Critical Mass

by David Hagberg

  She walked slowly to the door and looked across the compound toward the dark house and shivered even though the night was warm.

  If she left like this tonight, Ernst would recover eventually and he would come looking for her. Even Fukai’s promise of protection would do her no good. Ernst would find a way to get to her. And when he did he would kill her … unless she killed him first.

  She turned that thought over in her mind. On the way up from Greece she had toyed with the idea on several occasions; putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger would have been child’s play. But in her heart of hearts she’d known that she wouldn’t do it.

  That was then. Now that she was abandoning him, she’d come back to her original decision; to kill him, when the time was right, for everything he’d done to her. For everything he’d made her do.

  She shivered again.

  Spranger had taught her about sex—sex with men, that is—in East Berlin when she was still a teenager. And when he was finished with her, he’d used what he called her “certain charms” to help the STASI’s aims. She’d been ordered to sleep with Russians, with West Germans, Americans, and even Frenchmen.

  The worst had been the most recent. She’d slept with Fukai himself on four different occasions, each time worse than the previous, because each time the old man had come to learn more and more about her body, exactly what made her respond, and she hated him and Spranger for it.

  Stepping out of the garage, Liese moved silently across the courtyard and into the house. She halted just within the great room, a light breeze billowing the window shears at the open patio doors.

  In the distance she heard a train whistle, and in back the pool pump kicked on. Other than those sounds the night was still. Not even insects were chirping, a fact that somehow did not register with her.

  She was dressed in a short khaki skirt, a sleeveless blouse, and sandals without nylons. Reaching down she undid the sandal straps and stepped out of them.

  The tile was cool on her bare feet as she moved across the great room, down a short corridor and stopped just outside the open door into the master bedroom wing.

  This part of the house faced the opened veranda, and the glow of Monaco’s lights provided enough illumination so that she could see the big bed was empty, the sheets thrown back.

  Going the rest of the way in, she went to the night table where she’d left the glass of water and sedatives. The water was down and the pills were gone, which meant he’d be unconscious by now. He’d probably gotten out of bed and had collapsed somewhere.

  She hurriedly checked the bathroom and dressing alcove, but he wasn’t in either place and as she started back to the corridor, thinking he might have gone to the kitchen, she spotted him standing on the veranda at the low railing, his back to her.

  Careful to make absolutely no noise she went back to the nightstand, opened the drawer and took out the big Sig-Sauer automatic he kept there. She switched the safety off, cocked the hammer, and went to the open glass doors.

  Either he’d thrown the pills away, or he’d just taken them and the sedatives had not had a chance to effect him.

  In any event he seemed awake and alert enough to still be a significant danger to her if he realized that she was planning on abandoning him.

  She stepped out into the night and padded softly around the end of the pool, stopping barely three yards away from him. If she shot him now, his body would pitch over the rail and plunge three hundred feet onto the rocks and thick bush. If no one heard and pinpointed the shot, which she didn’t think they would, it might be a very long time before his body was discovered.

  “Do you mean to shoot me now, and leave me for the carrion eaters?” he asked, his voice barely rising above the gentle breeze.

  Liese was so startled that her hand shook and she nearly fired the pistol. But she got control of herself.

  “You won’t be missed,” she said.

  Spranger turned around to face her. He leaned back against the rail for balance and smiled wanly. “Haven’t you realized by now, my dear, that alone you are nothing? Even less than nothing, because your sexuality gets in the way of any sort of rational thought?”

  Liese raised the pistol and started to bear down on the trigger. Spranger’s smile broadened.

  “You have been the means to many ends,” he said. “You must understand that you are only a very pretty tool; of no value without the hand of the craftsman to guide it.”

  “I would rather it be Kiyoshi Fukai than you.”

  “That’s not true,” Spranger said. “You hate the man even worse than you hate me.”

  “He is a means to my end.”

  “That’s possible. If you could leave here and catch the plane in Rome.”

  “What’s to stop me …” Liese asked when she suddenly realized what Spranger had done. She pulled the trigger and the hammer slapped on an empty firing chamber. He’d foreseen what she would do, and had unloaded the gun.

  He reached into the pocket of his robe and started to withdraw a pistol, when Liese suddenly came to her senses. With a small scream she leaped forward, raising her hands, her elbows stiff.

  Because of his condition he was too slow to react. Liese hit him squarely in the chest with the palms of both hands, the Sig-Sauer still in her right hand, shoving him backwards over the low stone railing.

  He fell without a sound, his body hitting the face of the cliff about ninety feet down, and, turning end over end, finally landing in the rocks at the bottom.

  For a long time she just stared down at him, unsure of what she felt. But then she dropped the Sig-Sauer over the edge, turned and went back through the bedroom and out to the great hall where she retrieved her sandals.

  Before she left the villa she washed her hands in the guest bathroom. One more job and Fukai would pay her. After that no man would ever touch her again.

  69

  A POLITE YOUNG MAN IN A THREE-PIECE BUSINESS SUIT WAS sent over to escort McGarvey and Kelley from the main gates to the administration complex overlooking the bay. They had to leave the rental car parked outside and take an electrically powered shuttle across the compound.

