Dragon

  "A few, but most are East Germans, trained by the KGB."

  "They can be used," Suma said flatly.

  Tsuboi was not sold. "I do not advise the slightest association with them. Any suspected connection, and outside probes will be launched into areas we dare not have opened."

  "Hideki is not advocating assassination," elaborated Kamatori. "What he is suggesting is that abduction of unharmed hostages be blamed on the Blood Red Brotherhood."

  "Now that makes more sense." Yoshishu smiled. "I think I understand. You're advocating the silken prison."

  Tsuboi shook his head. "I've never heard of it."

  "From the old days," explained Yoshishu. "When a shogun did not want an enemy assassinated, he had him abducted and placed secretly in a prison of luxury as a sign of respect. Then he set the blame for the disappearance on his prisoner's jealous rivals."

  "Exactly." Suma nodded. "I have built such a facility on a small but modern estate."

  "Isn't that a bit risky?" inquired Tsuboi.

  "The obvious is never suspected."

  Kamatori looked at Tsuboi. "If you have candidates for oblivion, you need only give me their names."

  Tsuboi's eyes turned down, unseeing. Then he looked up. "There are two people in the United States who are causing us much grief. But you must be most careful. They are members of Congress, and their abduction will certainly cause a storm of outrage."

  "A Blood Red Brotherhood kidnapping and ransom situation should make a good cover for their sudden disappearance," said Suma as if he was describing the weather.

  "Who precisely do you have in mind?" asked Kamatori.

  "Congresswoman Loren Smith and Senator Michael Diaz."

  Yoshishu nodded. "Ah, yes, the pair who are promoting a total trade barrier against us."

  "Despite our lobbying efforts, they're gathering enough votes to force their legislation through both houses. Eliminate them and the drive would fall apart."

  "There will be great outrage in their government," Suma warned. "It may backlash."

  "Our lobby interests have acquired a powerful influence on Congress and will direct the outrage toward a terrorist conspiracy." Tsuboi's anger at his treatment by the select subcommittee had not cooled. "We have lost enough face at the hands of American politicians. Let them learn their power no longer protects them from harm."

  Yoshishu stared out the window unseeing for a few moments. Then he shook his head. "A great pity."

  Suma looked at him. "What is a great pity, old friend?"

  "The United States of America," Yoshishu spoke "She's like a beautiful woman who is dying of cancer."

  >

  Marvin Showalter sat on a train traveling through Tokyo's clean and efficient subway. He made no attempt to act as if he was reading a newspaper or a book. He calmly stared at his fellow passengers,

  "making," as they say in the trade, the two Japanese secret service agents who were keeping him under surveillance from the next car.

  Showalter had walked from the U.S. embassy shortly after a boring meeting with junketing congressmen over Japan's refusal to allow American construction equipment to be used on a new building ready to go up for an American oil company. It was simply another case of throwing up protectionist barriers, while the Japanese could freely enter the United States and raise buildings with their architects, foremen, materials, and equipment without major problems over government restrictions.

  "Fair is fair" did not apply to two-way trade with Japan.

  He appeared to be on his way to the small condominium his wife and two young children called home during his assignment in Japan. The building was owned by the American government and housed most of the embassy workers and their families. The construction cost of the entire ten-story building was less than a third the price of the land it stood on.

  His shadows had fallen into his travel routine, which never varied except when he put in an hour or two overtime. He smiled to himself as his stop came up and the two agents rose in anticipation of his getting off. He stepped to the door with the rest of the crowd, waiting for it to open onto the platform. It was the oldest trick in the world, one shown in the movie The French Connection.

  As the door opened, Showalter flowed with the crowd to the platform and began counting. He hesitated and casually glanced at the two Japanese agents. They had stepped from the middle door in the next car and were walking slowly in his direction, shielded by a group of departing passengers.

  When he hit twenty-five, he swiftly turned around and stepped back inside the car. Two seconds later the door closed and the train began moving. Too late, the Japanese secret service agents realized they'd been duped. Frantically they attempted to pry the doors apart and reboard the train. But it was useless.

