End of Enemies (52 page)

“No, not today. I have some news.”

“Judging by your face, it is not good.”

“It isn't. Yuri, I was called over to Langley yesterday.”

“Ah, the CIA. How is Mr. Mason and company—”

“Yuri, they made a deal.”

Vorsalov stopped. “What kind of deal?”

“I didn't know about it. It happened when—”

“What is it, Charlie?”

“The FIS helped us track you in Cyprus, but there was a price tag. After five years, they get you.”

Vorsalov stared at Latham for ten seconds. Finally, he nodded. “You knew nothing about it?”

“No. If I had, I wouldn't have—”

“Yes. I believe you, Charlie.” Vorsalov chuckled. “We may be on opposite sides, but I always suspected you were a … What's the phrase? A stand-up guy.” Vorsalov forced a smile and waved his hand in dismissal. “Oh, well. Politics. Who knows, much can happen in five years.”

“Yuri, you won't get away.”

“I know that.”

“Once they get you back—”

“Charlie, I know exactly what they will do to me. You forget, I've done the same to others.”

“Yeah, I guess you have. Still, I'm … I'm sorry, Yuri.” Charlie stood and pushed in his chair. “I'll check in from time to time. Is there anything I can get you?”

Vorsalov thought for a moment, then smiled and slid the chessboard back into the center of the table. “Do you play?”

Atsumi Bay,
Japan,
Five Weeks Later

Hiromasa Takagi poured himself a snifter of brandy and walked to the window. Far below he could see the lights of the fishing boats on the bay. He stood for a while longer, finished his drink, then set it on the sideboard and walked into his adjoining office. A single desk lamp lit the blotter on his desk, leaving the corners of the room in shadow. He walked to the chair and sat down.

“Good evening, Mr. Takagi,” a voice called from the darkness.

Takagi's head snapped up. “Who is that? Yamora?”

Briggs Tanner stepped forward into the light.

Takagi squinted. “You!” His hand shot toward the phone.

Tanner's hand came up holding a pistol. “Before you do that, I was hoping we could talk. After I'm done, if you still want to call your men, I won't stop you.”

“I have no intention of talking to you.” Takagi reached.

“Believe it or not,” Tanner said, “I didn't come here to shoot you, but if you touch that phone, I will, I promise you.”

“We have nothing to talk about.”

“I think we do. But it's your choice: Either we talk or I shoot you.” Tanner raised the pistol and centered it on Takagi's forehead. “You have five seconds.”

“You're insane.”

“Four seconds.”

“You've made a mistake coming here.”

“Three.”

“Stop counting, damn it!”

“Two.”

“All right! Fine! First, though: Where are my men?”

“I came right through the front door and didn't see a soul.”

“You're lying.”

“After we're done talking, you can check for yourself.”

“I'll do that.” Takagi leaned back in his chair. “You have my attention.”

Tanner walked to the corner, clicked on the floor lamp, and settled into the leather wing chair. “For the past month I've been thinking about why you started all this. I don't know how you found
Stonefish,
and to be honest, I don't really care. What's been nagging is the
why
of it all. It couldn't have been money.”

“Why not?” Takagi said. “What better reason?”

“For a lot of people there is no better reason, but for you … Somehow I didn't think so. Excluding money, that left one thing: power. For you, that's the real currency. Power to control, power to manipulate. Everything in life flows from power. How am I doing?”

“Go on.”

“I have a friend who loves research. He's happiest when he's hunting for an answer that doesn't want to be found. It's an odd quirk of his, but I love him for it. In fact, he's the one that led me to Parece Kito.”

“I wondered how you found it.”

“That was him. He's been working on my unanswered questions about you.”

“Which are?”

“One, what did you hope to get out of all this? And two, what could possibly be worth helping some madmen incinerate hundreds of thousands of people in a nuclear fireball?”

“You cannot prove that I had anything—”

“I'm not interested in proof. I know you did it, and that's enough for me.”

Takagi waved his hand in dismissal. “How nice for you.”

