The Expediter

by David Hagberg

  In the early days with the KGB he had carried out the occasional assassination, and although he was a ruthless, efficient officer in the field he was even better planning hits. His specialty had been, and still was, finding the right people for the job at hand and then motivating them to do it.

  Afterward he killed his assassins, which was ridiculously easy, because none of them ever saw it coming. Fresh off a kill they were usually so hyped-up, adrenaline pumping, that they kept an eye out for the authorities, not their paymaster.

  In each case Turov got a particular pleasure not only because a dead assassin would provide a lousy witness, and that he got his money back, but because each kill had given him a sexual rush.

  As a fifteen-year-old on the soccer field in Leningrad he’d felt his first surge like that when he’d seriously hurt a forward, breaking the kid’s leg, a couple of ribs, and the second and third vertebrae. The forward never walked again, which was a matter of total indifference to Turov, and although he had been kicked out of the game for unnecessary roughness he never forgot his feelings as he walked off the field. It had been better than an orgasm.

  He’d never told anyone that, of course, but he was sure that he’d seen the look of comprehension in the eyes of more than one of his victims just before they had died, which made his feelings even more intense.

  Minoru had been with Turov since the mid-eighties, and besides his monumental patience he understood his boss sometimes better than Turov understood himself. Among other things he knew when to back off. There were times for questions, times for action, and other times, like now for silence.

  Turov knew and appreciated this in Minoru, who had become as near to being a friend as anyone ever had or could, and he settled back in the rear seat with his thoughts about the upcoming battle with McGarvey.

  Somehow the CIA had found out about the Huks, and McGarvey had been sent to find Kim, but only to interview her, not make an arrest. Otherwise the NIS would have staked out the apartment, and kept a watch there until she finally showed up. The fact that they hadn’t was significant, though it hadn’t made sense to him until the clumsy attempt had been made to contact him with a job offer. Then he had understood.

  Against all odds the CIA had found out who had hired the Huks to go to Pyongyang and make the hit. Of course what they didn’t know was who had hired Turov to expedite the assassination. Had they known that, McGarvey would never have come to Seoul. He would have had another more interesting, and certainly a more devastating target to keep him occupied.

  Soon was safe in Pyongyang, because all the drugs in the world could not extract more information than the man had in his head. All he knew was that his paymaster was a man by the name of Alexandar, and that after each hit money was deposited in a Swiss account.

  The North Koreans did not have the laptop computer that Kim admitted had been taken from their apartment. McGarvey had it, and Turov was enough of a realist to believe that, however unlikely, it was at least possible that the computer’s memory could be read despite the encryption programs and fail-safes.

  It was on that basis that he suspected McGarvey would be coming here. And he’d found that he was looking forward to their meeting. It was time for him to kill someone interesting. Someone worthy. Someone capable enough to offer resistance.

  Someone, given the right circumstances, who could provide the nudge necessary to inadvertently make the U.S. push China into attack.

  McGarvey had come out here to unravel the mystery of who had killed General Ho in Pyongyang and why. When he was gunned down, apparently by an agent of the North Korean government, the hue and cry from Washington would be immediate.

  China would attack, Kim Jong Il would send his missiles flying, and the entire region would go up in flames in a war from which Japan and the Koreas might take a half-century or more to recover, and because of which the U.S. might sink to a second-class power, bankrupt and ineffectual.

  Ueno, Tokyo’s museum district, was located in the hills northeast of downtown with a lovely view of the city and the bay. Turov’s compound was on a broad street of similar compounds above the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Wealthy Japanese businessmen maintained second homes up here, usually for their mistresses. This was an area of secret, secondary lives, a place where everyone minded their own business to an even higher degree than was common in polite Japanese society.

  Minoru had telephoned ahead so by the time they’d pulled up at the rear gate, discreetly hidden behind a screen of foliage, one of the house staff let the Rover pass, first checking to make sure who was in the car.

  Security here was tight 24/7. In addition to Minoru, the six people on his staff included two cooks and two maids, plus Sokichi Tanaka and Kotaro Hatoyama who’d come from the ranks of Japanese Self Defense Forces Special Action units. They were not particularly bright, but they knew how to handle themselves. They’d been court-martialed and drummed out of the service for excessive violence after the two of them had taken on seven fellow servicemen after a poker game that had gone bad. All seven had ended up in the base hospital, two of them in critical condition. Only the fact that no one had died, and that the seven had started the fight kept Tanaka and Hatoyama out of the stockade.

  All of them, except for the maids, had been recruited eight years ago by Minoru who had the uncanny ability to find the disgruntled, disaffected man, angry with a system that valued discipline and proper reports over action, because he himself had been just such a man.

  His father had been a Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force colonel working as liaison to the embassy in Taiwan after the war. He’d married a Chinese woman, and Minoru had been born in the late sixties. When they’d returned to Japan their lives became a living hell. The colonel was kicked out of the army because his wife presented a security risk, and Minoru had been so severely ostracized at school that he was pulled out of classes and homeschooled by his mother, who was a mathematician, and by his father, who had been a military combat officer.