  They leaped back on the platform as the train picked up speed and disappeared into the tunnel.

  Showalter wasn't overly pleased with the simple dodge. Next time his tails would be wary and make his evasive moves more intricate. He transferred to a connecting line at the next stop and rode to Asakusa, an atmospheric area northeast of Tokyo in a section known as Shitamachi. Asakusa was part of the old city of Tokyo that had preserved much of its past.

  Showalter sat and studied the people around him as he had done so many times. Some of his fellow passengers studied him in return. They called anyone who did not share their thick black straight hair, dark eyes, and skin coloring a gaijin, literally translated as an "outside person." He theorized that the close similarity in their physical looks was perhaps the basis for their unity and conformity. That and the isolation of their island home.

  Their society evolved around the family and expanded to include everyone who worked around them.

  Lives were lived in a complicated quilt of obligations, contentedness, duty, and accomplishment. They accepted a regimented lifestyle as if all others were a waste to be pitied.

  The uncohesive melting pot of the United States could not be conceived, nor would it be tolerated in Japan, a country with the toughest immigration laws to be found in the world.

  The train stopped at the Tawaramachi subway station, and he stepped off and joined the crowd that rose to the busy street of Kappabashi. He hailed a cab and rode past the restaurant wholesale supply stores that sold the plastic food replicas seen in eatery windows. He directed the driver to a several-square-block section crowded with craftsmen's shops, ancient temples, and old houses.

  He got out and paid the driver at an intersection, and then walked down a narrow flower-lined lane until he came to a Japanese inn known as a ryokan.

  Although rustic and worn on the outside, the ryokan was quite neat and attractive inside. Showalter was met at the door by one of the staff, who bowed and said, "Welcome to the Ritz."

  "I thought this was the Asakusa Dude Ranch," Showalter replied.

  Without another word, the muscular doorman with arms and legs like railroad ties showed him over the smooth flattened river stones of the entry. They stepped onto the polished oak floor of the reception area, where Showalter was politely asked to remove his shoes and put on a pair of plastic slippers.

  Unlike most slippers that are too small for large Anglo feet, Showalter's fit like they were custom-ordered, which indeed they were, since the ryokan was secretly owned and operated by an American intelligence agency that specialized in covert and safe retreats.

  Showalter's room had a sliding shoji paper door that opened onto a small veranda overlooking a formal garden with water trickling restfully onto rocks through bamboo tubes. The floor was covered by the traditional tatami straw matting. He had to take off the slippers and walk in his socks while on the fragile mats.

  There were no chairs or furniture, only cushions on the floor, and a bed made up of many pillows and heavy cushions the Japanese called "futons." A small fire pit sat in the center of the guest room with warm glowing coals.

  Showalter undressed and donned a light cotton yukutu, a short robe. Then a maid in a kimono led him t
o the inn's communal bathing facilities. He left the yukata and his wristwatch in a wicker basket, and shielded by only a washcloth-size towel, he entered the steamy bath area. He stepped around the low stools and wooden pails and stood under a simple faucet. He lathered up and rinsed off. Only then was he ready to sink slowly into the hot water of a huge wooden pool-like tub.

  A shadowy figure was already sitting chest deep in the water. Showalter greeted him.

  "The Honda Team, I presume."

  "Only half of it," answered Roy Orita. "Jim Hanamura should be along any time. Like a saki?"

  "Against orders to drink during an operation," said Showalter, easing into the steaming water. "But what the hell. I'm colder than ice cream. Pour me a double."

  Orita filled a small ceramic cup out of a bottle sitting on the edge of the pool. "How's life at the embassy?"

  "The usual dung one would expect from the State Department." Showalter took a long sip of the saki and let it settle into his stomach. "How goes the investigation? Any information on the leads we received from Team Lincoln?"

