Critical Mass (36 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass
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MCGARVEY FLEW FIRST CLASS FROM WASHINGTON TO LOS Angeles, and then the long haul across the Pacific to Tokyo. The cabin attendants wanted to fuss over him, but on his insistence they left him alone for the most part.
He took sleeping tablets to make sure he would get some much-needed rest, yet he dreamed about the monastery on Santorini. It was night again, the wind-swept rain beating against the stained glass windows, and Elizabeth's screams echoing down the long, dank stone corridors. But he couldn't do a thing to help her; he'd been crucified. His hands and feet had been nailed to the cross above the altar, while the congregation of STASI killers watched him bleed to death.
Elizabeth was going to die unless he could help her, but it was impossible and he knew it.
“I'm sorry,” he mumbled in his sleep. “Please … Elizabeth … forgive me.”
McGarvey looked up into the eyes of a flight attendant, an expression of concern on her face. “You must have been having a bad dream,” she spoke softly to him.
“What time is it?” he asked, still half in his nightmare. He felt distant, almost detached.
“Seven-thirty in the morning. Tokyo time. We're about forty minutes out. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, please,” McGarvey said, and the girl helped him raise his seat.
“The restroom is free,” she suggested.
“I'll have the coffee first. And put a shot of brandy in it.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, smiling.
When she was gone, McGarvey raised his windowshade, the morning extremely bright and nearly cloudless. They were flying west, nothing yet but the empty Pacific beneath them. But he got the feeling that somebody was waiting and watching for him to show up. Ernst Spranger or Kiyoshi Fukai. He knew that he would have to fight them both, sooner or later, but he wasn't at all sure of the outcome.
 
Narita International Airport's Customs and Arrivals hall was a jam-packed mass of humanity. All the Japanese officials, airline representatives and redcaps were courteous, efficient and even outwardly obsequious, though, handling the jostling crowds as if they couldn't think of anything that would give them more pleasure.
All a sham, McGarvey wondered, presenting his passport, their smiles no more than a facade over their real emotions? The old newsreels came immediately to mind of the smiling, bowing Japanese diplomats in Washington on the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was an unfair comparison, then and now, yet he couldn't help but make it.
“The purpose of your visit, Mr. Fine?” the passport officer asked, looking up.
“I have business in Nagasaki,” McGarvey answered. “With Fukai Semiconductor.”
“Yes, very good,” the official said, smiling. He handed back McGarvey's passport. “Have a pleasant, profitable stay in Japan.”
“
Arigatò
,”McGarvey answered, and the official shot him a brief scowl that changed instantly back into a smile.
In three hours flat Technical Services had come up with a passport and legend for McGarvey as Jack Fine, a sales rep for DataBase Corporation, a small but upcoming competitor of TSI industries. If anyone called the Eau Claire, Wisconsin number, or asked for information to be faxed, they would be told that McGarvey was indeed who he presented himself to be. DataBase Corp was a legitimate company that sometimes acted as a front for the FBI's CounterIntelligence Division, and in this case as a special favor to the CIA.
Of course if Spranger was here, and got a look at McGarvey, the fiction would immediately fail. The confrontation would come then and there. He almost hoped it would happen that way.
Kelley Fuller was waiting for him on the other side of the customs barrier after he'd retrieved his single bag and had it checked. Dressed in a conservatively cut gray business suit, her hair up in a bun in the back, and very little makeup on her face, she looked like somebody's idea of an executive secretary for an American or Canadian firm.
He hadn't expected her to be here like this, but he had to admit he was pleased to see her, and to see that she seemed none the worse for wear.
“I have a taxi waiting for us,” she said in greeting. “Our train does not leave for another three hours, but we may need that time to reach the train station.”
“Where are we going?”
“To Nagasaki, of course.”
“But you're not coming with me.”
“Yes I am, I have taken a great risk to speak on the telephone for so long with Phil. He thinks the Japanese are becoming sensitive just now about such calls between Tokyo and the U.S.”
“There'll probably be a fight. You could get hurt.”
“Yes,” she said outwardly unperturbed. “Afterwards you will need someone who understands Japanese to speak on your behalf to the authorities. Now, let's hurry, please.”
