Rencke had finally fallen asleep, practically on his feet, and hey’d left him and come back to McGarvey’s office where Ms. Swanfeld had put the finishing touches on the briefing.
“Murphy will cut you off at the knees when he finds out what you’re trying to do,” Adkins warned. “What if you lay his on Lindsay’s lap and he doesn’t flinch?”
“I don’t think Lindsay’s a traitor, nor do I think he ordered he Georgetown bombing. He probably doesn’t even know what he’s doing for Japan. He was manipulated from the start, ust like a lot of presidents before him.”
“If that’s the case, ordering the Seventh Fleet into the fray has to be exactly what the Japanese want. But why?” Adkins shook his head. “North Korea probably asked the Chinese for help, so no surprise there. Nor was it very surprising that the Japanese knocked off one of their submarines. They started the fight, so why back us into a corner where the only thing we can do is send our navy right back into the middle of it?”
“In the first place it’s emptied Tokyo Bay. We don’t have much of anything there now.”
“That’s a thought,” Adkins said, a sour look on his face.
“And secondly it’s got our attention squarely focused on the Sea of Japan.” McGarvey shrugged. “Maybe that’s where they want us looking so that they can pull off something else.” The thought was there again niggling at the back of McGarvey’s mind. Something he should know, some connection he should be making. One of those ideas that surprised you because of its simplicity. But he wasn’t seeing it.
Kondo, Kajiyama and five commandos were in the water, strung out for 150 yards behind the Bertram. It was finally dark, but very few stars were visible because of the glow from Washington’s lights. The commando on the fly bridge could not see the men because of their black outfits and blackened faces. But one by one they sent one click on their walkie-talkies, which meant they were lined up and properly connected to the tow cable. When he counted the seventh click, he scanned the river both ways to make sure there was no traffic, then shoved the throttle levers forward to their stops. At first the boat struggled against the dead weight in the water, but then as the seven men became airborne on their paraglider chutes, the Bertram surged ahead. Looking back he could make out only vague forms rising into the night sky. They could have been anything, perhaps a flock of birds, harmless.
McGarvey rode with Murphy in the DCI’s limousine, the bodyguard riding in front with the driver. Thursday night traffic was moderate, a lot lighter than it was during the day. A few clouds had come in, but there was almost no wind, and a thick haze of humidity had settled over the city.
“Was there anything new in the AMs from Tokyo station?” Murphy asked.
“No. The entire country has closed down. Nobody’s talking,” McGarvey replied.
Murphy tapped his briefcase in which he carried the briefing folder. “I didn’t get a chance to go through the new material. Anything I should know about?”
“It’s mostly deep background. Tony Croft had apparently been seeing the call girl for about six months. Started about the same time Joseph Lee came to Sam Blair’s attention. The poor bastard.”
Murphy gave him a wry look. “Who’s a poor bastard, Croft or Blair?”
McGarvey had to smile. “Both of them.”
Murphy didn’t pursue the thought, leaving McGarvey to his self-doubts and his increasingly uneasy feeling that something very bad was going to happen.
Elizabeth slipped down the back stairs and went outside to the rear patio. The pool lights were out, and with the windows shuttered and the lights in her room off, the grounds were pitch black.
The flare from her cigarette lighter destroyed her night vision for a minute or so, and until her eyes adjusted she instinctively stepped back under the roof overhang. It was like being temporarily blind, and she didn’t like it.
She cupped her cigarette, conscious that out here in the darkness, she stood out like a beacon. She shivered. “Impatience is eventually going to get you in trouble.” She could practically hear her father telling her something like that. But she simply couldn’t stay inside doing nothing. At least out here she was another pair of eyes watching for an attack.
Kondo’s night-vision oculars adjusted for the sudden light bloom at the rear of the house, but it had taken him by surprise, and he was momentarily disoriented. It took several precious seconds for him to straighten out his flight path and angle once again toward a small open landing area that would put ten meters of woods between him and the four guards he’d spotted on the way in.
They were at their most vulnerable now, coming in silently 150 feet above the woods behind the house. If one of the guards on the ground was equipped with night-vision equipment and happened to look up, the operation would be over before it began. But so far their luck seemed to be holding.
Just before he dropped below the tree line, he glanced back toward the pool area. A lone figure stood beneath the overhang, something glowing in its left hand. The figure raised a hand to its face, and the glow intensified in Kondo’s oculars. The stupid fool was smoking a cigarette, Kondo realized in amazement, then he was down and gathering his chute as the two commandos with him touched down soundlessly.
Kondo directed them with hand signals. They moved swiftly to the edge of the woods, and immediately he spotted one guard leaning against a tree less than ten meters to his left. He clicked his comms unit once.
Within five seconds his two commandos, plus Kajiyama and his force of three men in the woods in front of the house, reported in with a total of another eleven clicks. In all they’d spotted twelve guards.
Now they would wait patiently until Kondo sent the tone signal which meant attack. But first he would allow time for the situation to stabilize in case they’d been spotted coming in. And he wanted to get a little closer to see who was smoking at the back door.
McGarvey entered the Oval Office with Murphy at precisely 10:00 P.M. The President and his national security adviser, Harold Secor, were seated across from each other in easy chairs, and McGarvey saw the brief look of irritation in Lindsay’s eyes replaced almost instantly with the President’s famous boyish grin. The President looked tired, McGarvey thought, as well he should considering everything that was happening.
“Good evening, Mr. President,” Murphy said. “Mr. McGarvey will conduct the briefing tonight, because at the moment he has more of the answers than the rest of us.”
“Very well,” Lindsay said. “Let’s get started.”
Mindful that there were armed guards out ahead and on either side of him, Kondo crawled slowly beneath some scrub brush. His two men were waiting in the darkness behind him for the signal to attack, as were the others. They would wait, he knew, without moving until hell froze over if need be. Their training and discipline were nothing less than magnificent.
He moved his head slowly to the left in time to see his targeted man speak into a lapel mike. Seconds later the guard stepped around the tree and urinated.
Kondo waited until the guard was finished and had moved back into position before he turned his attention to the lone figure still standing at the back door.
He could tell that it was a woman from her slight figure, but he was completely surprised when she turned and looked in his general direction, giving him a full view of her face. She was Elizabeth McGarvey. The foolish woman had come outside. They knew something might happen, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken the precautions they had: the guards, the shutters, the blackout. Yet they’d let McGarvey’s daughter step outside and light a cigarette.