Chapter 27
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. The Soviet Union, 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.”
