has got friends everywhere.”
Carrara nodded. “You think we can get a message to McGarvey via this intruder?”
“It’s worth a try.”
“Do it,” Carrara said, and he removed his hand from the telephone mouthpiece. “Tell the general I want to see him immediately.” He smiled grimly. “No, tell him.”
To the east the sky seemed to be getting brighter with the false dawn as McGarvey sat smoking a cigarette by the window. Behind him, Kelley Fuller rolled over on her tatami mat and sighed. They’d both spent another restless night.
It was the confinement, he thought. But just now Tokyo was a dangerous city for them.
Until Rencke could supply him with a name they could only stumble around in the dark.
Sooner or later they would end up like Shirley and Mowry. There’d be no defense against such an attack.
“What is it?” Kelley asked softly from the darkness.
“I’m waiting for my call to go through.”
“To your friend?”
“Yes. Can’t you sleep?” McGarvey turned from the window. Kelley was sitting up. She wore one of his shirts as a nightgown. It was very big on her, and made her look even smaller and more vulnerable than she was.
“How long must we wait?” she asked.
“Until we get some answers…?
“Which could be never!”
“There are a lot of powerful people working on this,” McGarvey said patiently. They’d gone over this several times already. “Sooner or later at least some of the answers will be forced. It’s inevitable.”
“In the meantime we hide and do absolutely nothing. I’m going crazy.”
“If you want to go home I’ll arrange it for you,” McGarvey said. When the time came he would need her as a guide through Tokyo’s labyrinths. But if she folded she would be less than useless.
“You didn’t see him on fire in front of the Roppongi Prince,” she said softly. “You didn’t hear his screams, his pleas for someone to help him.” She hesitated. “You didn’t… smell the odor of burning flesh.”
The telephone rang, and McGarvey stubbed out his cigarette and picked it up. “Yes?”
“I have your party on the line, sir,” the operator said.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s me, anything new?”
“Let me tell you, I’m either going to have to get out soon or 111 be forced into setting Ralph loose on them.”
“Are they on to you?”
“Looks that way. Are you keeping your socks dry?”
“Trying to,” McGarvey said. “Have you anything for me? A name?”
“No names yet, but apparently you’re in the right place. Seems like the local cops found a pair of highly unusual and very sophisticated communications devices that match the one the cops at Orly came up with.”
“Are the Japanese authorities cooperating with us now?”
“I’m not clear on that point, but hang on to your suspenders. Looks like Phil or somebody over there has put out a call for you. They want, in a most urgent manner, for you to make immediate contact.”
“Put out the call how?”
“Well, that’s just it, you see. They know that someone is dallying in their valley, and the smart buggers figure it’s your doing. Get a message to the intruder and ergo, the message is got to you.”
A Tokyo police van passed on the street below and disappeared around the corner at the end of the block.
“They’re making the connection across the river,” Rencke was saying. “And it’s got them shakin’ in their boots.”
“But it’s not the government over here?”
“I’m getting no indications. But whoever it is has got to be a well-heeled dude.
And just now there’s oodles if not googols of them.”
Another police van pulled up at the end of the block. “Hold on a second,” he told Rencke, and he motioned for Kelley to get up. “Get dressed, we’re leaving,” he whispered urgently, and he turned back to the phone.
“Mac?” Rencke asked. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” McGarvey said. “But listen, you may be going about this from the wrong direction.
Granted it may have to be a wealthy Japanese, but it’s more than that. We’re looking for a wealthy man or group, who would have a motive to assemble the parts for such a device.”
Rencke sucked his breath. “Revenge,” he said.
“I’ll call you soon,” McGarvey said, and he hung up.
The first police van returned and stopped at the opposite end of the street. Two police cars passed it and slowly approached the hotel.
“It’s the police,” McGarvey said to Kelley, who was hurriedly dressing in slacks and a sweatshirt.
“They’re looking for us,” she said.
McGarvey slipped on his shoes and threw his things into his overnight bag. Under no circumstances did he want to get into a gun battle with the legitimate police.
But there was no way of telling for certain who was legitimate and who wasn’t until after the fact.
A minute later he and Kelley stepped out into the narrow corridor. Their room was on the fourth floor, and already they could hear some sort of a commotion going on in the lobby.
“We’ll go out the back, so long as they haven’t blocked the alley,” McGarvey said as he led the way to the fire escape he’d discovered a half hour after they’d checked in.
Nothing moved below in the dark, crowded alley. During the day the narrow, winding pathway was crammed with tiny shops, stalls and vendors selling everything from American video tapes to bolts of silk, electronic games, potency potions and powders, live eels and traditional kimonos. At this hour, the permanent shops were tightly shuttered, and the vendors had taken their stalls away.
They reached the alley, and hurried off into the darker shadows as four uniformed police officers showed up from the opposite way and rushed to the back of the hotel.
Well clear of the hotel, they ducked into a subway station and took the escalator down. The first trickle of workers on the way to their jobs was beginning. Within an hour the city’s entire mass transit system would be mobbed.
“Did your friend come up with something yet?” Kelley asked on the way down.
“He’s close. We’re going to need to stay hidden for a little while longer, though.
Is there someplace?”
Kelley looked up at him, the expression in her eyes hard to read. She was frightened, that was reasonably clear, but she was also determined. He had no idea what motivated her.
“The trouble is that you’re a foreigner. You stick out.”
“There must be tens of thousands of Westerners in Tokyo at any given moment.”
“The police are very efficient.”
“Then we’ll have to get out of the city for a day or so.”
Kelley was shaking her head. “It’s not necessary,” she said. “We will go into Shinjuku’s Kabukicho.”
“What is that?”
“A district of the city where anything might happen, for a price.”
“Is there a place there we can hide?”
“Yes,” Kelley replied, smiling faintly. “Several places where no questions will be asked of anyone, providing the money lasts.” She smiled again. “They are called ‘love hotels.’ You will see.”
Chapter 37
Elizabeth McGarvey held her mother’s hands in hers. There was some traffic on the road, and she knew that