  Life had been difficult for the family, and even more difficult for Minoru after his parents died in a house fire. After living on the streets of Tokyo for two years he was accepted at the Waseda University on the basis of his high test scores and his athletic abilities on the non-sumo wrestling mat. In four years he graduated nearly at the top of his class in foreign studies, but no jobs were open to him with the government or industry because of his mixed heritage, except for the military, where despite his degree he was not given a commission.

  He did learn ground combat operations, including infiltration-exfiltration techniques, weapons, explosives, and hand-to-hand fighting. After a couple of years he transferred to the Public Security Investigation Agency, called Koancho, that had been loosely modeled after the American FBI. But his situation was no better there because of his parentage, and he eventually landed at the Russian Embassy as a translator and adviser to the KGB officer in charge of special projects—Alexandar Turov—who understood and appreciated him for his abilities and not his Chinese mother.

  Since that time there was nothing on this earth that Minoru would hesitate to do for his boss—espionage, treason, murder, even suicide if it was asked of him.

  Turov went directly through the sprawling, beautifully but sparsely decorated, traditional Japanese dwelling of interconnected rooms and spaces that could be defined and redefined at a moment’s notice by translucent rice paper shoji screens, to the bath house open on three sides to the peaceful rock and water garden.

  The maids, naked, had prepared his steaming bath. Without a word Turov spread his arms and the women undressed him. He sat on a low wooden stool next to a bucket of water to be washed vigorously with a harsh soap and stiff bath brush. When they were finished they poured the bucket of extremely hot water over him, and then helped him into the neck-deep bath.

  Minoru was there with a glass of crackling cold Krug for his boss. “What remains to be accomplished before we leave?”

  Turov looked up at him wit
h pleasure and smiled as the girls got into the bath with him.

  “An American ex-CIA officer may be coming here,” he said. He sipped the champagne, the coldness in contrast to the hot bathwater. The yin and the yang. The Chinese had gotten at least that much right.

  “Why?”

  “To assassinate me. His name is Kirk McGarvey. Do you know it?”

  “He was briefly the director of the agency,” Minoru said. “His death can be easily arranged, though there may be some consequences.”

  Turov held his glass out for more wine. “If he does come here, we’ll kill him. Otherwise we’ll leave well enough alone. He has no proof yet.”

  “Is that such a good idea, Colonel?”

  “We may have no choice,” Turov said. “Nero fiddled while Rome burned. And afterward we shall go to Australia to wait for the end of the war.”

  “The entire house staff will be leaving?”

  “Why no,” Turov replied indifferently. “Did you think so?”

  FORTY–SIX

  Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force refused to allow the Aurora to enter its airspace so instead McGarvey was shuttled across to Tokyo aboard a U.S. Navy Gulfstream IV VIP jet sent out from Yokosuka to fetch him. No questions were asked because of the current situation and because McGarvey was a former director of the CIA. He could be out here for only one reason.

  They landed around noon at Tokyo’s much smaller and less busy Haneda Airport ten miles southwest of the city center, and taxied across to the police hangar and out of sight. Customs had been alerted that an American traveling under a diplomatic passport would be arriving, but the two stern-faced men in plain suits who boarded the Navy jet identified themselves as agents with the Public Security Intelligence Agency, PSIA.

  “We’ve been sent to ask what your specific business is in Japan, Mr. Director,” one of them said.

  McGarvey had glanced at their IDs but hadn’t bothered with the names. “I’m here at the request of our ambassador.”

  “No, sir, you are not,” the agent said. “We have the right to search your luggage—”

  “Not under diplomatic cover.”

  “Or refuse you entry.”

  “That’s your choice, but it would be a mistake,” McGarvey said. “I’m here to help, if I can, but of course you’re aware that we have very little time.”

  The door to the cockpit remained closed and the young Navy attendant had disappeared somewhere forward.

  “Help us with what, specifically?” the other agent asked, his English good.

  “I’m looking for a man who may have been involved.”

  “Not a Japanese citizen.”

  “No, not a Japanese.”

  “But this man is expecting you?” the first agent asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Give us his name and we’ll find him.”

  “It wouldn’t do you any good, because if I’m right he’s nothing more than an intermediary and I’m hoping he’ll answer some questions.”

  “Just like that?” the first agent demanded. He and his partner were more uncomfortable than angry, and McGarvey figured they’d been ordered to try to find out why the former director of the CIA had suddenly shown up in Japan aboard a U.S. Navy jet direct from South Korea’s Oasan Air Force Base, but not to deny him entry.

  “Maybe not so easy,” McGarvey conceded.

  “We won’t stamp your passport.”

  “There’s no need, I won’t be long.”

  The two men gave him a bleak look. “If there’s any trouble we’ll leave it for the police to handle,” the first agent said. “Do you understand that you’re on your own?”

  “I’m here to help prevent a war.”

  The agent nodded. “Yes, sir. And the last time you were here to help, several of our citizens ended up dead. You’re not welcome here.”

  “Are you denying me entry?” McGarvey asked.

  “No,” the agent said.

  “It won’t do to have me followed. I’ll either disappear or leave the country and you can deal with the situation yourself.”

