To Free a Spy Read online

  “I said bar is closed.” His English wasn’t bad.

  “How ’bout a beer? We’ll make it quick.” Warfield looked the place over. “Last time I was here it was crowded.”

  “It happens,” Tex grunted, setting two drafts on the bar.

  A set of steer horns hung above the back bar, and clusters of photos of cowboys in rodeo scenes covered the walls. A life-size cardboard cutout of a Japanese Marlboro Man stood near the end of the bar. The wood floor was finished to a high luster. Half way through his beer, Warfield made reference to a large blond-haired man he saw the last time he was in the place. He tried to sound casual. “Think he said something about an atomic bomb. Surprised anybody jokes about that here.”

  The bartender put down the glass he was cleaning and looked at Warfield. “Funny, gaijin. I don’t remember seeing you here that night.”

  “You were probably busy.”

  Japanese don’t always make direct eye contact but Tex leaned on the bar and lasered into Warfield’s eyes. “Kyomou! You lie. I remember that night! Four people were here. Me, the drunk Russian, a woman and another man. You not here!” He sucked in a breath through yellow teeth and slammed both fists on the bar. “I do not know why you are here. Now leave!”

  Warfield finished the last of the beer, pulled a bill out of his wallet and laid it on the bar. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind giving me the name of that Russian before I go.”

  “If you have a message for him, write it down. I do not think it will be very healthy for you, so please do that.”

  “Note could get lost. I’ll wait here for awhile and see if he comes in.”

  Tex erupted. “You don’t understand, gaijin. Bar is closed!” Tex palmed a knife he used behind the bar. When he reached with his free hand to pick up Warfield’s money, Warfield grabbed his arm with both hands and jerked him over the bar in a single motion. His hat and the knife flew free when Tex hit the floor. Warfield grabbed the knife and plunged it through the bartender’s hand, pinning it to the wood floor. It was over in three seconds.

  Tex’s scream could have been heard back in the Moscow East where he may have had allies. Komeito stood guard at the connecting door while Warfield sat astraddle of Tex, his hand on his throat, as Tex answered his questions before passing out.

  TK was waiting with the engine running. Warfield ordered him to drive to his hotel, and told Komeito Tex’s pained revelations as they rode: Snake-eyes—Ivan was his name—comes there on some Saturday nights. Tex heard him say he followed his boss to the Tomodachi Sento one evening and that he threatened to nuke the bath house, as Romi had said. He also said Snake-eyes shoots off his mouth all the time and Tex never knew when he was serious. Then there was something about pizza.

  He turned to Komeito. “Know about Guido’s Pizza?”

  “Hai. Guido’s. All over city.”

  “Snake-eyes orders pizza brought to the Texas Saloon when he’s there.”

  When they got back to the hotel vicinity, by then four hours after Antonov’s murder, police cars and other emergency vehicles jammed the streets.

  Komeito decided he should go to the police. He was known at the Izumi and it would look suspicious if he dropped out of sight. He could tell the truth and the police would not hold him since they knew and trusted him. He would say Warfield was a guest of Antonov’s who remained at the dinner table the entire evening, and left the Izumi at Komeito’s insistence in the interest of safety. If the police needed Warfield or him they would be available. Warfield agreed, and told Komeito to leave him a voicemail message when he left the police station.

  * * *

  Police officers and hotel staff stood together at each entrance to the East Island Winds. Warfield was asked to present identification and pulled out his Virginia driver’s license and magnetic room key. “What’s going on,” he asked, showing mild interest.

  They told him there had been some sort of disturbance a few blocks away. It would not be a problem at the hotel. Warfield was cleared to enter and another hotel employee waiting nearby escorted him to his room while telling him of a murder at the Izumi Restaurant. He didn’t mention that the victim was a guest of the hotel.

  Warfield packed his things in three minutes and took the elevator down. Security didn’t seem to be concerned with anyone leaving the hotel and he walked out a side door onto the street. He glanced through the glass front and saw a police officer eyeing him. He was talking with the desk clerk and pointed in the direction of the door Warfield had used. Warfield picked up his pace and blended into the crowd.

