Diamond Solitaire (16 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Wedged into seat 1 IB in the Concorde, Diamond was about as comfortable as a stout person may expect to be on an aircraft noted for its slim contour. Eleven-B was immediately behind the serving bay, providing the dual advantage of increased legroom and a tray arrangement that allowed him to stand his champagne glass on a level surface rather than having it on a slope created by his stomach.

Rapid decisions were responsible for his being on the flight. Around 5:30 P.M., he had learned from Immigration at Heathrow that someone remembered a Japanese woman and child passing through the departure gate about 1:00 P.M. More importantly, the woman had been wearing what was described as gray sportsgear and the child a red corduroy dress, black tights and trainers. Soon after this, British Airways check-in staff had confirmed that a Mrs. Nakajima, accompanied by her daughter Aya, had boarded flight BA177 at 1415, due at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York, at 1705, local time.

New York.
This wasn't a game for faint hearts, but Diamond was totally committed. By using his former police rank, he succeeded in extracting a promise from the Immigration Service at JFK that Mrs. Nakajima and daughter would be detained for up to an hour. From British Airways he had already learned that by taking the last Concorde flight of the day at 1900, he could be in New York fifty minutes after BA177 arrived—the sort of schedule that would have him looking at his watch all the way across. He'd booked a passage immediately, quoting Yamagata's Gold Card number. The thought crossed his mind that he ought to have called the Albert Hall to get his sponsor's approval, but he decided against it. "Mr. Yamagata is a rich man. He will pay," the interpreter had promised when they had met, and presumably Mr. Yamagata, the man of honor, wouldn't quibble over a mere five thousand and thirty pounds. Diamond preferred not to inquire at this stage.

Remembering just in time that he was a considerate husband, he did phone Stephanie to let her know that he was leaving the country. She wasn't quite as devastated as he'd expected. "See if you can get me a pair of genuine New York sneakers while you're over there. White, of course. Remember I take a seven, but that's eight and a half in their size." How did she know these things? he wondered.

He checked his watch again, thinking ahead. The U.S. Immigration officials would be the first test They were trained to spot conmen. He'd need to be sharp to convince them that he was on an official investigation. Then there was the Nakajima woman, who had thoroughly outfoxed the formidable Mrs. Straw. She was a real challenge. Even if she folded under questioning and admitted to abducting the child, there was still the matter of what action could be taken, and where. Extradition law had never been his forte.

A stewardess came along the aisle and handed him a note that must have been transmitted to the cockpit.

To: Supt. Diamond

From: US. Immigration

Time: 1721NYT

Will meet you on arrival. Ms. Nakajima and child
detained.

A tingling sensation, a mixture of relief, anticipation and champagne, spread through Diamond's veins.

"Good news, sir?" the stewardess inquired.

He gave a dignified smile. "Just confirming an appointment" In truth, it deserved a fanfare. For one indulgent moment, he likened himself to Chief Inspector Dew, the man who had crossed the Atlantic in 1910 to arrest Dr. Crippen and his mistress. A telegraph message, a dash across the ocean, and Crippen had been copped.

There the comparison ended. Crippen had been a murderer. Mrs. Nakajima was guilty, at most, of abduction.

The Concorde had already started its descent. The "fasten seatbelts" order came over the public address.

They touched down five minutes before schedule at 1750.

When the doors were opened, a woman immigration officer was waiting. Diamond introduced himself.

"May I see your ID?" she asked, taking stock of him. He didn't fit the stereotype of a British detective, judging by the way she eyed his waistline.

"Will my passport do?" Helpfully, it had been issued four years ago and still listed his profession as police officer.

"Would you come with me, sir?"

The "sir" was encouraging. Stiff from the journey and slightly disorientated, but eager to see Naomi, he was taken through a roped barrier and along a corridor lined with filing cabinets. Another door, another corridor, and into an office looking like a scene out of a television police series with its sense of stage-managed activity as people walked through, stopped, exchanged words, presumably to develop different plotlines in the story, and moved on. A black officer in tinted glasses carved a way around a couple of desks and said, "You've got to be the guy from Scotland Yard."