  “We employ more than eighty thousand people at this location alone, Mr. Fine,” their escort explained. “Traffic would be worse than Tokyo’s if we allowed everybody to bring their personal vehicles inside.”

  “Where do your employees park?” Kelley asked.

  Their escort smiled. “Very few of our employees feel the need to drive, Ms. Fuller. Fukai Semiconductor provides bus service for the majority of employees, limousine service for some, and helicopter shuttle service for others. It is very efficient.”

  “How about Mr. Fukai himself?”

  The young man’s smile broadened. “Ah, Mr. Fukai maintains a private residence here on the grounds.”

  “Will we be able to meet with him this morning?” McGarvey asked.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Fine, but that will not be possible. Mr. Fukai will be involved with meetings all day.”

  “Tomorrow, perhaps?” McGarvey pressed.

  “Bad luck. Mr. Fukai will be out of the country tomorrow. Paris.”

  “I see. Then I will have to try again the next time I come to Nagasaki. My company hopes to do much business with Mr. Fukai in the future.”

  “Yes, I have seen the preliminary proposals. We are most anxious to do business with your firm.”

  Evidently Fukai had contacted DataBase, and they’d upheld the legend. McGarvey made mental note to pass along his thanks through Carrara.

  The world headquarters of Fukai Semiconductor was housed in a mammoth, sprawling building of glass, polished aluminum and native rock that seemed to be a hybrid design between traditional Japanese architecture and something off the drawing board of Frank Lloyd Wright, though there was almost nothing Western about the place. Situated along the shore of the bay, the massive structure rose in some places five stories above the water, each level cantilevered at a different angle thi
rty and sometimes fifty or sixty yards without apparent support. In other places the building was low, and followed the sinuously twisting shoreline as if it had grown out of the rock.

  About a half-mile north, still along the bay, the end of the main runway was marked by a cluster of hangars, a 747 jetliner with Fukai’s stylized seagull emblem painted in blue on the tail, parked in front of one of them.

  On the way across they were stopped four times by red lights. Electric cart and truck traffic was very heavy.

  “Is it like this all the time, or just on weekdays?” McGarvey asked.

  “All the time, Mr. Fine,” their escort said. “Twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. We must be ready to accommodate all of our offices and branch factories worldwide … in every time zone.”

  “Almost looks like a factory on war footing,” McGarvey said.

  Their escort glanced sharply at him, then smiled again. “Business is war, one’s competitors the enemy, don’t you agree?”

  “Of course,” McGarvey said.

  They left their electric cart with one of the security people in front and went up a broad wooden walkway to the headquarters’ dramatic main entrance. There were no doors, only an opening thirty or forty yards wide and a couple of stories tall blocked by a shimmering curtain of water. Whether it was falling from above or being pumped straight up was impossible to tell, but as they approached the entry the curtain of water parted, leaving them a dry opening wide enough to pass through.

  The entry hall was just as dramatic, with curtains and ribbons and tubes of water angled through the air as if to defy gravity, multicolored laser beams piercing the flowing water in seemingly random patterns.

  “It’s beautiful,” Kelley said.

  “It represents the inside of one of our new computer chips,” their escort said. “It has the same architecture.”

  They followed their guide along a series of moving ramps and walkways, to a reception area on one of the cantilevered floors jutting out over the bay. Docked just below was a sleek pleasure vessel that McGarvey figured had to be two hundred twenty feet or longer.

  “If you will just rest here for a moment, I shall return,” their escort said, and left them.

  They were in a large open area, furnished with groupings of couches and chairs. Flowers, living trees and other plants were everywhere in profusion. It was almost like being in a futuristic greenhouse.

  McGarvey moved down the line of windows until he could read the vessel’s name. She was the Grande Dame II out of Monaco. Another connection between Fukai and K-1, who were said to be based somewhere in the south of France? The Japanese flag flew at the stern, and Fukai’s blue seagull ensign was hoisted on the port halyard.

  But the boat was docked here, not at Monaco, which was half a world away.

  A hostess dressed in a traditional kimono offered them tea, or anything else they would like to drink, but before they could order anything their escort returned, an apologetic expression on his face.

  “I am very sorry, Mr. Fine, but the gentleman who was to have met with you this morning has been unavoidably detained. He asked me to convey his sincerest apologies, but he asks if you could postpone your business until tomorrow. A helicopter would be sent for you.”

  McGarvey remained by the windows. He looked down at the boat, and studied the line of the dock running south, until he had his answer. He turned.

  “Regretfully I will have to first check with my company. I was supposed to return to Tokyo first thing in the morning.”

  “We could arrange for your meeting here, and still get you to Tokyo faster than you could get there on public transportation.”

  “We will see,” McGarvey said. “I will telephone from my hotel in the morning.”

  “Very good, Mr. Fine.”

  “Who shall I be calling?”

  “Mr. Endo,” their escort said. “He is in charge of special projects.”

