Dragon

  Satisfied that he would not be studied by an observer, Hideki Suma went through the ritual of washing his hands in a stone basin and rinsing his mouth with a small ladle of water. Then he entered the outer shrine hall and met the chief priest, who was awaiting his arrival. Suma made an offering at the oratory and removed a sheaf of papers wrapped in a tissued scroll from the inside pocket of his raincoat. He gave them to the priest, who laid them on the altar.

  A small bell was rung to summon Suma's specific deity or kami, and then they clasped their hands in prayer. After a short purification ceremony, Suma spoke quietly with the priest for a minute, retrieved the scroll, and left the shrine as inconspicuously as he'd arrived.

  The stress of the past three days fell from him like glistening water over a garden fall. Suma felt rejuvenated by the mystical power and guidance of his kami. His sacred quest to purify Japanese culture from the poison of Western influences while protecting the gains of financial empire was guided by divine power.

  Anyone catching a glimpse of Suma through the misty rain would have quickly ignored him. He looked quite ordinary in workman's overalls and a cheap raincoat. He wore no hat, and his hair was a great shock of brushed-back white. The black mane common to almost all Japanese men and women had lightened at an early age, which gave Suma a look much older than his forty-nine years. By Western standards he was short, by Japanese ideals he was slightly on the tall side, standing at 170 centimeters.

  It was only when you looked into his eyes that he seemed different from his native cousins. The irises were of a magnetic indigo blue, the legacy, possibly, of an early Dutch trader or English sailor. A frail youth, he'd taken up weight lifting when he was fifteen and labored with cold determination until he had transformed his body into a muscled sculpture. His greatest satisfaction was not in his strength but the molding of flesh and sinews into his own creation.

  His bodyguard-chauffeur bowed and locked the heavy bronze gate after him. Moro Kamatori, Suma's oldest friend and his chief aide, and his secretary, Toshie Kudo, were sitting patiently in a backward-facing seat of a black custom-built Murmoto limousine powered by a twelve-cylinder 600-horsepower engine.

  Toshie was much taller than her native sisters. Willowy, with long legs, jet-black hair falling to her waist, flawless skin enhanced by magical coffee-brown eyes, she looked as if she'd stepped out of a James Bond movie. But unlike the exotic beauties who hung on fiction's bon vivant master spy, Toshie possessed a high order of intellectual ability. Her IQ bordered on 165, and she operated at full capacity on both sides of the brain.

  She did not look up as Suma entered the car. Her mind was focused on a compact computer that sat in her shapely lap.

  Kamatori was speaking over a telephone. His intellect may not have been on a level with Toshie's, but he was meticulous and deviously clever at managing Suma's secretive projects. He was especially gifted at behind-the-scenes finance, pulling the strings and fronting for Suma, who preferred to isolate himself from public view.

  Kamatori had a stolid, resolute face flanked by oversized ears. Beneath heavy black brows, the dark lifeless eyes peered through a pair of thick-lensed rimless glasses. No smile ever crossed his tight lips. He was a man without emotions or convictions. Fanatically loyal to Suma, Kamatori's master talent was hunting human game. If someone, no matter how wealthy or high in government bureaucracy, presented an obstacle to Suma's plans, Kamatori would shrewdly dispatch them so it seemed an accident or the blame could be fixed on an opposing party.

  Kamatori kept a ledger of his killings with notes detailing each event. Over the course of twenty-five years the tally came to 237.

  He rang off and set the receiver in an armrest cradle and looked at Suma. "Admiral Itakura at our embassy in Washington. His sources have confirmed the White House is aware the explosion was nuclear and originated with the Divine Star."

  Suma gave a stoic shrug. "Has the President launched a formal protest with Prime Minister Junshiro?"

  "The American government has remained strangely silent," answered Kamatori. "The Norwegians and British, however, are making noises about the loss of their ships."

  "But nothing from the Americans."

  "Only sketchy reports in their news media."

  Suma leaned forward and tapped Toshie's nyloned knee with his forefinger. "A photo, please, of the explosion site."

