Critical Mass (22 page)

Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass

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“WHEN I WAS A CHILD IN HONOLULU MY GRANDFATHER TOLD me stories about the western desert,” Kelley Fuller said.

McGarvey was seated in a tub of extremely hot, scented water to his neck. He turned at the sound of her voice as she closed the rice paper door. He could hear traditional Japanese music playing elsewhere in the building.

“He said that he was sent there simply because he was of Japanese descent.” She pinned her hair up, exposing her tiny ears and long, delicate neck. “He hated America until he died.”

“I thought you were sleeping,” McGarvey said. It was nearing noon, but in this place time seemed to have no meaning.

It was called the Sunny Days Western Ranch, and was housed in a nondescript but expansive two-story building off a crowded back street in the Shinjuku's Kabukicho District. On the first floor were the public baths, hostess rooms and kitchens, while the second floor was reserved for suites. They had rented a bedroom, sitting room and small bath.

The tariff was fabulously expensive, but the place was absolutely safe. No questions were asked or answered here. McGarvey had drawn an American Express card under a workname from his Channel Island account before he'd left Paris. A few eyebrows might be raised in Jersey when the bills started coming in, but they would be paid without hesitation and in secrecy.

“It was not possible to sleep. So I have come to wash your back, McGarvey-san,” Kelley said. She wore a snow-white
kimono which she opened and dropped to the floor. She was nude, her legs long and delicately formed, her belly nearly flat, her hips almost boyish, and her breasts small, the nipples large and very dark. She looked exotic.

“This isn't necessary.”

“You will save my life, I believe. I wish to thank you now, while there is still time.” She sat on a small stool and using a big natural sponge and a wooden bucket of warm soapy water, washed herself.

McGarvey watched her. “We may not find anything,” he said. “In the end you may have to return home.”

She glanced at him, her eyes round, almost as if she were a startled deer. “But your friend told you something this morning that troubled you.” She shook her head. “You will not leave Tokyo until you have struck back.”

“I need a name and a face before I can do anything.”

“You will find what you are seeking,” she said serenely. She rinsed herself with a bucket of clear water and a ladle, then joined McGarvey in the tub, kneeling on the bench behind him so that she could scrub his back with a rough towel.

“Perhaps not.”

“It's terrible to live in fear. I have, all of my life, you know. Now, there is nothing to go back for.”

“What about your parents?”

“My parents also hated America, and they taught this to me so that when I finished school I decided to work for the Central Intelligence Agency so that I could learn secrets which I could give to their enemies.”

“Did you become a traitor?”

“No. In the end it was impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because I saw that my grandfather and my parents were wrong.”

McGarvey turned to her. She was crying silently, tears streaming down her cheeks. Slowly, carefully, as if she were a fragile, easily breakable objet d'art, he gathered her into his arms, and they began to make love.

“I understand,” he said. And he did, because he'd also been afraid.

It was after midnight in Washington and McGarvey could hear the strain in Rencke's voice on the telephone. The man had probably worked around the clock since he'd been handed the problem.

“I may be on to something,” Rencke said.

“Have you got a name for me yet?” McGarvey asked. He was calling from a private cubicle just off the manager's office on the first floor. He'd been assured that the phone was completely untraceable.

“I did what you suggested, looked for a motive. What we're talking about here, I figure, is a case of hate and contempt. I mean really massive. Combine that with the money to do something about it â¦ we agree that this dude is well-heeled â¦ well, there'd have to be some public notice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody would catch it for what it really was, I don't think. But look, if you're worth let's say a billion dollars, and you spend your life trying to screw Americans, something will come up.”

McGarvey was beginning to see what Rencke was getting at, and it did make sense. “State might have something.”

“Them and the Company's Intelligence Directorate's archives, and of course the Defense Intelligence Agency's files.”

“You've been in their computers?”

