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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass
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SPRANGER WAS SHOWN UPSTAIRS TO THE KGB's
REFERENTURA
section of the Russian Embassy in Rome. His escort was a young, attractive blonde woman, who said her name was Tatiana. She was from Leningrad, and her desire was someday to be stationed at the embassy in Washington.
“Comrade Radvonska is looking forward to seeing you again,” she said, smiling. They spoke in German.
“I appreciate him taking time from his busy schedule,” Spranger replied graciously. “Will he be long?”
“I don't believe so,” the young woman said.
They entered a small conference room that could accommodate about ten people around a marble-topped table. Frescoes covered two plaster walls. Windows in the third opened down on a pleasant pocket piazza, deserted at this time of the evening. It was after midnight.
“Is he in the embassy now?”
“Yes, he is. As a matter of fact he is having supper with his family and some friends. He expressed his regrets in not inviting you to join them, but considering the unexpectedness of your arrival …”
“I quite understand,” Spranger said. “If he will not be long, I'll wait. Otherwise I could return in the morning.”
“Unfortunately, Comrade Radvonska leaves Rome first thing in the morning.”
“Reassignment?”
“Nein,”
Tatiana said. “May I offer you some refreshment? Vodka, schnapps, cognac?”
He was being put off, shown his place, because he no
longer represented an agency sponsored by a legitimate government. But Radvonska, who until two years ago was the KGB
rezident
in East Berlin, had agreed to see him because in this business old alliances died hard. There was no telling when old friends might be needed again. And considering the trouble the former Soviet Union was in at the moment, friends were at a premium.
“No,” Spranger replied. “This is not a social visit. And I too am a busy man.” He glanced toward the door. “Please tell Comrade Radvonska not to concern himself about me. I shall find an alternative source for the information I'm seeking.”
“I'm sure that will not be necessary. His engagement this evening is a legitimate one.”
“And so are my needs.”
The young woman's smile tightened. “If you will give me just a moment, sir, I will see that Comrade Radvonska is given your message.”
“Do that.”
Tatiana left the conference room and when she was gone Spranger went over to the window. A fine mesh screen covered the opening, and he could see where a wire was connected to it in one corner. The lights overhead were fluorescent, there was no telephone, and the only door in or out of the room was thickly padded. The methods were old-fashioned, but the room was for the most part surveillance proof.
The young woman returned five minutes later with an angry Yegenni Radvonska. The
rezident
was a barrel-chested man with thick, jet black hair. He was dressed in a warmup suit, CCCP stenciled on the left breast.
“Ernst,” he said, stiffly embracing Spranger. “It's been too long since we last worked together.”
“We're available any time you need us, Yegenni Sergeevich,” Spranger said. “You know this.”
“Yes, of course.” Radvonska motioned him to take a seat, and he and Tatiana sat across from him.
Spranger looked pointedly at her.
“Tatiana is my trusted and most valuable assistant,” the KGB chief of station said. “You may speak freely.”
“I need use of KGB archives,” Spranger began. “My people and I are working on a … delicate project, and something has come up for which I must have some information that only you can provide.”
“Yes, and who is your client in this project?”
“I can't say. But I give you my personal assurances that my client's aims are in no way at cross purposes with the policies or well being of Russia.”
Radvonska studied him for a moment. “I will hold you to that assurance at a later date, Ernst. Please proceed.”
“My group was involved in the July Second destruction of the Swissair flight from Orly Field, Paris.”
Tatiana's complexion paled slightly, but Radvonska showed no reaction other than mild curiosity.
“One of my people was killed by French police, but only after he'd been cornered by a man we took to be an outsider. Well-built, tall, dark hair, wearing a British-cut tweed sport coat. At the time we suspected he might have been either a British or an American police officer, or even an intelligence service officer.”
“Something you have subsequently learned has changed that opinion?”
“We now have reason to believe that he is a civilian. A man with whom we have done contract work in the past monitored a recent conversation in a Paris park between Thomas Lynch, who is the CIA chief of Paris station, and Phillipe Marquand, who is a high ranking officer in the SDECE's Action Service.”
Spranger took a copy of an amended version of the transcript out of his jacket pocket and handed it across the table. He'd taken out Marquand's references to the Japanese yen payments into their Bern account.
“This came to us less than twenty-four hours ago. There was a delay in getting it out of Paris …” Spranger stopped.
Radvonska had looked up from the transcript, a knowing
smile on his face, his eyes bright. He almost licked his lips. “McGarvey,” he said.
“Yes, that was what Marquand called him. Do you know this name?”
Radvonska focused on Spranger. “Yes, my friend, and so should you. In fact I am very surprised that this man hasn't already killed you and destroyed your organization.”
“What are you talking about?” Spranger demanded.
“Do the names General Valentin Baranov and Colonel Arkady Kurshin mean anything to you?”
“They were legends in their own time. But …” Again Spranger stopped in mid-sentence. “He killed them. It was McGarvey?”
Radvonska nodded. “Kirk Cullough McGarvey. As I said, if he is involved and was inside Switzerland, you may count yourself a very lucky man to be alive. But if he has gone to Washington to accept the assignment from the CIA, then your luck may not have very long to run.”
