Korean Intercept

by Mertz, Stephen

  Kwan saluted smartly and stalked off to find a squad leader, who he ordered to move out promptly. The remaining soldiers would remain aboard the transports. He then returned to the head of the column, and found that Li had summoned their radioman.

  The general was speaking into the telephone-like receiver, which he returned to the radioman. He turned to face Kwan.

  "Beijing has informed me that the Americans have been contacted with an offer to return their shuttle and crew."

  Kwan wasn't sure what to say for a moment. He was stunned, but did not wish to appear stupid. He managed to say, "I had thought Pyongyang would never consider negotiating with the Americans. They are sworn enemies."

  "Indeed. But it was not the North Korean government that made the offer. I have been advised, Major, of what I already knew. Beijing deems it imperative that we not fail. Had the North Korean government made such an offer, that would of course be between the two governments and there would be nothing for us but to return to Shenyang. But you see, Major, the offer was routed through a CIA contact in this region, and was made not by the North Koreans, but from an enterprising and, it would seem, a most audacious North Korean private citizen. A criminal, in fact. A bandit." Li snorted. "He is much feared in this region, we are told. He calls himself a warlord."

  "That can only be Chai Bin," said Kwan. "He is a marauder who operates in North Korea and China in these mountains. He is said to have a private army. He is elusive and, frankly, sir, my orders were to place him as a low priority. He terrorizes the peasants, but has stayed away from military or important government agricultural concerns."

  "Your orders are now changed," Li said sharply. He nodded to indicate the convoy of idling troop transports, and the end truck that was loaded with mortars, shoulder-held rocket launchers and crates of ordnance. "I can call in air cover, remember. I defy any mountain hoodlum's ragtag private army to withstand the firepower I can bring to bear."

  "With respect, sir," said Kwan, "would that not depend on the size of their force and their position?"

  "Let me put it to you this way," said Li. "This brigand, this Chai Bin, has the shuttle. Therefore, we will annihilate him and claim the shuttle before the Americans or the North Koreans can reach it, even if we have to engage them as well."

  Kwan frowned. "Military engagement of the Americans and North Koreans? Would that not then plunge our countries into war?"

  Li's expression was impassive. "I am a soldier obeying orders, Major, as are you. Here is the situation, frankly. If we fail in this endeavor and return to Beijing empty-handed, it will be the firing squad for both of us."

  Kwan flinched as brief bursts of automatic rifle fire hammered in the near distance, as if to underscore Li's pronouncement.

  Then the communication man's radio began crackling. It was the squad leader reporting that the area ahead had been secured. Bandits were caught in the process of raiding a family farm. The squad leader reported two of the bandits killed outright and the others taken prisoner. The bandits had slaughtered the adult males, then herded the women and children into a group while they ransacked and set fire to the farm.

  The convoy lumbered on.

  The small farm, what had been the family compound, a collection of huts and a barn, was a smoldering ruin. Women knelt, wailing over their dead. The crisp mountain air was heavy with the stench of the charred ruins and death. Children and some of the females wandered about in a state of shock, vacant-eyed.

  Kwan's squad leader was interrogating the surviving bandits, who had been ordered to sit, their wrists tied behind their backs: foul smelling, raggedly attired ruffians cowering in a loose circle, their eyes wide with fright. The soldiers of the squad stood with their rifles aimed at the prisoners, making threatening comments and gestures. Li stalked in that direction, and Kwan hurried to keep apace. As they approached, one soldier struck the back of a bandit's head with his rifle butt. The prisoner lurched sideways. A kick from the squad leader's boot forced him to remain sitting. One of the prisoners was already dead.

  Kwan lengthened his stride, gaining one step ahead of the general. As a ranking member of the Central Politburo, General Li was a man worth impressing. Kwan intended to do that. Inwardly, he steeled himself for what he must do.

  The squad leader had the stocky build of a peasant. He saluted General Li. "Sir."

  Li returned the salute. "What have you learned here?"