  Toshie nodded respectfully and programmed the necessary code into the computer. In less than thirty seconds a colored photo rolled out of a fax machine built into the divider wall separating the driver from the passenger compartment. She passed it to Suma, who turned up the interior car lights and took a magnifying glass from Kamatori.

  "The enhanced infrared photo was taken an hour and a half ago during a pass by our Akagi spy satellite," explained Toshie.

  Suma peered through the glass without speaking for a few moments. Then he looked up questioningly.

  "A nuclear hunter-killer submarine and an Asian junk? The Americans are not acting as I expected. Odd they didn't send half their Pacific fleet."

  "Several naval ships are steaming toward the explosion point," said Kamatori, "including a NUMA ocean survey vessel."

  "What about space surveillance?"

  "American intelligence has already gathered extensive data from their Pyramider spy satellites and SR-Ninety aircraft."

  Suma tapped a small object in the photo with a finger. "A submersible floating between the two vessels. Where did that come from?"

  Kamatori peered over Suma's finger at the photograph. "Certainly not the junk. It must have come from the submarine."

  "They won't find any sunken remains of the Divine Star, " Suma muttered. "She must have been blown into atoms." He tossed the photo back to Toshie. "A readout, please, of auto carriers transporting our products, their current status and destinations."

  Toshie looked up at him over her monitor as if she'd read his mind. "I have the data you requested, Mr. Suma."

  "Yes?"

  "The Divine Moon finished off-loading her auto cargo last night in Boston," she reported, reading the Japanese characters on the display screen. "The Divine Water. . . she docked eight hours ago in the Port of Los Angeles and is off-loading now."

  "Any others?"

  "There are two ships in transport," Toshie continued. "The Divine Sky is scheduled to dock in New Orleans within eighteen hours, and the Divine Lake is five days out of Los Angeles."

  "Perhaps we should signal the ships at sea to divert to ports outside the United States," said Kamatori.

  "American agents may be alerted to search for signs of radiation."

  "Who is our undercover agent in Los Angeles?" asked Suma.

  "George Furukawa directs your secret affairs in the western states."

  Suma leaned back, obviously relieved. "Furukawa is a man. He will be alert to any hardening procedure." He turned to Kamatori, who was speaking into the phone. "Divert the Divine Sky to Jamaica until we have more data, but allow the Divine Lake to proceed to Los Angeles."

  Kamatori bowed in acknowledgment and reached for phone.

  "Aren't you running the danger of detection?" asked Toshie.

  Suma tightened his lips and shook his head. "American intelligence agents will search the ships, but they'll bombs. Our technology will defeat them."

  "The explosion on board the Divine Star came at a bad time," said Toshie. "I wonder if we'll ever know what caused it."

  "I am not interested nor do I care," Suma said coldly. The accident was unfortunate, but it won't delay completion of our Kaiten Project." Suma paused, his face etched in a brutal expression. "Enough pieces are set in place to destroy any nation which threatens our new empire.

  >

  Vice President George Furukawa took the phone call from his wife in his plush office at the prestigious Samuel J. Vincent Laboratories. She reminded him of his dental appointment. He thanked her, said a few words of endearment, and hung up.

  The woman on the other end of the
line was not his wife but one of Suma's agents who could imitate Mrs. Furukawa's voice. The dental appointment story was a code he'd received on five prior occasions.

  It meant a ship transporting Murmoto automobiles had arrived in port and was preparing to unload.

  After informing his secretary that he would be having his teeth worked on the rest of the afternoon, Furukawa stepped into the elevator and punched the button for underground parking. Walking a few paces to his private stall, he unlocked the door to his mid-engined Murmoto sports car and sat behind the wheel.

  Furukawa reached under the seat. The envelope was there, placed in his car after he came to work by one of Suma's people. He checked the contents for the proper documents to release three automobiles from the unloading dock area. The papers were complete and correct as usual. Satisfied, he turned over the potent 400-horsepower, 5.8-liter, 32-valve V-8. He drove up to the thick steel barrier that rose from the cement drive and slanted menacingly at the front end of the Murmoto.

