“She’s the one who told you that Croft was murdered?”
Rudolph nodded. “The ME says he killed himself, no doubt about it. But the woman took some photographs of a man she saw meeting with Croft. Right after Tony killed himself, she said she saw this guy coming out of the Hay Adams in a big hurry, carrying what looked like a manila envelope. And it’s a break, if you want to call it that. We got the film from her purse and developed it. He was registered at the Hay Adams under the name Thomas Wang. His real name is Bruce Kondo, and he works for Lee.”
McGarvey sat back. All the pieces were starting to come together. Trouble was he had no idea what it all meant or where it was leading.
Rudolph read something of that from his face. “What the hell is going on?”
“Lee is buying influence for the Japanese, and Tony Croft was giving them information,” McGarvey said. “That part’s easy. Question is, why’d they come after me, and why’d Croft pick this time to kill himself? Did the woman say anything else?”
“Nothing that makes any sense, except that Tony Croft was worried enough about what he was doing that he kept mentioning to her something about the White House. But she said he told her that he wasn’t talking about that White House, whatever the hell that means.”
“The cabby who hit her comes up clean?”
“Yeah. It was an accident. She was there in front of him, and he couldn’t do a thing about it.”
“Anything else on the film?”
“Nothing that means anything, unless she was planning on blackmailing Croft.”
“What about Far East’s records?”
“We’re just starting to sift through it all. Dan Parks and his people are still hauling stuff out of there. But it’s going to take weeks before we’re through it all. In the meantime what am I supposed to do?”
“Your job, Fred. You’re a cop investigating a crime.”
Rudolph nodded. “Dr. Pierone said the President wants to be kept informed.”
“I’ll bet he does,” McGarvey said, but his mind was elsewhere, spinning out connections between what was happening here in Washington to what was going on in the Sea of Japan. Something, some link between the two, was tickling the edges of his consciousness. Anomalies. The one fact that didn’t seem to belong. But he wasn’t quite seeing it yet.
“How is your daughter doing?” Rudolph asked, breaking McGarvey out of his thoughts.
“She’s on the mend, thanks,” McGarvey said. “Have you found out who put the safe house on the Web?”
“That’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. But Croft had a lot of friends in the Bureau, so if you want to carry a dark thought in that direction, it could be one of them. We’re still checking.”
McGarvey dropped back into his thoughts.
“Whatever it is, it’s going to happen soon, isn’t it,” Rudolph said.
McGarvey looked up, another piece of the puzzle suddenly falling into place. “That’s it.”
“What is?”
“They have a time table,” McGarvey said. “All we have to do is find it.”
SIXTEEN
Kondo checked the plain gray government vans to make sure that nothing was missing. They’d brought them inside with Sandy Patterson’s blue Toyota van and loaded them last night. Then everyone had spent the night resting. After this operation there would be others, of course, but nothing would ever have the same urgency and flavor as this, because Japan would no longer have to hang her head in shame for something that had happened more than a half-century ago. India with her large navy and nuclear arsenal, China with her vast population and even ridiculous North Korea with her nuclear weapons, the triggers of which were held by a rabid madman, would no longer threaten the home islands. Japan would, at long last, take her rightful place in the eastern hemisphere, and no power on earth could resist her. It was a heady feeling. Melodramatic, but it had symmetry. The U.S. would be the dominant superpower in the West, and Nippon the new superpower in the East. Nothing on earth could stop them now.
This morning the team was in a subdued mood as they checked and rechecked their weapons, night-vision oculars, radios and other equipment.
Kajiyama came back from the front of the warehouse. He was dressed, as the others were, in street clothes. They wouldn’t change into their all-black uniforms until nightfall and time for deployment. “It’s ten o’clock. Time to head out.”
“Is everybody ready?”
“Hai,” Kajiyama said. His mood was bright, full of nervous energy. He glanced up toward the offices on the second floor. “What about the woman?”
Kondo followed his gaze. “Has she made all the final arrangements?”
“So far as I know, she has.”
“I’ll check with her.”
Kajiyama looked at him. “And then what, Kondo-san?”
“Get the men aboard the vans and pick up the boat at Riverview. We’ll rendezvous up river at Barton at five.”
“Is she coming with us, or with you?”
“Neither,” Kondo said.
“Kill her now,” Kajiyama said simply, and he went to gather the men as Kondo went upstairs.
Sandy Patterson was watching CNN on a small television in the manager’s office, where she’d slept last night. She looked up guiltily.
“Has there been anything about you or the Far East Trade Association?” Kondo asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. She looked like she was on the verge of cracking up. There were splotches of color on her forehead and high cheeks, and her lower lip quivered.
“Did you call this morning to make certain the boat is ready for us?” he asked calmly, gentling her like a trainer might do with a skittish horse.
“Yes, you have the slip number.”
“The helicopter pilot has his instructions?”
She nodded.
“The Bonanza pilot is ready for another sight-seeing tour?”
“He’s waiting for you at Woodmore.”
“Did you tell him that you would be coming along for the ride, the same as last time?”
Her eyes narrowed in surprise. “No. You told me that it’d be best if I stayed here until … afterward.”
“Very good,” Kondo said.
Rudolph’s speculation that whatever was going to happen would happen soon bothered McGarvey. Back at his office he started work on the daily intelligence report that Murphy would use to brief the President later in the day, but he couldn’t keep his mind on the paperwork. He told his secretary that he would be gone for a couple of hours and drove out to the safe house, calling ahead so that Isaacson’s people would be expecting him.
Nothing had changed out here. The weather remained beautiful, and the house and grounds looked like a summer camp or health spa. Idyllic, calm, peaceful. But he couldn’t shake the dark cloud that seemed to hang over him. It was a sixth sense of impending disaster that an Agency psychologist had once explained was nothing more than a highly developed and finely tuned subconscious awareness of everything and everybody around him.
He parked his Nissan Pathfinder in front, and like before an armed guard appeared from around the corner of the house.
“I won’t be long, so don’t bother putting it in the garage,” McGarvey told him.
The guard waved, then said something into a lapel mike and went back around the corner.
Paul Isaacson and Todd Van Buren were in the dining room operations center having a cup of coffee when McGarvey came in.