The problem was there would be no way of knowing any of that for certain without actually being aboard the airplane.
McGarvey stopped fifty yards later when he could make out the end of the corridor, which seemed to open into a large room or open space of some sort.
The technicians turned left through the opening and disappeared, leaving McGarvey alone in the dark corridor. It struck him again how simple it all had been, getting off the ship and following the technicians here. Almost as if they had been expecting him, and this was a setup.
He glanced up at the light fixtures on the ceiling. They were spaced every fifteen feet or so, and had they been lit the corridor would have been so brightly illuminated he could not possibly have followed the technicians this far.
But it changed nothing, he thought, tightening the grip on his pistol. He still had to find out what Fukai’s exact plan was, and he didn’t want to back off until he had extracted his own revenge for what they had done to Kathleen, and especially to Liz.
Also, when it came down to it, he too had been backed against a wall and left for dead. It was no love of country (though he thought he loved his country) that motivated him. Nor, he supposed, was it simply revenge.
He had been in this position before, where backing off would have been the most sensible option, but where each time he not only hadn’t turned away, he found that he could not.
In the end it was shame, he supposed, that made him who he was. Who he had become.
Though he seldom had the courage to admit it, even to himself.
The sins of the fathers shall visit their sons, from cradle to grave. That would be chiseled on his tomb should the truth ever be known.
“Good evening, Mr. McGarvey,” a man’s voice came from an overhead speaker.
McGarvey stepped back against the wall as the corridor lights came slowly up.
“It’s all right, no one will harm you for the moment,” the man said. His English was heavily accented with Japanese, but clearly understandable.
“What do you want?” McGarvey asked, again looking back the way he had come. The corridor was fully illuminated now, and he could see no one back there.
“For you to be my guest this morning. We’re flying to Paris, and it would only be correct of me to take you as far as San Francisco.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“We’ve been following your progress all evening, Mr. McGarvey. The only time you had us confused was when you slipped into the electrical distribution box. Our motion detectors lost you. But we figured it out. Now, come along please.”
Chapter 76
Two Fukai Air Transport Division crewmen, armed with Ingram Model 11 submachine guns, relieved McGarvey of his pistol and the Geiger counter, then stepped aside and motioned for him to go first.
The corridor opened onto a broad balcony that looked down into a vast aircraft hangar, easily large enough to accommodate two 747s. One of the gigantic airplanes was parked three-fourths of the way into the building, with only its tail section outside. Its hatches and cargo bay doors were open and from what McGarvey could see it looked as if the plane were in the final stages of being loaded and readied for takeoff.
A jetway connected the front passenger door of the plane to a spot one level below this balcony. The armed crewmen motioned for McGarvey to cross to an open freight elevator just at the end of the balcony, five yards from the corridor.
Dawn was only a couple of hours away, and from here McGarvey could smell the odors of the sea and even the mountains. Freedom.
Below, on the floor of the hangar, there was no sign of the white-suited technicians and the cart containing the bomb, but there was little doubt they were already aboard, or soon would be, and by the time morning came they would be well on their way east, into the rising sun. It would be a dramatic moment; fitting, in Fukai’s mind, after forty-seven years of waiting for revenge.
The crewmen let McGarvey ride alone down the one floor. They were taking no chances being with him in such a confined space. He had hoped for such an opportunity, but he hadn’t thought they’d be that dumb.
Two other armed crewmen waited for him on the lower balcony, at a respectful distance, and they motioned for him to proceed down the jetway into the airplane.
He hesitated only a moment before complying, and they followed him the thirty feet or so to the hatch. He wondered at what point they had spotted him tonight. Getting off the ship, perhaps. Which meant they’d followed his every move.
The flight across the Pacific to the West Coast of the United States took nine or ten hours. He didn’t think they would kill him until they were almost there, which would give him time for an opening.
He smiled grimly to himself, his gut tightening. There would be an opening. He would make sure of it.
Traditional Japanese music played softly from loudspeakers aboard the airplane. A pretty young Japanese stewardess dressed in a flowered kimono smiled demurely and bowed slightly.
“Welcome aboard, McGarvey-san,” she said in a lovely sing-song voice. “If you will please take your seat, the others have been waiting for you for some time now.”
A crewman armed with an Ingram blocked the stairs up to the flight deck. He wore shoulder tabs with three stripes. The copilot, no doubt, doing double duty for the moment.
To the left, in the area that was normally laid out as business-class seating, a door was ajar, and McGarvey could see what appeared to be an extensive communications console. Wherever Fukai went in the world, he would have to be connected with his business enterprises, via satellite. Just then, however, no one was seated at the console, though its lights and gauges were lit, indicating that it was functioning.
“Just this way, please,” the stewardess prompted, pointing aft. The armed guards from the balcony stood at the open hatch.
“Domo arigato,” McGarvey said pleasantly, and went aft, the young woman opening a sliding door for him.
The main cabin was furnished Japanese ultra-modern, in soft leathers and furs, muted tones, delicate watercolors, and beautifully arranged living plants.
A compactly built Japanese man dressed in a three-piece business suit was seated next to a stunningly beautiful white woman. They both looked up when McGarvey came in, and the man got lanquidly to his feet. He did not smile, nor did he seem pleased.
But he definitely did not appear to be concerned, and he wasn’t holding a gun.
“Ah, Mr. McGarvey, we have been waiting for you,” the man said.
“You have me at the disadvantage,” McGarvey said conversationally. There was something about the man that reminded him of a cobra.
“You may call me Mr. Endo.”
McGarvey nodded and turned to the woman, knowing who she was even before Endo said a word, and he had to hide his almost overwhelming urge to step across the cabin, pull her off the couch and snap her neck.
“Liese Egk, permit me to present the infamous Kirk Cullough McGarvey,” Endo said dryly. “I believe you two have much to talk about.”
McGarvey controlled himself, although he was shaking inside. “You were at the monastery on Santorini with Ernst Spranger and the others?”
She nodded. “Yes. But I’m surprised to see you here so soon. We all thought that you were dead, or close to it.”
“Spranger isn’t aboard yet?”
“I killed him,” Liese said.
“That’ll make my job so much easier, then,” McGarvey said, sitting down across from them.
