Hidden Sun

by John Campbell

  A knock on the doorframe sounded softly against the crackling of the fire, Hendrick only realizing that there was someone at the front door after the third knock. He picked his head up, dragged open his eyes and looked around. The knock sounded again, this time more insistent, and his breath caught in his throat.

  “Maggie,” he mumbled to himself, and stumbled to his feet. He hurried to the front door, squinting through the glass to see who was there. He saw with disappointment that it was a man. Hendrick slowly opened the door.

  “Hello, Mr. Hendrick,” said Georgi Bakhtin with a cautious smile on his face.

  Hendrick stared at him. “What now?” he asked himself. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Georgi Bakhtin,” said the man. The name meant nothing to Steve. “I thought you might like to know how this whole adventure will end.” His English was quite good with a minimal accent.

  Why not? Hendrick thought. This guy seems harmless enough, and I’m as curious as anyone. He stepped aside and let the SVR agent into the house. They both settled in the living room. Bakhtin put the brief case he was carrying on the floor next to him. Hendrick looked at Bakhtin expectantly.

  Bakhtin eyed the American and his smile faded. “Two of my men were killed last night at a temple near here.”

  Uh, oh, thought Hendrick. “You’re SVR then?” Bakhtin’s features were immutable. “Loshak and Drukarev were working for Konaka.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Bakhtin.

  “They admitted it last night just before I put two bullets into Loshak,” said Hendrick.

  “I see,” said Bakhtin.

  Hendrick got the distinct impression that Bakhtin already knew. “Someone else put a couple of slugs into Drukarev. Was that you?”

  Bakhtin smiled and shrugged to himself. “Yes. I am unaccustomed to anyone doing my job for me, especially anything so distasteful as eliminating someone.” He nodded to Hendrick. “Spasiba, tovarisch.”

  “You were supposed to kill them both?” asked Hendrick incredulously. “Why?”

  “You said it yourself. They were working for Konaka,” replied Bakhtin.

  “How did you know that?” asked Hendrick. “Were you told by Japanese intelligence?”

  Bakhtin’s eyebrows went up in surprise. Hendrick nodded to himself. Maggie had told her employers, the Naicho, and they in turn had told the SVR.

  Bakhtin hesitated, then gave Hendrick a meaningful look. He picked up his brief case, popped it open and pulled out a short object. Hendrick stared at it in amazement. It was the cylinder from the Awa Maru that had contained Stalin’s letter. The sides had the remnants of soot from the burning buildings on Konaka’s island.

  “You know what this is,” said Bakhtin. It wasn’t a question.

  Hendrick nodded. “How did you come by it?”

  “The Taiwanese covert team that landed on the island of Tung-yin Tao after your battle with Konaka asked me what it was and what might have been in it,” Bakhtin replied. “They picked it out of a burned-out building. I told them that it was nothing of consequence.” He had an intense expression on his face. “What was in it?”

  Hendrick thought it over briefly and decided that there was no harm in telling the Russian the truth. He stood and walked over to his attaché case. He pulled out the translation of Stalin’s letter, handing it to Bakhtin. The Russian read it quickly, his mouth opening as he got halfway through.

  “There were two copies of this letter in the cylinder, one in Russian and one in Japanese,” said Hendrick in anticipation of Bakhtin’s next question.

  “Where are the originals?” asked Bakhtin.

  “The Japanese version was either burned up in the fire, or Konaka still has it,” replied Hendrick.

  “And the Russian version?” asked Bakhtin.

  “I lost it,” Hendrick said, surprising himself at his protection of Maggie.

  “Konaka has read this letter?” asked Bakhtin in a rush. Hendrick nodded. The Russian agent thought for a moment, then leaned forward to lend importance to what he was going to say.

  “Stalin actually shipped two atomic bombs to Japan,” said Bakhtin.

  “Yes, I know,” said Hendrick.

  Bakhtin was clearly surprised. “How do you know this?”

  “I came across a picture showing the bombs in the hands of the Japanese,” replied Hendrick.

  “Where did you get this picture?” demanded Bakhtin.

