“A monumental ripoff to end all ripoffs,” Giordino observed moodily.
“The full scope of the network can never be documented.”
“More expensive even than the plunder of Europe by the Nazis?” Pitt asked, opening another bottle of soda water.
“By far,” Mancuso replied, smiling. “Then as now, the Japanese were more interested in the economic side—gold, precious gems, hard currency—while the Nazis concentrated on masterworks of art, sculpture, and rare artifacts.” His expression suddenly turned serious again. “Following the Japanese forces into China and then the rest of Southeast Asia, Yoshishu and Suma proved themselves to be archcriminal plotters. Like characters out of Heller’s book Catch-22, they worked beneficial deals with their enemies. They sold luxury goods and war materials to Chiang Kai-shek, becoming quite chummy with the generalissimo, an arrangement that paid handsome dividends after the Communists swept over China and later when the Chinese government moved to Formosa, which became Taiwan. They bought, sold, pillaged, smuggled, extorted, and murdered on an unheard-of scale, bleeding every country dry that came under their heel. It goes without saying that Suma and Yoshishu played a ‘one for you, two for me’ game when the loot was inventoried and divided with the Imperial forces.”
Pitt rose from his chair and stretched, easily touching the ceiling of the bus. “How much of the total plunder actually reached Japan?”
“A small percentage made it into the Imperial War Treasury. The more easily transportable treasure hoard, the precious gems and platinum, Suma and Yoshishu safely smuggled into Tokyo on board submarines and hid them on a farm in the country. The great mass of the bullion stayed behind on the main island of Luzon. It was stored in hundreds of kilometers of tunnels dug by thousands of allied POWs used as slave labor, who were either worked to death or executed to secure the hidden locations for recovery after the war. I excavated one tunnel on Corregidor that contained the bones of three hundred prisoners who had been buried alive.”
“Why is it this was never brought to the public attention?” asked Pitt.
Mancuso shrugged. “I can’t say. Not until forty years later was there mention of the barbarism in a few books. But by then, the Bataan death march and the armies of American, British and Philippine soldiers who perished in POW camps were only dim memories.”
“The Germans are still haunted by the holocaust,” mused Pitt, “but the Japanese have remained mostly unstained by their atrocities.”
Giordino’s face was grim. “Did the Japs recover any of the treasure after the war?”
“Some was dug up by Japanese construction companies, who claimed to be helping the Philippines rise from the ravages of the conflict by developing various industrial building projects. Naturally, they worked on top of the burial sites. Some was dug up by Ferdinand Marcos, who shipped several hundred tons of gold out of the country and discreetly converted it to currency on the world bullion markets. And a fair share was retrieved by Suma and Yoshishu twenty years later. Maybe as much as seventy percent of it is still hidden and may never be recovered.”
Pitt looked at Mancuso questioningly. “What happened to Suma and Yoshishu after the war ended?”
“No fools, these guys. They read defeat in their tea leaves as early as nineteen forty-three and began laying plans to survive the end in grand style. Not about to die in battle during MacArthur’s return to Luzon, or commit ritual suicide in the humiliation of defeat, Suma ordered up a submarine. Then with a generous helping of the Emperor’s share, they sailed off to Valparaiso, Chile, where they lived for five years in lavish comfort. When MacArthur became occupied with the Korean war, the master thieves returned home and became master organizers. Suma devoted his genius to economic and political intrigue, while Yoshishu consolidated his hold over the underworld and the new generation of Asian wheeler-dealers. Within ten years they were the major power brokers of the Far East.”
“A real pair of sweethearts,” Giordino said caustically.
“Koda Suma died of cancer in nineteen seventy-three,” Mancuso continued. “Like a couple of prohibition Chicago gangsters, Suma’s son, Hideki, and Yoshishu agreed to divide up the massive organization into different areas of activity. Yoshishu directed the criminal end, while Hideki built a power base in government and industry. The old crook has pretty much retired, keeping his fingers in various pies, guiding the present crime leaders of the Gold Dragons, and occasionally cutting a joint venture with Suma.”