  "Nothing yet, sir. They say they're Korean army deserters, living off the land."

  Kwan unholstered his pistol. He placed its muzzle to the temple of the closest prisoner, and pulled the trigger. The gunshot cracked sharply. An exit wound blew brains and skull fragments across the other two prisoners, and across the boots of the squad leader and the general. Before anyone could speak, Kwan stepped to the next bandit. He placed the muzzle of his pistol against this man's forehead.

  "Chai Bin," he said. "Take us to his stronghold."

  The man's eyes and mouth quivered. "But then Chai Bin would kill me! I dare not speak!"

  Kwan triggered another round. Blood and brains spurted like red mud from the back of this man's skull, and before his corpse had fallen onto its side, Kwan aimed his pistol to the remaining man's forehead.

  "Do you dare speak? Take us to Chai Bin."

  This man stared up along the gun barrel, into Kwan's eyes, as if looking into the eyes of a god. "Spare me! I will take you." The words poured out. "I will show you the way. It is a day's journey."

  Kwan holstered his pistol and turned to the general deferentially.

  Li said, "It will be a night's journey, if needs be. You've convinced me, Major Kwan. The convoy pushes on. We will attack this Chai's stronghold and that will take us to the shuttle." He patted Kwan's shoulder in a reserved manner, an almost unheard of gesture, considering the strict protocol of the Chinese military; surely a sign of how appreciative the general was, thought Kwan. He had most likely saved both of their lives from a firing squad. "Well done, Major. Yes, most impressive. When this is over, you will be a colonel, I assure you of that."

  Their group returned to the trucks, the prisoner roughly shoved along by soldiers, away from the bodies of the bandits and past the sobbing of the farmer's family over their dead.

  Kwan reloaded his pistol as he walked. He had impressed the general. And now they had a destination. Now, they had a target.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tokyo

  Meiko sat at the keyboard of her father's personal computer. She was alone in his private office in the executive suite.

  Her stepmother's connections had gained her access to this Olympus of Kurita Industries. When she and Sachito had at last found themselves alone together after that morning's sad, grueling funeral service for her father, her stepmother had seemed to genuinely want some sort of bond of shared grief between them. Meiko had taken the opportunity to profess her restlessness, and her curiosity. Even at a time like this, especially at a time like this, her innate investigative instincts were functioning. She could not erase from her mind that barely overheard conversation between Anami, the acting president of the company, and the dapper man in the aviator sunglasses who had used the occasion of Kentaro Kurita's funeral to approach Anami in a confrontational way. With such inappropriate behavior, she could only surmise that whatever was being discussed between them had been extremely important. What little she'd managed to overhear at the cemetery, her father's name and mention of the Liberty, would not cease nagging at her mind, though she chose not to confide this to Sachito. She did make her request, which Sachito granted without hesitation.

  Meiko was chauffeured into the city, to this enormous factory complex. Madam Kurita had called ahead and made all of the necessary arrangements. This facilitated her quick passage through security, to the somber executive suite overlooking a small portion of the factory below, where hundreds of laborers were busily assembling small engine parts beneath a bright red company logo sign with yellow letters in English and Japanes
e ideograms. Practically all signs in Japan are in English as well as Japanese, English being the most common second language spoken in Japan. The workers were clad in coveralls, safety helmets, goggles and ear protectors. The plant workplace was cleaner and better organized than factory assembly lines she'd seen in America. Conversation seemed minimal.

  After being shown into her father's office, which was an airy, sparsely yet comfortably furnished office of white carpeting and cedar paneling, she had made but a cursory inspection. She felt an uncertain twinge of displeasure when she saw the portrait of her mother on one side of her father's desktop, opposite Sachito's photograph. Then she put that out of her mind, sat at the computer terminal, booted up and began exploring, spending more than thirty minutes accessing the private document files stored on her father's hard drive. She followed links to business-related sites, scanning whatever she found, then backtracking and accessing more, learning more about Kentaro Kurita's holdings, his investments, becoming posthumously acquainted with her father not as a father but as the titan of a mighty commercial empire.