He shuffled as fast as he could to keep up with her across the main ticket hall to the taxi ranks outside. She didn't say anything to him about his condition, but he noticed her watching how he limped and favored his right side.
Something had happened to change her in the week since he had left her at the Sunny Days Western Ranch in Shinjuku's Kabukicho. She was still frightened. He could see that in her eyes, but fear no longer seemed to dominate her as it had before. She'd gained self-confidence; either that or she had, for some reason, resigned herself to her fate, whatever that might be.
The cab was pleasantly clean and very comfortable. The doors automatically opened and closed for them, and when they were settled the driver took off toward the city at a breakneck speed through the unbelievable morning traffic.
“What happened while I was gone?” McGarvey asked as they careened onto a crowded freeway.
Kelley looked over at him. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“If need be I'll telephone Phil and force him to keep you here, or better yet, order you back to Washington.”
“No,” she said so sharply that the cabbie looked at them in his rearview mirror.
“Tell me what happened, then,” McGarvey gently prompted.
Kelley's hands were in her lap. She looked down at them, her upper lip quivering, but her eyes remained dry. It was obvious she was trying to hold herself together.
“I had this friend in Washington. Her name was Lana Toy. We used to work together at the State Department. We were roommates too. Even fought over the same boyfriend a couple years ago.”
McGarvey thought he knew what was coming.
“She's dead. Burned up in a car accident. But it was no accident, you know. That's how they killed Jim and Ed Mowry … with fire.”
“Who told you about it?”
She looked up. “Phil Carrara,” she said. “How else did you think I'd find out?”
HERMANN BECKER WAS RUNNING LATE, AND HE WAS GETTING the feeling that someone was following him, though he'd been unable to detect any signs of it. He parked his rental car in the Cointrin Airport Holiday Inn parking lot, and walked directly from it, stopping a hundred yards away in the shadows to look back. No one was there.
It was coming up on 2300 hours, and his Swissair flight to Tokyo was due to take off at midnight. He couldn't miss the plane because there was no other flight out until tomorrow afternoon, and he had to be in Japan by evening, Tokyo time. But he was worried about more than time.
Liese Egk had sounded strained on the telephone, but Spranger had sounded worse; so bad in fact that Becker had hardly recognized his voice. But the general's orders had been clear and concise. The time was now.
“You must make delivery as planned. There can be no delays for any reason whatsoever. Are you perfectly clear in this?”
“Yes, of course,” Becker had replied, his mind already racing ahead to the various steps he would have to take to insure his unimpeded arrival in Tokyo and then Nagasaki.
But the scenario had been worked out in beautiful detail months ago. They'd even made several dry runs with absolutely no difficulties. This time would be no different. Except that Becker was worried about how Spranger had sounded on the telephone, and he had become jumpy.
Carrying his leather purse under his left arm, Becker, a small, dark-complected intense-looking man, entered the
hotel, crossed the lobby and took the elevator up to the eleventh floor. His room looked out toward the airport terminal a little over a mile away. He was assured that the hotel shuttle would run until the last flights arrived and departed.
It would take ten minutes to get downstairs and check out. Another ten minutes for the shuttle ride over to the terminal and another ten minutes to check in, which gave him something under twenty minutes to finish here if he wanted to be five or ten minutes early for his flight.
He threw the deadbolt on his door and slipped the security chain into its slot, then telephoned the front desk.
“This is Becker in eleven-oh-seven. I'll be checking out in time to catch a midnight flight. Please have my bill ready.”
“Yes,
mein Herr.
Will there be any further room service charges this evening?”
“No,” Becker said irritably, and he hung up, turning his attention next to the Grundig all-band portable radio receiver.
With a small Phillips head screwdriver he removed the six fasteners holding the radio's backplate in place. It unsnapped out of three slots at the top, slid down a fraction of an inch and then pulled directly off, exposing the outermost printed circuit boards.
Selecting a small nut driver, he loosened four fasteners holding the power supply board in place, and carefully eased it outward to the limit of its soldered wires. Using a tiny propane torch about half the size of a ballpoint pen, he unsoldered three of the wires, and swung the power supply board completely out of the way, exposing the circuit board containing the first and second IF stages, and a series of low-and high-pass filters.