  “Robert Lindsey gave it to me. He’s the one shot by Loshak,” replied Hendrick.

  “Yes, we know of him,” said Bakhtin. “Let me see the picture.”

  “I lost that too,” answered Hendrick. Bakhtin twisted his mouth in disbelief. “I have a question for you,” continued Hendrick. “Why did Stalin give atomic bombs to Japan?”

  Bakhtin shook his head to convey the difficulty of an accurate answer. ”I have some people working on that question now. The best they’ve come up with is that Berlin remained a contentious point between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Soviets wanted the U.S. out of Berlin and the U.S. refused to go. We nearly went to war over it a few times. Stalin must have thought that a nuclear-armed Japan would distract the U.S. so that he could make some sort of move against Berlin. After the bombs were in Japanese custody, it was leaked to the CIA that the Japanese had them. When confronted, the Japanese denied having them.

  “Stalin died right after the delivery, so whatever moves he would have made to go along with the bomb delivery died with him. Maybe he also thought that two relatively old atomic bombs weren’t worth much in light of their almost completed development of the H-bomb. He apparently was quite irrational toward the end.”

  “The Japanese still have these bombs?” asked Hendrick.

  Bakhtin nodded. “There is going to be an economic summit in Tokyo next week where the leaders of the top economic nations and their economic advisors will discuss policy. The Japanese government is worried that revealing the contents of this letter or their possession of the bombs will make headlines during this summit. To avoid any embarrassment to the governments of Russia and Japan, the Japanese have agreed to ship the bombs back to Russia for disposal, so that at least the Japanese can say that they are no longer in possession of any nuclear weapons. And so you see that the entire situation has come full circle.”

  “Good, that will be the end of it,” replied Hendrick. “You knew about the letter all the time then.”

  “For the last twenty-four hours,” replied Bakhtin. “The Japanese as well. It may seem unlikely, but the intelligence services of Japan and Russia do talk to one another now and then.” He looked at the letter once again. “But to see it written out in Stalin’s very own words - It is amazing.” He gave Hendrick a quick smile. “You made quite a mess of Konaka’s operation on Tung-yin Tao,” he added. There was admiration in his voice.

  “He had a lot of explosives on the island, and pretty bad security,” explained Hendrick. “By the way, did that covert team that landed on Konaka’s island find any gold?”

  Bakhtin’s eyebrows went up. “Ah, the other treasure that you recovered from the Awa Maru.” He shook his head. “They found no gold.”

  Hendrick gave him a rueful smile. “I knew I couldn’t get that lucky.”

  Bakhtin gave Hendrick a close look. “When you were on Konaka’s island did you go inside any of the buildings?” asked Bakhtin.

  “Briefly inside a couple of the buildings. Why do you ask?” asked Hendrick in a puzzled tone.

  “Do you know what a gamma ray spectrometer is?” asked Bakhtin.

  “Isn’t it a device to detect gamma rays?” returned Hendrick.

  “Yes, and Konaka apparently took possession of one of those devices about a year ago. I was wondering if you had seen anything that could be such a device.”

  Hendrick thought for a moment. “A terrorist with a gamma ray spectrometer. So he’s looking for nuclear material. The question is: what or who is he going to nuke?” He lapsed back into thought. “One of h
is men seemed to know what Hidden Sun was. After reading Stalin’s letter, Konaka said that I had given him Japan.” The conclusion roared through Hendrick’s mind. He began to explain. “Konaka is going to steal the two atomic bombs! One of his men must know where they are.” Hendrick had another thought. “He’ll probably try to steal the bombs when they’re shipped back to Russia. Think of how much damage the bombs will do if detonated in a major city.”

  “But the bombs won’t detonate,” reminded Bakhtin. “The nuclear material in the detonators will have decayed by now.”

  “They don’t have to detonate the bombs to be a threat,” said Hendrick. “He could use the plutonium to poison the drinking water of major cities all around the world.”

  Bakhtin thought for several moments. Hendrick kept quiet, knowing that the SVR agent had to sort things out in his mind. The Russian leaned back in his chair and looked extremely worried. “The Japanese government has decided to take a low key approach to this shipment with minimal visible security.”