  “All you Americans are arrogant,” the agent said. He and his partner gave McGarvey one last hard look, then left the aircraft.

  The pilot opened the cockpit door and came aft. His name tag read: Halvorson. “Is someone picking you up, Mr. Director?”

  “Not this time,” McGarvey said gathering his bag. “Thanks for the lift.”

  “No bodyguard, sir?” Halvorson asked. “The entire country’s pretty tense right now. A lot of them are blaming us. They’re seeing it as a standoff between us and the Chinese and no matter how it turns out Japan will be on the losing end.”

  McGarvey shook his head. “First it was Bush and now it’s Haynes. Amazing what people think one president can take the blame for. What’s happening with the Seventh Fleet?”

  “Already out to sea, or will be within twenty-four hours,” Halvorson said. “We’re heading down to Okinawa as soon as we refuel.”

  “Good idea.”

  “We can’t stick around for you.”

  “I don’t imagine,” McGarvey said at the open hatch.

  “Well, good luck, sir,” Halvorson said.

  McGarvey was given a lift by a taciturn man in a utility uniform and white cap with a strap around his chin driving a Follow Me pickup truck from the police hangar across to the busy main terminal.

  The monorail into the city was cheaper and much faster but it was crammed and McGarvey wasn’t in the mood to stand all the way. After he exchanged some money at one of the kiosks he walked directly across the main arrivals hall to the taxi stand outside where he asked the director with his little white flag for a cab to the Asakusa View, one of the finer hotels in the city.

  He wanted his arrival to be noted, and staying at a luxury hotel in the heart of the city would not esacape Turov’s notice. I’m here, McGarvey was saying. Do you want to play?

  Tokyo was more intense than Seoul had been, in part because the South Koreans had been living with the threat from the North for more than six decades, and in part because the Japanese had been attacked twice with nuclear weapons, and they knew the horror of it.

  The cabbie became angry as soon as he realized that his fare was an American, and when they reached the hotel in the city’s old section he refused to help with McGarvey’s bag, an insult that in other times would have meant his dismissal. Nor did any of the bellmen on duty offer to help. No one shot him angry looks, but the attitude was there.

  A harpist played in the tea lounge section of the small marble lobby, and as had been the case with the bellmen, McGarvey’s reception at the front desk was cool, even though he’d stayed at this hotel before, and even though he’d booked a suite for an open-ended stay.

  After he’d signed in he carried his own bag upstairs to his rooms on the twenty-fifth floor, where he unpacked his pistol, silencer, and two magazines of ammunition, placing them under his jacket on the bed.

  He opened a Kirin beer from the mini-fridge and went to the tall windows overlooking the city and the Sumida River that wound its way through the downtown, and telephoned Rencke in Washington.

  It was midnight, but Otto was still in his office. “The entire campus is on emergency footing, ya know,” he said. “And Dick doesn’t even want to know where you are. No one’s asking. Not even Howard.”

  “Anything from the White House that’s not been on the news?”

  “Nobody’s saying anything, but the pressure’s on for us to figure out what General Ho was doing in North Korea that would make Kim Jong Il want to take him out. Beijing sure as hell isn’t offering any explanations.”

  “What about the mood in the Building, has anything changed since I left town?”

  “It’s been less than forty-eight and it’s gotten really weird. Frosty. No one’s saying or doing anything except to cover their own asses. We’re practically drowning in a tidal wave of memos and e-mails. What about you?”

  “Turov’s our man, and he k
nows that I’m coming after him,” McGarvey said. Shooting Ok-Lee had been nothing more than a setup. Turov wanted a confrontation here in Tokyo, and he wanted it before the missiles started to fly. McGarvey’s jaw tightened thinking of Ok-Lee lying in a puddle of her own blood.

  “What happened, Mac?”

  McGarvey told him everything that had happened from the moment he’d met the South Korean NIS officer at Oasan until this morning in the hospital when the surgeon had finished saving her life.

  “Are you counting on him coming to you?” Rencke asked. “Because if you are I don’t think that’s such a hot idea. I’ve managed to dig up some stuff on him, and if this is the right guy he’s a bad dog.”

  “I’m hoping that’s exactly what he means to do,” McGarvey said. “Send whatever you’ve got, and I’ll take a look at it. In the meantime I want you to find out where he lives. He’s a Westerner here in Tokyo, so no matter how low a profile he’s maintained he’s on someone’s radar. Probably not the cops, but most likely the tax authorities, maybe one of the exclusive downtown golf clubs, possibly even one of the yakuza families. He’d need security and some sort of arm’s-length source of intelligence.”

  “You’re talking about local intel,” Rencke said. “He’s probably getting the big stuff from his contacts at the FSB’s First Chief Directorate. They’re still pretty good.”

  “I don’t care about that part of it for the moment. I just want to find out where he hangs his hat and maybe pay him a little visit when he least suspects it. But the clock is ticking.”

  “I’m on it,” Rencke said, and the connection was broken.

  FORTY–SEVEN

  McGarvey figured that Turov wouldn’t wait long to make contact, because he would want to get out of Tokyo as soon as possible. If it was going to happen it would probably be tonight, or certainly no later than tomorrow.