  A smiling guard came out of the gatehouse and leaned down. "You checking out early, Mr.

  Furukawa?"

  "I have a dental appointment."

  "Your dentist must own a yacht that's been paid for by your teeth."

  "How about a villa in France," Furukawa joked back.

  The guard laughed and then asked the routine question. "Taking any classified work home tonight?"

  "Nothing. I left my attaché case in the office."

  The guard stepped on a switch to lower the barrier and gestured down the double drive leading to the street. "Swish a shot of gin around your mouth when you get home. That'll deaden the pain."

  "Not a bad idea," said Furukawa, shifting the six-speed transmission into first. "Thank you."

  Situated in a tall glass building hidden from the street by a grove of eucalyptus trees, Vincent Labs was a research and design center owned by a consortium of space and aviation companies. The work was highly classified and the results carefully guarded, since much of the funding came from government contracts for military programs. Futuristic advances in aerospace technology were conceived and studied, the projects with the highest potential going on to design and production, while the failures were put aside for future study.

  Furukawa was what is known in intelligence circles as a sleeper. His parents were two of the many thousands of Japanese who immigrated to the United States shortly after the war. They quickly melted in with the Japanese-Americans who were picking up the pieces of their interrupted lives upon release from the internment camps. The Furukawas did not come across the Pacific because they'd lost their love of Japan. Far from it. They hated America and its multicultures.

  They came as solid, hardworking citizens for the express purpose of raising their only son to become a leader of American business. No expense was spared to give their child the finest education the nation could offer, the money arriving mysteriously through Japanese banks into family accounts. Incredible patience and long years of maintaining the facade paid off when son George received a Ph.D. in aerodynamic physics and eventually achieved a position of power with Vincent Labs. Highly respected among aviation designers, Furukawa was now able to amass enormous quantities of information on America's finest aerospace technology, which he secretly passed to Suma Industries.

  The classified data Furukawa had stolen for a country he had yet to visit saved Japan billions of dollars in research and development costs. Almost single-handedly, his traitorous activities had given Japan a five-year shortcut to becoming a world leader in the aerospace market.

  Furukawa had also been recruited for the Kaiten Project during a meeting with Hideki Suma in Hawaii. He was honored to be chosen by one of the most influential leaders of Japan for a sacred mission. His orders were to discreetly arrange for specially colored cars to be collected at the dock and transported to undisclosed destinations. Furukawa did not ask questions. His ignorance of the operation failed to bother him. He could not be deeply involved for fear of compromising his own mission of stealing U.S. technology.

  The traffic had thinned between rush hours as he made his way onto Santa Monica Boulevard. Several kilometers later he swung south on the San Diego Freeway. With a bare touch of his shoe on the accelerator, the Murmoto wove through the slower stream of cars. His detector beeped, and Furukawa slowed to the speed limit three hundred meters before entering the range of a parked police radar unit.

  He cracked a rare smile as he speeded up again.

  Furukawa worked into the right-hand lane and curled around the off-ramp down onto the Harbor Freeway. Ten minutes later he reached the shipping terminal area and cut into an alley, where he passed a huge truck and semitrailer parked behind an empty warehouse. The doors of the cab and the sides of the trailer were painted with the logo of a well-known moving and storage company. He hit his horn twice. The driver of the big rig tooted his air horn three times in reply and pulled behind Furukawa's sports car.

  After dodging a heavy crowd of trucks backing in and out of the loading docks, Furukawa finally stopped at one of the gates to a holding yard for cars imported from foreign manufacturers. Other nearby yards were filled with Toyotas, Hondas, and Mazdas that had already come off ships before being loaded on twodeck auto transporters that would haul them to dealer showrooms.

  While the guard checked the receiving documents from the envelope, Furukawa gazed at the sea of cars already driven off the Divine Water. Over one-third had been off-loaded and were sitting in the California sun. He idly counted the flow, as an army of drivers drove them through several gaping hatches and down ramps into the yard, and came up with a rate of eighteen a minute.

