The bomb was designed to be towed by the midget sub to its location. It would then be left in place. They would have to wait on final orders for detonation and the proper timing. The crewman would either leave or die with the submarine, but he could not survive underwater for more than a day or so. There was enough air in a midget sub for that long. So they must have prepared another way to detonate the bomb at the target with the remote.
It was very plain to see now. It was what Kuzumi would do if he had to make such a choice. The remote detonator had been sent to America through the TO network and Kuzumi knew whose hands it had ended up in: Nira’s. Why had she not detonated it? Had it malfunctioned, or, as was more likely, had she been stopped from finishing the mission?
Was there more to her “suicide” than Taiyo had let on? What had happened? Had the Americans stopped her? Why was the file on this American organization missing? Kuzumi saw plots within plots and he saw the death of the woman he had loved a half a century before at the center of a typhoon of deceit. The question was: Who had been the architects of all this? For the first time in his life, Kuzumi turned his head and looked at the painting of the Sun Goddess that hung behind the desk and he was uncertain.
Kuzumi’s fist slammed into the teak desktop, startling Nakanga, who had been waiting patiently for further orders. “Make preparations for travel,” Kuzumi ordered.
Nakanga inclined his head, indicating he understood the order. “Where am I to go, Genoysha?”
“You are going with me.” Nakanga’s head snapped up, his eyes wide in disbelief. “To San Francisco.”
“But, Genoysha! You cannot—”
“Prepare for travel.” Kuzumi’s voice left no room for argument. “We leave immediately. How long will it take us to arrive in San Francisco?”
“By our fastest jet, it will take us nine hours, Genoysha.”
“Then we may arrive before the trawler?”
“Yes.”
“Make the arrangements, quickly.” Nakanga paused in the doorway. “And Ronin Nishin, Genoysha? What should his orders be?”
“He is to do nothing.”
“But what about the Korean ship? Should it not be stopped?”
“I have already made arrangements for that,” Kuzumi said. “Now, no more discussion. We must leave immediately.”
CHAPTER 13
Lake had spent the rest of the day at Harmon’s apartment. They had a more slowly paced, but no less passionate, replay of what had happened in her office. They had not spoken until his portable had buzzed. It was a call from Ranch Central with orders to meet Feliks at ten on the Embarcadero. Lake had been waiting for the call. At that time he could unload the information about Genzai Baku dan and be done with it. If only it was that simple, he thought to himself.
“What are you going to do?” Harmon asked, her head resting on his chest, her fingers playing along his stomach.
“I have to meet him. He’ll chew my butt, get an update on everything, and then I’ll be out of here. He’ll have to deal with the little problem resting at the base of the south tower.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know,” Lake said. “I might even be fired, in which case I guess I’ll have to look for a job.”
“I know a job you could have right now,” she said, her hand straying lower.
The phone call and impending meeting with Feliks had made an intrusion on the quick wall her presence had built up for him. Reality still was out there and things were happening. There were still all the unanswered questions.
“There’s something I need to check before I meet Feliks. Can you give me a lift?”
“Certainly.” She stood up and walked across the room. Lake watched her for a few seconds before he started pulling on his own clothes. Her body was neither voluptuous nor model-thin, but rather lean with smooth, long muscles flowing under the skin.
Lake had never met anyone quite like her. Her strange aura of purposeful ness disconcerted him. He had not expected what had happened in the office, but it did not surprise him. Very rarely did he feel something when he encountered a woman, but on rare occasions there was a chemical attraction. He also knew that the stress of the past few days and the lurking danger of his mission had pushed both their emotional drives into hyper.
“Where are we going?” Harmon asked, pulling on a pair of jeans.
“A bar,” Lake said. “I want to play a hunch.”
She threw on a sweater and they walked out into the cool night air. She drove a red Chevy Blazer and Lake gave her directions. When they pulled up at their destination he could see that the Chain Drive was closed, police tape crisscrossed over the doorway.
“This doesn’t look good,” Harmon said.
“Don’t worry,” Lake said. “I’m not going in there’. Wait here for me,” he added. “Keep the doors locked. I won’t be more than an hour.”
“Be safe,” she said.
Lake went around the back of the bar to an old set of wooden stairs. He climbed them and quickly picked the lock on the door at the top. Lake made sure the shade was pulled on the single window before turning the overhead light on. He was in a one-room apartment above the bar. There was no sign the police had been in there, indeed there was no sign anyone had been in here other than Jonas since the last time Lake had been up here, about four weeks ago to conclude a deal.
He looked around. A battered sofa sat at the foot of a double bed, both facing a TV. The coffee table was covered with Patriot literature. Clothes were scattered on the floor. A few empty beer bottles sat next to the sink.
Lake began searching the room as he’d been taught at the Ranch, working top to bottom in a clockwise, descending spiral, foot by foot. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for but he was following his instincts. Someone had killed Jonas. Feliks had known about it within a couple of hours. Something wasn’t quite right” and he hoped the room revealed a clue as to what that something was.
It did. It took Lake forty-five minutes to work down to the level of the outlets and he unscrewed them one after another. Removing the cover on the one underneath the window revealed that the connection box had been gutted. There were two items in there and Lake removed both. The first was a thick roll of money wrapped in plastic. The outside bill was a hundred and Lake estimated there were at least a hundred of those in the wad. He pocketed it.
The second item was a top-of-the-line cellular satellite phone. Lake held it in his right hand as if he were weighing it. Then with his left he pulled out the Ranch-issue phone from his pocket. The two were identical.
Nishin slowly hung up the phone. Do nothing? He did not understand. What about the second trawler? he had asked. Do nothing, Nakanga had hissed at him.
Nishin walked the streets, his eyes unfocused, his mind trying to accept his orders. Perhaps Nakanga did not understand the situation? Perhaps I did not explain it well enough, Nishin thought. Nakanga had sounded distracted and somewhat confused. Perhaps there is something else going on that is causing Nakanga to lose perspective on this mission, Nishin reasoned.
Nakanga was his Sensei, but there was a higher authority that Nishin owed allegiance to. The Koreans must be stopped. That had been his orders when he had departed for this mission and if there was a second trawler, that one too must be stopped. The Genoysha himself had said that protection of the existence of the Genzai Bakudan program was of the highest priority.