“Come,” said Takahata to Maggie. “Let us greet our guests.”
They went down two decks to the helo deck, through a hatch and into what they humorously called the lounge, a bare walled room with paint peeling in several places and with one table and several chairs in the center. The six men from the helicopter entered through a door in the opposite wall of the room. Maggie looked them over one by one as they entered. They were all Caucasians, Russians by the looks of them. She didn’t know any of them.
Georgi Bakhtin was the next to last man to enter. His eyes fixed on Maggie and gave her a smile.
“Miss Ramsey, I presume,” said the SVR agent.
Maggie didn’t respond, her eyes rushing to the last man to enter, her heart speeding up without knowing why. Steve Hendrick entered the room, looked about quickly and ended up staring at Maggie.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” he said lamely.
Maggie returned his stare for a moment, then turned to Takahata. “Why is he here?” she asked in Japanese.
“You are surprised?” asked Takahata. Maggie clenched her teeth and gave him a dirty look. Takahata decided he had better answer the question. “He was invited along by our invited guests.” Takahata gestured in the direction of the Russians.
Maggie turned to Bakhtin. “Why him?” she demanded as she pointed to Hendrick.
Bakhtin gave Hendrick an amused glance. “He has told us a very wild story about a terrorist who wants what is on this ship.”
She looked Hendrick over once again and noted that he had no weapons as the others had. “So why bring Hendrick?”
“He can positively identify all the principals in this scheme to steal this cargo, if it really is a scheme,” replied Bakhtin. “If it is not, and it is just a story, then he will have to answer for some things in Russia.”
Maggie frowned. “What things?” Hendrick looked like he was sweating.
“There is a question of some bank notes which were stolen from Russia,” continued Bakhtin. “Our former finance minister, Valentin Gradov, had left Russia for Switzerland with a great deal of these bank notes after giving me a story that the notes were no longer worth anything. Some checking by our agents with financial contacts in the United States proved otherwise.” He gave Hendrick a short smile.
Hendrick gave Maggie a look of total innocence.
“We have recovered Gradov and his share of the bank notes which was approximately half the total worth of four million U.S. dollars,” said Bakhtin. “Now there’s the matter of the other half that we haven’t recovered.”
Hendrick looked at him in annoyance. “Those bank notes are rightfully mine. They were stolen from me by your two lackeys, Loshak and Drukarev.”
“Where did these bank notes come from?” asked Maggie, now completely intrigued.
“They were recovered from the Awa Maru,” said Hendrick.
Maggie gave Hendrick a look of disgust mixed with awe and respect. “You’re just a surprise a minute, aren’t you? And when were you going to tell me about the bank notes?”
“I told you about Stalin’s letter and look what it got me,” replied Hendrick in anger.
She tried to hold his stare, but her gaze wavered and fell. There was no defense for what she had done. She had the choice to be loyal to Hendrick, or betray him to keep a commitment to the Naicho who had saved her from Chang. She unconsciously moved closer to Takahata. She had made her choice, and there was no undoing it.
Maggie’s eyes wandered aimlessly for a few moments until they fell on the Russians’ armament. They each had nine-millimeter Makarov handguns in belt holsters and small submachine guns similar to the Naicho, but they were Russian made, nicknamed Kedr, the equivalent of the Mini-Uzi’s the Naicho carried. The Kedr submachine guns used the same rounds as the Makarov handguns.
Maggie noticed that Bakhtin’s pants leg had caught on the top of one of his boots exposing the butt end of a knife.
“It’s nice to see that you and your men are well armed,” she said. “Even to daggers in the shoes.” She gestured to his boots.
Bakhtin gave her an embarrassed glance and pulled his pant leg up slightly then let it go to cover the top of his boot.
“The Russian firing knife, no doubt,” said Takahata. “It fires a seven point six two millimeter special round from the butt of the knife. It is very useful for the line of business we are in, eh, Comrade Bakhtin?”
Bakhtin, who was clearly annoyed that anyone had seen the knife, nodded reluctantly.
