To Free a Spy (30 page)

Komeito looked at the address on the computer screen. It was nothing more than a numbered aircraft hangar. “You deliver to hangar?” Komeito asked.

“Hai.”

“Ever deliver to his home at night?”

“That’s it. Can you believe it? He lives in that hangar—Hangar 23, it says here. Three men live there, the boys tell me. All Russians.”

* * *

Komeito ran to the car to tell Warfield what he’d learned. While they were talking someone tapped on the car window. It was Norio and a younger man with the name
Aoki
on his Guido’s shirt. Komeito lowered the window.

Norio bowed. “Excuse please. Aoki came to work his shift. Knows Ivan, delivers to him all the time. Can show you way to hangar.” Aoki looked about twenty. He was above average height with jet-black hair cut short. He had a sincere smile.

“Hi,” Aoki said in English.

Warfield asked what he knew about the hangar.

“Hangar 23? Well, that big plane in there, they work on it all the time. Mainly up under the open belly of it, you know, in the middle. They’re working on something else at the other end of the building but I take the pizza right to a little office area and don’t go down there. Think they’re through with what they were doing. Last time I went there the plane was all back in one piece again.”

“When were you there last?”

“Two or three days ago.”

Komeito thanked Aoki and the manager and said they might need more information later.

Warfield and Komeito strategized for a minute at the car and went back into the pizza place to talk with Norio and Aoki again. Warfield asked for their help.

“I thought Ivan was not in trouble,” Norio reminded Komeito.

“He may have some information that will help in an investigation.” Komeito told Norio Warfield was from the FBI in Washington, cooperating with the Japanese government in an undercover investigation.

Norio looked at Aoki. They nodded to each other and then to Komeito and Warfield.

“Good,” Warfield said. “We need to go to the hangar. Is it necessary to use the main airport entrance?”

“No. There is an entrance for service vehicles,” Aoki said. The guards there know the Guido’s car.”

“Can you draw us a route to the hangar and a diagram of the inside?” Warfield asked.

Aoki nodded. “I will drive you there,” he said, looking to Norio for approval.

Warfield shook his head.

“You can’t get past the gate guards,” Aoki said. “Even with the car, they will look for familiar faces. They don’t ask for my I.D. any more but they stop the car and look inside. And Ivan, he knows me. He will freak if you walk in.”

Warfield had no intention of walking in like that, but Aoki had a point. “We’ll do it then. Komeito will go into the hangar with you to deliver the pizza and get the lay of everything. Say he’s your boss, riding with you today. I’ll stay out of sight in the car until you come out. Komeito and I will take it from there.”

Aoki and Norio nodded.

Warfield said, “But you need a reason to go there. Ivan will wonder why you are there if he hasn’t placed an order.”

“I surprised him one time,” Aoki said.

Komeito went to the car and gave TK instructions to follow them to the guard gate. He was to park there and wait. When Komeito got to the delivery car, Norio handed him a green and white Guido’s Pizza shirt and hat to wear and two boxes of pizza. To save time, Norio had added beets to a sausage pizza already in the oven. Aoki got into the front with him and Warfield crawled into the back seat.

When they were close to the gate Warfield shrunk himself into the rear floor space and Komeito hid him with extra uniform shirts he found in the car.

When they reached the gate Aoki handed the guard a box of pizza. “Making me fat, Aoki,” he said, patting his stomach. When the guard peered in at Komeito, Aoki said Komeito was new and the guard waved them through.

* * *

Hangar 23 was at the end of a service road in a remote corner of Narita about a mile from the service gate they’d used. Sprigs of grass that poked up through cracks in the pavement testified to the low volume of traffic in the area and Warfield saw no other buildings close enough to worry about. The only other cars he saw were on an expressway in the distance. As they approached the mammoth hangar Warfield ducked down behind the seat again.

The road went to the left just before the beginning of the tarmac and ran alongside a dense hedge that lined the outside hangar wall. Aoki slowed and followed the road to the back corner of the building. “I always park around the corner here,” he said. A moment later they came into view of the parking area and Aoki stopped in the middle of the road.

