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  The elevator dinged and the doors opened to a spacious lobby filled with plants and colorful prints. The air-conditioning smelled clean, with traces of perfumed carpet cleaner in the air. Three women and two men were busy behind the counter to the left, offsetting the almost empty waiting room to the right.

  A man sitting in the waiting room stood nervously, drawing Brognola's attention. His trained cop's eye flicked through details at once. The overcoat the guy had on was too heavy for the day's weather, even considering the rain earlier.

  The big Fed was reaching for Tucker and the .38 holstered on his hip as the man braced himself and dragged a sawed-off shotgun into view. Brognola yelled a warning to the people behind the counter as he triggered a round from his weapon. The shotgun boomed and something smashed into his leg, knocking him off balance.

  Brognola went down, automatically throwing out his empty hand to cushion the impact. The .38 in his other hand tracked onto the shotgunner's face, centering between his attacker's narrowed eyes. He stroked the trigger again, and the piercing crack of the .38 in the confined space of the waiting area seemed deafening. Third and fourth shots followed in rapid succession as he went down. He saved the last bullet for when he landed on the tiled floor, wanting to be sure of its effect, realizing it might be the last thing between the killer and the innocents around him.

  The shotgunner stumbled to one side as his head jerked back and his arms and legs went rubbery. His weapon hit the floor with a hollow thump, audible above the screams that reverberated from every corner.

  Still in the prone position, Brognola kept the downed man covered and looked past him into the waiting room. People lay scattered in refuge behind the overturned chairs, but no one made any hostile moves. He forced himself up as he kept the .38 on target.

  Tucker knelt in front of the reception desk with a big Charter Arms Bulldog .44 in both hands. He looked calm, but his face was paler than it had been a moment ago. Directly behind him, the imitation wood finish of the desk had been ripped away in two places by the shotgun loads, leaving holes big enough to shove two or three fists through.

  "You okay?" Brognola asked as he moved forward to lay the .38 against the shotgunner's throat, then checked for a pulse and found none.

  "Yeah." Tucker's voice didn't sound all that sure. He didn't put the pistol away.

  People spilled out of doorways down the hall. They approached the dead man with trepidation. Even though they weren't speaking a language Brognola understood, he recognized the familiar signs of shock as the crowd moved in to take stock of the situation.

  Brognola knelt beside the body and began checking the pockets for identification.

  Tucker joined him. "Security will be here in a minute. Leave this to them."

  "Maybe you didn't notice it during the confusion, pal, but this son of a bitch was waiting for us," Brognola growled as he turned the body over after the front pockets yielded nothing. "And maybe I'm a tad bit old-fashioned when it comes to getting shot at, because I'd kind of like to know who pulled the trigger."

  The CIA man knelt down to take a good look at the corpse.

  Brognola noticed the rubber bands wrapped tightly around the butt of the Bulldog. The blued metal showed bright spots where the finish had been worn away. The big weapon wasn't just an affectation; it was a working tool that had been used for a number of years.

  "I don't know this guy," Tucker said.

  "Neither do I, but the bastard knew us." Brognola was disgusted when he found nothing in the back pockets, either.

  "Anything?" Tucker asked.

  "No. He probably ran out of calling cards at the last stop." Brognola was irritated at the CIA man's aplomb. Did Tucker really act that cool under pressure and see the attack as being a matter for the Japanese police to handle? Or did it come as no surprise? He took his Visa card out of his wallet just as the elevator doors popped open and security people walked into the reception area with drawn guns. Wiping the credit card across his pant leg, he pressed the first three fingers of the dead man's right hand on the front, then repeated the operation on the back as Tucker began talking to the security people. When Brognola finished, he slipped it back into his wallet between other cards and stored it inside his jacket pocket.

  "They want you to get away from the body," Tucker said.

  Brognola looked beyond the CIA man at the stern faces of the guards. He got to his feet slowly, ignoring the quickening throb in his leg. Tucker still held the .44 at his side.

  One of the security guards stepped forward and began barking orders to the rest, making emphatic gestures with his white-gloved hands.

  "Tell him I want a report on this man as soon as possible," Brognola instructed.

  The leader of the security team turned to face him with hooded eyes. He asked something in Japanese.

  "I don't think this is the time to start pushing the issue," Tucker said.

  Brognola broke open the .38 and dumped the spent casings into a big palm. He tucked them away in a pocket and thumbed in fresh cartridges from another pocket. "You try pushing it any later, kid, and this body won't be so accessible to us."

  Tucker shrugged and spoke to the man. The leader's eyes registered a brief flicker of anger. He opened his mouth to speak, but another man's voice drowned out his reply.

  Brognola turned carefully to take in the new speaker. The man was small and compact in his immaculate black suit, his spine ramrod stiff, his head smooth-shaven.

  The security man nodded obediently and moved away, while the bald man stepped forward and held out his hand to Brognola. "As soon as he has anything of value, you will receive a copy of it. Fair enough?"

  Brognola nodded and shook the man's hand.

  Tucker smiled. "Hal Brognola, let me present Goro Fujitsu, our contact in Foreign Affairs."