“Your greatest ambition is to rule Japan,” Tanner said. “Not as prime minister, of course … that would come with too many built-in drawbacks. No, you wanted to be pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

“Of the hundreds of contracts you have in the Japanese government, one caught my friend's eye. Four years ago one of your subsidiaries—a security firm—signed a contract to guard and monitor all of Japan's nuclear power plants and disposal sites. It's your company, of course, but the citizenry doesn't know that. As far as they're concerned, the government runs the plants. The government handles pricing, regulation, safety—everything the average citizen is concerned about. And they
are
concerned. More than any nation on earth, Japan knows what nuclear energy can do if a tight rein is not kept on it.”

Takagi was shaking his head. Tanner kept going.

“Here's how you saw it happening: Manned by a crew of fanatical Arab terrorists,
Tsumago
sails into Tel Aviv Harbor and vaporizes itself in a fireball. Israel—who you don't care much about—is decimated, and Syria—who you care even less about—rolls into Lebanon to keep the peace, and Iraq gets blamed for the whole thing. All this is fine with you. As far as you're concerned, it's all trivia.

“In the wake of the catastrophe, the world is outraged. Every nation on the planet is shouting for the head of whoever supplied the uranium to make the bomb. The actual construction of it isn't the issue; that's all mechanical know-how and rudimentary physics. The tricky part is getting the feedstock.

“Investigations begin. Intelligence agencies beat the bushes. You're not worried, though. You've insulated yourself.
Toshogu
is gone, Parece Kito is gone, all the people even remotely connected to the project are dead.

“Two months go by. The world still has no clue how it happened. All the investigations have turned up nothing. Of course, they know how big the bomb was and how much material it would have taken to build it, but not much else.

“Until one day,” Tanner continued, “when an employee of your security firm happens to find an anomaly during a routine inspection of a plant's feedstock inventory. There's some uranium missing—just enough for the Tel Aviv bomb, in fact.

“The security company blows the whistle. The IAEA is called in. An investigation begins, and the world waits and watches. From there it snowballs, and before long the answer comes out: Through negligence or greed or simple stupidity, the Japanese government is at the root of the worst nuclear disaster in history.

“The Japanese people take to the streets. The ensuing scandal shakes the government to its foundations. Hundreds of heads roll, from the diet to the prime minister's cabinet. The voters demand change. A new party is formed that promises
this will never happen again.
The voters jump on the bandwagon, elections are held, and a new era of Japanese politics is ushered in.”

Tanner paused and looked at Takagi, who had grown pale. “Care to guess who's secretly behind this new party?”

“This is all fantasy. You have no—”

“I told you, Mr. Takagi, I'm not interested in proof. The answer to the question is, the newly elected prime minister and his cabinet have been handpicked by you and the Black Ocean Society. In the space of a year, you've dismantled the current government, orchestrated a bloodless coup, and taken over. And now, instead of pulling the strings of your hundreds of companies, you're pulling the strings of an entire country.”

Tanner sat back, looked at Takagi for a long ten seconds, then said, “Of course, I'm just guessing about all of this. I could be wrong, but somehow I don't think so.”

“You're a wonderful storyteller, Mr. Tanner,” said Takagi. “But that's all it is.”

Tanner shrugged.

“What happens now?” asked Takagi. “What do you plan to do with this yarn?”

“Nothing. While I don't need proof, without it, none of this will stick.”

“True.”

“So tell me: How good was my story?”

Takagi paused, then tilted his head. “It was excellent.”

“Thank you. You can make that call now.”

Takagi reached for the phone. As his fingers touched the handset, he jerked his hand back. “Ah! Something pricked me!” He stared at the tiny drop of blood on his fingertip.

Takagi's face went pale. His hand began curling itself into a claw. “What's happening?” he murmured. “What have you done to me?” He squealed and clutched his forearm. “Ahhh, God …”

“Don't worry,” said Tanner. “It's just a mild paralytic agent.”

“What!” Takagi croaked.

“It'll wear off in an hour or so.”

Tanner's coat pocket trilled. He pulled out his cell phone, listened for a moment, then said, “Thanks, Sconi. You can head back. I'll be along shortly.”

His facial muscles frozen and shoulders hunched around his ears, Takagi was sliding deeper into his chair. His eyes flicked up to Tanner. “What are you doing?”

“You and I, Mr. Takagi, are going on a boat trip.”

