“I’m going to get aboard the boat first, and then go ashore as one of the crewmen,”
McGarvey said, checking the seals on the waterproof camera case which they’d picked up at the dive shop where they’d rented the scuba gear. Earlier in the afternoon they’d purchased a compact Geiger counter from a scientific school supply house in Nagasaki. The unit fit perfectly in the camera case.
“What if the crew is all Japanese?”
McGarvey looked up. “It’s possible,” he said. “But I saw a good number of Westerners in the compound this morning. So it stands to reason there’ll be Westerners as crew aboard a pleasure boat that’s registered out of Monaco.”
“Once you’re ashore, what then? It’s a big place.”
“If there’s a lab to handle nuclear material, it’ll be beneath ground. In a sub-basement or even lower, which means it’ll have to be equipped with an elevator, perhaps an emergency stairwell, or access tunnel, and probably an air shaft or two. I’ve seen these sorts of things before.”
“If you don’t find it?” she persisted.
He smiled. “I don’t give up that easily. Especially now that we’ve come this close.
Besides, I owe this one to someone I’m very close to.”
Kelley’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What if you don’t find it?”
“Then I’ll find Kiyoshi Fukai, and ask him to show it to me.”
“He won’t tell you anything.”
“Then if I can prove that he’s involved, I’ll kill him,” McGarvey said evenly, and Kelley shivered because she believed him.
“Good,” she said, and she helped McGarvey pick his way across the rocks and into the water. His leg was giving him trouble because of the weight of the equipment he was carrying.
McGarvey spit on the inside of his mask, spread it around with his fingers, then rinsed it off in the bay. “If I’m not out of there by daybreak, I want you to call Carrara and tell him what’s happened.”
She nodded. “Is she beautiful?”
McGarvey donned the mask. “Very,” he said.
“Who is she?”
“My daughter.”
He had timed his entry into the bay to coincide with slack tide. Even so he briefly surfaced twice to make sure he was swimming a straight line underwater. The Grande Dame 11 was at least a mile from where he’d started at the edge of the Fukai compound, and being off by one or two compass degrees he could have swum past it in the pitch-black water.
But he was right on course, and the second time he surfaced he was close enough to pick out a lot of activity on the dock.
From the window of the headquarters building this morning he had spotted closed-circuit television cameras and what he took to be proximity alarm detectors along the line of the docks, which meant they were more concerned about someone coming ashore than anyone in the water.
Storm sewer openings would be screened and equipped with integrity alarms. And although he’d hoped to find the ship dark, and possibly even unattended, the unexpected activity would serve his purpose just as well, distracting attention away from the bay side of the ship’s hull.
The other thing he’d seen from the waiting room above the dock was the Grande Dame II’s
anchor chain. Apparently because of tidal currents, the anchor had been dropped to keep the ship from swinging too hard against the docks. It would also provide a way aboard.
Of course there was still a high probability that he would be spotted and challenged.
But if it happened, it happened, he told himself, biting down so hard on his mouthpiece that he nearly severed the thick rubber.
The expression in Elizabeth’s eyes that night off Santorini had not faded days later when she came to him in the hospital. He didn’t think it would ever go away, because she had become a frightened woman. Her self- confidence had been taken away from her by these people. And now if someone got in his way … it would be too bad.
Twenty minutes later the ship’s hull loomed up out of the darkness, and McGarvey reached out and touched it. He could feel the vibration of machinery through the bottom plates, probably a generator or generators supplying the ship with power.
A vessel this size never truly shut down unless she was in dry dock.
He followed the line of the hull to the bows, then turned away, to the right, coming at length to the anchor chain leading at an angle through the murk. Some of the light from the dock filtered a few feet down into the water, sparkling on the suspended particles of mud, like dust motes in sunlight.
Slowly he swam up the angle of the chain, breaking the surface ten or fifteen yards away from the looming white hull.
At this point he was practically invisible from the dock, but as soon as he started up the chain, anyone looking up from shore would be able to see him. There was no other way.
Careful to make absolutely no noise, he pulled off his BC vest and scuba tank, then unclipped his weight belt and draped it around the harness. It floated on its own until he opened a valve in the vest and released the air it contained and the entire assembly slowly sank.
He took off his fins and pushed them away, and, making sure that the strap holding his Geiger counter to his side was secure, started up the chain, one link at a time.
For the first three feet or so, he nearly lost his grip on the slimy chain several times, but when he reached the part that had never been in the water, or hadn’t been in the water for a long time, the going became easier.
Twice he stopped, holding himself absolutely still, stretched out along the chain as a security guard came to the edge of the dock and spit into the water.
The second time, the man looked up directly at McGarvey for several long seconds as he scratched himself, but then he turned away and walked back out of sight.
At the top, McGarvey was just able to squeeze his way through the hawse hole onto the bow deck, behind a thick bollard, where he crouched in the relative darkness.
His leg and arm were throbbing, and it felt as if some of his stitches had broken open. He thought he might be bleeding.
Five decks above and forward of midships the bridge was lit up, and as he watched he could see several people moving around.
It was possible, he thought, that the parts for the nuclear device had already been delivered and assembled, and would be transported aboard this boat to wherever Fukai intended on igniting it. It would mean the target would probably be somewhere on the U.S. West Coast.
But it would take ten days or more for the ship to make that distance. And somehow McGarvey didn’t think Fukai would be willing to wait that long. Because of what had happened to the STASI on Santorini, and what had happened up in Tokyo, the Japanese billionaire had to realize that someone would come poking around his operation sooner or later. Every hour he had possession of the bomb parts, especially the weapons-grade plutonium or uranium, he was risking detection.
McGarvey unzipped the front of his drysuit, took out his Walther and cycled a round into the firing chamber.
Next, he unsealed the camera case and took out the Geiger counter. He flipped on the switch, but there was no reading above ambient on the dial, nor had he expected any. If the bomb material was here, it would be well enough shielded to avoid detection except at close range.
Certain that no one on the well-lit bridge deck would be able to see him down on the dark foredeck. McGarvey darted out from behind the bollard and took the first hatch into the ship.
What he needed now was to find a crewman willing to give up his uniform.
Chapter 72
