“Okay, what about Murphy?”
Rencke chuckled. “He knows I’m lying through my teeth. I told him that I didn’t know where you were — which strictly speaking was the truth right then. But he just gave me a smile, and said to tell you to watch your ass, because the big dogs were gunning for you.”
McGarvey was surprised by the DCI’s apparently soft attitude. But then he’d been floored when Murphy first offered him the job as DDO and accepted Rencke back into the fold. “Keep an eye on my wife and Liz, would you?”
“Will do, Mac,” Rencke said with conviction. “Just take care of yourself and get back home. There’re a lot of people depending on you.”
“Count on it,” McGarvey said, and he broke the connection.
Sergeant Wilkes came back with the coffee and set it on the pull-down table. “Not exactly regulation, but I think this’ll hold you until breakfast, sir.”
McGarvey took a sip of the coffee and smiled. It was laced with brandy. “This’ll do just fine.”
“I think you should try to get some sleep. It’s a long slog to Misawa.” Sergeant Wilkes looked out the window. “At least it’s not bumpy.” He went forward to the tiny galley.
McGarvey was too fired up to sleep, thinking about Ripley. He did his homework, studying the Japanese guides and maps his missions and programs people had supplied him with. Sometime after two in the morning local, they touched down at Elmendorf Air Force Base outside Anchorage for refueling, the apron harshly lit by violet lights. He went into the base terminal cafeteria where he ate another breakfast, the only meal they were serving at that time of night, and an hour later he was back aboard the Gulfstream. This time the aircraft was nearly full with seventeen of the twenty seats occupied by air force officers, none of them below the rank of major. They’d been briefed too, and left McGarvey to himself at the rear of the plane. A half hour out he finally managed to drop off, his mind back in Katy’s Chevy Chase house the night they made love for the first time in years. He wanted to get back from this operation more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much lost, uselessly wasted time to catch up on.
McGarvey woke up, a gummy taste in his mouth, his muscles cramped, and he looked out the window. The sun was low on the hazy horizon, which meant it was late afternoon already. For a second he was confused about the time, until he realized he was seeing land ahead of them, which meant they were approaching the coast of Japan. Flying time combined with their westerly direction meant, in effect, he’d lost a day, although his body clock was still on U.S. Eastern time, five in the morning.
Sergeant Wilkes came back with another cup of brandy-laced coffee. “The time change screws everybody up,” he said with a chuckle.
McGarvey took the coffee. “When do we land?” Now that he was coming awake he felt rested.
“About twenty minutes. You okay, sir? Because I talked to Captain Palmer. He says we can put you up at the BOQ for a day and a wakeup.”
McGarvey quickly did the arithmetic in his head. When he’d left CIA headquarters the launch clock was around thirty-six hours. Now it stood at twenty-one. He shook his head. “I’d like to take a shower somewhere and then catch a ride into town, if that’s possible.”
“No problem, sir. I’ll take you over to the crew ready room, and when you’re ready I’ll run you out to the main gate. There’s a cab stand there.”
“Do the locals treat you guys okay?”
Sergeant Wilkes gave him an odd look, but he shrugged. “We pump a lot of money into the economy. Business is business.”
McGarvey nodded. That’s what was so weird about what had been going on between Japan and the U.S. over the past few years. They were major trading partners. Their economies were so closely linked that when the Dow Jones twitched, the Nikkei average did a nose dive. And when the value of the yen took off, the American economy felt the effects almost instantly. Of course the situation had been nearly the same in the twenties and thirties. It wasn’t a very comforting thought.
The Gulfstream touched down at Misawa Air Force Base at 8:00 P.M. local, and coming in McGarvey had a chance to study the layout of the coastal city of 100,000 people. The chief industry was fishing, of course; sardines, if he remembered his briefing book correctly, although there were a few very small copper mines to the south.
He waited until everybody else was off the aircraft before he rode with Sergeant Wilkes over to flight operations housed in a low, concrete block building. He had the shower room to himself, and when he had finished and gotten dressed, Wilkes was waiting in the day room with a couple of hamburgers, french fries and a can of Budweiser.
“I don’t know how long you’re going to be in-country, but I figured you might like a home-cooked meal while it was available.”
McGarvey dug in as Wilkes watched him, an expectant look on his face.
“I know I’m not supposed to say anything, but you’re a spy, aren’t you?”
McGarvey took a drink of beer, and grinned. “Let me guess, you’re a James Bond fan.”
“Le Carré, Clancy, Cussler, Flannery, all of them.”
McGarvey shook his head. “Sorry to disappoint you, Wilkes. What I’m doing here is secret, but I’m not James Bond.”
Wilkes shrugged good-naturedly. “Oh well. Even if you were you wouldn’t be able to tell me.”
After the meal, Wilkes drove McGarvey across the bustling base to the main gate. The guards were dressed in combat fatigues and wore sidearms in addition to the M16 riffles they carried. But there didn’t seem to be much tension. In fact as they approached the gate, a half-dozen airmen walked around the barriers and climbed into two cabs waiting on the narrow road. It was a Saturday night, and, as Wilkes explained, they were heading into town just like GIs did wherever they were stationed.
“When do you go back?” McGarvey asked.
“In the morning,” Wilkes said. They shook hands. “Have a good trip.”
“You too, Sergeant. Thanks for the burgers.”
Shinichi Hirota pulled up in front of the living quarters of the space center director, hurried up the walk and went inside. Lee and Tomichi Kunimatsu were having dinner together with several pretty young women. It took Hirota several minutes to get the attention of one of the girls, who came out to the front hall to him. It would not have done for him to barge in and thus interrupt their peace.
The girl bowed respectfully.
“Tell Mr. Lee that I am here.”
She hesitated, her eyes lowered.
“It is most urgent.”
“Hai, Hirota-san,” she said demurely, and she turned and shuffled back inside.
Hirota stepped back out of sight. His daughter, in school in Tokyo, was about the same age as the young women with Lee and Kunimatsu. He felt an instant of shame thinking what it would be like if she were doing this instead of studying chemistry, but then his heart hardened. Nippon was under attack. Difficult and problematic steps were necessary, sometimes even for the most innocent.
Lee, wearing a hand-embroidered silk kimono, came out a minute later, a neutral expression of his face. “What is it?”
“It’s him. Kirk McGarvey. He is here in Japan.”
Lee’s expression did not change. “Where?”
“Misawa. It is a small fishing city in Aomori Prefecture on Honshu’s far northern coast.”
“I know where it is,” Lee said, showing the first sign of impatience. “What is he doing there?”
“I alerted all the prefecture police captains to watch for him. He was spotted less than an hour ago leaving the American air force base.”