“According to Team Honda,” Kern informed them, “Suma and Yoshishu joined forces to underwrite the weapons plant and the Kaiten Project.”
“The Kaiten Project?” Pitt repeated.
“Their code name for the bomb-car operation. Literally translated into English it means ‘a change of sky.’ But to the Japanese it has a broader meaning: ‘a new day is coming, a great shift in events.’ “
“But Japan claims to ban the introduction of nuclear weapons,” Pitt ventured. “Seems damned odd that Suma and Yoshishu could build a nuclear weapons facility without some knowledge or backing from the government.”
“The politicians don’t run Japan. The back-room movers and shakers behind the bureaucracy pull the reins. It was no secret when Japan built a Liquid Metal Fast Breeder reactor. But it wasn’t general knowledge that besides functioning as a power source it also produced plutonium and converted lithium into tritium, essential ingredients for thermonuclear weapons. My guess is Prime Minister Junshiro gave his secret blessing to a nuclear arsenal, however reluctantly because of the risk of public outcry, but he was purposely cut out of the Kaiten Project.”
“They certainly don’t run a ‘government like we do,” said Sandecker.
“Has Team Honda located the weapons plant?” Pitt asked Kern.
“They’ve narrowed it to a sixty-square-kilometer grid around the subterranean city of Edo.”
“And they still can’t find it?”
“Jim Hanamura thinks the city has deep tunnels that connect to the facility. An ingenious cover. No aboveground buildings or roads as a giveaway. Supplies entering for the thousands of people who live and work in Edo, and their trash exiting. Most any nuclear equipment or material could be smuggled in and out.”
“Any leads to the detonation command?” asked Giordino.
“The Dragon Center?”
“Is that what they call it?”
“They have a name for everything.” Kern smiled. “Nothing solid. Hanamura’s last report said he was onto a lead that had something to do with a painting.”
“That makes a hell of a lot of sense,” Giordino carped.
The door opened to a cramped communications compartment in the rear of the bus, and a man stepped out and handed three sheets of paper to Kern.
As his eyes flicked over the wording, his face became stricken. Finally, after coming to the end of the third page, he rapped his knuckles against the arm of his chair in shock. “Oh, my God.”
Sandecker leaned toward him. “What is it?”
“A status report from Mel Penner on Palau. He says Marvin Showalter was abducted on his way to the embassy. An American tourist couple reported seeing two Japanese men enter Showalter’s car when he stopped for a stalled truck a block from the embassy. The husband and wife only happened to report it to embassy officials because of the U.S. license tags and the surprise shown by the driver as the intruders leaped into the car. They saw nothing more, as a tourist bus pulled alongside them and blocked their view. By the time they could see the street again, Showalter’s car had disappeared in traffic.”
“Go on.”
“Jim Hanamura is late reporting in. In his last report to Penner, Jim said he had confirmed the location of the weapons plant three hundred fifty meters underground. The main assembly area is connected to Edo City, four kilometers to the north, by an electric railway that also runs through a series of tunnels to arsenals, waste disposal caverns, and engineering offices.”
“Is there more?” Sandecker gent
ly persisted.
“Hanamura went on to say he was following a strong lead to the Dragon Center. That’s all.”
“What word on Roy Orita?” Pitt asked.
“Only a brief mention.”
“He vanished too?”
“No, Penner doesn’t say that. He only says Orita insists on sitting tight until we can sort things out.”
“I’d say the visitors have outscored the home team by three to one,” said Pitt philosophically. “They’ve snatched two of our legislators, cut Teams Honda and Cadillac off at the knees, and last but easily the worst, they know what we’re after and where we’re coming from.”
“Suma is holding all the high cards,” Kern conceded. “I’d better inform Mr. Jordan at once so he can warn the President.”
Pitt leaned over the back of his chair and fixed Kern with a dry stare. “Why bother?”
“What do you mean?”
“I see no need to panic.”
