The Expediter

by David Hagberg

  He took the blue contacts out, revealing his dark eyes, then began with the makeup that put age lines in his forehead and neck, age spots around his ears and at the base of his nose and his eyelids, and on the backs of his hands. A pale overlay lotion gave his skin tone a gray cast that made him look tired.

  The effect, when he was finished, was subtle, natural. He did not look like a man in his forties pretending to be older, instead he looked like a man in his sixties who was in very good shape for his age.

  He brushed a little gray in his sideburns to complete the effect, then dressed in dark slacks, a white shirt, a dark sport coat, and an embroidered yarmulke on the back of his head.

  “Mazel tov,” he told his reflection in the mirror by the door, before he went back downstairs to have more champagne and dinner, and to spread some money and good cheer so that the staff would not forget him.

  McGarvey’s crude attempt to engage him with an assassination proposal had been amusing. The pot between China and North Korea had been given its final stir and soon it would be time to decamp to Sidney or Melbourne.

  But he had to consider the possibility that McGarvey would come to him in Tokyo and he would have to kill the former CIA director. He decided that it would be one of the most pleasurable things he’d ever done.

  FORTY–THREE

  Kim got out of the cab a couple of blocks from the storage locker and blending in with the shoppers made it the rest of the way on foot to where she ducked into a shop selling incense sticks and soapstone holders across from the locker on the narrow street. Brightly colored banners and signs were strung from the second-story overhangs, lending a carnival air to the scene.

  Kim, who was from the small fishing town of Chinhae in the far south, had been dazzled by the big city the first time she’d come to Seoul. The tall buildings, traffic, and noise had made her homesick. But this district and especially this street reminded her of home, and she’d pestered Soon to find an apartment down here, at least until they had to leave Korea for good. He’d agreed with her, but they’d never seemed to find the time to make the move, and now it was too late.

  She bought a small bundle of sandalwood sticks from the polite shop owner, and then lingered over a collection of holders on a table just outside the doorway.

  The NIS plainclothes surveillance officer stood out like a sore thumb, leaning against his unmarked car at the end of the block. A cop had come over and they were talking and smoking cigarettes, neither of them doing their job.

  Kim watched them for a full minute, trying to make some sense of what was happening. Someone had been sent to watch the storage locker, as she had feared might happen, but the babysitter had his back to the building. It was as if he’d been sent here to keep an eye out for her, but had been told that it wasn’t very important. He was putting in his time, nothing more.

  Keeping an eye on the NIS officer and cop, Kim made her way across the street, ducking into Mr. Pim’s doorway as she pulled out her pistol and screwed the silencer on the finely machined threads on the end of the barrel. Making sure the babysitter hadn’t turned around, she hesitated until no pedestrian was nearby and then fired one shot into the lock securing the accordion gate.

  The noise from the single suppressed shot seemed loud to her ears, but no one passing on the street seemed to pay her the slightest attention. She eased the gate open, slipped inside, closed it behind her, and scurried back to their locker.

  She held up in the darkness for several seconds watching the passersby, half expecting to see the babysitter and maybe the cop at the gate, but still no one was coming to investigate.

  The brass padlock could not be opened with anything as light as the 7.65 mm bullet her pistol fired, but the soft metal hasp and the matching staple that was screwed into the wooden door frame were a different story. She fired two silenced shots, one above and the other just below the staple, waited a few moments to see if anyone was coming, then put the pistol back in her shoulder bag and tugged at the door, pulling the lock and the entire staple plate out of the door frame with a dull clunk.

  She stepped inside the room, closed the door behind her, and working by feel in the complete darkness took a couple of shirts from one of the cases, rolled them up, and stuffed them along the bottom of the door. Only then did she switch on the light.

  Her heart lurched. They hadn’t merely sent a babysitter to keep watch, they’d used the key to get in here and search the place. Most of the boxes and cases had been opened. They knew about the weapons and the false papers and everything else. They knew! And yet they were more interested in Alexandar than in her.

  She quickly went through everything, and when she was finished she was reasonably certain that nothing had been taken. Their things had been rifled, but nothing was missing, and that made even less sense to her than the babysitter outside who didn’t seem to be paying any attention to his job.

  For a long moment or two she stood flat-footed in the middle of the tiny storage compartment, conscious of her rapidly beating heart.

  None of what was happening here in Seoul really mattered. Only getting Soon out of North Korea meant anything to her. And she had hatched a wildly impossible scheme to do just that. Soon would tell her that she was crazy. Completely out of her pretty little head.

  His voice was clear inside her head, and it brought tears to her eyes.

  But she would have to hurry if she was going to save him before his brain was fried from drugs or before the nuclear weapons started to fly.

  She had to rummage through a couple of boxes before she found a blue nylon Nike duffle bag, into which she stuffed a set of black camos, including a black balaclava, boots, and night vision goggles. She added another set of identity papers to the ones she’d taken from the attic, some money in North Korean denominations, and a few pieces of civilian clothes to replace what she had to leave at the hotel. Anything else she needed she would have to buy on the run.