“One man,” Spranger mused.
“Yes, one man, Ernst.”
Spranger looked up. “Then my people will kill him. Immediately.”
Radvonska placed a forefinger on the side of his nose. “Do not become so overconfident. Under the present situation in Moscow the KGB will not be able to offer you much help. But some Russians have very long memories. I will supply you with the information you need.”
“Give me photographs so that he can be clearly identified, and tell me about his haunts in Washington, and I will take care of the rest.”
“A word of caution before you begin, Ernst. Unless McGarvey has involved himself directly in your operation, stay away from him.”
“Did you know him? Personally?”
“I was an aide to General Baranov. I saw what McGarvey did to Arady Kurshin the first time they met.”
“Then you have a personal interest.”
“Yes, I do. And you must listen to me. If you are going to
go up against him, you better stack the deck heavily in your favor. Back him into a corner. Take away his will to fight. Hurt him, even cripple him. But until those things are achieved, be very careful, because he'll not hesitate to kill you first.”
“I'd go one-on-one with him,” Spranger said. “There isn't a man on this earth I fear.”
“You would lose,” Radvonska said, and the simple directness of his statement stopped Spranger cold.
Tatiana was watching him, a very faint smile on her lips. Spranger had the urge to reach across the table and slap it from her arrogant face.
“Then I will back him into a corner first, as you say.”
“Yes, and I will help you,” Radvonska said.
“How?”
“By telling you about his ex-wife in Washington, but more importantly about Elizabeth, his daughter, who is presently in residence at a private school outside of Bern, Switzerland.”
“Why haven't you gone after him?”
“We don't do things like that anymore,” Radvonska said. “But you do.”
“Yes, I do,” Spranger said, and he couldn't keep the smile from his face.
“THE QUESTION COMES BACK TO EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS working on that got him killed,” Bill Neustadt, head of the CIA's forensics team in Tokyo, told Ed Mowry. “It's been more than three days and still we don't have the answer.”
“It's frustrating, Christ, don't I know it,” Mowry said. “I was his assistant COS and he didn't say a word to me.”
By contrast to Neustadt and most of the others Langley had sent over to help with the investigation, Mowry was a short, undistinguished man in his late forties. With a paunch, a receding hairline and a red, bulbous nose he was anything but athletic-looking. But he was a competent administrator and a good field agent in the industrial and economic espionage arena, which Japan had become.
“No contact sheet, no references in any file, no note on his desk calendar, nothing in his apartment, no mention to anybody why he was going to the Roppongi Prince Hotel that night, not even to his wife, and yet he was wearing a wire.”
Mowry and Neustadt were meeting in the embassy's screened room in the section of Tokyo called Minato-ku. The hotel where Jim Shirley had been murdered was barely a half-dozen blocks to the west. It was after eight Tuesday morning, and none of them had gotten much sleep since Friday.
“Unfortunately the recording equipment he had taped to his chest was completely destroyed,” Neustadt continued. “In the meantime the Tokyo Metropolitan Police are starting to ask some tough questions. For instance: Witnesses say that
Shirley met with a man at the hotel bar. A Westerner. The Dunée imposter?”
“Unknown.”
“For instance: Were we aware that Shirley was heavily invested on the margin in the Tokyo Stock Market?”
“We've been over this a dozen times, Bill. This has taken me completely by surprise. All of it.”
“I'm getting the impression that he was making ready to jump ship. Quit the Company and settle in here for the duration.”
“It certainly looks like it,” Mowry said glumly. “His wife Doris apparently has no plans to return to the States.”
They were alone in the conference room. Neustadt leaned forward. “So tell me, Ed, do you think he was doing a little freelance work on the side? Something that may have backfired on him?”
Mowry had asked himself that same question a dozen times over the past seventy-two hours. “If you had suggested such a thing to me last week, I would have punched you in the nose.”
Neustadt sat back and shook his head. “Beats me what I'm going to write in my report.”
The telephone rang and Mowry picked it up. It was his secretary just down the hall. “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Mowry, but when you get a chance there's someone in your office who wishes to speak with you. She says it's urgent.”
“Who is it?”
“Yaeko Hataya. She's a USIA translator from downstairs.”
“I'm going to be tied up all day. Have Tom or one of the others talk to her.”
“Sir, she says it's about Mr. Shirley.”
Mowry glanced at Neustadt, who was reading one of the files. “Be right there,” he said, and he hung up. There'd been rumors that Shirley had had a mistress. So far she'd not come forward, and no one knew who she was.
Neustadt looked up. “Something?”
“One of my translators is getting excited. I've got to go hold her hand for a minute or two.”
“Why don't you go over to the safehouse and get some rest. You look like I feel … like shit. Nothing's going to happen until Langley wakes up anyway.”
“I guess I will,” Mowry said, getting up.
“The apartment is clean,” Neustadt said. “But use your own driver. I'll have my people right behind you.”
“Will they stick around?”
“Probably. We'll see.”
“I'll be glad when this is over,” Mowry said, and he left the conference room.