"Peter Diamond," he said, offering his hand without going into the matter of where he was from. "You still have these people detained, I hope?"

"Sure have." The man didn't need to give his name. He had a tag hanging from his shirt that identified him as Arthur Wharton.

"Are they giving any trouble?"

"No, sir."

"What have you told them?"

"The usual. A small technical problem over their passport. They're yours." Arthur Wharton nodded to the woman who'd brought Diamond this far and she beelined determinedly between two people crossing the office from different directions and into another corridor. Diamond realized that he was meant to go with her. Striving to go the same way, he found that he wasn't so adept at dodging people.

He caught up with her by an open doorway. A uniformed member of the airport police was sitting outside, drinking coffee from a paper cup.

Diamond looked into the room.

He stared.

A woman and child were in there, certainly, but the child wasn't Naomi.

She was at least two years younger. Seated on a steel-framed chair, swinging her legs, this little girl still had a baby face, tiny features and chubby cheeks. She wasn't even dressed like Naomi. She had a blue dress, white socks and black shoes made of some shiny material like patent leather. She was Japanese, admittedly, but there the resemblance ended.

The Japanese woman who looked up anxiously at Diamond didn't match the description he'd been given either. She was in a red skirt and jacket and she was wearing rimless glasses.

At a loss, he turned to his escort, but she'd already gone.He spoke to the man at the door. 'Those aren't the people. There's some mistake."

The cop shrugged.

He found his way back to the hub of the Immigration Department, and vented his frustration on Officer Wharton. "You detained the wrong people. I've never seen that kid before and they're wearing different clothes, for Christ's sake."

"Hold on, Mac," Wharton told him, pointing a finger. "Don't give lip to me. We held the people you wanted. You gave us no description, just a name. That's Mrs. Nakajima in there, no mistake. You want to see the passport?" He handed one across.

Diamond opened it No question: these people were called Nakajima. "But they don't match the description," he said.

"You mean this passport belongs to some other woman?"

"No. What I mean is that the people who were seen at Heathrow were dressed differently from Mrs. Nakajima and child." Even as he spoke the words, the mistake he'd made dawned on him. "Oh, no!"

Wharton eyed him dispassionately.

"I assumed because Mrs. Nakajima and her daughter were Japanese and traveling alone that they had to be die woman and child seen going through the departure gate at Heathrow. After BA came up with these people, I just didn't check the other airlines. They must have taken some other flight. They could have gone anywhere—any damned place in the world." Mad with himself for being so obtuse, he ended by thumping his fist down so hard on Officer Wharton's desk that paper clips jumped.

Three thousand five hundred miles on the Concorde chasing the wrong people. What a pea-brain! "Listen," he said to Wharton, "it may be too late, but I want to contact Terminal Three at Heathrow. I want to fax every airline to check their passenger lists for a Japanese woman traveling alone with a child sometime after one P.M. today. Could you arrange that for me?" Sensing that die request was too stark, he added, "Arthur?"

"You want me to authorize those faxes?" Wharton's expression didn't look promising.

"You have the facilities here," Diamond told him frankly.

"But you want me to handle this?"

"Exactly. If my name is given, there's so much to explain. If the request comes from U.S. Immigration, they'll act on it promptly. No explanation needed. Speed is the key here."

"Checking passenger lists? You've got to be joking, man."

"They're computerized," Diamond pointed out. He'd not often thought of modern technology as an ally, but he had no scruples in this emergency. "It's just a matter of tapping a few keys."

Wharton rubbed the side of his face.

"Listen," Diamond steamed on, "while you're doing this for me, I'll go back to Mrs. Nakajima and make your apologies. Fair enough?"

It wasn't fair, and he knew it. Wharton knew it, too, but the urgency in the way it was put to him was compelling. "You'd better write down the message you want me to send," he said with a sigh.

The crucial reply from London came in forty minutes later. By mat stage of the exercise, Officer Wharton had been thoroughly briefed about the quest to find Naomi and now he identified himself totally with the challenge. "Hey, man, this is it" He held up the fax he had just taken from the machine. "You want some good news? She's here after all!"