“Now to the business at hand,” said Bakhtin to take control of the conversation. “I need to know exactly what state these articles are in.” A smallish man at the rear of the Japanese entourage spoke up.
“The packages consist of the entire bomb, but with the fuzes removed, so they have been completely safed,” said Yasuo Namiki, the nuclear engineer responsible for the technical aspects of the bomb transfer.
“They had fuzes in them?” asked Hendrick in an incredulous tone. They all looked at him. “Materials in the bombs will decay so that an old bomb won’t detonate. The plutonium or uranium will still be potent, but the other radioactive materials would be dead after sixty years. So why have a fuze in them?”
“You are correct about the radioactive materials. Polonium will -” began Namiki.
He was interrupted by a curt phrase in Japanese from Takahata. Namiki got a chastened look on his face and clamped his mouth shut.
“Well, Steve, you have stumbled upon one of the most closely kept secrets in the Japanese government for the last six decades,” said Bakhtin. “Since our talk back in Taiwan, I have discovered that the Japanese kept the bombs active by replacing critical materials as they decayed. These bombs were able to detonate up until yesterday when they removed the fuzes.”
Hendrick’s mouth popped open in surprise. “Why?”
“For insurance. What else?” said Bakhtin. “It is rather ironic that a country that has continually condemned the use of nuclear weapons, and is itself the only country to suffer nuclear weapon attack has two nuclear weapons at its disposal.” He gave an amused look to Takahata.
The Naicho leader gritted his teeth and said nothing. The ship’s public address system came alive with a short announcement in Japanese. Hendrick caught the name Takahata but nothing else.
“I am needed on the bridge,” Takahata said stiffly. He turned and left quickly. Bakhtin started to deploy his men, and Maggie followed Takahata. Hendrick, with nothing to do, tagged along after Maggie.
“Surprised to see me?” asked Hendrick.
Maggie glanced over her shoulder. “Yes. You have a habit of popping up when you’re least expected.”
They exited a doorway onto a weather deck and headed for the ladder that led up to the bridge. Hendrick suddenly reached out and grabbed Maggie by the arm. He turned her toward him.
“You were sent by the Naicho to spy on me in the Taiwan Strait, weren’t you?” he demanded. She winced. “All that crap about taking a sailing ship to Taiwan was bullshit too.”
“The Japanese government knew what was on board the Awa Maru and didn’t want Stalin’s letter to become known,” explained Maggie. She yanked her arm loose from Hendrick’s grip. “We were on an oceanographic research vessel to see if you had actually found the Awa Maru, but we were caught in a storm and capsized. The rest was true.”
“If you wanted to play spook, why didn’t you join the CIA?” asked Hendrick.
“My stepfather is the head of the DIH,” replied Maggie.
“DIH?” asked Hendrick.
“The Defense Intelligence Headquarters was created some years ago to upgrade Japanese intelligence analysis. He recruited me,” said Maggie. “He thought I would make the ideal agent. He knew no one would think that I would work for the Japanese.”
“So you joined the Naicho to get approval from your stepfather,” said Hendrick.
Maggie’s face froze. She turned away slowly. “No, it was for my mother. I thought
I’d fit in better if I -”
“Was it so important to give the letter and Lindsey’s picture to your friends here?” Hendrick gestured angrily up the ladder.
“Yes, it was important. It was important for me to keep a commitment that I had made. Maybe you wouldn’t know about anything like that. They rescued me from Chang. I owed them.” Maggie turned and ran up the ladder.
Hendrick clenched his teeth and followed her.
When they entered the bridge, they could see Takahata in earnest conversation with the ship’s captain, Fumio Ohsawa.
“I showed up at Chang’s headquarters a couple of days too late, I guess,” muttered Hendrick into Maggie’s ear.
“Oh, Steve,” she mumbled in frustration. Hendrick started to say something else, but Maggie had her attention focused on Takahata and the captain and waved him to be quiet. Hendrick stopped in midsentence and looked at Takahata.