  He caught a cab to the Orient Pacifica Hotel miles away in an old section of the city and checked in under the alias Rolf Geering with a Zurich address. His credentials for the alias would pass if anyone became suspicious and investigated. He let himself into his room, which was a couple of stars below the one he checked out of, and once again reviewed everything leading up to Tokyo, all details of the evening, and what he’d gleaned from Antonov and Komeito. Petrevich had crossed the border into Iraq with bomb-grade uranium, which he already knew. Antonov saw Petrevich at the Russian club and believed two of his technicians from Arzamas-16 had joined him in Tokyo. There was Romi’s report of the drunk Russian, Ivan, who goes to the Texas Saloon on Saturday nights and likes Guido’s Pizza. Antonov’s travel bag contained a photo of Petrevich, a note pad bearing the perplexing notation 8.6 and a telephone number (which he tried, but there was no answer.) There was reason to believe the retarded man at the Tomodachi was a victim of radiation. Probably Petrevich or someone connected with him had slashed Antonov’s throat.

  Warfield flipped on the TV and found an English-language local newscast. There was a short piece on a murder at the Izumi Restaurant, and interviews with the restaurant manager and their waiter. The victim’s name had not been released but there were reports he was a high-ranking Russian official. Police knew little, they said. Reporters mentioned that a Takao Komeito may have been with the victim before he was murdered. Another man, a Westerner, was with him also. Police were looking for both.

  Warfield had to avoid being picked up by the police if he was to have any hope of finding Petrevich.

  It was four-thirty a.m. when he turned in. There was time for a couple hours of sleep and then he would call the telephone number found in Antonov’s bag.

  * * *

  “Good morning. R-E-R-F.”

  “Mind telling me who I’ve reached?”

  “R-E-R-F, sir,” said a cheerful Japanese voice speaking English.

  “Which means…?”

  “This is the Hiroshima lab of Radiation Effects Research Foundation.”

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “Dr. Anderson.”

  “Connect me to Anderson.”

  A pause. “Dr. Anderson is not available. I can connect you with—”

  “Tell Dr. Anderson Rolf Geering is on the phone?”

  “I’m sorry, sir—”

  “Say I’m from Washington. Official business.”

  “Please hold.”

  Half a minute later John Anderson got on the line and introduced himself. “Namiko tells me you’re calling from Washington?”

  “Rolf Geering, John. I work out of the White House but I’m in Tokyo this morning. I can use your help.”

  “About?”

  “National security.”

  Anderson laughed. “Well, that’s broad enough, but there are not many secrets here. About anything I can tell you is available to anyone for the asking. That is, when we have the time to pull it up. For you, I’ll find the time. But for the record, I suppose the White House will vouch for you.”

  “Yep. Call there and ask for the president.”

  “Uh huh. I’ll just wait and ask him tonight. He and the First Lady are coming over for dinner.”

  Warfield laughed.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “For starters, what is RERF?”

  Anderson gave him the Cliff Notes version. The Radiation Effects Researc
h Foundation was funded by Japan and the U.S. to study the effects of radiation released by the atomic bombs the Americans dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was staffed by scientists from both countries. There was the Hiroshima center, where Anderson was located, and another in Nagasaki. Anderson managed more than forty scientists and their support staff. “What we do is research—primarily a continuing study of the effects of radiation on people who survived the bombs. Now what is it you need?”

  “Not sure. Found your phone number in a dead man’s hotel room here in Tokyo.”

  “Really!”

  “There’s no name with the number.”

  “So you want to find out if there’s any connection between the victim and RERF.”

  “Right. Name’s Antonov. Aleksei Antonov. Russian General, retired. Sound familiar?”

  “No, but hold on. I’ll get someone to check it out.” Anderson put Warfield on hold and returned seconds later.

  “Okay, what else?” Anderson asked.