  She missed him so.

  Her ascendancy through the ranks of Hakura News, becoming their White House correspondent, was related to her father's prestige and influence. It would have been naive to think otherwise. In the cutthroat competitiveness of global communications, she had thrived and risen to prominence because she was good at her job. On two occasions she had actually scooped her American media counterparts on big Washington stories concerning domestic American politics. But yes, family ties had helped. She could only hope to pass on through example what had been a gift to her; to let her countrywomen know that she was proving to the men, and to the women of Japan, that a woman could do a "man's" job. Today as in the past, marriage was the only truly acceptable goal of any Japanese woman. Those forces that motivated the women's movement in the West—the quest for self-expression and satisfaction—did not seem to appeal much to Japanese women. It was Meiko's experience that the majority of Japanese women considered western women and their search for self-fulfillment to be rather selfish. In Japan, every man, woman and child ideally regarded the well-being of the group before his or her own self-interest. Combining a career with marriage was an idea whose time was far from coming to Japan. She entertained hopes of someday starting a publishing company to help raise the public consciousness about women's issues. In Japan, a woman's salary was one-half that of a man's, even though women comprised forty percent of the work force. Meiko's prominence was unique.

  As was that of Madam Kurita, a woman who had owned the heart of her father, the man who had controlled Kurita Industries, which put her stepmother at the heart of power.

  Meiko absorbed the data scrolling down her screen until she felt that she had a sufficient overview of her father's business profile and portfolio. She was amazed at how extensive were her family's holdings. Strangely, she thought, the notion that she had inherited such enormous wealth, and curiosity about the terms of her father's will, were crossing her conscious mind for the first time since she'd received news of her father's passing. Satisfied that she understood the big picture, she next got more specific in her cyber investigations, following through on some links and cross-references until they proved to be dead ends while discarding others, like following the clues in a mystery novel. She had written down the license plate number of the limousine that had carried away the dapper man who had worn the aviator sunglasses, the man who had seemed so out of place at the funeral and whose behavior toward Anami, the CEO of her father's company, had compelled her to note the license plate number. The vehicle was registered to what proved to be a subsidiary of a corporation she had never heard of, Trans-Asian Enterprises, a transportation company leasing and owning everything from shuttle transportation to mail to export-import shipping.

  Her eyes began to ache. She started thinking about taking a break when the name of a major shareholder from Trans-Asian matched with Tokyo police files. Every journalistic instinct she possessed told her that she was onto something and rejuvenated her.

  The man's name was Rikihei Ugaki.

  She clicked her way into his file and there he was, in a half dozen photographs, various street scenes and other public places, snapshots obviously taken from secret surveillance because the participant appeared wholly unaware that he was being photographed. She determined that there were no police photos, what they called mug shots in the States, because nothing had ever been proven in a Japanese court of law against Ugaki. There was plenty in the file for her to speed scan, and the truth was obvious enough, even if not to a court of law.

  Ugaki was yakuza.

  The prosperous, successful businessman, an infamous social recluse, was reputed to be the Oyabun, the yakuza godfather, of the Red Scorpion Clan, the largest yakuza gang in Tokyo. The kumi, the criminal clans and families that derived their income from illegal sources—prostitutes, drugs, gambling and protection rackets—had many legitimate fronts, including close ties to some of the zaibatsu, Japan's giant corporations. The medieval yakuza were outlaws and wanderers who, over the centuries, evolved strict rules of honor among thieves and demanded courage and honesty in all conduct. They followed Bushido, the Japanese code of knighthood, which set forth the highest ideals of honor and courage. The modern yakuza, on the other hand, were powerful clans and corporate gangs who had perverted the traditional spirit of their code. She knew for a fact that some of the more unscrupulous corporations used the yakuza as enforcers for such matters as breaking up industrial disputes or intimidating the competition. The Red Scorpion Clan earned most of its profits via perfectly legitimate means. Trans-Asian was only one of Ugaki's business ventures, she quickly ascertained. He was a respected member of the establishment.