“The President must be alerted. We’re not only looking at the threat of nuclear blackmail but political ransom for Diaz and Smith. Suma can drop the axe any moment.
“No he won’t. Not yet anyway.”
“How do you know?” Kern demanded.
“Something is holding Suma back. He’s got a fleet of those bomb cars hidden away. All he needs is one driving the streets of Manhattan or Los Angeles to put the fear of God into the White House and the American public. He’s literally got the government by the scrotum. But what does he do? He plays petty kidnapper. No, I’m sorry. Something’s not going down the right chute. Suma isn’t ready for prime time. I say he’s stalling.”
“I think Dirk has a case,” said Mancuso. “It’s possible Suma’s agents smuggled the bomb cars into position before they could bring the detonation command on line.”
“It fits,” Sandecker concurred. “We might still have time to send in a new team to find and neutralize it.”
“At the moment everything hinges on Hanamura.” Kern hesitated apprehensively. “We can only hope he’s unearthed the Dragon Center. But we also have to consider the very real possibility he’s either dead or captured by Suma’s security force.”
They went quiet as the Virginia countryside rolled past the windows of the bus. The leaves on the trees gleamed gold under the fall sun. Few people walking beside the road paid any attention to the passing bus. If any had seen the charter sign above the driver’s windshield, they’d have simply thought it was a group of vacationers touring Civil War battlefields.
At last Sandecker spoke the thought that was on all their minds “If only we knew what thread Jim Hanamura was unraveling.”
33
AT THAT MOMENT, halfway across the world, Jim Hanamura would have given his new Corvette and his Redondo Beach bachelor pad’s state-of-the-art sound system to trade places with any man on that bus in Virginia.
The cold night rain soaked his clothes and skin as he lay covered by mud and rotting leaves in a drainage ditch. The police and the uniformed security force that were hunting him had canvassed the area and moved on ten minutes earlier, but he lay there in the slime trying to rest and formulate a plan of action. He painfully rolled over on his good elbow and peered up and across the road. The only sign of movement was a man in the garage of a small house who was bent under the open hood of a small delivery truck.
He dropped back in the ditch and passed out for the third time since being shot during his escape from Edo City. When Hanamura regained consciousness, he wondered how long he had been out. He held up his right wrist, but the watch had stopped, broken when he wrecked his car. It couldn’t have been very long, however, because the driver of the delivery truck was still tinkering with its engine.
The three slugs from the security guards’ automatic rifles had caught him in the left arm and shoulder. It was one of those flukes, a thousand-to-one unforeseen incident that catches a professional operative from a blind side.
His plans had been precise and exactingly executed. He’d forged the security clearance pass of one of Suma’s chief structural engineers by the name of Jiro Miyaza, who closely resembled Hanamura in face and body.
Entering Edo City and walking through the checkpoints leading to the design and construction department had been a piece of cake. None of the guards saw anything suspicious about a man who returned to his office after hours and worked on past midnight. All Japanese men put in long hours, seldom working a normal eight-hour day.
The inspection was loose, yet tighter than what it takes to walk into the Pentagon Building in Washington. The guards nodded to Hanamura and watched as he slipped his pass card into the electronic identity computer. The correct buzz sounded, a video camera’s light flashed green, and the guards waved him through, satisfied that Hanamura was cleared to enter that section of the building. With so many people passing in and out all hours of the day and night, they failed to recall that the man Hanamura was impersonating had only left for home a few minutes previously.
Hanamura tossed three offices in an hour and a half before he struck pay dirt. In the rear of a drawer of a draftsman’s table he found a rolled cylinder of rough sketches of a secret installation. The sketches should have been destroyed. He could only assume the draftsman had neglected to drop them in a nearby shredder. He took his time, ran the drawings through a copy machine, inserted them in an envelope, and put the originals back in the drawer exactly as he found them. The envelope he curled and taped to the calf of one leg.