  “I spent the evening with Antonov before he was killed. He said something about retardation in fetuses. Radiation related. Tell me about that.”

  “Yes. The technical version or plain English?”

  “Something in the middle.”

  “The risk posed to a mother’s fetus at Hiroshima or Nagasaki was dependent on a couple of things. One is proximity to ground zero; as you would expect, closer equals more exposure and therefore more risk. The other major factor was fetus gestational age at the time of exposure.

  “Never thought of this.”

  “Most people don’t.”

  “You mentioned gestational age.”

  “Yeah, the age of the fetus when exposure took place. This is the more important factor in determining degree of retardation. Of fifteen-hundred or so cases, exactly twenty-five were classified as severely retarded. It turned out that these were prenatally exposed at developmental age eight weeks through twenty-five weeks.”

  “So an unborn child in, say, week thirty wasn’t affected.”

  “Generally not much. But it varies.”

  Warfield thought of the grim events of August 6, 1945, when the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He recalled some of the details from reading he’d done at the library in high school. The B-29 bomber famously nicknamed Enola Gay left Tinian Island in the western Pacific carrying the five-ton bomb containing uranium-235. Someone had mockingly named it Little Boy. The bomb detonated above the city and generated winds of almost a thousand miles an hour. The ground-level temperature rose to 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat and the wind pressure destroyed all structures and instantly killed every living being within a third of a mile of ground zero. Still more exposed people died before the end of the year; in all, close to a half-million people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki perished.

  Warfield mulled over the grim description. “Tell me more about these kids.”

  “Most need only a little assistance if at all. But the severely retarded ones, they might have trouble carrying on a simple conversation with another kid, or adding six and four. Probably can’t manage basic living skills, you know, like brushing their own teeth. Some are institutionalized or at least have intense home care by someone.”

  “And there are exactly twenty-five like that?”

  “Yep.”

  Warfield said nothing, thinking.

  After a moment, Anderson continued. “I could fax a summary of the official report to you. Only a few pages.”

  Warfield read the fax number to him off the hotel room key.

  “You’ll have it in a couple of minutes. Oh, by the way, Namiko tells me there’s no record of an Antonov calling or visiting here.”

  * * *

  Warfield got off the phone with Anderson and called Komeito’s voicemail. Komeito had left a message that he was finished at the police station and would meet Warfield at eleven a.m. That was half an hour off, so Warfield called the hotel telephone operator and asked to have Anderson’s fax delivered to his room as soon as it came in.

  “Oh, it’s printing now, Mr. Geering. I’ll send it right up.”

  A bellman who appeared to be at least eighty showed up with the report and handed it to Warfield along with a USA Today newspaper that had been dropped at his door. Warfield threw the paper onto the bed and studied the RERF report. It contained a lot of dense detail and several graphs and charts. Anderson had circled the numbers he’d given Warfield on the phone.

  Throughout Warfield’s career, war victims of the enemy were statistics, but this report was about babies whose brains were damaged before they were born. War is hell was not just a cliché. He had never given the enemy a face, a life, a mother, a soul. Now he was holding a report about real people whose lives were ruined by war, innocent citizens of an aggressor country, which was no longer the enemy at all.

  The second page of the report made reference to the radiation exposure dates, August 6 and August 9, 1945, when the bombs were dropped on the two cities. When Warfield finished reading, something nagged at him. He read it again and then ambled over to the window and peered down at the ant-size pedestrians on the street below, weaving in and out on the narrow sidewalks alongside what he decided were the least attractive buildings he’d seen anywhere. The structures in this part of Tokyo, northeast of the Imperial Palace in the central city, were older and more traditional, nothing like the modern buildings around the East Island Winds.

  A sign mounted on the corner of the drab brick building across the street lazily gave the time, date and temperature, in slow rotation. Warfield watched as it displayed the time, 10:46; the date, 8.5 and 27°C, the temperature; over and over until the time inched up minute after minute and the temperature eventually increased by one degree.

