didn’t think it was the main distribution center for the headquarters complex. No, this supplied power for some specific section of the complex. Some installation. Something that required a huge amount of amperage.
The elevator doors closed and the car started up. McGarvey turned and hurried back to the head of the corridor to watch the floor indicator. The car stopped one level up, and almost immediately started back down.
McGarvey turned and looked both ways down the corridor, but there were no doors, nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
In desperation he rushed back into the darkness to the electrical distribution cabinet, yanked open the door and crawled inside, taking extreme care not to brush up against any of the yard-long bus bars that carried so much power. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up.
He closed the door and eased back into the deeper darkness as the elevator slid open and two men armed with Uzi submachine guns stepped out into the corridor, sweeping their weapons left to right, as if they’d been expecting trouble.
Moments later one of them said something into a walkie-talkie, and when he had his reply, said something to the other man who sent the elevator back up.
McGarvey could not make out what they were saying, but it was evident they were nervous. They kept a wary eye on both branches of the corridor.
The elevator returned and two white-suited technicians got off with a motorized cart.
Without hesitation the four of them started down the left corridor and as they came even with McGarvey’s hiding spot, his Geiger counter began to react, the volume just loud enough for him to hear the crackle.
He pulled the device off his shoulder and stared at the gauge. The needle was jumping well above ambient.
On top of the cart was an oblong metal box about one yard on the long axis and half that on the short side. It was marked in French: PORTSIDE SEWAGE LIFT PUMP.
As the technicians disappeared with the cart into the darkness, the Geiger counter reading rapidly subsided. Whatever the box contained, he decided, it definitely was not a sewage lift pump.
Chapter 74
Roland Murphy sat at his huge desk listening to what his Deputy Director of Operations, Phil Carrara, was saying. It was coming up on noon, and besides Carrara, the DCI had called Ryan and Doyle in to listen. The general was tired, and he had every right to be. He’d been going almost twenty-four hours a day since the Japanese crisis had come up, and he wasn’t as young as the others.
“She won’t do anything foolish, will she?” he asked his DDO.
“I don’t think so,” Carrara said.
“How’d you get her to stay?” Ryan asked.
Carrara sighed. “I told her a lie.”
“Her friend, Lana Toy?”
“We have her in protective custody. Told her that we needed her cooperation if we were going to save Kelley’s life.”
“What happens if they blow the whistle when this is all over?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t know,” Carrara said wearily. “But in the meantime Kelley is damned frightened.
I think McGarvey has made a believer out of her. She’ll stick, no matter what happens.”
“Which gives us just a few minutes before she calls back. What time is it over there now?”
“A little before 2:00 a.m.,”
Carrara answered. “Dawn will be in another three hours, which will put her in an exposed position if we order her back to Fukai’s perimeter.”
“No word from McGarvey?” Murphy asked. “Not so much as a sign?”
“I’m afraid not, General,” Carrara said. “She told us that he went into the water around twenty-hundred hours their time, about four hours ago, with the intention of somehow getting aboard a ship tied to the Fukai docks, and from there getting ashore.”
“What do we have on the boat?” Murphy asked, turning to Doyle, his Deputy Director of Intelligence. Doyle had worked with the National Photo Reconnaissance Office over the past days. He opened a file folder and withdrew a satellite shot of the Fukai compound. He passed it to Murphy.
“She’s the Grande Dame II, one of the two Feadship pleasure yachts in Fukai’s fleet.
The other, sister ship, the Grande Dame,
has been sailing in the Mediterranean for the past year. Evidently number two is being made ready to replace number one for the fall and winter season. They’re identical; 243 feet at the waterline, twin MTV diesels, state-of-the-art electronics. Either ship is capable of crossing any ocean in style at cruising speeds in excess of twenty knots.”
“Impressive toys,” Ryan mumbled taking the photograph from the DCI. “The bomb, if one exists, could easily be transported aboard either ship.”
“Of course,” Doyle said. “But I don’t think it’s likely. By now Fukai has to realize that he’s come under suspicion.”
“Especially with McGarvey poking around,” Ryan put in.
“If he has the bomb parts there in Nagasaki where his technicians are putting them together, he’ll want to get rid of the device as quickly as possible.”
“He could load it aboard the ship at his dock in under an hour, I would suspect,”
Murphy said.
“I don’t mean just get it out of Japan, General. I meant deliver it to its target and… fire it … as soon as possible.”
“By air,” Carrara said. “Fukai Semiconductor maintains a fleet of jetliners. They’ve even got a pair of Boeing 747s.”
“One of which is currently on the ground at Fukai, for routine maintenance,” Doyle said. “Kiyoshi Fukai himself is scheduled to fly out to Paris in a few hours.”
“Paris as a target?” Murphy said. “That doesn’t make sense. Nor would he risk riding on the same plane with a bomb. He’ll want to keep his distance.”
“Pardon me, General, but I don’t agree,” Carrara said, sitting forward. He turned to Doyle. “He’s going to Paris by what route Tommy? East or west?”
“East,” Doyle replied. “With a stopover for fuel in San Francisco.”
“Where the bomb would be off-loaded,” Carrara said, turning back to the DCI. “A customs check on a man such as Fukai would be perfunctory at best. He could drop the bomb off, set on a timer to explode after he was well on his way to Paris. There’d be no evidence left behind to connect him with the device.”
“Then we stop the plane from taking off,” Murphy suggested.
“That wouldn’t be so easy,” Ryan cautioned. “As you say, Fukai’s stature puts him above that of an ordinary citizen.”
“I can convince the President.”
“And if we were wrong, what then?” the Agency’s general counsel asked. “Maybe McGarvey’s presence has been detected and the bomb would not
be loaded aboard that plane. There’d be an international stink if we convinced the Japanese government to go after its richest man and nothing was found. I suggest we wait until the plane lands on U.S. soil and make a routine but thorough customs check. If a bomb is aboard, we’ll not only find it, but we’ll have Fukai himself in custody.”
“Unless he’s insane,” Carrara said softly. “If he’s cornered mightn’t he trigger the bomb anyway?”
“That’s a cheery thought,” Doyle said. “But it’s a possibility we should consider.”
“What do you suggest?” Murphy asked.
“Let me call my office first,” Doyle said. “There’s been a satellite pass within the past few minutes. Photo Recon has got a realtime link.” Doyle picked up the phone and called his chief of Analysis. He had his answer almost
