RW14 - Dictator's Ransom

by Richard Marcinko

  “You are a very practical man, Rogue Warrior,” said Kim.

  “Call me Dick.”

  “And you will simply call me Great.”

  I smiled. He smiled. We both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  “You hold your liquor very well,” said Kim.

  “So do you. Considering you’ve been drinking water all night.”

  Kim gave me a dirty look, then started to laugh.

  “I am glad to find that in person, you are even more clever than on the page.” He rose. “Mr. Sun will speak to you.”

  And with that, Kim departed. I sat in the chair, sipping my gin very slowly. A video camera sat in the corner of the ceiling opposite me, obviously watching.

  The complex was certainly large enough to house weapons somewhere, but so far I hadn’t seen any indication of where they might be. Staying the night—or whatever was left of it—would give me a chance to wander around, so I yawned for the camera, preparing my cover story. As I stretched my arms back, a burly Korean dressed in a Western business suit entered the room and strutted over to me, his face screwed into a frown.

  To this point, the dinner had seemed almost innocuous—as if it were, just as Kim’s people had said, a chance for the Great Dictator to meet someone he admired. But I wasn’t counting on that, and Sun’s manner would have cured any misconception if I had.

  “You are an enemy of the people,” said Sun. “Your country and my country are at war.”

  “That war ended decades ago.”

  “The war will not be over until Korea is reunited and the people are free of Western imperialism.”

  “Your people are free of a lot of things,” I told him. “Especially food.”

  “You have insulted the Korean people. Your presence itself is an insult,” said Sun. “Only by the grace of the Great Leader have you been tolerated. Do not forget this.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “You are an American, and that is despicable,” said Sun. “But you have one very important quality—you can get into places that others cannot.”

  “Such as?”

  Sun frowned. “The Great Leader wishes you to locate his son, Yong Shin Jong. You have two weeks to bring him here.”

  “Two weeks?”

  “The leader believes you can do it in one. You will be escorted off the premises now.”

  “I thought I’d grab a catnap before I left.”

  “Your friends are already waiting in the car. There will be no delay.”

  Six soldiers had entered while we were talking, and came toward my chair. I rose. Sun took a business card from his pocket. It was extremely simple—just his name, with a international phone number and a Google e-mail address.

  Good to see our enemies making the best use of our technology.

  “You will contact me when you have completed your task,” said Sun. “The Great Leader will see to it that you are paid for your efforts. $64 million. The sum is not negotiable. If it were up to me, you would receive nothing but your life.”

  He turned and started toward the door.

  “Hold on, cowboy,” I told Sun. “Where is Yong Shin Jong?”

  “I was told you were smart enough to figure this out. We last heard that he was in China. Two weeks. Or the Great Leader will not agree to your government’s treaty. And I will have the very great pleasure of seeing that you do not have an opportunity to insult the Korean people any longer.”

  1 You like these Roman numerals and mini-chapter breaks? Yeah, neither do I, but it was the editor’s idea. We have to do something he wants, or he won’t spring for drinks next time we see him.

  2 Officially, Delta’s “funny squadron” doesn’t exist, and hasn’t since it was created in 1993. Then again neither does Delta.

  3 The publishers’ lawyers have recommended I not use Fogglebottom’s real name, which is William Yarkowski, for fear of pissing off the administration. This is what happens when lawyers are allowed to make contributions to political campaigns.

  4 I wrote about some of my experiences with PBRs and their commanders in the original Rogue Warrior.

  5 Admiral Crowe passed away while I was in Korea. He was one of the finest leaders I’ve ever known. He had a brilliant mind and he used it instead of his rank to show the way. The admiral was instrumental in having CNO pick me to commission Seal Six. I’m proud to say he was also a friend. He’ll be sorely missed by his family, and his country.

  6 See Violence of Action.

  7 The width of the highways is not a coincidence. They’re intended to be used as runways during a war.

  8 Should I confess here that Kim had used a variety of the stand-in trick on the Chinese the year before? Nah. Better you think I’m omniscient rather than well read.

  2

  [ I ]

  YONG SHIN JONG, only son of a woman named Jeong Eun Kyung,” explained Fogglebottom a few hours later in Tokyo. “She and the Great Leader had a hookup in the late 1970s and early eighties while he was on Malta. She’s probably one reason he speaks English so well—she was one of his tutors.”

  “He likes older women?” I asked.

  “He likes all women.”

  “A man after my own heart.”