  When she had the bag zippered up, she hesitated a little longer trying to decide if she should take another weapon, something heavier than the Walther PPK in her purse. But she decided against it. She would try to reach Pyongyang to trade for Soon’s life, not try to shoot her way to him.

  She reached up to turn off the light when the door was suddenly jerked open, and she turned around to face the NIS surveillance officer from the street corner, what looked like a boxy 9 mm SIG-Sauer in his hand. There was no safety on the SIG, and the hammer was at full cock, so it was ready to fire.

  She picked that up in an instant, her NIS training automatically kicking in, and she managed a highly indignant look. The cop wasn’t with him, which meant she had a chance here, but only one.

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded. “Is this a stickup?”

  “You know damn well who I am, Lieutenant,” he said. “You had me spotted on the corner.”

  “Yeah, well where’s the cop who was with you?”

  “This has nothing to do with the cops.”

  Kim shook her head and dropped the nylon bag. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’ve got ID,” she said. She fumbled for her purse, and the NIS officer stepped through the doorway.

  “No, you don’t,” he warned. “Keep your hands in plain sight.”

  It was a mistake on his part. As he came into the narrow storage room, Kim raised her hands in front of her and moved toward him.

  He reached for her arm, but she stepped aside and batted his gun hand away as she sidekicked him in his leading knee, the bone and cartilage breaking and tearing with an audible pop. He went down with a grunt, and she grabbed his gun hand, and snapped the wrist using his own weight as a lever.

  This time he cried out in pain, but Kim dropped down, one knee on his chest, and clamped her fingers around his throat, depressing his carotid arteries, cutting off blood to his brain.

  It was mostly over before he had a chance to defend himself, and she watched as consciousness faded from his eyes, and his body went limp.

/>   She held the pressure for a few seconds longer, but then let go and reared back, a sob catching in the back of her throat.

  Another few seconds and he would have been brain-damaged. A little longer and he would have died. For simply doing his job. She was a suspected assassin and he had been ordered to watch for her, and take her into custody if possible.

  And it had been so easy for her. Easier than this poor bastard would ever realize.

  “We’re not murderers,” Soon had told her after their first hit.

  “What then?” she’d demanded. She’d been frightened and sick at her stomach.

  “What we always were, Kim. We’re soldiers.”

  He had been holding her in his arms, and she had tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “We’ve never killed an innocent person, and I promise you that we never will.”

  “How can you be so goddamned sure?” she’d cried.

  “I just am, and so will you be in time,” he’d said. “If it comes to it, and you don’t believe that our target deserves to die, then don’t pull the trigger. Walk away, and I’ll understand.” He’d kissed her. “I promise you, just walk away.”

  She looked down at the surveillance officer, whose breathing was starting to return to normal, picked up the nylon bag, turned off the light, closed the door and gate behind her, and walked away.

  FORTY–FOUR

  At the Asan Hospital McGarvey was shunted off to a waiting area next to the emergency room while Ok-Lee was evaluated by a team of doctors and nurses. In less than five minutes she was wheeled down the corridor and loaded aboard an elevator. A stern-faced nurse came back to where McGarvey was standing at the doorway.

  “You are the American who came with Ms. Ok-Lee?”

  “Will she be okay?” McGarvey asked. Turov had gut shot her so that he could make his escape, knowing that McGarvey wouldn’t leave her if she had still been alive. A cold fire had always burned in his belly for bastards like that. And there would be payback.

  “Her condition is very serious,” the nurse said. “She’s on her way upstairs to an operating theater now. We’ll know better in the next hour.”

  “Please let me know.”

  The nurse turned away but then came back. Her expression had softened. “She regained consciousness briefly and told us that you saved her life.”

  “I’ll wait here,” McGarvey said.

  “It may be hours.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  The nurse left at the same time two men, both of them obviously cops or intelligence officers, charged into the emergency room, flashing their identification. The admitting clerk pointed them in the direction of the waiting room, and when they spotted McGarvey they came straight back. They weren’t smiling.

  “McGarvey?” the shorter of them demanded. He had a small face that was screwed up into a mask of anger.

  “That’s right. You must be Mr. Bak, Lin’s boss.”

  Bak’s eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t matter. Where is she?”

  “Upstairs, they’re going to operate. She was shot in the stomach and she’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “And where were you?”

  “She wanted to show me the shopping arcade. We were supposed to meet there, but I was late. I’m sorry.”

  Bak was obviously holding himself in check. He nodded. “You’re lying, of course,” he said through clenched teeth. “I know your record, or at least some of it. Wherever you show up disaster follows you. I wanted you kept out, but I was overruled.” He glanced toward the corridor. “If she dies I’ll see that you hang, you son of a bitch, if I have to do it myself.”

  The agent with him touched his sleeve and said something softly in Korean, but Bak pulled his arm away.

  “You requested that a storage locker in Yeongdeung-po gu be placed under surveillance this afternoon. Why?”

  “I’m trying to find someone who might want to get something there.”

  “Who is this someone?” Bak pressed. “It must have something to do with the Pyongyang situation.”

