behind her again.
So far as he was able to tell, no one was watching her. It had been a few years since he’d been in the field, but some skills were never lost.
He pulled over to the curb before the corner, reached across and opened the passenger door as she was passing. “It’s me,” he called out.
She came immediately over to the car, and got in. “I saw you pass the first time,” she said.
Carrara pulled away, and turned the corner on W Street toward the hospital. “Do you think you were spotted in Tokyo?” he asked.
“It was horrible, Phil. He never had a chance. By the time he knew what was happening it was too late.”
“Were you spotted?”
“If they were watching him they had to know we were seeing each other,” she said.
She was very frightened. It was obvious by the way she held herself and by the shakiness in her voice.
“They were pros, Kelley. If they’d thought you were significant, they would have killed you before you had a chance to run.”
“What are you telling me, Phil?”
“We want you to go back to Tokyo, to your job at the embassy.”
Kelley reared back, a horrified expression coming to her face.
“The problem is not going to go away,” Carrara said. “It was a warning to us, and one that’ll probably be repeated. He was playing on their turf, and evidently he got out of hand.”
“Me next.”
“Not you. But there’s a good chance they’ll go after Ed, if they believe he was involved with Shirley’s… extracurricular activities.” Edward Mowry had been the assistant chief of Tokyo Station. For the moment he was acting COS, his cover now the same as Shirley’s had been, as special economic affairs adviser to the ambassador.
“Then we have to warn him.”
“We’d lose everything we worked for, Kelley. Think it out.” Carrara had fought the entire project, but it had the personal blessing of the entire seventh floor: Murphy, Danielle and Ryan-the unholy trinity.
“He’s a sitting duck,” Kelley cried in anguish.
“I sent a team over to watch out for him, but they’re going to stick out like sore thumbs.”
“What can I do?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open, just as you have been doing. You’re still the unknown quantity.”
Kelley looked at him with disgust. “I can’t believe you’re saying that to me. Now, of all times.”
Carrara concentrated on his driving for the moment. No one in operations had liked what they’d sent Kelley to do. Some of them had daughters nearly her age. But she had been recruited for the project without much persuasion. It was being called PLUTUS… after the god of wealth, and greed.
“I want you to keep your eyes and ears open, just as you have been doing.”
“You want me to go to bed with Mowry to find out if he’s been bought by the Japanese,” she shouted.
“I want you to watch him.”
“I didn’t see anything that would have helped Jim.”
“Yes you did, we just didn’t listen. You spotted Dunee and warned us, but we took too long to find out that the real Armand Dunee was not the man who made contact with Jim.”
Kelley closed her eyes. “At first I thought it would be interesting,” she said. “Necessary.
But I’m in over my head here.”
“We all are.”
She reopened her eyes. “It’s only money, Phil. We’re only talking about balancing foreign trade, or buying out Rockefeller Center, or MCA, or Disney World. Nothing earth-shattering.”
“That’s what we were talking about. But now we’re discussing murder. A horribly brutal murder, with the possibility that there’s more to come.”
“Not me,” Kelley cried.
“We want you to go back to Tokyo, back to your work with the USIA. If you spot something-anything, no matter what it is-that looks wrong, let us know immediately.”
“And then what?”
“We’ll pull you out.”
“What if I’m the target?”
“You won’t be.”
“What if I am?” Kelley insisted, her voice rising with anger.
“Then we’d have to protect you…?
“Like you protected Jim Shirley,” she said disparagingly.
“If they want to kill you, they won’t stop trying simply because you return to Hawaii, or here to us,” Carrara said harshly, hating himself for what he was doing to the woman. Yet he didn’t think that she was anyone’s prime target. Whoever was gunning for the Company’s Tokyo operation wouldn’t be interested in a USIA translator and sometime companion of the chief of station. They were after bigger fish than she.
Jim Shirley had been a good man, though over the past few years his loyalties had gotten slightly muddled. He didn’t deserve to die that way. And Carrara was going to do everything within his considerable power to catch his murderers.
Chapter 15
The lights of Monaco were brilliant against a black velvet backdrop as Ernst Spranger, a tall, ruggedly built, handsome man, pointed the bow of the powerful speedboat toward the ship just visible in silhouette on the horizon to the south. The night was gentle and warm, the sea almost flat calm.
Spranger was impeccably dressed in evening clothes, as was the beautiful woman seated beside him, indifferently humming the melody from the opera they’d just left. Like the others who’d come at Spranger’s command three years ago, Liese Egk had worked for the East German STASI as an assassin, a job at which she was an expert. She was a complete sociopath, totally without conscience. Combined with her intelligence, training and aristocratic good looks, she was lethal.
“I think I will miss Boorsch,” Spranger said, not bothering to raise his voice over the roar of the engines.
Liese was looking at him, a contemptuous expression forcing her full, sensuous lips into a pout. “He was a good shot with the Stinger, but he was an idiot. He would have caused us considerable trouble.”
Spranger couldn’t hear her voice, but he got most of what she’d said. They spoke in German, which was much easier to lip-read than English because of its regular pronunciations.
“Maybe you will cause us trouble in the end,” he told her, and she laughed.
“Then you better watch your back.” She glanced toward the ship on the horizon. “At least we’re not going out as failures.”
“No,” Spranger said to himself. Yet he still wasn’t clear in his mind exactly what had happened at Orly. The Airbus was down, everyone aboard dead, including Jean-Luc DuVerlie. But something had gone wrong at the last moment.
Bruno Lessing, who’d remained in front of the terminal for just such a contingency, reported that Boorsch had shown up in a big hurry, and moments later he’d been followed by a thickly built man dressed in what had appeared to be a British-cut tweed sportcoat.
Directly after both men had entered the terminal a French police helicopter had touched down, and Lessing had of necessity driven back into Paris.
The police were understandable. But who the hell was the man in the tweed jacket?
And why had they been summoned again, unless it was bad news? It was possible, he thought, that somehow British intelligence had gotten onto them, though it was unlikely unless the CIA had asked for help.