  “How is the shipment to take place?” asked Hendrick.

  Bakhtin thought for a moment, then judged that it was harmless to tell Hendrick. “A freighter will sail from Yokosuka with the bombs to Vladivostok. It will be shadowed by a Japanese destroyer. The Russian navy will be waiting outside Vladivostok to escort the ship to its final destination.”

  “Konaka will try to hijack it on the high seas. That’s his style,” said Hendrick with certainty. The memory of Konaka’s boarding of his ship in the Taiwan Strait ran through his mind.

  Bakhtin suddenly stood and looked down at Hendrick with determination on his face. “We have work to do.”

  “We?” asked Hendrick.

  “You are coming with me,” Bakhtin said. “If you are right about all this, then you will receive the undying gratitude of the Russian government for fighting side-by-side with the Sluzhba. But if you are lying, then there still is the matter of the bank notes that disappeared from the Russian finance minister’s office.”

  Hendrick was surprised that Bakhtin knew about the bank notes. Then he realized that his two wayward subordinates, Loshak and Drukarev, must have told him about it. He wondered about the fate of Finance Minister Gradov with whom he had conspired to liquidate the bank notes.

  Hendrick took a sudden look around. Two large men stood silently behind his sofa. His heart sank. He berated himself. He should have known that Bakhtin wouldn’t have come alone.

  “The house is surrounded by my men,” said Bakhtin quietly.

  Hendrick decided to make the best of it. He stood and looked him square in the eye. “All right. It’s a deal.” A thought struck him. But how would Bakhtin react? He excused himself to pack a small bag and went upstairs. Bakhtin let him go, confident that there was no way for Hendrick to escape.

  He went to his bedroom and tried to ignore his continuing thoughts of Maggie. Would he ever see her again? He shoved her out of his mind and concentrated on the job at hand. He and Bakhtin had to try to stop Konaka. But first there was something he had to do. He walked over to a nightstand and picked up the phone. He had to call a new-found friend.

  For insurance.

  CHAPTER 36

  The Transfer

  JAPAN

  THREE DAYS LATER

  Maggie Ramsey scanned the horizon with binoculars for the hundredth time since leaving the port of Yokosuka on the eastern coast of Japan. She twisted all the way around while leaning against the port bridge wing’s railing and faced south toward O Shima Island, then turned farther to look back along their wake. She could just make out the destroyer the Japanese Navy had supplied as an escort for the eleven hundred mile trip to Vladivostok.

  The Akita Maru, a relatively old freighter in the Japanese merchant marine, throbbed below her feet as it noisily made its way through the choppy waters of the Western Pacific. They had been underway for three hours now at a speed of twenty knots. Only one thousand and forty miles to go, thought Maggie as she pulled her foul weather jacket closer around her body to keep out the increasingly chilly wind off the water. The sun was high in the sky but provided little heat. In spite of a bright sun she saw a gloom over the large Japanese island of Honshu. She could see the outline of the destroyer contrasting with the backdrop of the darker island.

  The Japanese government, along with the military and the intelligence agencies, had been informed of a possible attempt to steal their extremely valuable cargo by the international terrorist Masaya Konaka. The Japanese government, however, still didn’t back away from their desire to keep the transfer of the Soviet atomic bombs as low key as possible. They had sent out another destroyer ahead of them, escorting a ship, which was actually a decoy. And behind them was the second destroyer escorting another decoy ship. Between the two sets of ships was the Akita Maru with the real atomic bombs on board and with no nearby escort.

  The Japanese government had put a platoon of very tough looking armed sailors on the Akita Maru. Maggie glanced at her watch. Even now the sailors were going through some sort of drill after training all morning, setting up gun emplacements, and practicing a repel boarders drill.