  The guard handed him the envelope. "Okay, sir, three SP-Five Hundred sport sedans. Please give your papers to the dispatcher down the road. He'll fix you up."

  Furukawa thanked him and motioned for the truck to follow him.

  The ruddy cigar-smoking dispatcher recognized Furukawa. "Back for more of those putrid brown cars?" he asked cheerfully.

  Furukawa shrugged. "I have a customer who buys them for his sales fleet. Believe it or not, that's his company's color."

  "What does he sell, Kyoto lizard crap'?"

  "No, imported coffee."

  "Don't tell me the label. I don't want to know."

  Furukawa slipped the dispatcher a hundred-dollar bill. "How soon before I can take delivery?"

  The dispatcher grinned. "Your cars are easy to find in the cargo holds. I'll have them for you in twenty minutes."

  An hour had passed before the three brown automobiles were safely tied down inside the enclosed trailer and released from the holding yard. Not once did the driver and Furukawa exchange words. Even eye contact was avoided.

  Outside the gate, Furukawa pulled his car to the side of the road and lit a cigarette. He watched in stony curiosity as the truck and semitrailer turned and headed for the Harbor Freeway. The license on the trailer was California, but he knew it would be switched at some desert truck stop before crossing the state line.

  Despite his practiced detachment, Furukawa unconsciously found himself wondering what was so special about the brown cars. And why was their final destination so secret?

  >

  "First we'll body surf under the sunrise at Makapuu Point," said Pitt, holding Stacy's hand. "Later, it's snorkeling around Hanauma Bay before you rub suntan oil all over my body, and we spend a lazy afternoon dozing on a warm white sand beach. Then we'll soak up the sunset while sipping rum collins on the lanai of the Halekalani Hotel, and afterward it's off to this intimate little restaurant I know in the Manoa Valley."

  Stacy looked at him in amusement. "Have you ever thought of forming an escort service?"

  "I don't have it in me to charge a woman," said Pitt amicably. "That's why I'm always broke."

  He paused and looked out the window of the big twin-engine Air Force helicopter as it drummed through the night. In the early evening of Pitt and Plunkett's rescue, the big bird had appeared and plu
cked the entire Soggy Acres mining team and the crew of Old Gert off the deck of the Chinese junk.

  But not before everyone profusely thanked Owen Murphy and his crew for their hospitality. The final act was the removal of Jimmy Knox. Once his canvas-wrapped body was hoisted on board, the great craft rose above Shanghai Shelly and the Tucson and beat its way toward Hawaii.

  The sea below shimmered under a bright three-quarter moon as the pilot flew almost directly over a cruise ship. Ahead to the southeast, Pitt caught sight of the lights on the island of Oahu. He should have been sound asleep like Sandecker, Giordino, and the others, but the exhilaration of escaping the bony character with the scythe kept his blood stirred up. That and the fact Stacy stayed awake to keep him company.

  "See anything?" she asked between yawns.

  "Oahu on the horizon. We should be passing over Honolulu in fifteen minutes."

  She looked at him teasingly. "Tell me more about tomorrow, especially the after-dinner part."

  "I didn't come to that."

  "Well?"

  "Okay, there are these two palm trees--"

  "Palm trees?"

  "Of course," said Pitt, looking surprised that she asked. "And between them is this carnal hammock built for two."

  The helicopter, its ultramodern Ferrari-like body lacking the familiar tail rotor, hovered momentarily above a small grass field on the outskirts of Hickam Field. Unseen in the darkness, the perimeter was patrolled by an Army special combat platoon. A lighted signal from the ground informed the pilot the area was secure. Only then did he lightly drop the huge craft onto the soft grass.

  A small bus with KAWANUNAI TOURS painted on the sides immediately drove up and stopped just outside the radius of the rotor blades. It was followed by a black Ford sedan and an Army ambulance to carry Jimmy Knox's body to Tripler Army Hospital for autopsy. Four men in civilian clothes stepped from the car and stationed themselves at the helicopter's door.