Waste Not, Want Not td-130

by Warren Murphy

  He slipped out the door with the crowd.

  Chiun gave a single backward glance at the Vaporizer.

  The next tour group had donned the special boots and was now coming out onto the deck. Near the open gate, Dr. Sears was in whispered conversation with a janitor. The man wore coveralls and leaned against a push broom.

  Out on the deck, a beautiful woman with long black hair pulled up in a bun mingled with the rest of the new group. Every now and then, her long fingers brushed the broach that was pinned to her sensible white blouse.

  She was subtle, for a white woman. Her mannerisms were not broad enough to give her away. Chiun alone knew the woman was taking pictures with a miniature camera.

  Aiming her broach at the gate, the woman snapped a photo of Mike Sears and the janitor.

  The old Korean quickly lost interest. Turning from the window, he followed the others out the door of the Vaporizer control room.

  Chapter 11

  In the bowels of the Institute building in Moscow, Anna Chutesov sat behind her tidy desk.

  The head of Russia's secret Institute was bathed in the glow of her desktop monitor. The only sound over the soft hum of her computer was the regular click of her mouse.

  Through careful eyes she studied the photographs e-mailed to her by Petrovina Bulganin.

  Most of the pictures were of little interest to Anna. They depicted, from different angles, shots of the Vaporizer unit. The Institute wasn't interested in the technology. She would forward those photos to the proper scientific directorate.

  Anna doubted anything could be learned from them. A photograph of an automobile didn't tell one what was under the hood. Still, she had usurped the investigation of the Vaporizer from the SVR in order to get her agent into Mayana. The time Agent Dvah wasted on the pictures was necessary.

  Originally reconnoitering the device was going to be the SVR's responsibility. But at a security meeting with the president and other high-ranking officials at the Kremlin three days before, Anna had argued that the assignment required subtlety-a trait sorely lacking among most of the KGB throwbacks who filled the ranks of the SVR.

  "Give this job to the SVR and they will kill, drug and blackmail everyone in Mayana," Anna had said. "And they will still find a way to come back empty-handed."

  "This is outrageous," Pavel Zatsyrko, the head of the SVR, spluttered to the president of the Russian Federation. "This woman is a menace and her agency is a joke. The SVR has handled far more serious tasks. And, I might add, so has the KGB, which she is so quick to dismiss."

  The president-a former KGB man himself-turned his watery eyes to the head of the Institute. "Why are you even interested in this, Anna Chutesov?" he asked, suspicion on his bland face.

  Anna shrugged. "My field agents need experience," she replied simply.

  "My agents have experience," Zatsyrka interjected.

  "Yes," Anna said. "But why trust a tank when you have a scalpel?"

  A few of the other men laughed. Even the president cleared his throat, covering a smirk behind a small hand.

  Pavel Zatsyrko was outraged. Even more so when the president handed the assignment over to the Institute.

  Anna could not have cared less about the victory. The truth was, she wasn't interested in the Vaporizer. But with the delegations of each nation to Mayana being limited, thanks to the Globe Summit, she couldn't very well say she wanted to assign one of her agents there based on suspicion alone.

  Once Petrovina was done at the Vaporizer, she could begin her true assignment.

  The thought troubled Anna Chutesov.

  Out of necessity, Anna had been forced to entrust her Agent Dvah to a team of SVR men who had been assigned to Mayana. Anna was reluctant to recruit assistance from the SVR, but she had no other choice. She had won a victory with the president for one agent, but she would not be permitted to pull the entire SVR group and replace it with spies from her Institute.

  Pavel Zatsyrko wasn't alone in his opinion of Anna and her agency. Already more than a few men higher up in Russia's intelligence services were griping about Anna Chutesov's all-female group. Typical. The same fools didn't open their big mouths to complain when the men were in control and running Russia into the ground for more than seventy years.

  The same old story. Men circling the wagons, protecting themselves and their delicate egos.