Working again with the torch, Becker unsoldered fourteen of the filters and removed them. The tiny devices were each housed in a pale gray metal container a little less than a quarter-inch long, and half that in thickness and width.
These he took into the bathroom, wrapped them in tissue paper and flushed them down the toilet.
Back at his work table he took a small plastic box out of his
purse, opened it and from within drew out a tiny device to which a pair of wires were attached. Oblong in shape, the triggering device, which had been designed and manufactured by the Swiss firm of ModTec, was not much larger than the filters he'd removed from the radio.
Working with extreme care he soldered the glass-encased trigger into one of the slots that had held a filter, making certain he did not allow the device to get too hot, or for any solder to splatter the board. Providing the selector switch was not turned to the shortwave band, the radio would work normally.
When he was finished with the first trigger, he soldered in the remaining thirteen devices, then resoldered the power supply wires to the proper connections, refastened the power supply board, and closed the back cover, replacing all six screws.
He was sweating lightly by the time he had cleaned up his tools and equipment and finished packing his single bag.
Making sure he had his airplane tickets and passport, and that he was leaving nothing incriminating behind, he left his room and took the elevator down to the lobby.
The time was just 2332.
 
Wind was gusting to forty miles per hour, sending spray a hundred yards inland from the waves crashing on the rugged rocky shoreline, and snatching away most sounds except for the wind itself.
A panel truck, its headlights out, materialized out of the darkness on a narrow dirt track that ran down toward the water and disappeared on the stony beach. A long time ago local fishermen had maintained a cooperative dock here. A few years after the revolution, however, government forces had occupied the nearby town of Dalnyaya on Cape Krilon at the extreme southern tip of Sakhalin Island. Japan was barely thirty miles south, across the Soya Strait, and this area had been abandoned.
The beat-up, dark gray truck stopped twenty feet off the beach, and Franz Hoffmann switched off the engine. He was
a huge, rough-featured man with a pockmarked face and a thick barrel chest. His eyes, however, were small and close-set.
He glanced over his shoulder at the four animal cages in the back. Now that they were this close he was becoming nervous.
“Let's get the little bastards down to the beach,” Otto Eichendorf said.
Hoffman looked at the other East German. Spranger had ordered them to take refuge inside Krasnoyarsk three months ago. Neither of them had liked the assignment, and he could see that Eichendorf was just as nervous and just as anxious to get away as he was.
“Take the light and make the landing signal first, Otto. I don't want to get caught here.”
Eichendorf nodded, and got out of the truck. Hoffman watched as the man trudged down to the beach and raised his flashlight.
They were a half hour early, but if the boat was out there waiting for them as planned, they would see the light and signal back.
Again Hoffmann glanced into the back of the truck. Two of the cages contained a pair of wild sables, and the other two each held a pair of wild Siberian mink.
They were vicious animals, and any border patrol prick or naval rating they might encounter would certainly think twice about sticking his hand in those cages. But if he did, and if he survived with his hand intact, he would find eighty pounds of refined plutonium 239 encased in lead containers beneath the false bottoms in each cage.
They had brought it overland from the nuclear facility at Khabarovsk, where, incredibly, they had purchased it in small lots from a local black marketeer who boasted (and rightly so) that he could get them anything for the right price. On the coast they'd hired a fishing boat to take them across the Tatar Strait onto Sakhalin Island … simple fur animal smugglers that everyone was happy to deal with for a few hundred rubles.
The idea was a to commit a visible crime for which the authorities were willing to take a bribe, in order to hide their real action. So far it had worked beautifully.
Now, however, if they were caught by the KGB, or by a Japanese Coast Guard patrol, they would have a more difficult time explaining themselves. Internal smuggling was one thing, but trying to take sables out of the Soviet Union was another crime, serious enough to expect, if they were stopped, that the cages would be searched.
A pinpoint of light out to sea flashed once, then twice, and once again, and Eichendorf hurried back up to the truck.
Hoffman climbed out. “I saw it,” he shouted over the wind.
“I'll be glad to get off this rock,” the taller, thinner man said. “Now let's get the cages down to the beach.”