“Of course. But the real paydirt came when I checked out the
New York Times
' files, with cross references in three newsmagazines and two television networks. I came up with a nifty little search program that sought out anti-Americanisms based on a weighted scale â¦ one to a hundred. For instance: Making a flat-out public statement that a man hated America and would do everything within his power to bring it down, would be worth anywhere from seventy-five to a hundred points, depending on whether or
not the man had control of enough money to buy and put to use one of the devices K-1 is going after. Do you follow my drift so far?”

“Go on,” McGarvey said.

“I came up with beaucoup names. Seems as if there's a lot of dudes in the empire who've got varying degrees of hardons for us. So I had another brainstorm. Wait'll you hear this one. Just for the hell of it I added two other parameters to my search program. Number one: I figured that in order to pull this sort of a thing off our bad guy would have to be worth at least a hundred large. I mean a hundred million U.S. Agreed?”

Terrorism was fabulously expensive if it was to be successful. Many small countries couldn't afford it. A hundred million wasn't out of line. “Agreed.”

“Hang on to your socks. Now come motives, and I came up with a few dillies. For instance: How about former prisoners of war? How about Japs whose businesses had failed because of U.S. policies?” Rencke giggled. “Or the grand-dilly of them all. How about dudes who lost families or loved ones in Hiroshima or Nagasaki?”

McGarvey was speechless for a moment or two. Christ, it fit. A man whose family had been destroyed by an American atomic bomb, and who'd later made his fortune, could be thinking of revenge. But there'd have to be more.

“Have you come up with a name yet?”

“No,” Rencke admitted. “But I've come up with a half-dozen candidates whose birthplaces and whose backgrounds during that period of history are unclear. I'm working on that.”

“I want you to throw in one other consideration,” McGarvey said. “I don't think simple revenge would be enough. Whoever this person is, he is rich. In order to get there he has to be smart; shrewd, at the very least, perhaps even brilliant.”

“Which means he'd have to have another motive. He'd have something to gain by using his little toy.”

“Exactly.”

“If I can't buy the Rockefeller Center, I'll nuke it,” Rencke said.

“Something like that.”

“I'll get on it,” Rencke said, and already McGarvey could hear the faraway note in the man's voice which meant most of his mind was elsewhere; working on the problem at hand.

“I'll call later,” McGarvey said.

“Oh, wait,” Rencke came back. “I almost forgot. Your name has come up again across the river. They want to make contact with you in a worst way. It has something to do with your daughter and ex, I think.”

“What about them?”

“I don't know,” Rencke said distantly, and the connection was broken.

McGarvey's call to Carrara's home was automatically routed to his office at Langley. The DDO sounded harried, even worried, but not at all surprised.

“Who have you got hacking for you?” Carrara asked. “My records people are having fits.”

“What about Kathleen and my daughter?” McGarvey asked, ignoring the question. “Has something happened to them?”

“They've been kidnapped.”

The air left the room. “By whom?”

“We don't know yet. Evidently your ex-wife was visiting the school outside of Bern, and both of them were taken just a few hours ago. The general got the call personally from the Swiss Federal Police.”

“K-1?” McGarvey asked, dreading the answer he knew he was going to hear.

“We think so. It has all the earmarks of a Spranger operation. An instructor from the school evidently got in the middle of it and was shot three times in the head.”

“Any leads?”

“They may have been taken across the Swiss border into France. The SÃ»retÃ© may have a lead.”

“Call Marquand,” McGarvey said. He was sick at his stomach.

“Already have. He'll meet you in Paris.”

AT ROLAND MURPHY'S SUGGESTION THE PRESIDENT HAD called his National Security Adviser Daniel Milligan and Secretary of State John Cronin to the Oval office for an 8 A.M. meeting. It was a few minutes after that hour and the three men were looking at the DCI, grim expressions on their faces.

“Let me get this absolutely clear, Roland,” the President said. “What you're saying is that some group, or perhaps some individual in Japan is being linked to the STASI organization's effort to steal the components of a nuclear bomb?”