  Thinking bitter thoughts of the opposite sex, she clicked a slender finger on her mouse. The images went by lazily, one after another.

  Petrovina had grouped the photographs by category. The pictures proceeded from the Vaporizer grounds, to the unit itself, then on to some of the personnel.

  Anna recognized Mike Sears from the television. Her fledgling agency still relied on the SVR for much of its information. They had little data on the American scientist.

  There were a few other people. Technicians and officials from the Mayanan government. As she clicked through them, one photograph caught her eye.

  It was of a man somewhere in his early fifties. Dressed as a janitor, he stood near the open Vaporizer door.

  The man was talking to Dr. Sears. He held a push broom listlessly. He didn't seem pleased.

  The man didn't look Mayanan. While many in the South American country had soft, white British features, a disproportionate number of these were still among the upper classes. The social pecking order almost required that a janitor in Mayana be of local peasant stock.

  She enlarged the picture.

  The man seemed too refined to be a janitor. For one thing his hands looked too clean. The same for his clothes. The knees of his coveralls weren't worn or baggy in the least. And he held his broom in a way that made it look like an offense that he was even asked to carry it.

  Odd that he would wear such an expression while talking to the head of the Vaporizer project.... Turning on her printer, Anna made physical copies of all the photos of the Vaporizer and the grounds around it. She slipped the two stacks of pictures into envelopes and addressed them to the proper government departments. The photos of the personnel she put in another envelope.

  When she was finished, she pressed her intercom. "Yes, Director Chutesov," a female voice replied.

  "I have some photographs that I want the SVR to go through for us. Tell them it is top priority."

  "Right away, Director Chutesov."

  Anna turned her attention back to her computer. She pulled up the picture of the janitor once more. Something didn't seem right.

  Blue eyes suspicious, she reached for her mouse. After a few clicks the printer next to her chair whirred to life once more. When it was done, Anna took the color photograph in slender fingers.

  For a long moment she studied the picture of the Mayanan janitor. There was definitely something not right about the man. She would have to tell Agent Dvah to check on him once she was finished with her assignment.

  Anna finally set the photo to one side of her desk. Putting the janitor from her mind, the head of Russia's secret Institute returned to work.

  Chapter 12

  Toshimi Yakamoto worked late into the evening. It was well after ten o'clock by the time he shut off the lights in his little corner office and headed for the door.

  Yakamoto always worked late. His diligence had been applauded on several occasions. With the excitement of this morning, he had no intention of arousing suspicions by breaking with eleven months' worth of tradition.

  He shut his office door, locked the dead bolt with his key and stepped out into the warm South American evening.

  From the far-off hills came distant jungle sounds. To accommodate the Vaporizer site, many acres of trees had been chopped back. The creatures that thrived in darkness growled and screeched at a safe distance.

  When he first came to Mayana, Yakamoto had been bothered by the animal noises. But it was a fear he had been able to put aside once he had been given a tour of the site.

  A great fence stretched all around the vast hilltop area. There were only two routes
in. The main road, used by most of the employees and visitors, and the secondary road, which was used for hauling trash up from the harbor.

  The gates were staffed by security during the day and locked down tight at night. Nothing could get past that fence without authorization. Including whatever jungle dangers might be lurking in the darkness.

  Feeling safe from animal dangers, Yakamoto headed across the well-tended grounds of the visitors' center.

  The high fence that surrounded the immediate Vaporizer area was similar to the one that enclosed the entire site. The gate was still open. Yakamoto stepped inside, past the box of special safety boots, to the outer door of the device.

  It was secure. Nodding his satisfaction, he headed back out through the gate, locking it carefully behind him.

  Routine was very important for him to maintain. They had stressed that back in his training in Japan. "You must work hard for them," he had been told in that final briefing many months before.