  She leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes, massaging them. She considered.

  Ugaki and the acting CEO of Kurita Industries have a confrontation at the funeral service for her father. She overhears them speak the word Liberty while the rest of what else she'd overheard had been spoken in Japanese. The dapper man in the sunglasses had radiated a primal aura: that of a violent beast barely kept in check. This was not the sort of man her father would abide. Or was Kurita Industries in some way involved in whatever was going on with that space shuttle flight?

  Trev's wife was aboard that shuttle.

  Life was so strange.

  She refocused on the computer screen and continued opening documents in cyber space in her quest for more information about Ugaki.

  She would follow this, no matter where it took her. She owed that to her father.

  And she owed it to a woman she'd never met, named Kate Daniels.

  As acting chief executive officer of Kurita Industries, Ota Anami was used to being chauffeured about. The limousine, in which he was the sole occupant, was furnished with all of the amenities he was used to, including a well-stocked liquor supply and state of the art audio and video. Yet he found himself unable to partake of any of these luxuries during the drive to Ugaki's estate.

  Ugaki had sent the limousine. Its heavily tinted windows made the world passing by outside seem like a dark place. Anami felt vulnerable and small in the car's lavish interior. He inwardly rued, for the ten thousandth time, the day he had sold his soul to the yakuza. He had been summoned on that day exactly as he was being summoned today by Qyabun Ugaki. Anami had sold his soul to the devil.

  The limousine turned, without slowing, onto a paved driveway, passing an open wrought-iron gate, waved on through by a uniformed security guard. Anami was certain that the guard was only for show. Ugaki's home would be an armed fortress, with the most sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment and a full cadre of unseen, heavily-armed men no doubt waiting for the first indication of trouble. The main house was large and single-storied, with pink-painted concrete walls and a roof of green slate. The chauffeur braked the limousine to a stop. While the engine idled with the barely audible purr of a contented kitten, he briskly got out from behind the ste
ering wheel to hold the car door open for Anami. When he had debarked, the limousine drove off, past a parked, white Mercedes Benz, and circled around the side of the house.

  Anami felt suddenly very much alone.

  The latticework front door of the home, before him, slid open. A man with a scarred face and the build of a wrestler bowed ever so slightly and stepped aside, holding the door handle. The top two joints were missing from the little finger of his left hand. It was the sign of yakuza. The mark of the gangster. If a yakuza commits an offense against his Oyabun, he may try to atone and regain his Oyabun's favor by offering to sever one of his own fingers as a supreme token of repentance. The man closed the front door.

  Anami paused to remove his shoes.

  After he had stepped out of his shoes, the man said, "Come this way," and led the way down a hallway lined with sliding partitions. At the end of the hall, he bowed again, opened one of the partitions and gestured for Anami to enter.

  Ugaki was seated on the tatami floor behind a low black lacquered table, polishing a samurai katana sword, hand-forged in an earlier century. The room was a formal tatami of rice paper walls and doors, uncluttered and austere except for a massive glass case displaying ten sets of antique samurai swords without scabbards. Ugaki was bare chested. A lurid red and green scorpion was tattooed across his chest. He did not look up, but acknowledged Anami's presence by sternly motioning for him to take the cushion in front of the table as he completed his task.

  Anami sat on his knees in the formal sitting position. The servant poured them each a cup of warm sake, then left. At last, Ugaki set down the sword and looked up.

  "You are prompt in obeying my summons. That is good."

  Anami always felt as if this man's eyes could read his mind and see into his soul. "Truthfully, Ugaki-san, I have wished an audience with you since this morning at the cemetery. May I respectfully inquire why you chose the funeral service as a point of contact? Do we not risk drawing attention to ourselves at this critical juncture?"