Dragon - Cussler Clive - Страница 47

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?”

“I ‘borrowed’ 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 posing 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.