Murphy said nothing, allowing the President to come to the same conclusions he’d come to earlier.
“If this group of ex-STASI officers is the same group who went after the engineers at ModTec, and from what you’re telling me it looks as if that’s the case, and if they’re being funded by the Japanese, possibly the government …?
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but there’s no evidence to that effect.” “If that’s the case, Roland, then it could mean that the Japanese are in the market for nuclear weapons technology.”
Murphy sighed deeply and sat back. “I simply don’t know.”
The President had another thought. It was clear from his expression that he was still on the same path Murphy had gone down.
“Could this walkie-talkie the French found have been designed and manufactured by a Japanese company?”
“It’s possible.”
“Is it likely?” the President pressed.
“I can’t answer that, sir,” Murphy said. There was more to come.
The President’s eyes narrowed. “What was Jim Shirley involved with when he was assassinated in Tokyo?”
“He was meeting with a man who claimed to be a Belgian banking adviser to a consortium of businesses in Japan. But he was an imposter, and there is no such consortium.”
“Coincidence?”
“On the surface one would have to say no. But only on the surface. There is absolutely no solid connection between Japan and this STASI group. Nor has there been the slightest hint that the Japanese, that anyone in Japan, has the slightest interest in nuclear weapons technology.”
“Give me a reading on this, Roland,” the President said.
Murphy shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I can’t do that.”
“What is being done?”
“We’re investigating ModTec to see if anyone else has been approached, and to see if the technology has already changed hands. We’re also looking into the French assertion that the STASI accounts exist and that they’ve received Japanese currency payments.”
“And in Japan?”
“We’re investigating Jim Shirley’s murder, of course. But beyond that… I’ll need your authorization. Considering the pending trade agreement between our countries, if it were to come out that the CIA is spying against Japan it would go badly.”
“You have my authorization, Roland,” the President said. He sat forward. “Let me make myself perfectly clear. You are to take this investigation to its logical conclusion.
No matter what resources you have to use to do it, and no matter which nation you’re led to scrutinize.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I want results, Roland. Soon.”
Carrara came up as soon as Murphy returned from the White House. The DDO has harried.
He’d been on the job, or at least in the building, for more than seventy-two hours.
Ever since 145 had been shot down.
“We’ve got the green light to step up the investigation in Tokyo,” Murphy said.
“How far can we go?” Carrara asked.
“All the way, Phil. You’ve got carte blanche on this one.”
“If we’re caught there’ll be a lot of political trouble, not only from the Japanese, but from the Swiss as well.”
“This is your operation…? Murphy said, but Carrara interrupted, which in itself was a mark of his tiredness.
“Yes, it is, sir. But I just wanted to make sure that everyone understands exactly what we’re up against. Lynch thinks that the Action Service is playing us both ends against the middle, and although Kelley Fuller is going back over, she’s going to be hard to control.”
Murphy was impatient.
“What I’m getting at, Mr. Director, is that so far as I see it, either operation could blow up in our faces.”
“We’ll take the risk,” Murphy said. “Now, where the hell is McGarvey? Is he here in Washington or isn’t he?”
“He came through Dulles last night, but then he disappeared.”
“Find him,” the DCI ordered.
“We’re watching his ex-wife’s house. He’ll show up there sooner or later.”
“Good. The minute he does, I want him up here.”
Chapter 20
Otto Rencke thought in colors. He had been doing so for seven years, ever since he’d stumbled across a series of tensor calculus transformations concerning bubble memories that he could not visualize.
He’d hit on the notion of thinking of his calculations in a real-world fashion, coming up at length with the question of how to explain color to a person who’d been born blind.
With mathematics, of course. And he’d devised the system, which turned out to be his bubble memory transformations. If it worked in one direction, there was no reason to think it couldn’t work in the other.
Lavender, for example, was among the simplest of all. In his mind’s eye he could visualize an entire multidimensional array of complex calculations that described a many-tiered and interlocking series of traps leading into the CIA’s computer system.
Someone had found and negated his old screen door program, which would have allowed him fairly easy access, replacing it with a complex system of fail-safes. Enter the program from the outside, or in an improper manner, and the incoming circuit would be seized, traced to its source, and an alarm automatically issued … all without the intruder knowing he’d been discovered.
A few minutes after ten in the morning, Rencke suddenly smiled. On his main monitor, which glowed lavender, the CIA’s logo appeared in the upper left hand corner, beneath which the agency’s computer asked him:
WELCOME TO ARCHIVES DO YOU WISH TO SEE A MENU?
He jumped up and went into the kitchen where a half-dozen cats swarmed around him, meowing insistently. “Yes, my little darlings, I hear you,” he cried. “Patience.
The color is lavender and you dears must have patience.”
Opening several cans of cat food and distributing them around the kitchen floor, he took a nearly full half- gallon carton of skim milk back into the living room, drinking from it as he went, milk spilling down his front and soaking his sweatshirt.
But he didn’t give a damn.
“The sonsabitches thought they could fuck me,” he shouted, dancing around the lavender screen. “But they were wrong. Hoo, boy, they were wrong!”
McGarvey paid off his cabby and stood for a moment or two at the end of the long driveway leading up to his ex-wife’s house in Chevy Chase. The country club was across the street, and in the distance he heard someone shout: “Fore!”
The house was an expensive two-story colonial set well back on a half acre of manicured lawn. A half-dozen white pillars supported a broad overhang protecting a long front veranda.
Whatever Kathleen was or was not, he thought, starting up the walk, she was a classy woman. They’d been divorced for eight years now, after a twelve-year marriage, and it was often difficult for McGarvey to remember clearly what their life together had been like, but it had been stylish.