“I put her inside,” his secretary, Amanda Richardson, said. “Poor kid is terrified.”
“I'll talk to her. In the meantime get my car and driver around front. I'm getting out of here for a few hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
The young woman was seated in front of his desk when he came in. Her hands were folded primly in her lap. She looked vaguely familiar to Mowry, who thought he might have seen her around the embassy. If she'd been Shirley's mistress, he'd had good taste.
“My secretary tells me that you know something about Jim Shirley.”
“I was there when he was killed,” Kelley Fuller said in a small voice.
Mowry had gone around behind his desk, and was about to sit down. He stopped. “You were there, at the Roppongi?” he asked, incredulously.
“In front, on the path behind the trees. I saw everything. It was horrible.”
“Why did you wait to come forward?” Mowry demanded. He reached for the phone, but she half rose out of her chair.
“No,” she cried. “You mustn't tell anyone. Not now! Not yet!”
“The investigators are here from Washington. They have to be told.”
“Especially not them,” Kelley said. “Jim was just as afraid of Washington as he was of the people here in Tokyo.”
“What people? What are you talking about?”
“Jim called it the chip wars. There was money, so much it was hard to imagine. Billions.”
“Of yen?”
She shook her head. “Dollars. In gold and diamonds. Jim said that so much wealth had corrupted everyone who'd come near it.”
“Was Jim investigating this group?”
“Yes,” Kelley said. “He was going to accept some of their money. But he had to prove that he believed in them. It had something to do with the Tokyo exchange. He would get information, and then he would buy some stock. I don't understand it all.”
“Then why was he killed?” Mowry asked, barely able to believe what he was hearing, and yet instinctively feeling it was true.
“I don't know. But he was worried that someone in Washington had found out about what he was doing. Don't you see, Mr. Mowry, that nobody's to be trusted? Nobody?”
Their investigation into Shirley's assassination was getting nowhere. The Station had all but closed shop. Nothing of value was coming in or going out, and there was no telling how long the situation would last. The Japanese authorities were enraged, and Langley was hamstrung.
“Where are you staying?” Mowry asked, making his decision.
Kelley looked up and shook her head. Tears were sliding down her cheeks. “I ran away to the country Friday night, and I just got back now.” She sat forward. “I can't go back to my apartment. Not now. Someone … might be watching.”
“Were you working with Jim?” Mowry asked.
“Yes. He and I were … friends.”
“Will you work for me? Will you help me find out who killed him? Together we can stop them.”
She shook her head again. “I'm frightened. I don't know what to do.”
She looked very fragile. Totally at wit's end. “I'm sorry, Miss Hataya, but we'll have to go through normal channels with our investigation in that case.”
“No, please!”
“What is it?”
Kelley was wringing her hands. “I need a place to stay that's safe. That no one knows about.”
“If I provided you an apartment like that, would you help me?” .
“Yes.”
Tokyo Station maintained two safehouses within the city. One, near the Ginza shopping district, was an open secret, but expenses for the other were buried in one of the embassy's housekeeping accounts. Only a few key station personnel even knew the place existed. Ironically it was located less than a hundred yards from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters on Sakurada-dori Avenue and within sight of the Imperial Palace.
“We'll go there now,” Mowry said, rising. “And you'll tell me everything you know. Everything.”
 
Shizuko Igarshi was parked across the street from the U.S. embassy when Edward Mowry came out with a young Japanese woman, and they both got into the back of a waiting Lincoln Town Car.
The woman was somewhat unexpected, but then it was very common for Occidental men away from home to have young mistresses.
Igarshi kick-started his Honda 250 as the gunmetal gray Lincoln pulled smoothly away from the curb. He waited, and moments later a blue Toyota with two Americans inside pulled out of its parking spot, shot across the road, and fell in behind the Lincoln. It was as he had been told to expect. Mowry would be protected.
But who was the girl?
Igarshi waited for a break in the traffic and headed after them, keeping a couple of cars behind the Toyota.
The girl was probably not important, but he'd been taught to keep an open mind, especially when it came to Americans, and those around them. “They are a crude, bellicose and unpredictable people,” he'd been warned. It was true.
Mowry's driver, a Japanese contract employee, knew the city well, and in less than ten minutes he pulled up in front of a sprawling three-story apartment building near the Imperial Palace's broad Sakurada Moat.
The Toyota made a sudden U-turn and parked directly across the street, leaving Igarshi no other choice but to continue beyond.
Mowry had already gotten out of the car, and the girl was just climbing out at that moment. Her eyes locked with Igarshi's for an instant, and then he was past.
Around the corner, thirty yards away, he hurriedly parked his motorcycle and rushed back to where he could see the front entrance of the apartment building. Mowry and the girl were going inside, and the Lincoln was leaving. But the Toyota remained.
Igarshi pulled off the paper air filter that covered his face, and wiped his mouth. For just that split second he thought he'd seen a hint of recognition on the girl's face. But that was not likely.
Killing Mowry, he thought, would be even more interesting than the first one, because this time they would have to take out the two Americans in the Toyota, as well as the girl.

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