  "A pity the meeting couldn't have been under more pleasant circumstances," Fujitsu said.

  "If the circumstances had been any less pleasant," Brognola replied as he waved toward the shattered reception desk, "a meeting of any type would have been impossible."

  Fujitsu nodded. "Did you know this man or what reason he might have had to attack you?"

  "No."

  "Then what makes you think he singled you out?"

  "He looked right at me when he pulled the trigger."

  "Could the target have been Mr. Tucker?"

  "I don't know him, either," the CIA man said.

  "Still, you have been in this country long enough to have acquired a considerable number of people who might want to kill you." Fujitsu smiled. "Your Agency is sometimes careless with its operations."

  Brognola saw Tucker's lips compress into a thin, hard line. Maybe the agent wasn't as chummy with the Foreign Affairs representative as he'd tried to act. Brognola put the .38 back into its hip holster.

  The security team busied itself with moving the people in the reception area into the elevators in small groups. Some of the women were still crying as others helped them along. One of them had a bloodstained sleeve, but the injury looked superficial.

  Fujitsu walked forward to survey the body, quietly studying the bloody patterns latticed across the tile. "You are bleeding, Mr. Brognola." The little man looked up.

  Brognola lifted his pant leg slightly, exposing the torn flesh along his calf. "It's not as bad as it looks."

  "Still, it would be in the best interests of everyone concerned if you had it taken care of now." Fujitsu made a small grimace. "As you can see, I will be tied up here for some time. I'll leave word for Mr. Hosaka and his son that we will be contacting them as soon as another meeting can be arranged." The man's tone made it clear that no disagreement was permissible.

  "Is there a room I could use while I make a few phone calls?" Brognola asked.

  "Of course, but shouldn't you have your injury taken care of first?"

  Brognola smiled. "Duty before comfort, I'm afraid."

  Fujitsu nodded and headed back down the corridor he'd come from. "I can a
rrange for someone to drive you to the hospital if you'd like." He stepped inside the first office he came to and said something in Japanese. The man standing inside the door left without a word. The Foreign Affairs man waved them in. "Please."

  "Thank you," Brognola said as he stepped into the room, "but Mr. Tucker can take me the moment we finish here."

  Fujitsu nodded, closed the door and left.

  Sighing with momentary relief, Brognola took the chair behind the desk and pulled up his pant leg and pushed down his sock. The wounds looked ugly and already showed signs of bruising and swelling. Tucker went over to look.

  Brognola grabbed several tissues from a box on a desk and began to dab at the three puncture wounds in his leg. None of them had gone through, flooding him with a new sense of disgust as he realized a doctor would have to probe for the pellets and injure the area even further. He applied pressure with a half-dozen tissues.

  "You weren't serious about having to call in before you went to the hospital, were you?" Tucker asked.

  He shook his head. "I did need to borrow this office for a few minutes, though."

  "For what?"

  Brognola took another handful of tissues from the box. The wounds were starting to throb. "Did you get a look at the gunner's right hand?"

  "Not really. I was more interested in making sure the security team knew whose side we were on before they came in and finished the job."

  "The last joint of his little finger was missing."

  "Are you working out some kind of Sherlock Holmes fetish here?"

  "No. I just know that the Yakuza have a code of cutting off the last joint of the little finger when they screw something up. If the guy was Yakuza, that means he could have been an assassin hired by someone local to pop us as we came through the door."

  "He could be a guy who went around the bend today and happened to have lost that finger in a childhood accident. You stay in Justice long enough, you start finding Mafia bozos everywhere. Even in Japan."

  Brognola scowled. "Do you usually play devil's advocate, Tucker, or do they really not teach you to guys to think when you're in training? Do they just point you at an obstacle or a person and let you go?"

  The agent smiled, seating himself on the edge of the desk. "I'll force myself to remember that you're a gravely injured man and not operating with all of your faculties at the moment."

  "You do that." Brognola removed the tissues. He opened a desk drawer and found a small tube with Japanese writing on it among the other office supplies. He held it up. "Is this what I think it is?"

  "If you think it's heavy-duty glue, it is."

  "That's what I thought it was." Brognola set it on the desktop. "Do you think you could get me a bottle of Drano from the building maintenance people?"

  "Drano?"

  "Or an equivalent. Just so that it's ninety-five percent sodium hydroxide."

  Tucker gazed at him for a moment in silence. "You're serious?"

  "Yes."

  "Shit. What have you got up your sleeve?"

  "An arm." Brognola pushed himself up out of the swivel chair. "Find me a bottle of Drano, and I'll show you an old beat cop's trick."

  Tucker moved for the door. "Anything else?"

  "A cotton ball."

  "Where am I supposed to get a cotton ball?"

  "If the building maintenance people don't have any, ask one of those pretty, young secretaries out there. This looks like the kind of job that could cause a lot of headaches. I bet you'll find one of them who has an aspirin bottle. Haven't you heard of improvisation?"

  "Sure. I can make a garrote out of a hair clip. I'll show you how when I get back. That way we can swap trade secrets." He left.

