moment we spot them we shoot.”
“What about the car?”
“We’ll leave it,” Tanaka said, hauling the big car around the corner onto Hibaya-dori Avenue. He pulled up in front of the east gate into the Imperial Palace’s Outer Garden.
“Take this entrance,” he told Heidinora. “Igarshi and I will come from the south side and drive them toward you.”
“Very well,” Heidinora growled, and he got out of the car and entered the garden.
Police units seemed to be converging from all over the city on the scene of the killings.
Violent crime was relatively unknown in Tokyo, and when it occurred the police were quick to respond. McGarvey led a shaken Kelley Fuller across Harumi-dori Avenue into the Imperial Palace’s Outer Garden. Most of the joggers were already gone on their circuit of the palace grounds, but a few stood at the outer portal looking to where black smoke rose into the morning sky.
“They weren’t the police,” Kelley said.
“You’re right, but there’s nothing we can do about it for the moment,” McGarvey said.
He pulled up short just within the garden and studied the approaches behind them.
The Mercedes would be back. Today’s attack had been well planned and coordinated.
Whoever they were, they would not want to leave any loose ends dangling.
“I tried to warn Mowry, but his secretary told me that he’d already left. And your hotel said you hadn’t checked in yet.”
“Where were you going?”
“I was trying to lead them away. But God, I didn’t know this would happen.” She was distraught, and clearly on the verge of breaking down.
“All right, listen to me. They saw which way we headed, and they’re probably going to come back for us. Have you got someplace to go? Someplace where you can hide at least for the rest of the morning?”
“I had an apartment, but I’m not going there now,” she said. “Maybe the embassy.”
“No,” McGarvey said. “The moment the authorities found out you were there they’d demand that you be turned over to them. You’re a material witness to at least one killing.”
“So are you,” she said.
“That’s right. But so long as we make no contact with the embassy the police won’t know who we are.”
“That’s just great,” Kelley said bleakly. “If we run for safety the Japanese police will take us. If we stay on the streets, the maniacs who killed Shirley and Mowry will have us.”
“I want you to go over to my hotel and wait for me in the coffee shop, or the lobby.
Anyplace that’s public, where there are a lot of people.”
Kelley’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? You mean right now?”
“Yes. Take a cab.”
“What about you…?” She looked closely at him. “You’re going to wait here for them?”
“One of them is already dead, and I may have wounded the second. Which leaves two more, possibly three. I’d like to even the odds a bit, and then have a little chat with whoever is left.”
“You’re crazy.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“You saw what they did to Mowry. God, they did the same thing to Shirley.”
The red Mercedes slid to a halt a hundred feet away on Harumi-dori Avenue. McGarvey spotted it out of the corner of his eye and pulled Kelley back out of sight behind the gate as a slightly built man got out of the back and started up the broad pedestrian walkway. He was limping. The car left immediately, but not before McGarvey saw that the driver was now the sole occupant.
“He’s the one from the van,” Kelley said. “At least I think so. But he was wearing a uniform then.”
“It’s the same one,” McGarvey said. “But one of them is missing. He’s probably somewhere behind us, and this one means to drive us into him.”
Kelley looked wildly from the approaching figure, back down the treelined concourse that led into the garden. Already the park was beginning to fill up. “We have no idea what he looks like.”
McGarvey had gotten a vague impression of a bulky man in the front passenger seat, but he had not gotten a clear look. “No, but he shouldn’t be so hard to spot once this one tells me what he looks like.”
The driver of the Mercedes would probably abandon the car and come in from the west, boxing them in, leaving them only one direction to run. The killers were taking a big risk of being spotted by the police, which meant they considered McGarvey and Kelley very important.
“We can let him pass and duck out behind him,” Kelley said.
The police imposter was less than fifty feet away, his right hand stuffed into the light brown jacket he wore now. Passers by didn’t look directly at him; the Japanese were too polite to stare. But it was clear that his presence, blood on one leg of his trousers, was causing a stir. It would be only a matter of a few minutes before the alarm was sounded and the police showed up.
“As soon as he comes through I want you to do just that,” McGarvey said. “Grab a cab and get out of here.”
“I don’t want to leave you here like this, not with three-to-one odds,” she argued, and McGarvey looked at her with a new respect. She was frightened half out of her mind, but she was willing to stay and help.
“Are you armed?”
“No.”
“Then go to the hotel and wait for me there.”
The killer was nearing the gate, and McGarvey pulled Kelley farther back behind the portal, so that they were completely hidden for the moment.
“What if you don’t show up?” she whispered urgently.
McGarvey took out his pistol and switched the safety off. This was the last of the ammunition he had with him. But he was going to avoid at all costs any kind of a shootout here in a public park.
“If I’m not back by noon, make contact with Phil Carrara, he’ll know what to do,”
McGarvey said. “Now get ready to go.”
“This is stupid,” she whispered in desperation.
“You can say that again,” McGarvey agreed.
The man came through the gate, and as soon as he was past, McGarvey stepped out from around the portal and fell in behind him. Kelley darted around the corner and out the gate.
“I don’t want to kill you, but I will unless you do exactly as I say,” McGarvey said in a conversational tone.
Igarshi practically jumped out of his skin. His step faltered and he started to withdraw his hand from his pocket.
“I killed your friend back there, I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in your spine,” McGarvey warned.
“Who are you? What do you want here?” Igarshi demanded, his English very bad but understandable.
“My questions,” McGarvey said. “But first I want to know who hired you to kill Shirley and Mowry…?
Igarshi was incredibly fast. With his right elbow he knocked McGarvey’s gun hand aside, and then spun around, smashing three well-aimed blows into McGarvey’s chest and throat within the space of barely one second.
On instinct alone, McGarvey was just able to fall back, sidestepping the killer’s next blows, and smash the butt of his pistol into the back of the man’s neck. Igarshi went down with a grunt.
Several people stopped and turned to see what the commotion was all about, and McGarvey stepped back, bringing up his gun as the Mercedes driver came down the broad path on the left in a dead run.
Tanaka fired three shots, one of them hitting a bystander, one smacking into a tree and the third plucking at McGarvey’s sleeve.
McGarvey turned sideways to present less of himself as a target, and squeezed off two measured shots, both hitting the oncoming Japanese in the chest, driving him to his knees and then down.
A woman was screaming and another woman was down on her knees beside the bystander who’d been shot, wailing and wringing her hands.
McGarvey hauled the dazed Igarshi over on his back. “Who hired you to kill Shirley and Mowry?” he
