immediately.
“Well?” Murphy demanded impatiently.
“The 747 that was parked on the apron has been moved to a hangar near the Research and Administration complex. We caught a view of her tail section, but nothing else.”
Doyle looked at the others then back to Murphy. “Call the President, Mr. Director, and lay it out for him. Our alternatives, as I see them, are to stop the plane on the ground now, before it leaves Japan; let our customs people take care of it in San Francisco; or…? Doyle hesitated a moment. “Or divert the flight to a deserted airport somewhere well away from any civilian population so that if the bomb is triggered, casualties will be at a minimum.”
“If the pilot refuses?” Ryan asked.
“Then we’d better be ready to shoot it down over the ocean.”
Kelley Fuller called two minutes later from a roadside phone three miles from the main gate into the Fukai compound, but still within sight of the airfield. She sounded bad.
“There is still no sign of him,” she said, obviously at the edge of panic. “I think he must have drowned. There were small boats swarming all over the harbor until just a little while ago.”
“Listen to me, I want you to do one more thing for us,” Carrara said. The call was on the speaker phone so everyone could hear.
“Yes, I’m listening,” she said.
“Can you see that big airplane from where you are?”
“Yes,” she answered uncertainly.
“I want you to keep watching it. The moment it moves toward the runway I want you to call us. Then you can get out of there. But only then. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do,” Kelley said. “But what about Kirk?”
“We’ll help him,” Carrara said. “Trust me.”
Chapter 75
One hundred yards from the intersection, the corridor ended at an elevator that could only be operated with a key. There were no indicators on the outside telling if the car was on the way down or up, or even if the elevator went both ways.
McGarvey figured it was a fair bet that the car only went to some lower level where he supposed the bomb was being assembled now. But there was no indication of any radioactive source nearby, nor could he hear anything from below by putting his ear to the elevator door. It was as if no one had ever come this way, yet the technicians with the cart had to have used this elevator. There were no other doors in the corridor.
Which meant that unless there was some other underground passage out, which he doubted, the assembled bomb would have to be brought out this way.
He looked back the way he had come. His position was exposed here. If someone else came down the corridor from the freight elevator, he would have nowhere to run. He would have to shoot his way out, which would alert Fukai’s security people that he was here.
He had found what he had come looking for; evidence that Fukai Semiconductor had in its possession material that was radioactive. Enough evidence to launch an immediate investigation.
All he had to do was turn around now, and retrace his steps. He didn’t think he would have much trouble swimming down the bay, past the Fukai perimeter to where Kelley Fuller was waiting.
Together they could return to the hotel, or even Tokyo, and take refuge in the U.S. Embassy.
But that wasn’t enough. The look in Liz’s eyes, and the expression in her voice back in Washington was still very fresh in his mind. Fukai and Spranger were going to be held accountable for what they’d done. He was going to make sure of it.
It was past 2:30. The technicians had been down here at least a half hour. To do what? Make some final assembly? Perhaps install the initiator into the bomb itself, assuming that the sewage lift pump contained it. Unless he misunderstood the relatively simple construction of a nuclear device, he didn’t think that sort of an operation would take very long. A few minutes at the most.
And, if the assembled bomb was to be installed aboard the ship, it would probably be done under cover of darkness. Except for the people on the bridge, and the man he’d fought with, the ship had been deserted.
The time was now. The bomb was going to be put aboard tonight. In the morning the regular crew would come aboard and the Grande Dame II would sail east; perhaps for San Francisco, where a nuclear explosion would wipe out TSI Industries. Perhaps Honolulu, as a reprise of the start of World War II.
Or perhaps even the Panama Canal, which would isolate the Pacific Basin, making an eventual Japanese takeover more feasible.
Once the body was found just outside the engine room, however, there was no telling what Fukai would do. Obviously he would have to change his plans.
The elevator door rattled slightly with a change of air pressure inside the shaft.
McGarvey again put his ear to the door, and this time he could definitely hear the car coming up.
He sprinted down the corridor and slipped back into the electrical distribution cabinet, softly closing and latching the mesh gate, then easing farther into the shadows.
A minute later the same technicians and guards came down the corridor with the motorized cart, but as they passed McGarvey’s hiding place he got a good look at what they had brought up. It was an oblong metal container about the same size and shape as the one they’d brought down. But this unit was marked in English: HYDRAULIC DISTRIBUTION
SYSTEM-SECONDARY, beneath which were the letters TBC. The Boeing Company? It was a Boeing 747 they’d seen parked on the ramp to the north of the headquarters building.
Perhaps the parts had arrived by boat, and would be leaving by plane.
The group turned right, past the freight elevator, and disappeared from McGarvey’s view down the opposite corridor. As before, the Geiger counter went crazy, but unlike earlier, the guards were not so jumpy. As they’d passed the electrical distribution cabinet McGarvey had gotten a close look at them. They’d been wary, alert, on edge, but definitely not jumpy. They’d learned something in the past half hour. What?
McGarvey waited a full half minute then carefully opened the gate and stepped out, his pistol still in hand. At the corner he flattened himself against the wall and eased around the edge.
This corridor was in darkness too, the light fading thirty yards away. One of the guards switched on a flashlight and led the way. Within a minute or so they had disappeared in the distance. And unless it was an optical illusion, McGarvey thought that the corridor sloped upward at a very slight angle.
Like the other wing, no doors led off this corridor, and within seventy or eighty yards he came again within sight of the four men. He slowed down so that he just matched their pace, keeping well back so that even if they did stop and turn around, he would be outside the range of their flashlight and would have plenty of time to get back to his hiding spot.
But they didn’t turn or alter their pace and fifteen minutes later McGarvey thought he could see the first faint glimmers of light from somewhere well ahead.
He figured they had come at least half a mile or more from the freight elevator, which had to put them at the edge of the main building, and probably near the airfield.
He was also certain that the corridor was sloping upward at a gentle angle, and what he had guessed at before was not an optical illusion.
An assembled nuclear device was going to be loaded aboard a Fukai jetliner, probably one of his 747s, which would take him to Paris via the West Coast of the United States.
When they stopped for refueling in San Francisco, the bomb would be off-loaded and stored at an in-transit warehouse, timed to explode after Fukai was well clear of the area. Possibly even days later.
But Fukai was too brilliant to leave anything to chance. The bomb would probably be equipped with some sort of a proximity detonator, or certainly a tamper-proof firing mechanism. It could possibly even be fitted with a remote control, the triggering impulse sent by radio, or perhaps cellular telephone.