  "I checked out the company management of Murmoto. I can't uncover a direct link between the corporate executive officers and the warheads. My own opinion is they're clean. They haven't the slightest idea of what is going on beneath their noses."

  "Some of them must know."

  Orita grinned. "Only two assembly line workers have to be in on it."

  "Why only two?"

  "All that are required. The assembly line worker who oversees the installation of the air conditioners.

  He's in a position to select specific cars to get the warheads. And the inspector who checks out the units to make sure they work before the cars are shipped to the dealers. He okays the phony units that don't operate."

  "There has to be a third man," disagreed Showalter. "An agent in the factory's computerized shipping department who erases all trace of the bomb cars, except on the bill of lading which is required to satisfy foreign customs officials."

  "Have you followed the thread from factory to air conditioner supplier to nuke plant?"

  "To the supplier, yes. Then the trail vanishes. I hope to pick up a scent and follow it to the source in the next few days."

  Orita's voice became silent as a man came from the dressing room and walked toward the heated pool. He was short with silver hair and mustache and held the small wash towel in front of his groin.

  "Who the hell are you?" demanded Showalter, alarmed that a stranger had broken the security of the ryokan.

  "My name is Ashikaga Enshu."

  "Who?"

  The man stood there without answering for several seconds. Showalter began frantically looking around, wondering why no security sentries were present.

  Then Orita began laughing. "Great disguise, Jim. You fooled hell out of both of us."

  James Hanamura removed the silver-haired wig and pulled off the eyebrows and mustache. "Not bad if I do say so. I faked out Hideki Suma and his secretary as well."

  Showalter exhaled a great breath and sank in the water up to his chin. "Jesus, you gave me a scare.

  For all I knew you had penetrated the security rings and were about to dispatch Orita and me."

  "That saki looks good. Any left?"

  Orita poured him a cup. "There's a whole case of it in the kitchen." Then suddenly a surprised expression swept his face. "What was that you just said?"

  "Beg your pardon?"

  "Hideki Suma."

  "My half of the operation. I traced ownership of the Murmoto Automotive and Aircraft Corporation and the Sushimo Steamship Company through a string of phony business fronts to Hideki Suma, the recluse tycoon. Murmoto and Sushimo are only a drop in the bucket. This guy has more assets than the entire State of California, with Nevada and Arizona thrown in."

  "Didn't the ship that blew up, the Divine Star, belong to Sushimo Steamship?" asked Showalter.

  "Yes indeed. A neat package, wouldn't you say? It looks to me like Hideki Suma is up to his ears in this mess."

  "Suma is a very powerful man," said Showalter. "He prospers in strange and devious ways. They say that if he commands Prime Minister Junshiro and his cabinet ministers to flap their arms and fly, they'd fight over who jumps out the window first."

  "You actually got in to see Suma?" Orita asked in amazement.

  "Nothing to it. You should see his office and secretary. Both very choice."

  "Why the disguise?"

  "Team Lincoln's idea. Suma collects paintings by a sixteenth century Japanese artist named Masaki Shimzu. Jordan hired an expert forger to paint what is called in art circles an undiscovered Shimzu, one it was known Suma didn't have in his collection. Then, as the reputable finder of lost art, Ashikaga Enshu, I sold it to him."

  Showalter nodded. "Clever, clever. You must have studied your Japanese art."

  "A crash course." Hanamura laughed. "Suma elaborated on how Shimzu painted islands from a balloon. He'd have ordered me drawn and quartered if he knew he was laying out a hundred and forty-five million yen for a fake painted from a satellite photo."

  "For what purpose?" asked Orita, his face oddly taut.

  "To plant bugs in his office, naturally."

  "How come I wasn't in on this?"

  "I thought it best you two didn't know what the other was doing," Showalter answered Orita, "so you couldn't reveal anything of importance if either of you were compromised."

  "Where did you set the bugs?" Orita asked Hanamura.

  "Two in the frame of the painting. One in an easel he's standing in front of a window, and another inside the draw handle for the blinds. The latter two are in perfect alignment with a relay transmitter I placed in a tree outside the atrium dome of the city."

