“I don’t know for sure. It was the same two cars behind me all the way across town.”
“Japanese?”
“I think so.”
“Are they here at the hotel?”
“I don’t know. I doubled back on the subway, then walked a half-dozen blocks before I caught a cab here. But I’m no spy.”
Shirley glanced across the room. Two other men had come in behind him, but neither of them seemed suspicious. He kept talking.
“It sounds as if you did all right. But the next time I’ll want you to abort the meeting if you think you’re being watched. I’ll explain how to make the proper signal.”
Dunee seemed concerned, but so far as Shirley could tell the man was holding together.
It was a good sign this early into the recruitment-although Dunee had come to him, not the other way around.
The Belgian worked for a consortium of seven Japanese companies that did extensive business in the West. His job was to act as liaison between them and banks in Europe and the U.S. In actuality he claimed to work for the Banque Du Credit Belgique as an undercover man here in Tokyo. His real employers, he claimed, were concerned that these Japanese companies were planning a series of currency manipulation raids on the West-a theory that just now was getting a lot of play in Washington.
He was a spy after all, but of a different type than Shirley.
They had arranged to meet this evening so that Dunee could hand over a series of documents that outlined the consortium’s plans concerning eighteen U.S. savings and loan institutions. He said he’d not told his Japanese or his Belgian employers about his contact with the Americans, and he had refused up to this point to tell Shirley what he wanted in exchange. But that would come tonight, at or just before the handover.
What would happen afterwards remained to be seen so far as Shirley was concerned.
Japan was his home now, and he wasn’t about to do anything anti-Japanese unless the Belgian’s charges were very serious, and completely substantiated. Shirley was not a traitor, merely cautious.
The waiter returned with the saki, and Shirley paid him. “You leave first,” he told Dunee. “I’ll be one minute behind you.”
“Where shall I go?”
“Out front. If it looks clear we’ll get a cab together.”
“How will you know?”
“Leave that to me,” Shirley said, and after a hesitation Dunee closed his attache case, and left without looking back.
Shirley remained seated, sipping his rice wine. No one had seemed particularly interested in them, or in Dunee’s departure. In all likelihood the Belgian had managed to lose his tail, if there’d even been one in the first place.
After one minute, Shirley followed the man outside. Two taxis were waiting in the long driveway. One of the drivers had gotten out and was speaking with the doorman and a bellman. Just ahead of the first cab, two workmen in white coveralls, hard hats on their heads and paper air filters covering their faces, were unloading five-gallon paint cans from the back of a small, open truck. No one else was around at that moment, except for Dunee, who stood to one side a few yards from the lead cab. Shirley went down to him.
“Let’s go.”
“It’s them, I think,” Dunee said excitedly. “Below, on the street.”
Shirley stepped around the Belgian to get a better look, and he stupidly tripped over the man’s feet and went down heavily, a sharp pain stabbing at his right ankle.
For a dazed moment or two he didn’t understand what had happened, except that he’d probably broken his leg. He looked up as Dunee walked back into the hotel, and a second later he was completely doused from behind with something very cold and wet.
Gasoline, the horrifying thought crystalized in his brain. Burned like acid.
He turned around in time to see one of the men from the open truck lighting a book of matches.
“No!” Shirley shouted at the same moment the workman tossed the burning matches.
“No!”
The gasoline and fumes ignited instantly with an explosive thump. Shirley reflexively took a deep breath as the first massive pain struck him, drawing burning fumes deeply into his lungs. Mercifully a red haze began to blot out his vision, his hearing and his other senses, and his last thought was that he was too ridiculously young to be dying.
Chapter 13
CIA operations had been moved to the U.S. Consulate until a new embassy could be built a couple of blocks away on the Avenue Gabriel. Just around the corner from the Tuileries Gardens, the building was old and very French with slow iron cage elevators, creaking wooden floors and terrible plumbing.
It was past lunch by the time McGarvey arrived with Tom Lynch, and they went immediately up to a small conference room on the fourth floor. The Station had been on emergency footing all morning because of the air crash, and its effects could be seen on the faces of everyone they met. This was the second serious attack on the CIA’s French operation in seven months.
The French were starting to ask some tough questions, for which there were no answers that were satisfactory to either side. It was a common understanding that the CIA operated within the country, as did the SDECE-the French secret service-in the U.S.
But as long as neither side attracted too much attention to itself, the status quo could be maintained.
McGarvey, however, was a common denominator between this attack and the one that had destroyed the embassy seven months ago. A lot of French citizens had died in each event, and now the Surete National, which headed the French Police, had taken notice.
“It’s only a matter of time before the SDECE takes an interest in you… an official interest,” Lynch told him on the way back from the airport. The chief of station was a slender man with light brown hair and delicate, almost English features. He’d been with the Company for nearly ten years, and was one of the rising stars. He was a corporate man; a team player.
“It had nothing to do with me, Tom, and you know it,” McGarvey said. “They were after your people.”
“Possibly. But why the hell did you call airport security about them?”
“Because everytime I look over my shoulder it seems like one of your people is back there. And I’m starting to get tired of it.”
“Then go back home, McGarvey. Nobody wants you over here. You make people nervous.
You make me nervous.”
“As soon as the French are done with me, I’ll leave Paris.”
“Good,” Lynch had said, and they’d driven the rest of the way back to the city in silence.
McGarvey went to the windows which overlooked a courtyard. Two women were seated on a bench, the remains of a late lunch spread out beside them. He and Marta had often brownbagged it in the parks of Lausanne. It was an American custom she’d found particularly charming.
“Wait here,” Lynch said. “I’ll be back in a minute and we can get started with your debriefing.”
McGarvey didn’t bother to reply, staying instead with his thoughts about Marta. There was no reason for her or the others aboard 145 to have been killed. And there especially was no reason for an ex-STASI hitman to have committed such an act of terrorism.
But it had happened, and like the crash a few years ago at Lockerbie, the official investigation might drag on for a very long time before producing any results. Most likely the real reason for the attack would never be known for sure, because any official investigation was of necessity ponderous, allowing the terrorists ample time to sidestep any move made against them.
It was one of the reasons he’d not told anyone about Boorsch. The French had his body. If they identified
