End of Enemies

by Grant Blackwood

  Vorsalov continued heading southeast. The car Randal sent to California and Kalorama reported nothing unusual at the phone booths.

  After ten minutes of random driving, Vorsalov turned onto fifteenth, then swung west on Constitution into the heart of Capitol Hill.

  “Passing Virginia Avenue,” Randal reported.

  Latham checked his watch. Come on. …

  “Coming up on Roosevelt Bridge. … We’re over the bridge, heading north to the George Parkway.”

  Latham traced the route on his map. Vorsalov was taking the bridge over the Potomac and to Teddy Roosevelt Island. Roosevelt Island … Latham thought, reviewing what he knew about it. Good place for a meeting; plenty of trails. An easy place to spot surveillance.

  “I see him,” Randal called. “All units keep driving, nobody pull in. Command, he’s pulling into the Roosevelt Island parking lot. The only exit is northbound, so we’re setting up down the parkway. The median is blocked by a barrier. No way he can get across.”

  “Roger,” said Latham. There were only two ways to reach Roosevelt Island, one from the parking lot, the other a pedestrian bridge crossing from Rosslyn Station. “Don’t forget Rosslyn, Paul.”

  “It’s covered. We’re also collecting plate numbers from the lot.”

  Now to find out who the Russian was meeting.

  Vorsalov climbed out and stretched his legs. His muscles were sore. It felt good to be out of the car. He looked around. Most of the cars in the parking lot were from other states. Tourists with children. That would make it hard for watchers. Good. He started across the footbridge.

  The last few hours had been grueling but satisfying. Just like the old days. His hands shook with excess adrenaline. God, how he missed this. He was safe, he decided. Even if by chance he’d been intercepted, he’d long since lost them. He knew the city too well and had played this game too long to be trapped.

  He turned his attention to the island, picking out landmarks and trails from the guidebook. A ninety-acre game preserve, the guide said, named after Theodore Roosevelt. He skimmed his fingertip along the map until he found the trail he wanted.

  He turned off the bridge and east onto the path. Time was critical now. He picked up his pace.

  One mile south of the island, Latham’s command van sat in the visitor parking lot of Arlington National Cemetery. Ten minutes had passed since Vorsalov had parked. Latham’s cell phone buzzed. “Latham here.”

  “Agent Latham, Marie Johnson here, from Bell—”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ve got the information you requested. There were only three incoming calls to that bank of phones. One wasn’t answered, the other was a busy signal. The third was picked up. The call lasted just over a minute.”

  “Great,” Latham said. “Was that phone used—”

  “I thought you’d ask that. About fifty seconds after the first call came in, the phone was used again, this time for two minutes.” She gave him the number, a 202 area code, 333 prefix. Inside the city.

  “Where—”

  “The number is registered to Brown’s Boat Rental at Virginia and Rock Creek.”

  Latham froze. He knew Brown’s. It lay on the east bank of the Potomac, not three hundred yards from Roosevelt Island.

  Jesus. Vorsalov wasn’t meeting anyone. He was still dry-cleaning.

  “Thanks, Ms. Johnson, you’ve been great.” Latham hung up and keyed the radio. “Command to Mobile One.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Paul, get somebody back across the bridge. I want one car in the parking lot of Brown’s Boat Rental and two patrolling north and south on Rock Creek.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Our boy’s making a run.”

  Vorsalov’s ploy was a master stroke, Latham would later admit.

  Vorsalov calls a partner at the booth on California and Kalorama, who then calls Johnson’s to confirm a boat is reserved and waiting on the island, a common request during tourist season. Meanwhile, Vorsalov crosses the bridge to Roosevelt, maneuvering any pursuers into a perfect bottleneck that would trap them on the west side of the Potomac with no quick way to get back across during noon rush hour.

  Latham did the calculations: Six or seven minutes for Paul to reach Rock Creek Parkway, another two minutes to reach Brown’s. Add to that the ten minutes head start Vorsalov had, plus four minutes for him to paddle across the river …

  It would be close.