  It was in the familiar cold and gleaming conference room back in Osaka. The man who had summoned him there was the same man Yakamoto had called in desperation that very morning. His employer had a deep voice and a bulging neck that made him look like a Japanese bullfrog.

  "They must never suspect you are anything other than a loyal employee," his true employer had insisted. "You will remain safe as long as you are a hard worker. Obey the security rules we have taught you. It is likely that they do not know the truth behind their own research. As well, it is doubtful their source will reveal the truth to them. Too much false pride to admit it is all lies. You will be safe in the guise of an average scientist." The bullfrog smiled. "Until the day you bring ruin down around their ears."

  Toshimi Yakamoto was grateful that day had almost arrived.

  He headed away from the main buildings, walking calmly down the same road he had run along in panic that morning.

  It would be a relatively simple matter to destroy the device. He had worked out exactly which nozzles would have to be misaligned. Several hundred in each of the four major grids would have to be bent. Generally only one out of alignment automatically drew attention from the safety systems, but Yakamoto could easily get the computer to lie. When the device was switched on, extra power would be shunted through those nozzles. The device would overload, feeding on itself. Once started, there would be no way to stop it. When it was done, a smoking crater would mark the site.

  Actually, as he walked down the road, Yakamoto doubted there would even be smoke.

  He understood why this espionage could not take place before the device was introduced to the world. He could not have tipped his hand four months ago, before anyone knew of the Vaporizer. The Mayanans would have uncovered the spy in their midst quietly, and all Yakamoto would have accomplished was a short delay. It had to come when the eyes of the world were watching, when everyone would see the great danger posed by this machine.

  Soon. Now that he had the help he needed, he could be finished with this affair and on a plane back to Osaka by the end of the week. The thought gave him great relief.

  A warm breeze brought a foul scent down from the low mountains that crowded the western slope of the Vaporizer hill. There was a great valley beyond the mountains, off-limits to all but a few select individuals. Twenty-five years before, a little corner of that valley had become famous as the home of the Jamestown cult.

  Yakamoto crinkled his nose as he walked.

  The odor was particularly strong this evening. When they had started their tests there had not been a smell. The more trash they removed, the worse the odor became.

  Yakamoto shook his head. The Mayanans were such fools.

  The parking lot was empty, save Yakamoto's little Toyota. Even Mike Sears was gone for the night, off at yet another in the seemingly endless functions hosted by the government of Mayana in the days since the machine had been introduced to the public.

  At the moment Sears was at a hotel ballroom in downtown New Briton. Four blocks from there, Dr. Hiro Taki would already be waiting for Yakamoto. Yakamoto had made arrangements to meet with his new secret assistant in a corner booth of a restaurant lounge.

  Later that week, Dr. Taki would return with one of the tour groups. When the visitors left, Taki would stay behind to assist Toshimi Yakamoto. Today had been a dry run.

  An electronic security record was kept of everyone who visited the site. Those managing each tour group used a pocket organizer to check guests in and out. The handheld PCs were tied in with the site computer system. When Yakamoto had used his office computer to remove Taki's name from the computer, no one had batted an eye. When he showed up at the bus to leave, Deputy Prime Minister Jiminez assumed he had missed logging Dr. Taki in at the airport. He recorded his name into his organizer and let Taki on the bus.

  It was that simple. Simpler on Friday, when Taki would return with the entire Japanese delegation to the Globe Summit. Then he would be an Asian face in the crowd. No one would miss him when the group left without him. As simple as that. Oh, he might get a little cramped hiding in the well of Toshimi Yakamoto's desk all day, but that was just part of the price of doing business.

  Somehow just knowing that he finally had an accomplice in Mayana was enough to bolster Toshimi Yakamoto's spirits. Better was the fact that when they were done, Yakamoto would at long last be allowed to return to Japan.

  Yakamoto walked briskly, as if by quickening his stride he could somehow hurry along the future. His shoes scrunched gravel underfoot as he headed for his car.

