Satellite antennae were located throughout the vast compound. Several years ago Fukai had begun putting up its own communications and research satellites, buying boosts into space from the European Space Agency as well as NASA until recently, when the Japanese themselves (with a lot of Fukai money behind them) started launching their own rockets.
Carrara admitted that the National Security Agency’s current guess was that at least two of the Fukai satellites were probably being used as surveillance platforms. Parked in geostationary orbits some 22,000 miles over the western hemisphere, there was little doubt about just who was the likely surveillance target. But nothing could or would be done about it.
“Space, as it was explained to me,” Carrara said, “is still free. That means for anyone, not just any government.”
Also evident, even from a distance of several miles, were the outward signs of Fukai’s security arrangements. An inner and an outer wire mesh fence (no doubt electrified) surrounded the entire compound. Separated by a twenty-five-yard-wide no-man’s-land, the fence line was punctuated every hundred yards or so by tall guard towers.
As they watched, they could see Toyota Land Rovers patrolling the perimeter not only inside the fence, but outside as well.
The place looked like a prison. Only in this case the guards were not trying to keep people in, they wanted to keep intruders out. It made one wonder what they were doing down there that they had to go to such extreme measures.
“It’s bigger than I thought it would be,” Kelley said, her voice and manner subdued.
“Yeah,” McGarvey said absently, his thoughts racing. He pulled over to the side of the road and studied the vast compound for several long minutes.
“What do we do now?” Kelley asked.
McGarvey looked at her. Security might be tight, but he thought he knew how he could get in undetected tonight.
“We’ll present our credentials,” he said. “I need to take a look at something.”
Chapter 68
Liese Egk tossed her Louis Vuitton bag in the back seat of the Jaguar convertible parked next to the Volkswagen van in the garage. She stood in the darkness for several long moments, her hands gripping the edge of the car so hard that her knuckles turned white.
Ernst was asleep in the house, and if he’d taken the sedatives she’d laid out for him he wouldn’t feel a thing for another twelve hours. Plenty of time for her to make it down to the waiting private jet at the Rome Airport.
But she could not leave. Not like that. Not knowing what Spranger, even in his present condition, was still capable of doing. The man was half dead, and he was a maniac, yet he was the best and most ruthless operative she’d ever known. And he still had the loyalty of the group, the contacts around the world, and the respect of a great many people who would be willing to hunt her down if it came to that.
She walked slowly to the door and looked across the compound toward the dark house and shivered even though the night was warm.
If she left like this tonight, Ernst would recover eventually and he would come looking for her. Even Fukai’s promise of protection would do her no good. Ernst would find a way to get to her. And when he did he would kill her … unless she killed him first.
She turned that thought over in her mind. On the way up from Greece she had toyed with the idea on several occasions; putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger would have been child’s play. But in her heart of hearts she’d known that she wouldn’t do it.
That was then. Now that she was abandoning him, she’d come back to her original decision; to kill him, when the time was right, for everything he’d done to her. For everything he’d made her do.
She shivered again.
Spranger had taught her about sex-sex with men, that is-in East Berlin when she was still a teenager. And when he was finished with her, he’d used what he called her “certain charms” to help the STASI’s aims. She’d been ordered to sleep with Russians, with West Germans, Americans, and even Frenchmen.
The worst had been the most recent. She’d slept with Fukai himself on four different occasions, each time worse than the previous, because each time the old man had come to learn more and more about her body, exactly what made her respond, and she hated him and Spranger for it.
Stepping out of the garage, Liese moved silently across the courtyard and into the house. She halted just within the great room, a light breeze billowing the window shears at the open patio doors.
In the distance she heard a train whistle, and in back the pool pump kicked on. Other than those sounds the night was still. Not even insects were chirping, a fact that somehow did not register with her.
She was dressed in a short khaki skirt, a sleeveless blouse, and sandals without nylons. Reaching down she undid the sandal straps and stepped out of them.
The tile was cool on her bare feet as she moved across the great room, down a short corridor and stopped just outside the open door into the master bedroom wing.
This part of the house faced the opened veranda, and the glow of Monaco’s lights provided enough illumination so that she could see the big bed was empty, the sheets thrown back.
Going the rest of the way in, she went to the night table where she’d left the glass of water and sedatives. The water was down and the pills were gone, which meant he’d be unconscious by now. He’d probably gotten out of bed and had collapsed somewhere.
She hurriedly checked the bathroom and dressing alcove, but he wasn’t in either place and as she started back to the corridor, thinking he might have gone to the kitchen, she spotted him standing on the veranda at the low railing, his back to her.
Careful to make absolutely no noise she went back to the nightstand, opened the drawer and took out the big Sig-Sauer automatic he kept there. She switched the safety off, cocked the hammer, and went to the open glass doors.
Either he’d thrown the pills away, or he’d just taken them and the sedatives had not had a chance to effect him.
In any event he seemed awake and alert enough to still be a significant danger to her if he realized that she was planning on abandoning him.
She stepped out into the night and padded softly around the end of the pool, stopping barely three yards away from him. If she shot him now, his body would pitch over the rail and plunge three hundred feet onto the rocks and thick bush. If no one heard and pinpointed the shot, which she didn’t think they would, it might be a very long time before his body was discovered.
“Do you mean to shoot me now, and leave me for the carrion eaters?” he asked, his voice barely rising above the gentle breeze.
Liese was so startled that her hand shook and she nearly fired the pistol. But she got control of herself.
“You won’t be missed,” she said.
Spranger turned around to face her. He leaned back against the rail for balance and smiled wanly. “Haven’t you realized by now, my dear, that alone you are nothing?
Even less than nothing, because your sexuality gets in the way of any sort of rational thought?”
Liese raised the pistol and started to bear down on the trigger. Spranger’s smile broadened.
“You have been the means to many ends,” he said. “You must understand that you are only a very pretty tool; of no value without the hand of the craftsman to guide it.”
“I would rather it be Kiyoshi Fukai than you.”
“That’s not true,” Spranger said. “You hate the man even worse than you hate me.”
“He is a means to my end.”
“That’s possible. If you could leave here and catch the plane in Rome.”
“What’s to stop me…? Liese asked when she suddenly realized what Spranger had done.