Once he passed the guards on the way out, Hanamura thought he was home free. He walked out into the vast atrium and waited his turn to take an elevator that opened on a pedestrian tunnel leading to the parking level where he’d left his Murmoto four-wheel-drive pickup truck. There were twenty people packed in the enclosure, and Hanamura had the misfortune of having to stand in the front row. When the doors opened on his parking level, fate dealt him a bad hand.
Pushed ahead by the crowd behind him, Hanamura stepped right into Jiro Miyaza.
The engineer, whose identity Hanamura borrowed, had exited the adjacent elevator with his wife and two children. They were headed for the same parking level for an evening drive aboveground. Inexplicably, Miyaza’s eyes were drawn to the clearance pass clipped to Hanamura’s pocket.
For a moment he simply stared, then his eyes widened and he looked into Hanamura’s face with disbelieving eyes.
“What are you doing with my pass?” he demanded indignantly.
“Internal security,” Hanamura answered calmly with an air of authority. “We’re examining security areas to see if the guards are alert and pick us out. I happened to be issued your name and ID number.”
“My brother is assistant head of security. He never mentioned such an inspection to me.”
“We don’t advertise,” Hanamura said, glaring at Miyaza, who refused to back down.
Hanamura tried to edge his way past Miyaza, but the engineer grabbed his arm.
“Wait! I want to verify this.”
Hanamura’s lightning move was almost undetectable. He rammed his palm into Miyaza’s chest, breaking the sternum. The engineer gasped for air, clutched his chest, and sank to his knees. Hanamura pushed him aside and calmly walked toward his vehicle, which he had backed into its stall. He quickly threw open the unlocked door of the Murmoto V-6 four-wheel-drive, slipped behind the wheel, and turned the ignition key. The engine started on the second turn, and he shoved the shift lever into drive and headed for the exit ramp and the gate only one level above.
He might have made it if Miyaza’s wife and children hadn’t screamed their heads off and pointed frantically toward Hanamura. A nearby security guard rushed over and questioned them. He barely made any sense of their hysterical jabbering, but he was smart enough to use his portable radio to alert the guards manning the main entry gate.
Nothing went Hanamura’s way. He was a fraction of a second too late. A guard stepped from the gatehouse and raised his hand for Hanamura to stop. Two of his comrades pos
ted on opposite sides of the exit tunnel lifted their weapons at the ready position. And then there was the heavy steel barrier shaft across the drive.
Hanamura took in the scene with one trained glance. There was no stopping in an attempt to bluff his way past. He braced himself for the impact, slammed his foot against the gas pedal, and crouched down in the seat as far as he could go. He struck the shaft partly on the raised bumper of the truck and partly across the headlights, smashing them back into the fenders and pushing the grillwork against the radiator.
The shock was not as bad as Hanamura expected, just a crunch of metal and glass and a twisting screech as the momentum of the truck snapped the steel barrier off where it hinged into a concrete piling. Then the windows vanished in a spray of slivers as the guards opened up with their automatic rifles. It was the only small bit of luck that came his way. The guards aimed high instead of blasting the engine compartment and gas tank or blowing out the tires.
The firing abruptly ceased as he broke clear of the tunnel and raced through a stream of cars entering the underground city from the other, incoming road. Hanamura paid as much attention to the view in his rearview mirror as he did to the road and traffic ahead. He didn’t doubt for a second that Suma’s security people were alerting the police to set up roadblocks. Throwing the Murmoto into four-wheel-drive, he cut off the pavement and shot down a dirt road muddied by a pouring rainstorm. Only after bumping through a forested area for ten kilometers did he become aware of a burning pain in his shoulder and a sticky flow of fluid down his left side. He pulled to a stop under a large pine tree and examined his left shoulder and arm.
He’d been struck three times. One bullet through the biceps, one that cut a groove in his collarbone, and another through the fleshy part of his shoulder. They were not killing injuries, but if not cared for they could become extremely serious. It was the heavy loss of blood that worried Hanamura. Already he felt the early stages of light-headedness. He tore off his shirt and made a couple of crude bandages, stemming the blood flow as best he could.
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