  70

  THE HIGHLY MODIFIED SEA KING HELICOPTER TOUCHED DOWN on the rooftop landing pad of Fukai Semiconductor’s headquarters building a few minutes before nine in the evening. The strobe light on the machine’s belly flashed across the registration numbers and the stylized blue Seagull painted on the fuselage.

  A short, slightly built Japanese man, dressed impeccably in a suit and tie, had been waiting in an elevator alcove. He hurried across the pad to the chopper as the hatch slid open. A pair of technicians in white coveralls came directly after him, guiding a motorized hand truck.

  “Any trouble?” he called up to the helicopter crewman at the hatch.

  “None getting down here, Endo-san. But they had to shoot their way off Sakhalin.”

  Endo wanted to hit something, anger instantly rising up like bile in his throat, but he restrained himself. “Was the boat spotted?”

  “No.”

  Franz Hoffmann’s bulky frame filled the hatch opening and he shoved the Japanese crewman aside. “Is Ernst here yet?” he demanded in German.

  Endo looked mildly up at the man. “Not yet, but I expect him to come for his payment very soon.”

  “Well, let’s get this shit unloaded and verified. I want to get out of here.”

  “Very good,” Endo said, and he stepped aside to let his technicians move in with the hand truck.

  Hoffmann and the other East German, Otto Eichendorf, unstrapped the animal cages from the restraining rings in the chopper’s cargo deck, and carefully passed them out the hatch one by one, the sables and minks hissing and snapping wildly as they threw themselves against the wire mesh.

  The Japanese technicians handled the cages with extreme caution, and when all four were loaded, they maneuvered the hand truck around and headed back to the elevator.

  Endo had remained to one side, an unreadable expression on his face, the strobe light making him look pale, almost ghostly.

  Hoffmann jumped down from the helicopter, and reached back inside for his Kalashnikov rifle.

  “There’ll be no need for that here,” Endo said.

  Hoffmann looked at him, startled, but then he relaxed and put the rifle back. “Right,” he said, and he stepped back as Eichendorf jumped down.

  “Just this way, gentlemen,” Endo said graciously pointing the way toward the elevator.

  The two East Germans turned and started across the landing pad. Before they got ten feet, Endo pulled out a Heckler and Koch VP70, nine-millimeter automatic, and fired two bursts of three rounds each, Hoffmann and Eichendorff stumbling and going down. They were dead before they hit the deck.

  “Strip their bodies and dump them at sea,” Endo said, without bothering to turn around as he headed toward the elevator. “And have someone clean up this mess immediately.”

  “What about the others, Endo-San?” the crewman from the helicopter called.

  “They have already been taken care of,” he said. The elevator came and he took it down to a sub-basement, still much work to be done before this night was over.

  The pit had been carved out of the living rock three hundred feet beneath Fukai Semiconductor’s headquarters. Sixty feet on a side and fifty feet deep, the room and anything that happened within its confines was totally undetectable from outside, and from anywhere within the normal areas of the building above.

  It had been built nearly thirty years ago for just the purpose it was finally being used for this night. All during that time Fukai’s most trusted aides and scientists had continually updated its equipment so that at any given time the place was a state of the art laboratory-factory for the assembly of nuclear weapons.

  Endo watched from behind thick Lexan plastic windows in an upper gallery as one of the technicians wheeled a small equipment cart over to the four cages set side-by-side on a long steel table. The restless animals paced back and forth, stopping frequently to see what the human was doing.

  The tech flipped a couple of switches on the piece of equipment that looked like a heart-cart. Two leads snaked from the front panel. The tech clipped
one of the leads to the wire mesh of one of the cages, and poked the second lead inside that cage, the probe barely touching the side of one of the sables.

  The animal leaped straight up, its back violently arching. Endo had the speaker on, and he heard the sable scream once before it fell dead.

  There was pandemonium in the cages as the other animals went berserk, understanding instinctively what was happening. But within a couple of minutes all eight of them were dead, and the technician turned off the machine, unclipped the lead and pushed the cart away.

  A pair of technicians, these dressed in radiation suits, came from behind a lead shield in the assembly area across the lab. One of them opened the cages and removed the animals’ bodies, handing them to the other tech who dumped them in a lead-lined bin. It was a simple precaution in case the animals had somehow become contaminated. The bin would be buried in a hole bored one thousand yards into the bedrock beneath the laboratory level so that no radiation would ever be detected here, even if someone managed to penetrate this far.

  Endo had turned that thought over many times, and he’d discussed it once with Fukai, who’d agreed that extraordinary measures would be taken to discover who was behind the … attack. Therefore every effort would have to be made to thwart the ensuing worldwide investigation.

  When the last of the animals’ remains had been disposed of, the technician removed the false bottom from the first cage, and from within gingerly withdrew a gray cylinder about the size of an ordinary thermos flask, and cradling it in both hands very carefully handed it to the second technician.

  There was little or no danger of harmful radiation at this point, because the cylinders they were handling were lead-lined containers for the weapons-grade plutonium.

  But there was always the possibility of accidents, and every man working on the project understood that the amount of material they would be handling this evening constituted a critical mass.