  Walking more gingerly now that the pain had set in, Brognola limped to the door and out into the hall for a glass of water at the fountain. Fujitsu was supervising the entire operation, taking a 35 mm camera from a man who was snapping pictures of the corpse and doing the job himself. Watching as the man shed his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves before lying prone on the floor, Brognola realized the Foreign Affairs guy took his job seriously. Even as Fujitsu advanced the film for each successive shot, he was issuing orders to the men around him.

  Brognola took his cup of water back inside the office and closed the door. He found an ashtray, standard issue and unused, on top of a filing cabinet and brought it back to the desk. Sitting down, he applied another handful of tissues to his leg. A moment later he rechecked it. Satisfied that he had stopped most of the bleeding, he took his handkerchief and wrapped it around the leg, tying it with a loose knot to keep part of the pressure on.

  Opening the desk drawer again, he took out a paper clip and a pencil. There was nothing in the small rubber trash can beside the desk except a handful of paper, which he left on the floor when he emptied it. He used his pocketknife to make a slit in the side of the trash can near the bottom, then widened it until the pencil slid through and was held in place.

  Tucker entered the room, carrying a small canister. "It's not Drano, but it is ninety-five percent sodium hydroxide."

  Brognola took it and sprinkled a light dusting across the bottom of the ashtray, then added the water. "Did you get the cotton ball?"

  Tucker rolled it across the table.

  Uncapping the glue, Brognola squirted a generous portion onto the cotton ball after flattening it.

  "Are you going to tell me what you're doing," Tucker asked, "or do I have to wait until you actually pull the rabbit out of the hat?"

  Brognola put the cotton to one side and reached into his pocket for his wallet. He pulled out the credit card, carefully avoiding touching either surface. "I'm making a set of prints so that we can follow up on Shotgun Sam ourselves. If the guy has a record — and I'm betting he does because the missing little finger points to a screw-up of some sort — Interpol might have him on file." He slipped the paper clip onto one corner of the credit card and hooked the other end of the clip over the pencil poking through the inside of the trash can.

  "You're going to make a set of prints on your credit card?"

  "It was the only thing I had handy at the time." Brognola set the trash can down gently.

  "Why not American Express? You're not supposed to leave home without it."

  "The Visa has a smooth surface above the imprinted information. American Express has a line between the two colors that would show up. Do you wear contacts?"

  "No."

  Brognola grunted and dropped the glue-smeared cotton ball into the mixture in the ashtray. A pink film formed over the cotton immediately. He set the trash can upside down on the desk over the ashtray and leaned back in the swivel chair.

  "Why did you ask about the contacts?" Tucker asked.

  "Because the chemical reaction I've just started releases cyanoacrylic esters in the fumes that would glue them to your eyes. At least it would glue them to your eyes until a doctor cut them off."

  "Doesn't sound pleasant."

  "I wouldn't know."

  Tucker moved toward the windows and pulled down a blind to look outside. "It's raining again."

  Brognola grunted, then studied the CIA man. There was nothing he could put his finger on, but his instincts told him something was bothering the man. He glanced at his watch — 11:17. Bolan should have checked in by now. Thoughts as dark as the cloud outside the window crowded into his mind. He lifted the phone and left a message for Michael Belasko.

  Thirty minutes passed in studied silence as he reorganized his line of thinking. He could tell from the brief emotions flitting across Tucker's face that the young agent was doing some reevaluations of his own. Lifting the trash can from the desk, he unclipped the credit card as Tucker came over to observe the results.

  Three white latent prints stood out against the gray background of the card. The ones on the white back of the card didn't stand out as well, but he could feel the ridges. Putting the trash can away, he dumped the papers back inside and dropped the disposable ashtray into h
is drinking cup. On their way out he could dump the contents down the john.

  "It doesn't look like much," Brognola said as he put the ruined credit card back into his wallet, "but it may be just enough to get us into the game."

  "You still sure you want in on this?" Tucker asked.

  "Oh, yeah." Brognola limped toward the door. "I want in even more now than ever." He wondered where the hell Striker was and how badly the mission had been compromised.

  Chapter Three

  Brown water gurgled around Tuley as the Subaru continued toward the river bottom. It streamed in through both windows, rapidly filling the small car's interior. Marashanski was deadweight pressing against him. The man's forehead had all but been erased by at least one of Belasko's rounds.

  He pushed the corpse off him as he moved toward the window and tried to fight his way through the water. Panic surged through him like the beating of a drum. His fingers clawed for purchase on the doorframe, sliding away as he felt his fingernails rip and tear. Marashanski floated up with the water to throw dead arms around his neck. He brushed the corpse away again and shoved himself upward, finding that the air pocket remaining inside the vehicle had been reduced to a matter of inches.

  Flattening against the top of the Subaru, he sucked in the air greedily, tasting the taint of the river overriding everything else. Then the car shifted again, overturning as it struck the riverbank and finished filling the air pocket.

  He tried not to let himself think how far under he was as he pulled himself toward the window. Desperation gave him strength. He stared into the filmy brown murk around him as he kicked free of the car, trying to figure where "up" was. Suddenly he was swallowed by the undertow created by the sinking car. The last few saucer-sized bubbles exploded from the vehicle, and it dropped from sight faster, sucking him down with it.