“What’s wrong?” Komeito asked.

“That car,” he said, pointing. “Ivan said I should never stop if a government car is here.” It was a dark blue sedan with an official-looking insignia on the door. Komeito told Warfield the insignia was Ministry of Transport.

“What happens if you do?”

“Not much, probably. He said his boss doesn’t like outsiders coming here.”

“What do you think, Warfield?”

“You two go in as planned,” he said from the floor. “We’ll talk when you come out.”

Aoki drove on to the parking area and turned off the engine. Warfield reminded Komeito to memorize the layout inside.

The whine and whoosh of jet engines in the distance were the only sounds after they left the car. Warfield thought about the time, and remembered his slow-motion powerlessness as a kid when trying to run in a pool or the ocean. August sixth was approaching faster than he could get everything out of the way.

* * *

Aoki and Komeito walked to the personnel entrance beside the huge hangar door and Aoki froze in his tracks.
“Look!”
he shouted. “It’s gone! The big plane is gone!” Aoki’s voice echoed through the cavernous hangar. “The office over there, that’s where I take the pizza,” he said, nodding toward a chain-link enclosure at the center of the left wall. They ran across the floor in that direction. No one was in sight.

“What’s going on here?” Aoki mumbled, when they reached the office area. The building was almost empty. Two computers sitting on a desk in the center of the area had been smashed and the hammer that did the damage lay nearby on the floor. Aoki stood with his hands on his hips and looked around. “That canvas there,” he said, pointing to a big roll of tent cloth outside the office area, “it used to hang on the fence. Ivan said it was there to make the office more private.” Aoki kicked at two old Guido’s Pizza boxes lying on the floor next to an over-full trash can. “Everything’s gone. The plane. Ivan, the other two. The big thing they were working on at the other end. What has happened?”

Komeito ran back to the car. “Warfield! There is no one inside.”

As Warfield, Komeito and Aoki inspected the hangar together, Aoki pointed out the small enclosed area the Russians used as their living quarters and told them other details he knew from previous visits. In contrast to the disheveled office, the rest of the hangar—tools, machines, a supply of what appeared to be aircraft parts and the Russians’ living quarters—was okay. Warfield finished looking around the makeshift dormitory room and was making a second pass through the office area when he spotted the edge of a notebook peeking out from beneath some papers on the cluttered desk. He flipped it open and saw the Cyrillic characters of the Russian language. He called to Komeito.

Komeito scanned the pages. “Boris Petrevich,” he yelled. “This is Petrevich’s notebook!” When he got to the third page, he shouted, “and Yoshida’s listed here, his phone number, too!”

“Got ’im!”
Warfield said, his eyes narrowing. “Let’s get out of here!” He pocketed the notebook and hurried toward the car. Warfield told Aoki to take them back to the gate where TK was waiting. Aoki was confused by it all, but complied.

En route they saw several police cars, lights flashing, near the gate. It was hard to make out in the distance but it looked like they had surrounded a gray car. “Think it’s TK,” Komeito said.

“Find another way out of here but don’t attract any attention!” Warfield ordered.

Seconds later they reached the road that led back to the service gate where they entered but Aoki turned left, away from the gate, and followed the access road around a hangar where the tarmac resumed, and to another gate half a mile from the first one but on the same street. There were no police cars. Warfield hid himself on the floor again. The security guard remained sitting in the kiosk and waved Aoki through.

Aoki turned left onto the street, away from the first gate. Warfield told him to drive to the nearest hotel.

Several blocks later Aoki wheeled into a high-rise Holiday Inn and stopped. Warfield put his hand on Aoki’s shoulder and told him not to worry. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

As Warfield jumped out and ran toward the hotel, Aoki turned to Komeito for reassurance.

“What you have done is for good,” Komeito said. “The police don’t know the good actors from the bad ones in this case yet, but they will. And you will understand very soon also.”

Komeito caught up with Warfield as he entered a side door of the hotel. Warfield told Komeito to call the number in Petrevich’s notebook for Yoshida. “See what you can find out about him.” Warfield looked at his watch. It was exactly six p.m. Saturday evening in Tokyo. In Washington, five o’clock Saturday morning, where it was already August sixth!

