Chapter 44
A light drizzle fell from a deeply overcast sky as the Dassault helicopter touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was just dawn, and the terminal area had a deserted air, the lull before the day’s international flights began arriving and departing.
McGarvey and Littel had ridden up with Marquand and Belleau. For most of the three-hour flight no one had said much. Elizabeth and Kathleen and their kidnappers had simply disappeared, leaving behind no trace.
The alert had gone out to every airport, train station and bus depot in the Grenoble area, as well as the border crossings in all of France. Word had also been sent to every police district to check every hotel, inn or any other place of lodging for the two women and their captors.
“It will take time,” Marquand explained on the tarmac. Two cars were approaching, one of them from the U.S. Embassy at Littel’s behest. “But if they have left France we will learn of it, or if they are still here we will find them.”
“In the meantime?” McGarvey asked.
Marquand shrugged. “We wait, naturally. But what about you? Will you return to Tokyo now, or wait here?”
“They’re still in Europe.”
“Yes, and where is this?”
McGarvey looked into the Action Service colonel’s eyes. “I don’t know yet, but I will find them.”
“If they are in France, Monsieur, you will let me know before you do anything. Anything at all.”
The embassy car pulled up and Littel opened the rear door. “Mr. McGarvey.”
“I will insist on this,” Marquand said.
McGarvey nodded. “If they are in France I’ll call you.” He and Marquand shook hands.
“Thanks for your help, Colonel, but I think that Grenoble was just a diversion.”
“You know where they are?”
“Not yet.”
“You found something at the chalet. Something that has given you a clue as to their whereabouts. What was it?”
“They’re not in France,” McGarvey repeated. “The case is out of your jurisdiction.”
“I could have you detained for withholding information,” Marquand said in frustration.
Belleau stepped to one side, his right hand inside his jacket, ready for trouble.
“That wouldn’t help anyone,” McGarvey said, in a reasonable tone. He got into the car, and Littel scrambled in after him.
“I want to know,” Marquand called after them. “I’m on your side, McGarvey.”
“Get us out of here,” Littel told their driver, and they headed off leaving the two Frenchmen standing beside the helicopter. “That was a slick move. You really told them. Christ, that Marquand is a son of a bitch…?
“Shut up,” McGarvey said mildly, cutting Littel off in mid-sentence.
McGarvey reached into his jacket pocket and fingered Elizabeth’s diamond necklace.
The clasp was intact, and latched, which meant the necklace hadn’t been taken from her forcefully. She had unsnapped the clasp, lifted it from her neck and relatched the clasp.
He turned that thought over in his head for a little while. She’d been out of sight of her kidnappers for a few moments. She knew something; she’d figured it out, or seen something, or overheard them talking… whatever. But she’d come up with a bit of information that she wanted to make sure only her father would understand. So she’d left her necklace.
What next? Alone, her necklace off, the clasp relatched, she’d tossed it into the cool fireplace.
Check that. First she’d blackened the stone with a bit of creosote or pine tar. She’d blackened the diamond. The move had been deliberate. She was telling him something.
McGarvey closed his eyes, the solution suddenly coming to him. But it was simple…
too simple for mere chance. It was Spranger again, telling him something. The East German had left the clue, or had maneuvered Elizabeth into leaving it.
Either way, it was a sign post: Here I am. Catch me if you can.
Chapter 45
“In forty minutes the Japanese Ambassador to the United States is going to walk through that door and start asking me a lot of tough questions,” the President said. “And if he decides to hold a news conference either before our meeting, or afterward, the cat will be out of the bag.”
It was Saturday noon. The President had called a number of people to the Oval office, among them his National Security Adviser Dan Milligan, Secretary of State John Cronin, his advisers for Far East Affairs Harvey Hook, and Domestic and International Finance Maxwell F. Peale, his Press Secretary Martin Hewler, and the DCI Roland Murphy.
“At least it’s the weekend,” Peale said. “The panic on Wall Street won’t be so bad.”
“If he holds it inside his embassy, there won’t be much we can say or do,” Hewler said. “But once he steps outside, we’ll do the orchestration.” Hewler was a big, shambling bear of a man with a direct and very honest view about everything and everyone.
He was enormously popular among the press corps.
“Don’t tell me somebody’s watching him,” Cronin said.
“I have a friend over at the Post who’ll tip me off if Shiro makes a move.”
“Won’t this friend of yours take this request as a news story in itself?” Cronin pursued the issue.
“No,” Hewler said simply.
Cronin turned back to the President. “Of course, none of this comes as a surprise.
Prime Minister Kunihiro has shown that he’s willing to go to almost any lengths to save face. He took a terrific battering over the Diet’s failure to come up with what he thought was a fair amount of financial help to the Western Alliance for the war with Iraq. This now may be nothing more than a catalyst for him.”
“He’s clutching at straws,” Harvey Hook, the Far East expert said. “But I have to agree with John. There is a new feeling of national unity in Japan that i s increasingly causing overt moves, especially in the marketplace. We’ve talked about this before.”
“Nobody has prevented them from investing here,” Peale said. “But what Harvey is getting at are perceptions and the backlash they’re causing.”
“Get to the point,” the President said harshly.
“The point is this, Mr. President,” Hook said. “Rightly or wrongly there is a growing anti-Japan sentiment in this country. The Warsaw Pact has been dismantled. The Russian threat has faded with their internal problems. Quaddafi is quiet. Iran is behaving itself. We’ve settled the issue with Iraq. And China is being docile for the moment.
So who will be our new enemies? The Japanese?”
Hook looked to the others, but no one said a thing.
“The Japanese have a monetary surplus, and the public perception is that they’re buying up America, so let’s restrict trade with them, and let’s place severe restrictions on what they’re able to purchase in this country. The fact of the matter, however, is that the British own twice as much property in the United States as the Japanese do. But, the Brits are our friends. And their eyes are round, their skin is white, and they speak the same language, better than we do-they don’t make Ls out of their Rs-and they didn’t attack Pearl Harbor.”
“We were talking about the Japanese reaction,” the President said.
“That’s right, Mr. President. The Japanese are reacting to the anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. It has become a point of honor to them during a time when their national psyche, if you want to call it that, is so confused that political faction differences in Tokyo have damn near erupted into all-out war.”
“What you’re saying is that we’ve brought this on ourselves,” the President’s National Security adviser put in.
