“He would have left more than a note,” Pierone suggested.
“Maybe he did and someone got in and out before the maid discovered the body.”
“The prostitute?”
“Or Thomas Wang.”
Pierone smiled wryly and shook his head. “I met Joseph Lee and his wife, Miriam. Did you know that she was born and raised in San Francisco? Charming people, witty, gracious, pleasant. They’ve been friends with the Lindsays for at least five years. Close friends, which is why Sam Blair was appointed special prosecutor — he’s tough but nonpartisan — and why you were assigned to find out about his campaign contributions.
“We’re drawing blanks for the moment,” Rudolph admitted.
“I know. Point is that if Joseph Lee was behind the Georgetown bombing and somehow involved in Tony Croft’s suicide, this won’t simply land in the backyard of the White House. It’ll end up in the President’s lap, and where would that put us?”
“In the middle of a criminal investigation,” Rudolph said, acutely aware that he had probably uttered the biggest understatement of his life.
“Have you discussed any of this with Sam?”
“No.”
“Don’t, without talking to me first,” Pierone said. He called his secretary. “Get Jack Hailey up here as soon as possible, would you?”
On the way back to his own office, Rudolph tried to remember why he had ever left his job with the Supreme Court. For the life of him he couldn’t, and for the first time he knew that he would give serious consideration to leaving once this investigation was over.
Traffic was a bitch on Sakurada-Dori Avenue as it always was Monday through Friday. Peter Rivas, parked in a bright green Honda Prelude across the street from the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, raised his motorized Nikon and took three rapid-fire shots of the exit from the police garage as a Mercedes limousine emerged. He got at least one good picture of the lone passenger in the backseat, the image through the 200mm telephoto lens clear enough so that he was sure the passenger wasn’t Joseph Lee.
Tokyo was a huge city of eight and a half million people living and working in twenty-three wards, twenty-six small cities, seven towns and eight villages spread out over 227 square miles. As far as the young CIA officer was concerned, trying to find one person in the middle of all that was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack, it was a gross waste of time. But orders were orders. And Lee was a top priority.
Rivas laid the camera on the passenger seat and lit a cigarette. He’d been here two hours already, since eight-thirty this morning, and had six to go. The COS had spread his twenty-three available personnel at the airport and through the city, eight hours on, eight hours off. Places where Lee, if he showed up in Tokyo, might logically be spotted.
Another Mercedes limo came up the ramp and waited for a break in traffic. Rivas flipped his cigarette away, raised the camera and focused on the two men in the backseat. The man on the right, behind the driver, had a narrow, pinched face, short-cropped gray hair and a round nose. He was Joseph Lee, there was no doubt of it.
Rivas snapped a half-dozen photographs as the car pulled out into traffic and headed south. He started his car, waited for a taxi to pass, then shot out behind it. He snatched the microphone.
“Control, seven. Red-one is on the move, south from my QTH. I’m in pursuit.”
“Don’t crowd him.”
Crowd him, hell, Rivas thought, just keeping up with the bastard was going to be a trick all in itself. This was the big one and he didn’t want to blow it.
The limo and cab shot through the light at Sotobori-Dori Avenue as it was turning yellow, and Rivas had to floor it to get through. His apartment was nearby so he was reasonably familiar with this section of Tokyo. But in another mile Sakurada-Dori branched off, to the right toward Roppongi, Akasaka and Aoyama, and left toward Hamamatsucho Rail Station, Shiba Rikyu Garden and the port of Tokyo. Either way the limo turned there would be dozens of opportunities for Rivas to lose it.
“Control, seven, I’m going to need some help.”
“Has he come to the turn yet?”
“Another couple of blocks.”
“If he turns toward the port, follow him, otherwise back off. Nine is in Akasaka.”
The radio transmissions were encrypted and sent in one-millisecond compressed bursts, but Rivas was still nervous. The Japanese may not have invented modern technology, but they sure as hell were masters at it.
“Okay, he’s in a black Mercedes 600, license seven-one-seven, governmental.”
“Stand by.”
The limo moved over to the center lane and the taxi switched lanes with it. Before Rivas could follow suit a pair of white Toyota vans pulled up on either side of him, boxing him in.
“Seven, the limo belongs to Shimoyama, so watch yourself.” Shiego Shimoyama was chief of Tokyo police. He had a reputation for hating Americans.
Rivas tried to speed up, but a third white Toyota van, which had been in front of the limo, switched lanes directly in front of him and dropped back.
“Control, seven, I’ve got trouble here,” Rivas radioed, but there was no reply.
The limo suddenly shot across three lanes and made the left turn toward the port, but Rivas, still boxed in, was forced to turn right through the intersection, toward Rappongi.
“Control, seven, you copy?”
The radio was silent.
“Shit,” Rivas said, looking for a way out, but the three vans refused to get out of the way, and a fourth suddenly appeared in his rearview mirror.
“Control, seven,” he radioed.
When there was no answer, he dropped the microphone. Like taking candy from a baby, he thought. But then it was their city, where a Westerner stood out like a sore thumb. The real trouble would come when he had to write his report. This was hot, and he’d blown it.
A few blocks later the white vans turned off, which came as no surprise, and his radio started to work again.
“Seven, this is control, do you read?”
“Control, seven, I copy. I lost him.”
Joseph Lee gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows toward the powerful H2C rocket on its launchpad five miles away, only a few puffy clouds marring an otherwise perfectly blue sky. Except for the incident this morning with the CIA officer in Tokyo, he was certain that the Americans had no idea he’d flown down here for the launch. Everything that he’d put in place for Morning Sun was developing as planned, in Taiwan, in Tokyo, in Washington and especially here at the space center. Nothing would go wrong.
“Joseph, I came as soon as I heard that you had arrived,” Tomichi Kunimatsu said.
Lee turned as the slightly built Tanegashima Space Center director came across the palatial great room, his hand outstretched.
They shook hands. “I’m happy to be here at least,” Lee said. “How is the countdown coming?”
“We’re at seventy-two hours, and I’m happy to say that so far there have been no major holds.” Kunimatsu, whose quarters these were behind the launch control complex, frowned. “I understand that you ran into some trouble in Tokyo?”
“Nothing serious,” Lee said. “How about the American Tiger team, are they behaving themselves?”
“No, but we’re taking care of them. Kimura wants to send them home now, and I agree.”
“Not until the launch. Otherwise there might be questions. That is, of course, if you can keep them out of mischief.”
“This close to launch, frankly they make me nervous, but I can see the wisdom in what you advise.” Kunimatsu looked out the windows. “Nine minutes after launch we will lose contact with the spaceship. And by the time Norad’s space command finds our wayward satellite, if they do, we will already have made the announcement.” He turned back to Lee. “Everyone will know the true meaning of Hagoromo.”