  Twenty minutes later, they had their answer.

  Randal reported finding an abandoned canoe on a beach just south of the boat center. “Are we sure it was him?” Latham asked.

  “Pretty much. One of the attendants saw him ditch the canoe and take off toward the GWU Metrorail stop. The description matches.”

  Latham stared into space. He was numb. They’d worked so hard. …

  “Charlie, are you there? Should we—”

  “No,” Latham said. “Forget it. He’s gone.”

  32

  Alaska

  The tide was already beginning to lift the stern, banging it against the cliff face and breaking free chunks of ice that shattered on the deck. Tanner looked aft and saw waves lapping at the midships rail. Soon the entire afterdeck would be submerged.

  Bear tied off the rope, set himself, and lowered Briggs over the side until he was perched against the hull. Below his feet, waves rushed through the hole with an explosive sucking sound. The billowing mist froze almost immediately into clouds of vapor. Tanner peered into the hole but could see nothing of the interior.

  “Ready, Bear?” he called.

  “Ready!”

  Briggs watched the waves surge, timing them. One one thousand, two one thousand … He eyed the hole’s ragged edges; if he timed it wrong, he’d be gutted like a fish.

  Tanner pushed off the hull, swinging out and down. Jagged metal flashed past. He plunged into the water and he felt like he’d been hit with an electric current. Then he was up again, gasping for breath. A wave broke through the hole and blotted out the sky. His ears squealed with the pressure change.

  He looked around. He was submerged up to his waist; already he could feel his legs growing numb. Above him was a horizontal steel railing. He grabbed it, pulled himself up, and rolled himself onto the catwalk.

  He was in the anchor windlass room, a small compartment containing the winch that raised and lowered the anchor. A few feet away, a ladder ascended into the darkness.

  “Briggs,” Cahil called. “Hey, Briggs—”

  “I’m okay, Bear,” Tanner shouted. He untied himself and tossed the rope through the hole. “There’s a catwalk a few feet inside the hull. Once you get through, reach out. I’ll grab you.”

  With a banzai cry and a splash, Cahil swung through the hole. Tanner caught his hand and pulled him onto the catwalk. “Welcome aboard,” Tanner said.

  “God, that’s cold.”

  “I noticed.” Briggs shined his flashlight over the blackened edges of the hole. “Shaped charge,” he said. “They tried to scuttle her.”

  “Just one’s not enough to sink her,” Bear said. “There’s gotta be others.”

  “Yep. Let’s get moving.”

  They climbed the udder to the next deck. The tide had not yet reached this high, but they could hear it below them, sloshing and echoing. They headed aft, passing several machinery rooms and the galley, all of which were deserted. In a crew’s lounge they found a magazine lying open on a couch; a paperback novel spine-up on a coffee table; a mug, half full of tea. There were no signs of disorder. It was as though the crew had just walked away.

  Cahil picked up the magazine; it was written in Kanji.

  In the crew’s quarters they found several lockers containing clothes. “Here,” Tanner called to Cahil, tossing him a towel. They both stripped, toweled off until the color returned to their arms and legs, then found a couple pair of coveralls that fit.

  “This f
eels creepy,” said Cahil, slipping into one.

  Tanner nodded. “Like borrowing clothes from ghosts.”

  They made their way to the pilothouse. The windows were rimmed with ice, and rainbowed sunlight danced on the bulkheads. Like the crew’s quarters, the bridge was a picture of orderliness. Tanner found the helm controls set at All Stop.

  They made a quick search. “No logs, records … nothing,” Briggs said.

  “Same with charts. Everything’s gone.”

  Under their feet, the deck groaned and leaned farther to starboard.

  They descended two decks but were stopped by rising water at the entrance to a machinery room. The hatch was open, however, and Tanner shimmied down the railing and shined his flashlight inside.

  “There’s another hole,” he called. “About the same size as the one at the bow. It’s filling up quick.”

  “Just time for one more stop, then,” Bear said.