  I paged through the photos Fogglebottom had brought. They showed a slightly pudgy Korean in his mid-twenties. He had a serious face, even in the two candid photos. He had dark buzz-cut hair and a dimple in his chin that looked like an upside-down triangle. He resembled his father as a young man, though unlike Kim Jong Il he didn’t need glasses.

  Fogglebottom and I were sitting in a secure room in the embassy, which included metal shielding in the walls—a Faraday Cage for the technically minded—to prevent eavesdropping. Kim’s goons had marched me out of the complex the same way I’d come in, depositing me in the Mercedes where Trace and the translator were waiting. We’d been driven directly to the airport and returned to Tokyo.

  “If he’s looking for his son, it’s very possible that he does have cancer,” said Fogglebottom. “Two of Russia’s top oncology experts have been flown to Pyongyang in the past month. Until now, we’ve had nothing connecting them to Kim, but it would make a lot of sense. Pancreatic cancer cannot be cured once it has spread beyond a certain point,” he added. “So it’s understandable that Kim is looking to reconcile with his bastard son before he dies.”

  Except that Kim didn’t strike me as the touchy-feely type. Obviously there was more to the “request” than met the eye; it was just a question of how much more. I leaned back in my chair, listening as Foggy told me everything he knew about Yong Shin Jong. Unlike Kim’s acknowledged sons, who had reputations as eccentric ne’er-do-wells—or just plain psychos—Yong Shin Jong was not only normal but reputed to be fairly bright. He had been raised far from the capital until he was twelve. At that point he was taken to a private school in China, and later to Germany. He went to college in Hong Kong, studying economics. Upon graduation, he’d gone to work for Daddy, helping administer the Kaesong Industrial Region, a small area near South Korea where companies from the South can use cheap northern workers.

  How cheap? The most recent estimates put North Korean wages—which are mostly paid to the state, not the workers—at about half the average Chinese worker’s. And Chinese laborers get about a tenth of what a South Korean factory worker is typically paid.

  Not a bad deal for the companies, which is one reason so many South Korean capitalists want to normalize relations with the North. But of course, nothing in North Korea works very well, even when Kim himself is behind it, and the Kaesong Industrial Region hasn’t come close to its potential.

  “According to the CIA, Yong Shin Jong disappeared three months ago,” said Fogglebottom. “There was some thinking that he was on vacation in Europe, traveling under an assumed name—something Kim’s other sons tend to do a lot.”

  “Did you look for him in Disneyland?”

  “They did. And in many other places.”

  Disneyland wasn’
t a joke. Kim’s oldest son—and onetime heir apparent, Kim Jong Nam—had been arrested in 2001 trying to sneak into Tokyo Disneyland. Kim Jong Nam has since fallen out of favor and last I heard was trying to sell condos in Macau, a tiny region of China once populated by Portuguese traders now best known for its casinos.

  Son number two, Kim Jong Chul, was once considered a favorite of the army. (He was also a very big Eric Clapton fan.) But in the past few years Jong Chul was criticized by his father for being too weak and “girl-like”—the ultimate put-down in male-dominated North Korea.

  The latest intelligence estimates listed Kim’s youngest legitimate son, Kim Jon Woon, as the dictator’s favorite. But Kim’s interest in Yong Shin Jong was sure to cause a reevaluation.

  “So how soon do you think you can locate Yong?” asked Fogglebottom.

  “Who says I’m going to locate him?”

  “You’re not?”

  Foggy looked like I had hit him in the gut. “Why should we help North Korea?”

  A long dissertation on the need for “patriotic Americans to stand up to the plate” followed. But patriotism wasn’t the question here. I’d only gone to Kim’s drinking party because of Admiral Jones; I hadn’t had a chance to locate the bombs, but what I had seen would be of use, so I’d done my patriotic bit.

  Fogglebottom pointed out that finding Yong Shin Jong might mean he would end up in power after Kim died—which in turn might help us win friends and influence enemies after the regime change.

  “I would think if your government asked for your assistance, you would help gladly,” said Fogglebottom.

  “You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” I got up. “See you back in Washington sometime.”

  “But, Dick—”

  “Having dinner with him was bad enough. I’m not going to work for him.”

  “You’d really be working for us,” said Foggy.

  “Well that just cinches it, doesn’t it?”

  “Wait, Dick. Don’t go. Someone from the CIA wants to talk to you. He wants to debrief you about Kim’s palace.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He must be running late,” said Fogglebottom. “I expected him before you arrived.”