  The Soviet atomic bombs, or what was left of them after being dismantled by Japanese nuclear engineers, were locked securely in two large containers. Maggie had heard that there wasn’t much shielding in them to contain the radiation from the thirty or so pounds of radioactive material in each case. The ship’s crew had been warned to stay away from their unusual cargo. The containers had been loaded into the number two hold amidships only minutes after they had arrived from their storage facility in Yokosuka. Shortly after the containers were loaded, the ship set sail along the east coast of Japan toward its destination in Russia, Vladivostok. Japanese authorities wanted no delay in getting the transfer underway.

  “So we are on our way, making history,” said a voice in Japanese over her shoulder.

  Maggie glanced back and eyed her superior, Junji Takahata, of the Naicho, Japanese Foreign Intelligence.

  “Yes, making history,” mused Maggie. “But why am I making history with you?” She had been wondering why she was told to accompany the bombs back to Russia.

  Takahata glanced at her without expression. “If these reports of attempted theft of this cargo are correct, then we need someone who can positively identify these terrorists. And you can identify this man Konaka and some of the men working with him.”

  Maggie shrugged in resignation. “But do I need all this?” She held up the Mini-Uzi machine gun and clip belt that was slung across her right hip, and touched the handgun she had in a shoulder holster under her left arm.

  “Your record indicates that you are qualified with these weapons,” replied Takahata, “and this is one situation where you might have to use them.” He gave her a close look with half closed eyes. “You have performed with exceptional bravery up until now. I would not like to see that change.” He had the beginnings of a smile on his face.

  From Takahata this was high praise indeed, thought Maggie. He normally never said anything that even hinted at a compliment for his subordinates. Maggie looked Takahata over quickly and noted that he had the same weaponry on him.

  Junji Takahata was the head of a new and relatively small department in the Naicho. Takahata’s department was the equivalent of covert operations departments in intelligence agencies around the globe. The Naicho, called the Cabinet Research Office and which reported to the Prime Minister, was small itself, only about two hundred members, and was dedicated to intelligence assessment. Recently with Takahata’s urging, a covert action staff was assembled. Maggie Ramsey was the only non-Japanese and the only female member of the department. Their number had decreased to eighteen after Maggie’s rescue from Chang. Two of their agents had been killed in the rescue operation, a fact which left Maggie feeling guilty and which insured her loyalty to the department’s members.

  Takahata’s attention was suddenly riveted on something in the distance. Maggie turned and saw a glint of ro
tor blades near the horizon. She immediately raised her binoculars as the announcement was made by the lookouts over the public address system that an aircraft was approaching from the northwest.

  A helicopter swung shakily into view in her fieldglasses. It looked large and powerful, and it was coming on fast. Maggie thought of her superior next to her and offered him the binoculars. He took them with a serious expression on his face and gazed steadily through them. Maggie glanced around at the sailors who were deploying about the ship brandishing an array of weapons. She saw one man crouching down behind the aft gunwale with a large tubular structure on his shoulder. She recognized it as a Stinger, a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile used to shoot down aircraft. He pointed the Stinger at the oncoming aircraft. Maggie relaxed. If the oncoming helicopter tried to attack, the Stinger would blow them out of the sky in seconds. She nodded imperceptibly to herself. The Japanese had thought of everything.

  Takahata was called away by one of the bridge crew and returned moments later in a more relaxed mood. “We are getting some visitors.”

  “Who?” asked Maggie.

  “You’ll see in a few minutes,” said Takahata. “I believe you know them.”

  Maggie’s curiosity was piqued, and she asked Takahata once again who they were, but he wouldn’t say. Takahata enjoyed surprises and being mysterious, much to his subordinates’ annoyance, especially Maggie, who disliked that sort of game but was forced to play it herself in the intelligence business. She looked the helicopter over again, noting that there were no markings on its fuselage.

  The helicopter came on without hesitation in spite of the weapons trained on it by the Japanese sailors. The helo tilted back to decrease forward velocity then hovered over the helo deck, which was aft of the ship’s superstructure. Seconds later the helicopter touched down on the deck. A half dozen men spilled out carrying small automatic weapons, crouching low against the rotor blast while making their way toward the bridge. Maggie looked them over, squinting against the torrent from the rotors but was unable to identify any of them in the distance.