van pulled up opposite Mowry's limousine. The acting chief of station got out of the car, and turned to see what was happening.
The red Mercedes stopped alongside the Toyota, and for several beats it seemed as if nothing would happen. Traffic flowed around the two stopped vehicles, but everything else seemed to be in stasis. Like a time bomb ready to go off.
A uniformed cop jumped out of the back of the van and hurried around the big American car. He carried what appeared to be a large fire extinguisher, but he was holding it as if he were about ready to put out a fire.
Or start one! The chilling thought suddenly flashed into McGarvey's head. They weren't cops!
“Get down,” he shouted, pushing Kelley farther back into the book stall.
The driver's side window in the blue Toyota suddenly burst into a million pieces, blood spraying the inside of the windshield as one of the men in the Mercedes opened fire with what sounded like a silenced Uzi … the clatter of the expended shell casings louder than the actual shots.
McGarvey yanked out his pistol as he sprinted forward, switching the safety to the off position.
Mowry reared back, inadvertantly placing himself between the
koban
cop and the cop with the fire extinguisher, leaving McGarvey no shot.
“Get back, get back!” McGarvey shouted, knowing that he was already too late.
The cop from the van raised the fire extinguisher, and a geyser of flame twenty-five feet long gushed from the horn-shaped nozzle, completely engulfing Mowry, as well as the
koban
cop behind him.
McGarvey spun on his heel and darted behind a parked taxi, the heat from the flame thrower so intense even at a
distance of fifty feet that it made his eyes water and singed the hair on his head.
Mowry and the
koban
cop were both screaming inhumanly as they did a macabre little jig, almost as if they were marionette puppets on strings.
The air was filled with the stench of gasoline and burning flesh. Traffic was coming to a screeching halt, people were falling back, running away, screaming in terror.
The Lincoln started to pull away from its parking place, but got only five feet before its windshield disintegrated in a hail of automatic gunfire from the driver's side of the police van.
A second burst of flame from the bogus fire extinguisher completely engulfed Mowry and the
koban
cop again as McGarvey popped up and fired three shots in rapid succession.
The column of flames suddenly veered wildly left, splashing the fronts of the buildings across the sidewalk as Mowry's assassin staggered backward.
McGarvey snapped off a fourth and fifth shot, the last hitting the flamethrower's fuel tank which erupted in a huge fireball, instantly killing the man.
The police van burst into flames, and the driver, also dressed in a police uniform, jumped out, firing his Uzi toward McGarvey, forcing him down behind the taxi, glass and bits of bullet fragments raining down on his head.
Mowry and the
koban
cop had stopped screaming. They were mercifully dead. But in the near distance McGarvey could suddenly hear the sounds of sirens. Probably behind the police headquarters in the last block.
He popped up again and fired two shots at the cop who was scrambling into the back seat of the already moving Mercedes. Then a third. The fourth time he pulled the trigger the hammer fell on an empty chamber.
The answering automatic weapons fire raked the taxi McGarvey was crouched behind, almost completely destroying it.

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