  “I’m not sure,” McGarvey said. He couldn’t afford to be hung up here in South Korea answering questions. By now Turov was on his way back to Tokyo, and that was where the answers would be.

  Bak stepped closer, an even more menacing expression on his round face. “Well now you can be sure, Mr. Director. The man on surveillance was found by a neighborhood cop semiconscious inside the locker. Can you guess what was found, besides my man, that is?”

  McGarvey shrugged.

  “False papers, money, clothing, and weapons. Sniper’s weapons. The tools of assassins.” His eyes never left McGarvey’s. “If you expect to get out of Seoul before the bombs fly, you’ll have to tell me the truth.”

  “If I don’t get out of Seoul by morning, the bombs just may fly,” McGarvey said.

  Bak wanted to pull a pistol and open fire, McGarvey could see it in his eyes, and he suddenly realized that the man was probably in love with Ok-Lee, which just now made him doubly dangerous.

  “Who shot her? One of the assassins?”

  “No.”

  “You’re telling me that whoever shot her has nothing to do with what we found in the storage locker, or what happened in Pyongyang?” Bak asked harshly. “Because if that’s what you’re trying to do here I’ll arrest you right now. Believe me, you won’t like our interrogation center.”

  “I’m sure I won’t, but in the meantime you’ll still have the same problem on your hands.”

  “One that you’ve come here to help solve for us.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you won’t share information with us.”

  “There’s no time.”

  Bak turned away, and the other agent said, “Witnesses said they saw a tall man, a Westerner without hair leaving the courtyard, and that you came afterward. Would you know this man?”

  “No,” McGarvey said.

  “Leave Korea while you can, Mr. McGarvey, before we have to arrest you and forcibly put you on a plane out of here.”

  “I’d like to stay until morning, at least long enough to find out how Lin is doing,” McGarvey said. “Can you give me that much?”

  Bak turned back. “What’s your interest in her?”

  “I’m partially to blame for putting her in harm’s way. I want to make sure she comes out of it.”

  Bak said something in Korean to the other agent, who gave McGarvey a bleak look.

  “I’m going to collect your things from your hotel room, and bring them here. As soon as we learn that Captain Ok-Lee is in the clear I’ll personally drive you back up to Oasan.”

  “Thank you,” McGarvey said.

  The agent hesitated. “Is there anything I need to be made aware of? Anything in your things that might hurt me?”

  McGarvey shook his head. “Just dirty laundry.”

  Around midnight the surgeon came downstairs, his gown and paper booties blood-splattered. He looked tired. By now NIS personnel were all over the hospital, inside and out. One of their own had been shot in the line of duty, and it had probably happened because of an American ex-CIA director. No one was happy.

  Bak said something to the doctor, who ignored him, and instead came over and sat down in the chair beside McGarvey.

  “Mr. McGarvey, Captain Ok-Lee has lost a lot of blood, but the bullet missed her spleen and her liver so that the damage was confined mostly to the walls of her stomach. She’ll recover with no problems, but it will take a great deal of time before she is without pain. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes. May I see her?”

  “No, not for twenty-four hours at least.”

  “I can’t stay that long.”

  “She said that you would say something like that.”

  “She’s conscious?” McGarvey asked.

  “Long enough to ask me to thank you for saving her life,” the doctor said. He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “And for you to find your Russian.”


  “Thanks, Doctor,” McGarvey said. “When she recovers tell her that I will.”

  Tokyo

  FORTY–FIVE

  Turov took the early morning JAL flight direct to Tokyo, after a big breakfast and a round of hefty tips and good wishes at the hotel. He’d clumped across the lobby, leaning heavily on his cane, and humming an old Israeli kibbutz song loudly enough that everyone he passed had glanced up and smiled. He had played his role to the hilt as he usually did, so that the staff and guests would be sure to remember him as a rich, generous eccentric, not a Russian expediter of murder.

  The time before he had been a nervous scholar who had kind words for everyone, and before that he’d taken on the roles of playboy, medical doctor, movie director, and journalist, but always with one common thread, that of generosity and good cheer.

  Minoru Hirobumi was waiting for him with one of the Land Rovers at Narita’s international arrivals gate. As usual the airport was a mad house, and as usual his chief of staff was completely unruffled, serene. He was a small man, compact. “Another success, and now we may leave,” he said. “Have you decided when and where?”

  “Melbourne, but we have some time yet,” Turov replied. “The U.S. is putting enough pressure on China to hold off the attack for at least a week. Maybe longer.”

  “Do you think there will be a war, Colonel?”

  “Almost certainly, but don’t you think so? It was a slap in the face to Beijing, an international embarrassment. It’s bound to have an effect. It’s why Haynes is working so hard.”

  “The longer the delay the less likely China is to attack, I think.”

  “You may be correct,” Turov said absently. “Maybe they’ll need another little nudge.”

  The airport was fifty miles to the northeast of the city and the Ueno Park District where his expansive home was located behind bamboo walls. Traffic was nearly impossible as usual, but the morning was bright and lovely and Minoru was an excellent driver. Turov stared out the window and let his thoughts drift to the coming confrontation.