God, tell us.”
Armonde was just coming across the driveway from the Fine Arts Building as the Peugeot headed down to the driveway. Elizabeth looked out at him, and he half-raised his hand, startled, as they passed.
“Is it serious?” Kathleen was asking the policewoman and her driver. “Has he been injured?”
Liese glanced back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McGarvey, but I don’t have any further information.
I was simply ordered to pick up your daughter.”
“Then someone must be trying to reach me in Washington.”
“I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”
Elizabeth was having a hard time keeping her thoughts straight. She kept envisioning her father lying on the floor or on the ground somewhere, blood pouring from the back of his head. She had the distinct feeling that she was seeing him moments before his death. Something very dreadful had happened, and she felt so terribly helpless, ineffective, useless.
At the end of the driveway, they turned left toward the Bern-Lausanne highway, and their taciturn driver sped up, the night suddenly and ominously dark.
“What about my car?” Kathleen asked. “It’s a rental from the Bern airport.”
“We’ll have someone pick it up, ma’am,” Liese said.
“My luggage is in the trunk.”
“Yes, ma’am, we’ll take care of that as well.”
Last year when he’d come home briefly, Elizabeth had thought he’d looked tired. Completely worn out, and above all lonely… alone.
“Where exactly is it we’re going?” Kathleen asked. “Police Headquarters in Bern?
A hospital? The American consulate?”
Liese didn’t answer, and Elizabeth looked up out of her thoughts, then looked at her mother who was clearly becoming alarmed.
“May I see your identification again?” Kathleen asked.
Liese reached for something on the seat next to her, and when she turned around she was holding a gun in her hand. She cocked the hammer. “No more questions.”
“You’re kidnapping us,” Kathleen said. “My, God, you’re actually kidnapping us.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Then my father hasn’t been hurt?” Elizabeth asked, relief suddenly washing over her.
“Not yet,” Liese said. “But you’ll be there when it happens.” She laughed.
Elizabeth grinned. “I’ll be there, all right,” she said. “But you’ve got to know that you fucked up this time.”
Liese looked at her, surprised. “Yes?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said confidently. “My father is going to tear you a new asshole.”
Chapter 36
It was only two-thirty in the afternoon, but Carrara had been going steadily for the past four days and he was seriously considering throwing in the towel and going home for some much-needed rest.
There’d been nothing out of Tokyo since yesterday. McGarvey and Kelley had simply disappeared, and Tokyo Station was completely closed down.
His secretary buzzed him. “Sargent Anders from Technical Services is here. He says it’s urgent.”
“All right, I’ll see him.”
Moments later the Technical Services director came in. He seemed out of breath, and extremely agitated. “We’ve just got a break in this operation, but you’re not going to like it.”
Carrara motioned for him to take a chair. “Are you talking about Tokyo?”
“Yes, and Switzerland.”
Something clutched at Carrara’s gut. “You’ve made a bridge?”
“The Golden Gate,” Anders said, his eyes shining. “Have we had any word from McGarvey or Kelley Fuller?”
“Nothing yet. But what have you got?”
“Remember the encrypted burst-transmission walkie-talkie the French found at Orly?
The one Boorsch had used?”
Carrara nodded. “Have we got an ID on the manufacturer?”
“Depending on your point of view something even better. A duplicate was found by the Tokyo Police in a red Mercedes parked near the Imperial Palace Outer Gardens.”
“The red Mercedes from the attack on Mowry?”
Anders nodded. “And a third duplicate, charred but recognizable, was found in the burned-out remains of the bogus Tokyo Police van in front of the safehouse.”
The implications were overwhelming. Carrara sat back wearily in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment. If the Japanese were supplying Spranger’s group of ex-STASI thugs with advanced communications equipment, and if K-l were after nuclear weapons technology, what was there to look forward to?
“A DNA trace from what we found in the truck used in Shirley’s assassination matched with one of the bodies in the Outer Gardens. Same people killed Shirley and Mowry and my two people over there.”
“And presumably it was the same people who shot down the Airbus… or ordered it destroyed.”
“Yes, sir,” Anders said. “It looks like the Japanese are in this up to their ears.”
“It’s not the government.”
Anders shrugged. “That’s not for me to say. But whoever it is-a political or military faction, a corporation or an individual-they’ve got big bucks. This sort of thing doesn’t come cheap.”
“Nor does capitalizing on the technology Spranger and his people are stealing for them.”
“I’m not sure it’s that complicated,” the Technical Services director said. He took off his glasses and polished the lenses with his handkerchief.
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t know yet if that’s what K-l was after in Switzerland.”
“The triggers…? Carrara objected, but Anders held him off.
“Excuse me, sir, but the impression I get is that they weren’t necessarily after the technology so much as they were trying to buy the specific item. They wanted the actual working triggers. The devices themselves.”
“Same thing.”
“I don’t think so. If they were after the technology as such, then I would tend to believe that the Japanese, or someone in Japan, wanted to learn how to build nuclear weapons.”
“The Japanese are developing a credible rocket program. They’d have the delivery system.”
“Nasty thought, isn’t it?” Anders said. “But if someone over there was simply interested in purchasing the triggers and an initiator and seventy or eighty pounds of plutonium, then I’d say their aim was to build an actual weapon.”
Carrara sat back. “Terrorists.”
“They didn’t hesitate to shoot down that Airbus loaded with innocent people,” Anders said.
“No. The question is, how far along are they? How close have they come to gathering everything they need to make such a device?”
“And once they’ve got the bomb, what’s the target?”
“The answers are in Tokyo,” Carrara said, picking up his telephone. “I don’t care what it takes, Sargent, but we must find McGarvey. Immediately.”
“I’ve got an idea on that score as well,” Anders said.
“Just a minute,” Carrara said to his secretary on the phone, and he put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Go on.”
“We think someone is hacking in our computers. And considering the nature of the files the intruder has been trying to pry open, we think the hacker may be working for McGarvey.” Ander smiled ruefully. “The son of a bitch