They went around to the back of the truck and opened the door. The animals went wild, hissing and snapping and banging against the wire mesh, their teeth bared.
Hoffman pulled the first cage out by the handle, careful to keep his fingers as far away from the mesh as possible. One of the sables was madly biting and chewing at the wire.
Eichendorf took the other side and between them they carried the one hundred sixty-pound cage over the rocks the rest of the way down to the beach, setting it down a few feet from the water's edge.
They could see nothing out to sea, no lights, not even the dark form of the boat. But they'd seen the light signal in reply to theirs. So it was there. Nevertheless Hoffman was starting to get very jumpy. It was the tone of Spranger's voice. The general had sounded … worried, upset. Hurt. It had been disconcerting listening to him.
It took them several minutes to haul the other three cages from the truck, and by the time they were finished they were both winded, and sweating lightly despite the breeze and the chill.
Hoffman held up a hand for Eichendorf to keep silent for a second as he cocked an ear. He had heard something over the wind, an engine noise perhaps.
He stepped closer to the water and held his breath to listen. The sounds were definitely there, but not out to sea, he realized with horror.
He spun around, and looked up toward the dirt track.
Eichendorf was hearing it now too. “Christ, is it a KGB patrol?”
“I don't know, maybe not,” Hoffmann said. “Get the rifles.”
“Right.” Eichendorf raced back up to the truck, as Hoffman snatched the flashlight and turned back to face the sea. Under these circumstances he was supposed to send five short flashes, which meant there was trouble on the beach, and that the pickup was off.
But they were so close. To be caught here on the beach like this would mean certain arrest, and almost certainly death by firing squad after a very brief trial for espionage. Never mind they were ex-STASI, and had once worked for the KGB. That old alliance would not protect them now.
Eichendorf came back with the Kalashnikov rifles. “Did you send the signal?”
Hoffman threw down the flashlight and grabbed his rifle, levering a round into the firing chamber and switching the safety off. “No,” he said. “We're getting off this beach tonight, or we're going to die here.”
The sound of the engine faded, came back and then faded again and was gone. Hoffman took a few steps toward the road, but he could hear nothing now, other than the wind.
“Franz,” Eichendorf called urgently.
Hoffman turned as a big rubber raft, carrying two men dressed in rough dungarees and thick sweaters, surged onto the beach. One of them immediately hopped out.
“
Macht schnell
,” he shouted. “We have a KGB patrol boat on our ass.”
Hoffman and Eichendorf exchanged glances, and Hoffmann shook his head slightly. Whatever had been heading toward them on the road had apparently turned around and left.
Between the three of them it only took a couple of minutes
to load the cages aboard the boat. Eichendorf and the sailor clambered aboard, leaving Hoffman to push them off.
“What's going on down there?” someone shouted in Russian from behind them on the road.
Hoffman snatched his Kalashnikov and in one smooth motion turned around. He had only a moment to catch sight of two uniformed soldiers above, on the rocks, and he opened fire, cutting both of them down before they could utter another word.
For a long second or two, the night seemed suddenly still. Even the wind seemed to lessen for that time, but then Eichendorf grabbed Hoffman by the back of his jacket and dragged him into the boat.
“I hope they were alone,” one of the sailors said. “Because if someone is still alive up there, and can use a radio, we're dead men.”
“I didn't have a choice.”
“No,” the sailor said. “And now neither do we.”
 
Thoma Orff presented his passport and customs declaration form to the uniformed officer when it was his turn. Tokyo's Narita Airport was jammed to capacity, but the noise level was surprisingly low.
“What is the purpose of your visit to Japan, Mr. Orff,” the customs official asked. He had difficulty pronouncing the name.
“Tourism. I've had no holiday in years.”
“How long will you be here?”
“A week, maybe a little longer.”
“Have you nothing else to declare?”
“Only the brandy,” Orff said, holding up the cardboard liquor box by its handle. “Three bottles. Good stuff. French.” The nuclear weapons initiators were hidden in two of the bottles, which were in turn wrapped in lead foil that had been sandwiched between thin layers of ordinary-looking aluminum foil.

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