  In the engine room, the sea had flooded all but the upper-most catwalk on which they stood, and Tanner could hear gurgling whooshes as air pockets were forced ever upward by the tide. They trotted through the next hatch and down a ladder.

  The after cargo hold. Water lapped at the edges of the catwalk beneath their feet and up the bulkhead, leaving an ever-thickening sheet of ice. Tanner could feel the chill on him.

  “Briggs, you better get over here.”

  Tanner walked to where Cahil was kneeling.

  The bodies were lying face up and side by side against the port bulkhead. All but one of them were chained to the railing, and all were submerged up to their chests, their faces crusted with ice. Several of the corpses’ wrists were rubbed raw, some clear to the bone. Tanner tried to picture it: chained here as the scuttling charges exploded … flailing in the rising water, screaming for help, but no one coming.

  What a god-awful way to die.

  The only body not chained had met a different fate than had the others. Aside from being the only non-Oriental, this man, a Caucasian with thinning blond hair, had been shot once in the forehead.

  One by one, Tanner shined his flashlight over each face. At the fourth face, he stopped. “Bear, recognize him?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was the missing engineer from the Takagi Shipyard.

  Cahil took some quick photos, then followed Tanner down the catwalk to where it widened into a small alcove. Here, beneath the catwalk, they found an undetonated scuttling charge attached to the port bulkhead.

  “Sealed bowl charge,” Cahil said. “Half pound of RDX, looks like. See the funnel at the bottom of the bowl?”

  “That’s not good,” Briggs whispered.

  The charge was armed with a hydrostatic trigger, essentially a funnel at the bottom of which sat a detonator designed to fire when water poured in and caused a short circuit.

  Tanner looked down. Water was lapping at the catwalk.

  “We’re out of time, Bear.”

  They were climbing the ladder when the deck lurched under their feet, then leaned sharply to starboard. The ship started wallowing. Instinctively, Tanner knew what was happening: the tide had floated the ship’s stern. They had only minutes before the bow followed.

  “Go, Bear. Run!”

  Chasing the beams of their flashlights, they charged up the ladder, through the engine room, and out the opposite hatch.

  They heard a groan of steel. The deck rolled beneath their feet. They crashed against the bulkhead. Cahil’s flashlight clattered to the deck and rolled away, the beam casting jumbled shadows against the bulkheads. They stood up, braced themselves, kept moving. The list was passing fifty degrees now.

  “Ever see The Poseidon Adventure?” Cahil called.

  “As a kid. It scared the hell out of me.”

  “Me, too. I think we lost our exit, bud.” The hole in the bow was now either submerged or buried in silt.

  “Let’s go for the one in the MR,” Tanner said.

  It took them sixty seconds to reach the ladder to the machinery room. They shimmied down the rail and slipped into the icy water. Water was boiling through the hatch. Too fast, Briggs thought. As the ship was rolling over, the trapped water was cascading from port to starboard, gaining speed like a self-contained tidal wave.

  The water reached their waists, swirling higher and faster.

  “Gonna be a tough swim!” Cahil shouted.

  “We’ll wait till the hatch fills! The current will lose some speed. There should be an air pocket below the hole.”

  “Should be?”

  “Will be!”

  Tanner felt the fear swell in his chest. He quashed it. The water reached his chin, the cold like a vise around his chest. He raised himself onto his toes. With a final swoosh of escaping air, the hatch disappeared beneath the foam.

  Tanner nodded to Cahil, then took a breath and dove.

  Inside the machinery room they found a jumble of inverted catwalks and ladders. Above their heads, the gash in the hull was open. Tanner could see murky daylight. They headed for the nearest ladder and started up.

  Three feet below the hole, they broke into an air pocket. Outside, Tanner could see the face of the cliff. Waves and spume broke against it and rushed into the hole. He stretched his arm, caught the edge, and pulled. “Gimme a shove,” he yelled. Cahil hunched his shoulders and Tanner pushed off. He pulled himself out, rolled onto the hull, grabbed Cahil’s hand, and lifted him up.

