Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

Ways and Means. Besides which, for all his personal . . . eccentricities . . .

Trent had always been a good friend and fair critic of the Bureau. But the

bottom line was simpler: all three of his committee jobs had impact on the

FBI. Shaw listened and took some notes. “The Nashville S-A-C is Bruce

Cleary, but we require a formal request for assistance from D-O-T before we

can-okay, sure, I’ll await her call. Glad to help. Yes, sir. ‘Bye.” Shaw

looked up from his desk. “Why the hell is Al Trent worked up over a car

wreck in Tennessee?”

“Why are we interested?” Murray asked, more to the point.

“He wants the Lab Division to back up NTSB on forensics. You want to

call Brace and tell him to get his best tech guy on deck? The friggin’ acci-

dent just happened this morning and Trent wants results yesterday.”

“Has he ever jerked us around on something before?”

Shaw shook his head. “Never. I suppose we want to be on his good side.

He’ll have to sit in on the meeting with the chairman. We’re going to have to

discuss Kealty’s security clearance, remember?”

Shaw’s phone buzzed. “Secretary of Transportation on three, Director.”

“That boy,” Murray observed, “is really kicking some serious ass for a

Saturday afternoon.” He got out of his chair and headed for a phone on the

other side of the room while Director Shaw took the call from the cabinet

secretary. “Get me the Nashville office.”

The police impound yard, where wrecked or stolen vehicles were stored,

was part of the same facility that serviced State Police cars. Rebecca Upton

had never been there before, but the wrecker drivers had, and following them

was easy enough. The officer in the gatehouse shouted instructions to the

first driver, and the second followed, trailed by the NTSB engineer. They

ended up heading to an empty area-or almost empty. There were six cars

there-two marked and four unmarked police radio cars-plus ten or so

people, all of them senior by the look of them. One was Upton’s boss, and

for the first time she was really aware of how serious this affair was becom-

ing.

The service building had three hydraulic lifts. Both Crestas were unloaded

outside it, then manhandled inside and onto the steel tracks. Both were

hoisted simultaneously, allowing the growing mob of people to walk under-

neath. Upton was by far the shortest person there, and had to jostle her way

in. It was her case after all, or she thought it was. A photographer started

shooting film, and she noticed that the man’s camera case had “FBI”

printed on it in yellow lettering. What the hell?

“Definite structural failure,” noted a captain of the State Police, the de-

partment’s chief of accident investigation. Other heads nodded sagely.

“Who has the best science lab around here?” someone in casual clothing

asked.

“Vanderbilt University would be a good place to start,” Rebecca an-

nounced. “Better yet, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.”

“Are you Miss Upton?” the man asked. “I’m Brace Cleary, FBI.”

“Why are you-”

“Ma’am, I just go where they send me.” He smiled and went on. “D-O-T

has requested our help on the investigation. We have a senior tech from our

Laboratory Division flying clown from Washington right now.” On a D-O-T

aircraft, no less, he didn’t say. Neither he nor anyone else in Ins office had

ever investigated an auto accident, but the orders came from the Director

himself, and that was really all he needed to know.

Ms. Upton suddenly felt herself to be a sapling in a forest of giants, but

she, too, had a job to do, and she was the only real expert on the scene.

Taking a flashlight from her pocket, she started a detailed examination of the

gas tank. Rebecca was surprised when people gave her room. It had already

been decided that her name would go on the cover of the report. The involve-

ment of the FBI would be downplayed-an entirely routine case in inter-

agency cooperation, backing up an inquiry initiated by a young, dedicated,

bright, female NTSB engineer. She would take the lead on the case. Rebecca

Upton would get all the credit for the work of the others, because it could not

appear that this was a concerted effort toward a predetermined goal, even

though that’s precisely what it was. She’d also begun this thing, and for

delivering political plums this large there had to be a few seeds tossed out for

the little people. All the men standing around either knew or had begun to

suspect it, though not all of them had begun to grasp what the real issues

were. They merely knew that a congressman had gotten the immediate atten-

tion of a cabinet secretary and the director of the government’s most power-

ful independent agency, and that he wanted fast action. It appeared that he’d

get it, too. As they looked up at the underside of what only a few hours

before had been a family car on the way to Grandma’s house, the cause of

the disaster seemed as straightforward as a punch in the nose. All that was

really needed, the senior FBI representative thought, was scientific analysis

of the crumpled gas tank. For that, they’d go to Oak Ridge, whose lab facili-

ties often backed up the FBI. That would require the cooperation of the De-

partment of Energy, but if Al Trent could shake two large trees in less than

an hour, how hard would it be for him to shake another?

Goto was not a hard man to follow, though it could be tiring, Nomuri

thought. At sixty, he was a man of commendable vigor and a desire to appear

youthful. And he always kept coming here, at least three times per week.

This was the tea house that Kazuo had identified-not by name, but closely

enough that Nomuri been able to identify, then confirm it. He’d seen both

Goto and Yamata enter here, never together, but never more than a few min-

utes apart, because it would be unseemly for the latter to make the former

wait too much. Yamata always left first, and the other always lingered for at

least an hour, but never more than two. Supposition, he told himself: a busi-

ness meeting followed by R&R, and on the other nights, just the R&R part.

As though in some cinematic farce, Goto always came out with a blissful

swagger to his stride as he made his way toward the waiting car. Certainly

his driver knew-the open door, a bow, then the mischievous grin on his

face as he came around to his own door. On every other occasion, Nomuri

had followed Goto’s car, discreetly and very carefully, twice losing him in

the traffic, but on the last two occasions and three others he’d tracked the

man all the way to his home, and felt certain that his destination after his

trysts was always the same. Okay. Now he would think about the other part

of the mission, as he sat in his car and sipped his tea. It took forty minutes.

It was Kimberly Norton. Nomuri had good eyes, and the streetlights were

bright enough for him to manage a few quick frames from his camera before

exiting the car. He tracked her from the other side of the street, careful not to

look directly at her, instead allowing his peripheral vision to keep her in

sight. Surveillance and countersurveillance were part of the syllabus at the

Farm. It wasn’t too hard, and this subject made it easy. Even though she

wasn’t overly tall by American standards, she did stand out here, as did her

fair hair. In Los Angeles she would have been unremarkable, Nomuri

thought, a pretty girl in a sea of pretty girls. There was nothing unusual about

her walk-the girl was adapting to local norms, slightly demure, giving way

to men, whereas in America the reverse was both true and expected. And

though her Western clothing was somewhat distinctive, many people on the

street dressed the same way-in fact, traditional garb was in the minority

here, he realized with a slight surprise. She turned right, down another street,

and Nomuri followed, sixty or seventy yards behind, like he was a god-

damned private detective or something. What the hell was this assignment

all about? the CIA officer wondered.

“Russians?” Ding asked.

“Free-lance journalists, no less. How’s your shorthand?” Clark asked,

reading over the telex. Mary Pat was having another attack of the clevers,

but truth be told, she was very good at it. He’d long suspected that the

Agency had a guy inside the Interfax News Agency in Moscow. Maybe CIA

had played a role in setting the outfit up, as it was often the first and best

source of political information from Moscow. But this was the first time, so

far as he knew, that the Agency had used it for a cover legend. The second