* * *

Komeito knew chances were slim anyone would answer if the number in Petrevich’s notebook was to Yoshida’s office, even though Saturday was a workday for many Japanese. The number rang for a long time and he was about to hang up when a woman answered in Japanese. “Vice-Minister’s Office!” She was abrupt, and sounded angry.

“This Fumio Yoshida’s number?”

“You know it is Vice-Minister Yoshida’s office! And I know you are another reporter calling about his brother. Please do not call back. Good-bye.”

So they had found the body.
“No, wait! This is police.”

“Police!
Again?”

“Yes. I am Captain Iwamoto,” Komeito said. “In charge of the investigation into Jotaro Yoshida’s death. Any of my officers still there?”

“Two
were
here. That is why I am still here. They left a minute ago.”

“We’re having radio problems. Haven’t talked with them since they left you. Mind repeating what you told them?”

“I told them the vice-minister cannot be reached at this time. They were rude, so I did
not
tell them that he is on a training flight. They asked questions that were none of their business.”

It was an opportunity made for the moment and Komeito seized it. “Please tell me your name,
keishu
.”

“Mrs. Nakamura.” Being called a lady seemed to calm her down.

“I am very sorry for their unforgivable rudeness, Mrs. Nakamura. I will speak with them, and I will see to it they apologize to you.”

“You are a
jentoruman.
How can I help you?”

“Did you say the vice-minister is on a training flight?”

“Mr. Yoshida is responsible for pilot training standards and certification. Indirectly, I mean. He is a pilot and flies often, but his responsibilities include much more than that now.”

“What is he flying?”

“Not sure. A Ministry plane.”

“Why can’t he be reached by radio?”

“We’re trying now. For some reason he isn’t responding. Couldn’t have gone at a worse time. We are very upset about his brother. Have you found the two men who did it?”

She knew it was two men, so it had to be Mrs. Tanaka, the old lady next door to the Yoshida’s, who called the police. He knew she would. “No, but we will get to the bottom of it soon.”

“Minister Yoshida’s brother was affected. The bomb, you know. He cared for him all these years. I feel very sorry for both of them,” she said.

Komeito gave it a respectful moment before going on. She was close to the edge. “You didn’t say where he is flying to on this training flight.”

“Oh, to Los Angeles, in America. You can check with air traffic control for details. He always files a flight plan. Vice-Minister Yoshida is very particular about things like that.”

“I was wondering if you would call air traffic control and ask for his flight plan, Mrs. Nakamura. You must know some people over there.”

“Sure, Captain. We work with them all the time.”

“I’ll call you back. Five minutes long enough?”

“I think so.”

“Oh…, Mrs. Nakamura, please do not discuss this matter with anyone but me for the time being. If anyone asks, you should say you have spoken with several police officers about it. It will not be necessary to mention our conversation.”

She was silent for a moment. “You are keeping secrets from your officers?”

“Uh, not at all. It’s just that you would have no way of knowing who you are speaking with on the phone. It could be the reporters falsely identifying themselves in order to get information from you.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Glad you reminded me.”

When Komeito called Mrs. Nakamura back she had all the flight plan details. He wrote them down and thanked her.

* * *

Komeito told Warfield everything Mrs. Nakamura had told him about Yoshida. His position at the Ministry of Transport, her job as his assistant. “He’s in the air now and guess where he’s going.”

The hair on Warfield’s arms stood on end when Komeito told him.

Komeito handed him the notes he’d made when talking with Mrs. Nakamura, including the flight plan. “He expects to be there at five a.m. Los Angeles time. Logged it as a training flight.”

Warfield did the time conversion.
Yoshida’s Los Angeles ETA was less than three hours away.
He barked instructions to Komeito to use his connections in Tokyo to get the Japanese authorities to Hangar 23 to look for nuclear traces.
“Now, Komeito!”

Warfield had to call Cross but needed more information if he was going to convince him to act. He remembered the file Komeito checked at Yoshida’s house and asked him about it. The Jotaro file.