  He picked up the USA Today and sat down on the bed, still thinking about the information Anderson had sent him. The headline read, “Hiroshima Prepares to Pause.” The story described the memorial service to be held tomorrow in that city, with similar silent observances all across Japan. Warfield stared at the words for a second, then jumped up and strode back to the window in two steps. The flashing sign! The eve of Hiroshima, 8.5. Of course! Antonov’s 8.6 notation referred to the day Hiroshima was bombed! August , 1945! That would be tomorrow!

  * * *

  Warfield dialed John Anderson and while waiting for the receptionist to find him wondered if it would be possible to get anyone in Washington to act on the information he could present to them. He decided not. Even with the best of evidence, Fullwood would ignore him out of spite. How about the military establishment? The president? He could try them but out of caution they wouldn’t take any action without their own independent intelligence to back them up and there was no time for that. “My God, Warfield, you want to risk an international incident on the basis of speculative information?” they would say, and Warfield wondered whether he wouldn’t say the same thing if the roles were reversed.

  Warfield had always kept an ace in the hole but this time was different. No one sent him to Japan or even knew he was there, and if he went further he was setting himself up for no-telling-what violations of the law—both American and Japanese. But there was no return now. Something was going down tomorrow, August sixth, a few hours away. With Boris Petrevich likely involved, that could not be good news.

  Anderson got to the phone.

  “Geering again. Need your help. Time’s critical.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Names of those twenty-five—the severe retardation cases. How fast can you get those to me?”

  “Why didn’t you ask for something hard, Geering. Those names are hidden away in a computer somewhere else. That’s one thing that’s kept confidential. They’re given case numbers. It might take days to get names, even if I can get approval to do it.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “How about dates of birth, other stats? That help?”

  Warfield thought for a moment. “Okay, birth dates. When can you have that for all twenty-
five?”

  “An hour, two at most.”

  “Good man. Need it in one. I’ll call. Don’t leave there until you hear from me.”

  Warfield had missed the meet with Komeito and went to the fallback they’d agreed on. A gray Toyota sedan cruised by and stopped a few feet beyond where he stood on the sidewalk. A window cracked open enough for Warfield to make out Komeito inside. He jumped in and told Komeito to go to the Tomodachi bath house.

  Komeito asked what it was about.

  “Later. What happened at the police station?”

  “Went okay. They asked about the man who left the Izumi with me. I said you were at table all the time. Police know me through my job at the embassy and trust me but they want to talk to you anyway.”

  “They’ll wait.”

  “Right. Now why Tomodachi?”

  “Tomorrow is August sixth.” He watched for Komeito’s reaction.

  Komeito looked at the car ceiling. “Ahhhh! Hiroshima, the 8.6 number.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you think Petrevich is planning something for tomorrow.” Komeito’s eyes narrowed.

  “Someone is. Petrevich is helping him carry it out. Too many things converge on the Tomodachi to dismiss them. Antonov’s girlfriend told him she heard Snake-eyes Ivan mention a bath house. The bartender said Ivan followed his boss to the Tomodachi. The old man there saw Ivan casing the place. Ivan bragged he was gonna nuke it. Maybe drunk talk, maybe not.”

  “So you are going for Ivan’s boss.”

  “We find him, we find Ivan. Then Ivan to Petrevich. I’ll bet on it.”

  When TK stopped the car, Warfield never would have guessed it was the Tomodachi he was looking at. The area was run down, but the appearance of the sento was in sharp contrast to its surroundings. A red-tiled roof swept down in flowing lines to an upturned edge, and red ceramic tile that was still attractive despite fissures and faults covered the outside walls and paved the sidewalk. The place was a holdover from the old days when everyone went to a neighborhood bath house. Komeito told Warfield that traditional center-city sentos continued to scrape by on a dwindling clientele of students, the down-and-out, and traditional Japanese. Newer public baths included sauna, mineral baths, Jacuzzis, waterfalls, massage chairs, TV rooms and lounge areas to counter the dwindling flow of customers that resulted from modern in-home baths. Not so the Tomodachi.