  As he was reaching for his keys, he noted a soft metallic squeak from somewhere above his head. With a sudden sinking feeling, Yakamoto's eyes searched for the sound.

  He found the security camera where it always was, mounted to a light post at the parking lot's edge. As Yakamoto watched with growing dread, the automated camera rolled to one side. Again came the soft squeak.

  The daytime noises always drowned it out. The squeak was only audible in the quiet of late night. Yakamoto had forgotten about the camera. After eleven months working at the Vaporizer site, he was so used to it that he had blotted it from his mind. But it was there. Just as it had been there twelve hours before while he was cowering in the back seat of his car with his cell phone.

  Alone in the midnight parking lot, his hands began to shake. His keys rattled in his pocket.

  He tried to be rational.

  Only a camera. Even if it had seen him it did not hear him. He could have been calling anyone from his car. His mother, his sister, his wife. The camera didn't know.

  The keys came out, jangling in frightened fingers. As he tried to steady the key into the door lock, he wondered briefly where the camera images went. There was a security building at the site, but now that he thought of it, he couldn't remember ever seeing a surveillance room there. Strange for there to be so many cameras on the grounds yet no place there to view the images. He would have to mention this to his new confidant, Hiro Taki, the man who had unknowingly become Toshimi Yakamoto's best friend simply by saving the poor frightened scientist from being alone.

  The key slipped into the lock.

  Yakamoto had just begun to turn it when his shocked ears detected a new sound.

  A footfall. Very close by. Almost simultaneous with the sound, looming shadows fell across the car. When the strong hands grabbed him from behind, Yakamoto could not even find breath to gasp. He was thrown roughly against the side of his car.

  There were three men. Two were large brutes. The third was a slight man with a pale face and sagging eyes.

  Yakamoto knew the last man. He worked maintenance at the site. He seemed to always be underfoot. Yakamoto had even gone to Mike Sears about the nuisance janitor who seemed to do nothing but get in everyone's way. When he did, Sears had gotten a funny look on his face. The head of the Vaporizer project had brushed aside Yakamoto's complaints.

  Now here he was being assaulted by the strange janitor and two men Yakamoto didn't know. "What is meaning of t
his?" Yakamoto demanded, forcing the fear from his voice. "What you think you doing?"

  He tried to puff out his chest. After all, he was authorized to be here. His heart pounded madly. The janitor's face remained flat. There was no hint of emotion in those dark-rimmed eyes. "We have been sent to take out trash," he replied in heavily accented English.

  It was the first time he had ever heard the man speak. When he heard the janitor's voice, an icy fear gripped Toshimi Yakamoto's belly. He knew that accent.

  "You are not Mayanan," Yakamoto said, his voice weak.

  The janitor didn't answer him. He turned his sagging eyes to the big men who stood behind him. "Bring him," he ordered with crisp authority. Turning on his heel, the janitor marched off. The two men grabbed hold of Yakamoto. They dwarfed the little man as they dragged him back up the road to the hurricane fence.

  Yakamoto's mind raced. Pleading eyes darted up at the two who were carting him along.

  "What are you doing with me?" he begged.

  In some lucid part of his brain he suddenly realized that there was something familiar about them. He seemed to recall seeing them the day the Vaporizer had been revealed to the press. They had witnessed the test along with the group of Mayanan government officials.

  Sweet relief sang in his ears. When he had heard the janitor speak he had feared the worst. But knowing these men were from the government changed everything.

  The janitor was just that. A janitor. In his panic Yakamoto had misheard the man's accent.

  He might be arrested. But there was nothing he could be charged with. He had not done anything yet.

  Probably deportation. He would be sent back to Japan. A failure, yes. Probably fired from his job. But he would be alive. And at the moment he realized that there were things far worse than personal disgrace.

  Feeling the tension of months of subterfuge drain from his narrow shoulders, Toshimi Yakamoto offered no resistance as the trio led him back up the road to the small complex of buildings.