  Toshogu lay prone on her starboard side, her decks perpendicular to the water. Behind them, the stern rolled and crashed against the cliff face. With a deafening grating of steel on gravel, the bow began sliding off the beach.

  “Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” Cahil yelled.

  Tanner followed his outstretched finger. His heart filled his throat.

  Jutting over the edge of the cliff was the helicopter’s tail rotor. The rope, taut as a piano wire, ran from the strut to the ship’s railing where they’d tied it off.

  Toshugu rolled again. The helicopter skidded toward the edge.

  Tanner pointed to the cliff face. “Think you can make that ledge?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do it. I’m going for the rope.”

  “Wait, Briggs—”

  “If we lose the helo, we’ll die out here.”

  Tanner took off running, arms outstretched for balance as he sprinted along the hull. He slipped, fell hard, scrambled for a grip. He pulled himself up and kept going. Behind him, he heard a muffled explosion. Scuttling charge, he thought absently. He kept his eyes fixed on the rope; it trembled with the strain. The helicopter lurched closer to the edge.

  “Jump, Briggs!” Cahil called. “She’s going over!”

  Ten feet from the rope, Tanner leapt. Even as his feet left the hull, he felt it sliding away beneath him. He caught the line in both hands, pulled his dive knife from its sheath, and sliced the rope below his knees.

  Then he was swinging, the wind rushing around him. The cliff face loomed before him. With a teeth-rattling jolt, he hit the rock and bounced off. He reached out, found a handhold, and pulled himself to a ledge.

  He caught his breath and looked over his shoulder.

  Toshugu was gone. Only her port railing was still visible above the waves, and as Tanner watched, transfixed, that, too, slipped beneath the waves and disappeared in a cloud of bubbles.

  “Briggs! You there?”

  He leaned out and saw Cahil perched on the ledge, grinning like a maniac. Alive! Tanner felt it, too. “I’m here! You okay?”

  “Yeah, but all things being equal, I’d rather be back at the Starlight!”

  33

  Japan

  Thirteen sleepless hours later, a taxi dropped them back at the Royal Palms Hotel. There was a message waiting for Tanner. He handed it to Cahil.

  “Wonder what the good inspector Ieyasu wants,” Bear said.

  “I’ll call and arrange a meeting.”

/>   Cahil yawned. “Make it a couple hours, huh?”

  Before leaving to meet Ieyasu, Tanner called Holystone to check in, the first time since discovering Toshogu. Oaken listened while Tanner told the story.

  “Good God. So are you thawed out?” Oaken asked.

  “I am, but the tips of Bear’s toes are still blue.”

  Cahil said, “Better that than my—”

  “I get the picture,” said Oaken. “So bottom line is we have a scuttled ship with a murdered crew. Is she reachable?”

  “I doubt it,” said Tanner. “She probably stayed afloat long enough to get washed out past the shelf. We’re talking about some deep water.”

  “How deep?”

  “Five, maybe six thousand feet.”

  “Then no salvage operation. My guess is Leland is going to call this the end of the road. We’ve got nothing else solid to follow. Unless …”

  “What?”

  “I’m working on something. Can you lay low for a day or so? That’ll give me a chance to finish this; if it pans out, we might have something.”

  Tanner almost asked why Oaken was going to such trouble, but he knew the answer. Oaken loved a mystery as much as anyone, though his detecting was more the armchair variety. “Thanks, Oaks.”

  “You bet. I’ll get back to you.”

  Ieyasu stood near the tide line, tossing stones into the surf. Tanner introduced Cahil. “And you are a tourist as well?” Ieyasu asked.

  Cahil smiled. “What can I say? I’ve heard good things about your country.”

  “My country would be better without people like Hiromasa Takagi.”

  “Agreed.”

  Tanner led them to a log, and they sat down. “Inspector, it’s time for some truth between us. You know we’re not tourists, and you know Ohira and Sumiko were more than just employees of Takagi Industries.”

  “Yes.”

  “The U.S. government believes Takagi Industries is involved in illegal arms dealing. Ohira had been trying to help us put a stop to it.”