Hirota calmed down. “You’re looking for the car as well, of course. I want you to look everywhere, including the train station in case our man doubled back and took the next train.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hirota broke the connection and dialed another number. This one rang seven times before it was answered by Shiego Shimoyama, chief of Tokyo Police, at his home.
“This must be bad news,” Shimoyama said.
“Our people at Ichinobe haven’t reported in.”
“Have you instituted a search of the immediate area?”
“Hai.”
“Very well then, we must assume the worst, that’s he is on the loose and heading south.”
“Yes, but time is on our side now. There are less than twelve hours to launch, which means he will have to take a shinkansen or an airplane. He can’t get here in time otherwise.”
“That’s helpful. It means his choices are limited, and we can concentrate our search efforts.”
“He must be found, Shimoyama-san. At all costs.”
“Yes,” the police chief replied dryly. “It is in the national interest.”
“Nothing has been so important since Pearl Harbor.”
Shimoyama laughed. “With different results this time, one would hope.”
McGarvey entered the Buddhist pilgrimage city of Nagano shortly before seven in the morning. It was a weekend and traffic was reasonably light. At first he didn’t know where he was because the few road signs that existed were difficult to understand, and often contradictory. He knew that he was south and west of the Tokyo megalopolis, and that he was in the mountains. But it wasn’t until he actually entered the city that he knew precisely where he was, and that he would never make it in time to stop the launch unless he could find an airplane and pilot to take him there.
The H2C was scheduled to lift off in a little more than nine hours, but the space center was seven hundred miles farther to the south. At least eighteen hours by car just to Kyushu’s south coast, plus however much longer it would take to cross the fifty miles or so of open water to the island.
He stopped at a roadside rest area that contained a Shinto shrine and studied his maps. The nearest airport was fifty miles south at Matsumoto where he was reasonably certain that he could find a plane and pilot. He had enough money to pay for the trip, but he would have to invent a plausible story that the air service would buy. That was providing private aviation hadn’t been grounded because of the military alert.
In addition, the two cops who’d come to kill him in Ichinobe would be missed by now, and the authorities would be searching for this car in ever widening circles. Sooner or later he would be caught in their net unless he got rid of the car very soon.
He decided that would have to be his first priority. He studied the Nagano city map, then drove into the city, careful to watch the speed limit and traffic that came from his right. It would be terrible to get a traffic ticket or get involved in a fender bender now, because once the civilian police had him he could not fight back. They were innocents in this.
He stopped for a red light a half block from the ornate railroad station at the end of a broad cul de sac. A bus had just pulled around the traffic circle and stopped in front of the station, ahead of a taxi rank with three cabs. As McGarvey waited for the light to change, a police car, its blue lights flashing, came through the intersection from the right, sped around the circle and pulled in behind the bus. Two cops jumped out of the car and rushed inside the station.
It was no coincidence. But even if it was, McGarvey felt that he would have to operate on the assumption that the authorities were guarding every train station between Ichinobe and the south island until after the launch. They would be looking for a tall, well-built westerner. They would stop all westerners, because there were so few of them traveling around Japan at any time, and especially now.
The light changed. McGarvey turned right and headed away from the station. If they were watching all the train stations, they were probably watching all the airports between Ichinobe and the south island, including Matsumoto. Lee’s people would have figured that McGarvey’s only way to Tanegashima in time for the launch was either a shinkansen or an airplane. Any other means of transportation would be too slow.
Of course he did have the option of doing something totally unexpected. He could turn around and drive back up to the air force base at Misawa, where he would be safe. But he would have failed in his mission. It was a bitter thought, but one that he knew he was going to have to consider very soon.
The solutions to both of his immediate problems — time and transportation — came ten minutes away from the railroad station near a magnificent Buddhist temple at the foot of which was a very old traditional ryokan, the Hotel Fujiya, when his satellite cell phone chirped. He answered the phone as he cruised slowly past the long pedestrian entrance to the temple. It was Rencke.
“Oh, boy, I can’t get a fix on you, Mac. Where are you?”
“Nagano. But I don’t think I’m going to make it in time.”
“Are you okay, Mac?”
“For the time being,” McGarvey said. He quickly ran through everything that had happened since he’d landed at Misawa. “I’m going to have to get rid of the car and try to make it back to the base.”
“You’ve got an extra thirty-one hours, if that’ll help,” Otto gushed. “They’re having trouble with one of the onboard guidance computers, so the launch has been pushed back until tomorrow night. The new window is from 11:02 to 11:24.”
McGarvey was passing the hotel entrance, and it suddenly occurred to him how he was going to make it at least to Kyushu in time for the delayed launch.
He headed back into the city.
“Okay, I’ve still got a shot at this,” he told Otto. “Has NASA made contact with their people yet?”
“No. Hartley wants to go over, but the Japs are dragging their feet. Nobody seems to know or care what the hell is going on.”
“Keep pushing on them,” McGarvey instructed. “I can use every extra hour you can give me.”
“Gotcha—”
“But you can’t call me again. This time we were lucky, I was alone. But if I’m in a tight spot and this phone pops off I could be in trouble.”
Otto didn’t like it. “I see your point. But keep in contact, willya?”
“Will do,” McGarvey said, paying attention to traffic, which was picking up. “Gotta go.”
“Hang in there, Mac. We need you.”
McGarvey broke the connection and tossed the phone in his bag on the passenger seat. He circled around the downtown area, approaching to within a couple of blocks of the railroad station from a different direction than before. Parking on a weekday would have been difficult, but McGarvey found a spot in the parking lot of a small shopping district two blocks away. He circled until there was no activity in the lot, then pulled in, grabbed his bag, locked the car doors and walked away without looking back and with the air of a man with all the time in the world.
There was some pedestrian traffic, but no one paid him any particular attention. A block from the parking lot he stopped to look at the cameras in a shop window and to check behind him. No one was tailing him. At this point they would be concentrating on the train station.
He walked another couple of blocks toward the railroad station, finally finding a taxi waiting in front of a department store, its vacant light on.
McGarvey got in, and the driver turned and smiled.
“L‘hôtel Fujiya, s’il vous plait,” McGarvey said.
“Fujiya?” the driver said, his smile widening.