Her drink came and she paid for it with cash, as she did everything. The bartender gave her a stern look, as if to say: Go ahead and have your drink, sweetheart, but don’t look for any action in my establishment. She’d seen the same thing before and she was getting tired of it.
She shook her head, more in frustration with the situation she’d gotten herself into than fear, although she was plenty frightened. Fact was she couldn’t simply walk away from her life this time the way she had left Des Moines.
She signaled to the bartender that she would be right back, and walked across the lobby and around the corner toward the restrooms. A bank of pay phones lined the wall of the corridor. She called a number she’d memorized and it was answered on the second ring.
“You have reached the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If this is an emergency please press one. If you know the extension of your party please enter it now. For all other calls please press two.”
Judith pressed one. A moment later a man came on.
“FBI hotline.”
“I need to talk to whoever is in charge of the Tony Croft investigation. I have some information for you.”
“Yes, ma’am. Can you give me your name please.”
“Transfer me now, or I’ll hang up,” Judith said. “I’m not screwing around.”
“One moment please.”
Judith lit a cigarette with shaking hands. What the hell was she doing? What the hell had she gotten herself into?”
“Hello, this is Fred Rudolph, who am I talking to?”
“Never mind that for now,” Judith said. “I think Tony Croft was murdered, and I think I know who did it.”
FOURTEEN
A heat bloom suddenly showed up where it didn’t belong on the Whiskey Clipper Four satellite console, and Louise Horn sat forward so fast she spilled some of her coffee. “Damn.”
She brought up another infrared sensor to confirm what she thought she was seeing and fed both inputs into her computer. A second later the machine answered, “Natsushio.”
Louise looked up at the big board as she pulled out a cigarette and lit it. The tactical display showed the entire Sea of Japan and all the warships converging on a point southeast of Kimch’aek that they designated P1. Each time a satellite passed overhead the information on the screen was updated, showing the new position for each ship, the tracks they had taken since the last pass and their projected courses.
A small red circle showed the position where the Natsushio had attacked and killed the Chinese submarine, with two tracks leading away from it — one for the Japanese submarine and the other for the Seawolf. The problem was that the Natsushio had changed course. She was not heading, as they had assumed she would, back to her base at Maizuru. She had turned southwest, directly toward the oncoming Chinese fleet, or even a little south of it, perhaps trying to make an end run and sneak up on them as they passed. If that was his plan, Louise thought, he was one gutsy submarine commander. Or crazy.
She dialed up one of the high-resolution cameras aboard Whiskey Clipper Four, enhanced the image and zeroed in on the exact position of the diesel exhaust heat bloom.
It was morning out there, and except for a few puffy clouds viewing was nearly perfect. At first she saw nothing. She dialed up the highest magnification and image enhancement, which actually degraded the picture somewhat, and she spotted a tiny white wake, at the head of which was obviously a masthead sticking out of the water. It was the Natsushio’s periscope and radio antennae. The Japanese were talking to someone.
The information was already being transferred to photo interp upstairs. She called the night duty officer.
“I see it, Louise,” Major Wight said. “But hold a moment, I’m on the line with Fort Meade.”
The National Security Agency, headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, monitored electronic emissions all over the world. Like the NRO they were focused on the situation in the Sea of Japan. If the Japanese submarine was communicating with her home port, the NSA would be listening in right now.
While she waited for Major Wight to come back, she brought up control of the main tactical display on one of her consoles and asked the computer to extend the submarine’s track for the next twenty-four hours, juxtaposed against the tracks of the Chinese fleet.
“Okay, NSA says the Natsushio sent out a directed burst transmission, duration two hundred and ten milliseconds, which means it was a long message.”
“Was it sent to Maizuru?”
“Apparently not, but they can’t say where, and they haven’t decrypted it yet, but they’re working on it.”
“Well, she’s not heading back to the barn, Bert. From what I’m looking at on the board, she’s heading directly for the eastern channel south of Tsu Island. The Chinese fleet is using the western channel.”
“The skipper got smart, he doesn’t want to get into another fight. Especially now with those odds.”
“So where’s he going?” Louise asked.
“Maybe he plans on sneaking up behind them.”
“Once they’ve passed each other, he’d never be able to catch up.” Louise’s first cigarette was still burning in the overflowing ashtray. She lit another. “Could be he’s heading for Tokyo the long way around. That way he’d not only avoid the Chinese fleet, he wouldn’t have to deal with Seventh.”
“What are you getting at?” Major Wight asked carefully.
“Tokyo Bay is pretty empty right now. Maybe we should take a closer look at what’s happened over there since our fleet cleared out.”
“Are your projected tracks in the computer?”
“I’m looking at them right now.”
“Okay, good job again, Louise,” Major Wight said. “I’ll get this next door, but I want you to stick with this one for the duration. Can you handle that?”
Louise had to laugh. “The overtime pay sucks, but I can manage.”
Major Wight disconnected. Louise put down her cigarette, took a drink of coffee, then lit another cigarette as she stared up at the big board. This was how wars started, she had the unhappy thought.
FBI Director Gerald Pierone was shown into the Oval Office at 7:00 P.M. by the President’s appointments secretary Dale Nance. President Lindsay and Harold Secor were going over some information contained in a file open on the President’s desk. Lindsay closed it.
“The Japanese and Chinese ambassadors are coming over in a half hour, so I can’t give you much time, Gerald,” the President said. “You have some new information about Tony?”
Pierone had agonized all afternoon over what the Bureau’s role was in the investigation and exactly what position he should take personally. But he didn’t have any choice in the matter, as he saw it. He was the nation’s top cop, and if a law had been broken, it was his job to investigate it.
“There’s an outside chance that Tony Croft was murdered. We received a call on our hotline from a woman who claims that she knows who murdered him. The partial description she gave us fits a man by the name of Thomas Wang, a South Korean businessman. He was registered at the Hay Adams but apparently he never used his room, and he’s disappeared.”
The President was shaken. He sat down. “Do you know who the woman is?”
“We don’t have her name, but she claimed to be Croft’s mistress. They’d been meeting once or twice a week at the Hay Adams over the past six months. The hotel staff thinks she was probably a prostitute.”
The President and Secor exchanged a glance. “Did you know anything about this, Harold?” Lindsay asked.