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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass
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“Phil?” Kelley Fuller asked, her voice small and shaky.
“Yes, it is, but listen to me, don't use names now. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, listen carefully. I want you to stay right where you
are for one hour, let's say until 9:30 sharp. Then I want you to leave the apartment and take the first right.”
“On foot?”
“Yes. I'll pick you up as soon as I'm sure it's safe. Do you have that?”
“Yes.”
“All right, I'll see you in a bit.”
 
Kelley Fuller had put a light sweater over her shoulders, and Carrara spotted her walking alone north on Second Street toward McMillan Park and the reservoir. He passed her, and swung around the block to come up from behind her again.
So far as he was able to tell, no one was watching her. It had been a few years since he'd been in the field, but some skills were never lost.
He pulled over to the curb before the corner, reached across and opened the passenger door as she was passing. “It's me,” he called out.
She came immediately over to the car, and got in. “I saw you pass the first time,” she said.
Carrara pulled away, and turned the corner on W Street toward the hospital. “Do you think you were spotted in Tokyo?” he asked.
“It was horrible, Phil. He never had a chance. By the time he knew what was happening it was too late.”
“Were you spotted?”
“If they were watching him they had to know we were seeing each other,” she said. She was very frightened. It was obvious by the way she held herself and by the shakiness in her voice.
“They were pros, Kelley. If they'd thought you were significant, they would have killed you before you had a chance to run.”
“What are you telling me, Phil?”
“We want you to go back to Tokyo, to your job at the embassy.”
Kelley reared back, a horrified expression coming to her face.
“The problem is not going to go away,” Carrara said. “It was a warning to us, and one that'll probably be repeated. He was playing on their turf, and evidently he got out of hand.”
“Me next.”
“Not you. But there's a good chance they'll go after Ed, if they believe he was involved with Shirley's … extracurricular activities.” Edward Mowry had been the assistant chief of Tokyo Station. For the moment he was acting COS, his cover now the same as Shirley's had been, as special economic affairs adviser to the ambassador.
“Then we have to warn him.”
“We'd lose everything we worked for, Kelley. Think it out.” Carrara had fought the entire project, but it had the personal blessing of the entire seventh floor: Murphy, Danielle and Ryan—the unholy trinity.
“He's a sitting duck,” Kelley cried in anguish.
“I sent a team over to watch out for him, but they're going to stick out like sore thumbs.”
“What can I do?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open, just as you have been doing. You're still the unknown quantity.”
Kelley looked at him with disgust. “I can't believe you're saying that to me. Now, of all times.”
Carrara concentrated on his driving for the moment. No one in operations had liked what they'd sent Kelley to do. Some of them had daughters nearly her age. But she had been recruited for the project without much persuasion. It was being called PLUTUS … after the god of wealth, and greed.
“I want you to keep your eyes and ears open, just as you have been doing.”
“You want me to go to bed with Mowry to find out if he's been bought by the Japanese,” she shouted.
“I want you to watch him.”
“I didn't see anything that would have helped Jim.”
“Yes you did, we just didn't listen. You spotted Dunée and warned us, but we took too long to find out that the real
Armand Dunée was not the man who made contact with Jim.”
Kelley closed her eyes. “At first I thought it would be interesting,” she said. “Necessary. But I'm in over my head here.”
“We all are.”
She reopened her eyes. “It's only money, Phil. We're only talking about balancing foreign trade, or buying out Rockefeller Center, or MCA, or Disney World. Nothing earth-shattering.”
“That's what we
were
talking about. But now we're discussing murder. A horribly brutal murder, with the possibility that there's more to come.”
“Not me,” Kelley cried.
“We want you to go back to Tokyo, back to your work with the USIA. If you spot something—anything, no matter what it is—that looks wrong, let us know immediately.”
“And then what?”
“We'll pull you out.”
“What if I'm the target?”
“You won't be.”
“What if I am?” Kelley insisted, her voice rising with anger.
“Then we'd have to protect you …”
“Like you protected Jim Shirley,” she said disparagingly.
“If they want to kill you, they won't stop trying simply because you return to Hawaii, or here to us,” Carrara said harshly, hating himself for what he was doing to the woman. Yet he didn't think that she was anyone's prime target. Whoever was gunning for the Company's Tokyo operation wouldn't be interested in a USIA translator and sometime companion of the chief of station. They were after bigger fish than she.
Jim Shirley had been a good man, though over the past few years his loyalties had gotten slightly muddled. He didn't deserve to die that way. And Carrara was going to do everything within his considerable power to catch his murderers.
THE LIGHTS OF MONACO WERE BRILLIANT AGAINST A BLACK velvet backdrop as Ernst Spranger, a tall, ruggedly built, handsome man, pointed the bow of the powerful speedboat toward the ship just visible in silhouette on the horizon to the south. The night was gentle and warm, the sea almost flat calm.
Spranger was impeccably dressed in evening clothes, as was the beautiful woman seated beside him, indifferently humming the melody from the opera they'd just left. Like the others who'd come at Spranger's command three years ago, Liese Egk had worked for the East German STASI as an assassin, a job at which she was an expert. She was a complete sociopath, totally without conscience. Combined with her intelligence, training and aristocratic good looks, she was lethal.
“I think I will miss Boorsch,” Spranger said, not bothering to raise his voice over the roar of the engines.