Diamond was galvanized. "Here? In New York, you mean?"

"Right on. They flew in this afternoon on a United flight A Japanese woman and a kid."

"Brilliant! When did they land?"

"Seventeen-twenty. About an hour ago."

"An
hourl"
Diamond's elation withered and died. "By now they must have cleared customs and left the airport."

But Wharton gave a reassuring grin. "Not this airport. Takes a while to get through Immigration in JFK. The United flight?" He looked at his watch. "I figure they
could
be as far as the customs hall by now, but I wouldn't bet on it"

Diamond was on his feet. "Which way?"

"Hold on, Peter," Wharton told him. "You're in serious danger of doing yourself an injury. We can check from here." He pointed upwards to a set of eight television monitors mounted on the ceiling. "Video surveillance. See if you can spot your people. I'm going to see if I can raise the crew of that flight."

Cameras were in positions where they could pan slowly over the entire queue snaking around the system of barriers towards the kiosks where their passports were examined and stamped. Diamond studied each screen keenly, looking for a child. Some were tantalizingly half obscured by adults.

Wharton was busy on the phone. "I've spoken to the chief steward on the United flight," he presently informed Diamond. "There's no question they were on board. He remembers Naomi in the red corduroy, and the woman in the gray Rohan jacket."

"That's wonderful, but where are they now, I'd like to know," said Diamond. "I can't see them in the queue."

"You won't. Seems the United flight has cleared Immigration. Take a look at the baggage claim hall—the monitors to your right. They should be in mere somewhere. I'm trying to establish which of our officers dealt with them."

He would rather have been in the baggage hall himself instead of staring at the gray screens. The figures grouped by the baggage carousel looked about as remote and unfocused as the pictures of the first moon landing. True, he could just about make out enough to distinguish one individual from another.

"If you think you spot them, we have a zoom facility," Wharton explained, taking the phone away from his ear for a moment "We can take a closer look."

"Thanks." But he hadn't spotted them, and the possible explanations were depressingly simple to supply. They may have collected their luggage and gone. Or the woman may have owned a U.S. passport, in which case they would have passed through at least half an hour ago. Or they'd carried everything as hand luggage.

Then Wharton started talking earnestly on the phone. He told Diamond, "Okay, they just passed through Immigration. The woman's name is Tanaka—get that?—Mrs. Minori Tanaka, Japanese passport holder. The kid is traveling on her passport, name of Emi."

"Amy?"

Wharton spelled it. "Mrs. Tanaka put down the Sheraton, Park Avenue, as her address. We can check with the hotel whether they have a reservation."

Diamond's eyes hadn't left the monitors and a moment later he was rewarded by the image of two grainy figures of a woman and small girl approaching the carousel with a cart. The child appeared to have Naomi's fringe and black hair.

He pointed. "That one. Second from the end. The child." Wharton reached for a remote control and pressed a button to operate the zoom. The child's face increased in size until it filled the screen, placid in expression, gazing nowhere in particular, as if preoccupied in thought.

Naomi, without question.

"Let me see the woman with her," Diamond requested.

"In close-up?"

The screen blurred momentarily, then he had his first sight of Minori Tanaka, a keen-eyed, intelligent face with prominent cheekbones and a small nose. The mouth, defined with an intense lipstick, was wider than usual in a Japanese, giving a suggestion of waywardness, or sexiness, according to interpretation. She was probably in her thirties.

"Attractive," was Arthur Wharton's opinion.

Unexpectedly, the face slid out of shot.

"Can you pull back?" Diamond asked, and as the camera was being adjusted to give the longer view, even before it was complete, he saw that the woman was stooping over the carousel. "Christ, she's collecting her suitcase! She'll be gone."

Watching the screen, they had been lulled into a near- disastrous passivity. In seconds, Mrs. Tanaka could wheel her cart through customs to the cab area and be driven away with Naomi.

"How do we get to them?" Diamond demanded.