Takagi forced open his eyes and found himself staring up at the night sky. He felt a breeze blowing over his face. He heard the lapping of water and felt himself rocking.
A boat.
Tanner had said something about a boat.
He lifted his hand and stared at it. He flexed his fingers. He felt a residual tingling sensation in them, but otherwise he felt fine.

He forced himself to a sitting position. He looked down at his feet and saw they were cuffed together.

“Feeling better?” Tanner asked, crouched a few feet away.

“Unlock me right now! Where am I?”

Takagi looked around and realized he was surrounded by water. To his left, perhaps five miles away, he could make out the shoreline of Atsumi Bay. He looked over Tanner's shoulder and saw the conning tower.

“A submarine,” he murmured.

Tanner nodded. “Ethan Allen-class. Old, but very quiet.”

“What are you doing? You can't kidnap me!”

“I have no intention of kidnapping you.”

“Then what?”

Tanner paused for a moment then said, “Let's just say I'm giving you an empirical lesson in the law of cause and effect … and irony. Can't forget irony.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

In answer, Tanner stood up, walked to the conning tower, retrieved a large canvas rucksack, and returned. He dropped it at Takagi's feet with a
thunk.

“What's that?” Takagi murmured, wide-eyed.

“A teaching aid.”

Tanner stooped over the rucksack and reached inside. Before Takagi could react, Tanner snapped a padlock onto his leg cuffs. “What are you doing?” Takagi kicked wildly, smacking the padlock and chain against the steel deck. “Get this off me!”

Tanner unzipped the rucksack and lifted it away, revealing a fifty-pound cinder block. Takagi stared at the block, then looked up at Tanner. “You can't do this! Do you know who I am?”

Tanner stared down at him. “I know exactly who you are. You're a sociopath and a murderer. And it's going to end here.”

“Goddamn it, Tanner, you can't just—”

“I am doing it.”

“Please, God! I'm begging you,
please
!”

“Good-bye, Mr. Takagi.”

Tanner turned and started walking toward the conning tower.

“Tanner! Damn you! You can't do this!
Tanner
!”

He pulled the hatch closed, spun the wheel, and took the rungs to the deck below. Waiting for him was the sub's captain, who frowned, glanced up the ladder, then at Tanner.

“Something wrong, Captain?” Briggs asked.

“I thought … Where's our passenger?”

“He couldn't make it.”

“Oh.” The captain frowned again, then shrugged. “You're the boss. What now?”

Tanner smiled. “Take her down and head south,” he replied. “I've got a date in Tahiti with a beautiful, recently retired Israeli secret agent.”

While writing is by nature a solitary endeavor, no book comes fully to life without help from others.

My heartfelt thanks to the following people:

My parents, Robert Perry Blackwood and Kathryn Irene Blackwood. Without them none of this would be possible.

My sister, Roberta, for being first to say, “You know, you should be a …” and for her unconditional love and support.

Julie, for being the woman I thought I would never find, but did. I'm so glad you're in my life. Dick and Jackie Robinson for taking me into their lives and hearts. You've helped make me a better person.

All my friends who never doubted. It's been said that a true friend celebrates your successes as heartily as they do their own.

Nancy Beckes and Elizabeth Katzman, for their compassion and perspective.

Clive Cussler, whose novels helped create the spark.

And finally, to the people who were instrumental in making this long-held dream come true:

Jonathon Lazear, Christi Cardenas (for her saintly patience, humor, and unwavering optimism), Neil Ross, and all the folks at The Lazear Agency, who worked so hard on my behalf. You were worth the wait. I'm glad you're on my team!

To Pam Ahearn of the The Ahearn Agency and Dan Conaway and the team at Writers House Literary Agency. I wouldn't be here without you.

Tom Colgan, my editor at Penguin Putnam Inc./Berkley. You, too, were worth the wait. A finer editorial deity does not exist.

Thanks also to all the folks at Penguin Putnam Inc./Berkley who helped make this book the best it can be—from the copyeditors, to the typesetters, to the art department, and everyone in between.

To the gang at Diversion Books. New partners, new horizons.

To Asha of Asha Hossein Design for her fantastic cover art. You're a pro, Asha.