Liese was looking at him, a contemptuous expression forcing her full, sensuous lips into a pout. “He was a good shot with the Stinger, but he was an idiot. He would have caused us considerable trouble.”
Spranger couldn't hear her voice, but he got most of what she'd said. They spoke in German, which was much easier to lip-read than English because of its regular pronunciations.
“Maybe you will cause us trouble in the end,” he told her, and she laughed.
“Then you better watch your back.” She glanced toward the ship on the horizon. “At least we're not going out as failures.”
“No,” Spranger said to himself. Yet he still wasn't clear in his mind exactly what had happened at Orly. The Airbus was down, everyone aboard dead, including Jean-Luc DuVerlie. But something had gone wrong at the last moment.
Bruno Lessing, who'd remained in front of the terminal for just such a contingency, reported that Boorsch had shown up in a big hurry, and moments later he'd been followed by a thickly built man dressed in what had appeared to be a British-cut tweed sportcoat. Directly after both men had entered the terminal a French police helicopter had touched down, and Lessing had of necessity driven back into Paris.
The police were understandable. But who the hell was the man in the tweed jacket?
And why had they been summoned again, unless it was bad news? It was possible, he thought, that somehow British intelligence had gotten onto them, though it was unlikely unless the CIA had asked for help.
But there was no reason for such a thing to have occurred. If the Americans had requested help from anyone it would have been from the Swiss, who still hadn't discovered the first engineer's body.
DuVerlie had come as a surprise. And except for the fact that they'd already gotten what they'd needed from ModTec, no one wanted the Swiss or the Americans to suspect they had.
Question was, how much had the Swiss engineer told the CIA, and exactly why was it they were returning to Lausanne?
Puzzles within puzzles. But it was a part of the business that Spranger had one way or the other lived with for all of his life. His father before him had been an agent (though not a particularly good one) for the RSHA—the Nazi intelligence service—before and during the war.
Spranger and his mother had hidden themselves in Switzerland for eight years before returning to West Germany. Within one year she was dead, and he had slipped into East Germany offering his services to the STASI. The Russians, not as squeamish about former Nazis as they led the world to
believe, accepted the young man with open arms, and his real training had begun.
He slowed the speedboat as they approached the 243-foot cruiser
Grande Dame
out of Monaco. The sleek, white-hulled pleasure vessel lay still in the water, all her lights ablaze, her portside boarding ladder down. There were no movements, the only sounds from the ship's generators. Except for the lights the ship could have been abandoned, or everyone aboard dead. It had been the same each time they'd been called for a rendezvous.
Spranger maneuvered the speedboat close, then chopped the engines, so they would drift the last few feet. He tied a line to a cleat on the platform and helped Liese up, scrambling onto the boarding ladder directly behind her.
Reaching the main deck they went aft and entered the spacious, well-furnished main salon. Music was playing softly and champagne had been laid out for them, as usual.
A white coated Italian waiter appeared.
“Accogliere cordialmente, signore e signorina,”
he said pleasantly. “Champagne tonight?”
Spranger nodded.
Outside, the speedboat was started and left, and seconds later the
Grande Dame's
engines came to life and they began to move.
“Please,” the little waiter motioned for them to take a seat.
The telephone next to Spranger rang once. Putting his champagne down, he lit a cigarette then sat down and picked up the phone. “Yes?” he said English.
“Tell us about the gentleman in the tweed coat at the airport.” the Japanese voice said in clear English.
“I don't know for certain,” Spranger answered, surprised that they knew about him. It meant they must have had one of their own people watching the airport. “My guess would be that he is an intelligence officer. British or American.”
“What is being done about him?”
“Nothing. I don't consider him a threat at this point. Although Boorsch will be identified and probably traced back
to us, we can handle the inquiries. And your position with us is very well insulated.”
“What about Switzerland?”
“We have the parts.”
“I see,” the Japanese man said after a brief hesitation. “And why have you not delivered them?”
Spranger had been expecting the question. He'd hoped it would not have come so soon, but he wasn't going to hedge. “The parts are in a safe place, where they shall remain until we have gathered everything you contracted for. Only then will we make delivery.”
“Why?”
“Insurance,” Spranger said bluntly. He looked over at Liese. She was watching him, a faint smile on her lips.
“Against what?” the man asked.
“You.”
“Do you consider us a threat to your well-being? We are, after all, allies once again.”
“Allies, but not friends,” Spranger said. “Is there anything else?”
“We could replace you, if you refuse to cooperate.”
“No one else could do the job.”
The man laughed. “I believe we could find someone capable. A person such as Miss Egk, for example.”
“She could do the job,” Spranger said, once again surprised. “Unless I killed her first. Then you might never get your little toys.”
Liese's smile broadened. She was seated on a low couch across the salon from him. As he watched, she crossed her long, lovely legs.
“Do we still have a contract?” Spranger asked after a moment.
“Yes, of course. But I am worried about the man in the tweed coat, and I believe you should be worried as well. Look into it.”
“If you think it's important.”
“I do.”
“I will have to divert some resources. It will cost you …”
“Money is no object. I have already made that quite clear.”
“Very well,” Spranger said.
“How soon do you expect to be in a position to fulfill the terms of our agreement?”
“Soon.”
“How soon? Days? Weeks? Months?”
“Soon,” Spranger repeated, and he hung up.

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