“A commercial freighter has gone dead in the water ahead of us, and they said that they’re sinking,” relayed Maggie in a breathless tone. “They’re asking for our help, and the captain wants to stop, but Takahata ordered him to keep going.”
Hendrick nodded. “It could be a trap.”
“It could be a sinking ship,” Maggie shot back.
Their eyes went to the ship in the distance, a degree off the starboard bow. A signal light blinked on and off in intermittent rhythm. Maggie continued with her translation of the conversation on the bridge.
“They’ve lost power, and their radios are out,” she said in an undertone.
“Of course. They don’t want anyone else to hear them,” said Hendrick. He had no idea whether he was right in his assessment that it was a trap, but he felt compelled to disagree with Maggie out of stubbornness.
“Ships can lose power, you know,” answered Maggie.
“They don’t have any batteries on board for their portable radios?” asked Hendrick.
Maggie hated to admit it, but Hendrick’s remarks got her worried. Why were they in trouble here? Why now? Was it too much of a coincidence?
MV EASTERN CONVEYOR
“We have a positive indication,” said the console operator. He glanced over his shoulder at the two men standing next to the gamma ray spectrometer. In spite of the distance between the spectrometer and the nuclear weapons, the sensitive instrument had detected gamma rays emanating from the ship that rapidly approached them.
Masaya Konaka stood impassively as his plan unfolded. A subordinate, Ken-Ichi Murata shot an admiring look toward his leader. He nodded slowly, then with increased vigor.
“This is working out as planned, Konaka-san,” said Murata.
“We were fortunate that you knew the location of the top secret project called Hidden Sun,” replied Konaka. “Then when our colleagues in the government informed us about the bomb transfer, the plan came together quickly. It was child’s play to pick out which ship leaving Yokosuka actually had the bombs on board.”
The two men walked out of the room to the weather deck, with Murata deferentially walking behind Konaka who climbed the ladder to the bridge. On the bridge, Konaka gave orders to ready his helicopter, then they picked up binoculars and studied the approaching ship, the Akita Maru.
“Do you think they will stop?” asked Murata.
“I would not if I were them,” replied Konaka, a smile tugging at his taut face.
CHAPTER 37
Pulse and Gas
AKITA MARU
All eyes on the bridge of the Akita Maru strained to pick out details of what was happening on the ship that was now only two miles away and two degrees off their starboard bow.
“Helicopter lifting off!” said Maggie as she stared through her binoculars. She lowered them briefly to glance at the ship’s captain who was radioing the warship following miles behind them.
The mystery ship was built similarly to the Akita Maru with a helicopter deck aft of the superstructure. It appeared to be a container ship with a full load of containers on deck. The air above the single stack was clear, no smoke visible. The ship was clearly dead in the water. It also appeared to be taking on a slight list.
The large white helicopter came straight at them at high speed, covering the distance between them in less than a minute. The shouted orders of the Japanese sailors filled the air around the ship as they got ready to fend off what might be an attack.
Takahata’s walkie-talkie crackled with a report from the naval commander. Takahata told them to wait for his order to open fire. He eyed the helicopter closely to assess the threat. It was a commercial type, but relatively large with what looked to be a cargo area behind the passenger compartment.
One of Takahata’s men immediately got on the ship’s radio and attempted to warn the helicopter off, but repeated messages were ignored by the helicopter crew. Suddenly the ship’s radio came alive with a message from the helicopter. Maggie translated for Hendrick.
“They have a casualty on board and want to land to transfer him to us so we can administer first aid. Apparently a boiler exploded,” said Maggie in a hushed voice.
“I don’t believe them. Not for a second,” said Hendrick. He turned to Takahata. “It’s Konaka! Blow the damn thing out of the sky!”
Takahata gave him a sharp look, trying to stifle his indecision. He told the radio operator to keep ordering the helicopter away. The helicopter got within two hundred yards of the ship then turned and ran down the length of the freighter. All eyes followed the aircraft as it passed by the stern then swung wide of the ship and took up a station five hundred yards off the starboard quarter.