“Yes, sir. Our best evidence seems to be pointing in that direction.”

“But it's not the government,” Secretary of State Cronin asked. “You're sure of that?”

“We're not sure of it, John, but we don't think it's likely. There've been no indications whatsoever out of Tokyo.”

“Nor was there before Pearl Harbor,” Cronin grumbled.

“That's not true,” Murphy said. “We had plenty of warnings before Pearl, but they were ignored.” Murphy turned back to the President. “The government or the military wouldn't simply be after the parts, they'd be after the technology itself. A technology, I might add, that their own scientists could come up with.”

“I'm inclined to agree,” the President said. He turned to his National Security Adviser. “Dan?”

“I tend to agree with Roland, as well. The Japanese government has no need to become a nuclear power. Hell, they lost the war but they're sure winning the peace. They're outshooting us with their currency, their technology, and
before long maybe even their GNP. Why risk world censure by joining the nuclear club? They'd have nearly everything to lose, and almost nothing to gain. Nuclear weapons, at least so far as governments go, have become almost useless.”

“But not in the hands of a terrorist,” Murphy said.

“No,” Milligan said. “And we all knew it would happen sooner or later. What are the latest estimates of how much weapons-grade plutonium is missing each year? Enough to make a dozen effective bombs?”

“More,” Murphy said. “But this is the first time we've detected a concentrated effort to come up with all the components.”

“Except for Libya's attempts a few years back,” Cronin said. “And more recently, Iraq's.”

“I'm not talking about governments now, John. I'm talking about individuals.”

“This sort of thing would take a lot of money, wouldn't it?” the President asked.

“In the tens of millions of dollars at the very least,” Murphy said.

“Which narrows down the field, somewhat, especially if we're limiting ourselves to the Japanese.”

“There are a lot of rich people in Japan at this moment in history. My people are working on ways to narrow down the list, but it's going to take time. We don't even have a motive yet. In the meantime the Agency's operations in Japan are all but shut down.”

“I'm sending John to Tokyo in a few days. He'll speak with Prime Minister Kunihiro, but there's no guarantee anything positive for us will come of it. Eight murders in a few days' time in Tokyo, five of them Americans, has got everyone on edge.” The President sat back, his chin resting on a bridge of his thumb, forefinger and middle finger. “It was my understanding, Roland, that you had sent some additional people over there â¦ someone not directly connected with our embassy.”

Murphy nodded. “We have even more trouble on that score, Mr. President. You may recall the name Kirk McGarvey.”

“He was involved in stopping the people who kidnapped that submarine of ours in the Mediterranean a few years back.”

“Yes, sir. And he was responsible for getting that shipment of gold through to Iran.”

“Yes. That was one of the reasons the Iranians cooperated with us when we kicked Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. If McGarvey's involved now, the scale has been tipped to our side.”

“It's very likely the STASI group has had the same thought,” Murphy said. “They may have found out he was involved and done something about it.”

No one said a thing.

“McGarvey is divorced. His ex-wife lives here in Washington. She came to see us yesterday morning. Somehow she figured out that McGarvey was working for us, and she wanted to get a message to him.”

“What message?” the President asked.

“It was nothing important. At least we didn't think so. Before we could react, she disappeared from the Washington area. McGarvey has a nineteen-year-old daughter attending a school of design outside of Bern. His ex-wife showed up there last night, and she and her daughter were kidnapped by a person or persons unknown.”

“The STASI organization?”

“It's possible. The Swiss, and now the French, are helping us. They may have a lead.”

“Has McGarvey been told?”

“Yes, Mr. President. He's on his way to Europe at this moment.”

“If the STASI kidnapped them, was it to lure McGarvey out of Japan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Into a trap?”

Murphy nodded. “We're doing everything we can to help him.”

“Indeed,” the President said. “Because I want to make something else very clear to you, General. McGarvey has been of great service to this country.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now, we owe him.”