  "What if Suma has hidden sweep equipment?"

  "Ìborrowed' the electrical blueprints to his floor of the building. His detection equipment is first rate, but it won't pick up our bugs. And when I say bugs, I'm talking in the literal sense."

  Orita missed Hanamura's implication. "You lost me."

  "Our miniature receiving and sending units are not designed with the look of tiny electronic objects.

  They're molded to look like ants. If discovered, they'll either be ignored or simply mashed without suspicion."

  Showalter nodded. "That's pretty slick."

  "Even our Japanese brothers have to take a back seat to our home-grown eavesdropping technology."

  Hanamura smiled widely. "The relay transmitter, which is about the size of a golf ball, sends all conversations, including telephone or intercom calls from the office bugs, to one of our satellites, and then beams them down to Mel Penner and his Team Chrysler on Palau."

  Orita stared into the water. "Do we know for certain if they're picking up Suma's conversations?"

  "The system is fully operational," Showalter assured him. "I contacted Penner before I left for our meeting. He's receiving the signals loud and clear. And so are we. A member of my team at the embassy is also tuned in on Jim's listening gear."

  "You'll alert us, I hope, if any information comes through that we can use in the investigation."

  "Absolutely." Showalter poured himself another saki. "As a matter of interest, there was an intriguing conversation going on between Suma and Korori Yoshishu when I left the embassy. Too bad I only caught the first couple of minutes of it."

  "Yoshishu," muttered Hanamura. "Good lord, is that old crook still alive?"

  "Ninety-one and rotten as ever," answered Showalter.

  Hanamura shook his head. "The master criminal of the age, personally responsible for more than a million deaths. If Yoshishu is behind Suma and a worldwide organization of hidden nuclear warheads, we're all in deep, deep trouble."

  An hour before dawn a Murmoto limousine pulled to a stop and a figure stepped from the shadows and quickly ducked through the opened door. Then the car crawled slowly through the narrow back streets of Asakusa.

  "Mr. Suma's office is bugged," said Orita. "One of our agents po
sing as an art dealer hid sophisticated listening devices in the frame of a painting, an easel, and the draw pull of the window blinds."

  "Are you certain?" demanded a stunned Kamatori. "The dealer produced an original Shimzu."

  "A fake painted from a satellite photo."

  Kamatori hissed. "You should have informed me sooner."

  "I only learned of it a few hours ago."

  Kamatori said nothing but stared at Orita's face in the semi darkness of the limousine as if reinforcing his trust.

  Like George Furukawa, Roy Orita was an intelligence sleeper, born in the United States of Japanese parents and groomed for employment in the CIA.

  Finally Kamatori said, "Much was said this afternoon that could prove damaging to Mr. Suma. There can be no mistake about this?"

  "Did the dealer say his name was Ashikaga Enshu?"

  Kamatori felt shock mingled with shame. His job was to protect Suma's organization from penetration.

  He had failed miserably and lost much face.

  "Yes, Enshu."

  "His real name is James Hanamura. The other half of my team whose job is to investigate the source of the nuclear car bombs."

  "Who fathomed the tie between the cars and the warheads?"

  "An amateur by the name of Dirk Pitt. He was borrowed from the National Underwater and Marine Agency."

  "Is he dangerous to us?"

  "He might cause trouble. I can't say for sure. He's not assigned to the investigative operations. But he does have an awesome reputation for successfully carrying through impossible projects."

  Kamatori sat back and idly stared out the window at the darkened buildings. At last he turned to Orita.

  "Can you give me a list of names of the agents you're working with and provide updates on their activities?"

  Orita nodded. "The list of names, yes. The activities, no way. We all work separately. Like a magical act, no one knows what the other hand is doing."

  "Keep me informed as best you can."

  "What do you intend to do about Pitt?"

  Kamatori looked at Orita with venom in his cold eyes. "If a safe opportunity arises, kill him."