“What the hell was all that about?” asked Hendrick under his breath. Maggie shook her head slowly. “Did you see that strange oblong thing on the underside of the fuselage? It looked like a satellite dish that was stretched out of shape.”
“An antenna of some kind?” offered Maggie.
An excited voice came from one of the bridge crew. Maggie walked over to the radar repeater display, as did Takahata and the ship’s captain. They all stared at it.
“Everything has disappeared from the radar!” exclaimed Maggie.
Hendrick whirled and looked at the bridge instruments. The GPS receiver display had gone blank. The radio operator had a frustrated look on his face as he pushed buttons quickly on the radio’s front panel. Hendrick knew the radio was out as well.
“Takahata! Tell your men to shoot down that helicopter! Now!” shouted Hendrick. The Naicho leader just shook his head without looking at the American. Hendrick took a step toward him and grabbed his arm.
“Konaka has blown out all the electronics on the ship! Shoot him down!” Hendrick shouted. He gestured quickly toward the radio and the GPS receiver.
Takahata looked about in disbelief. He yanked his arm free from Hendrick and reached for his walkie-talkie. He keyed the transmitter and gave a guttural order, then let the transmit button go and waited for the reply. None came. Takahata tried twice more, then gave Hendrick a look near panic.
“They can’t hear you. Their receivers are blown out,” said Hendrick. The full magnitude of the electronic attack on the ship suddenly became apparent. No radios, and no contact with the shadowing warship. He had a second thought. The ship’s captain, Fumio Ohsawa, had sent a message to the destroyer about the ship that was dead in the water. Now that contact was lost, the destroyer would assume the worst and come on the run.
Maggie ran out to the starboard bridge wing, shouting in Japanese to shoot down the helo. Hendrick went to a window and watched the sailors set up to fire on Konaka’s aircraft. He heard Maggie gasp in disbelief and looked in her direction. She was looking forward toward Konaka’s ship.
A very large helicopter was hovering over the ship. Below it was the cavernous opening in the top of what had looked to be separate containers but were actually one very large hangar that had concealed the now hovering helicopter. Seconds later the helicopter rotated to face them then headed toward the Akita Maru. Hendrick grabbed a spare
pair of binoculars and hurriedly lifted them to his eyes. The helicopter was dark green with one large rotor and an array of rocket launchers and cannon mounted on its fuselage.
“It’s Russian,” said Bakhtin breathlessly. He had come up to the bridge to assess the situation. “It’s a Mil Mi-17. Those are thirty-millimeter cannons on the side with -” He strained to make out the details. “ - one pod for fifty seven millimeter rockets.” He lowered his binoculars. “Suki syn!”
“You can say that again,” mumbled Hendrick in reply to the Russian version of “son of a bitch.” “It looks like the helicopter we saw on Konaka’s island.”
The dark green helicopter swept in without hesitation at low altitude, bypassing the bridge to deliver three rockets into the sailors scattered throughout the deck in various defensive positions. The rockets exploded with devastating effect. Black smoke, flame and body parts filled the air.
The attacking helicopter fired another salvo of rockets, which struck the center deck of the freighter and exploded, leaving plumes of white smoke. The smoke settled over the deck and the sailors like morning mist in a river valley.
“Oh, God! It’s got to be a gas attack!” said Maggie in a wavering voice.
Hendrick suddenly realized that the ship was slowing down. He whirled around to the bridge crew. “What’s happening? Get our speed back up to push the gas off the deck!” The captain looked about in panic. Both Maggie and Takahata began to shout at him in Japanese until he rang up full speed ahead on the engine order telegraph.
The large helicopter stopped firing and hovered over the deck between the two large cranes fore and aft of the hatch to the center hold. The stiff rotor wash from the helo cleared the deck of the white gas, exposing the sight of Japanese sailors lying prostrate on the deck in awkward positions. Lines fell from the helicopter and unfurled to within a few feet of the deck. These were quickly followed by black-clad men, automatic weapons slung on their backs, who swiftly slid down the ropes. Their faces were covered with bulky gas masks. They came down the ropes six at a time.
Hidden Sun Page 40