  “Tell him I’ll meet him after lunch. I have to go see a friend of mine and if I don’t go now, I’ll be late.”

  “But—”

  “If he’s got something better to do, we can always discuss it when I get back to the States.”

  [ II ]

  THERE’S NO WAY I can ever visit Tokyo without calling on Toshiro Okinaga. Tosho supervises a Kunika team, working on counterterrorism. Kunika is a special unit of the Japanese police force; they shut down the Japanese Red Army in the 1980s, and have played an important role in fighting a variety of terrorists, foreign and homegrown, in the years since. They’re every bit as efficient and relentless as you would expect the descendants of samurai warriors to be.

  I first met Tosho and friends back in my SEAL days, when Red Cell ran some exercises at a U.S-Japanese base at Yokosuka. He’s a hell of a shot and a seventh degree black belt; he can also put away the Kirin like there’s no tomorrow, a truly important quality for a SpecWarrior.

  We’d arranged to meet in a quiet noodle restaurant at the edge of Akasaka, which is Tokyo’s main business district. The restaurant caters almost exclusively to high-powered Japanese businessmen. Had we eaten there at night, Tosho would have had to mortgage his wife as well as his house to afford the meal. (Custom dictates that the host pay, and I would have insulted him severely had I even offered to do so.) Lunch, though, was very reasonable, with nothing on the menu more than a thousand yen—roughly eight and a half bucks.

  Tosho was already waiting when I arrived; his loud voice carried across the room.

  “Kusotare!”

  “Shithead!” I replied, translating the term.

  “It’s about time you got here, sturgeon breath.”

  “I lost your scent out back by the garbage cans.”

  Every eye followed me across the room as we continued to exchange terms of mutual endearment. They probably would have anyway. I was the only gaijin or non-Japanese in the place. When I reached the table, we one-upped each other with expletives and then toasted each other’s health with sake. Tosho ordered some sort of spiced octopus with noodles made of seaweed for me, then bragged about the pending addition to his family: a grandchild, due to be born in a few months.

  “So why were you in North Korea?” he asked finally.

  “How did you know I was in North Korea?”

  Tosho frowned. The North Koreans and Japanese have an exceedingly testy relationship, and a good part of Kunika’s resources are spent tracking developments in their dysfunctional neighbor across the Sea of Japan.

  “Your flight was recorded,” said Tosho. “And we received notification. It’s routine.”

  “And you knew I was on it?”

  “I can add two plus two. A flight comes from Pyongyang early in the morning. A short time later my old friend calls me for lunch. That’s not exactly calculus.”

  I gave Tosho a rundown, leaving out the fact that the meeting had taken place at Kim’s new palace, and that the real purpose of my visit had been to get a good peek at the inside. But I did tell him about Kim’s request that I find his son.

  “You’re going to do it?” Tosho asked.

  “Hell no.”

  “Good bit of money, Dick.”

  I laughed.

  “You’re not curious?” he added.

  “Curious about what?”

  “About what’s going on behind the scenes. I think I’d do it just for the giggles.”

  “You’re welcome to.”

  Tosho didn’t know much about Yong Shin Jong. So far as he knew, Kim’s illegitimate son hadn’t been part of any of North Korea’s operations in Japan.

  Sun, on the other hand, had an entire building of Kunika files devoted to him.

  “General Sun Sang Min—a Chinese-Korean who is one of Kim’s secret police officials. He’s the number two man in the State Safety and Security Agency—Kim himself is number one,” said Tosho.

  State Safety is the Korean equivalent of the Gestapo, without the cool cars but with bigger cattle prods. State Safety has incredible power in North Korea; even the military is afraid of them. Which is why Kim Jong Il heads the agency personally.

  “Sun is a very nasty customer,” added Tosho as he slurped his noodles. “Killed his own brother to get ahead. And that’s just for starters.”

  The North Korean secret service had run a variety of operations in Japan. For a while one of their favorite pastimes was kidnapping Japanese citizens. Though the entire operation was something of a mystery, it was believed to have been aimed at obtaining Japanese language teachers for North Korean spies. Sun, then a young operative, had been involved in at least one of the kidnappings. A few years later, he returned to Japan and lived there for at least three years, posing as a Singapore citizen. It was believed that he had helped beef up the North Korean spy network. Escaping just as the Japanese closed in, he had surfaced in Pyongyang as the director of a program to exterminate North Korean defectors living in South Korea. His excellent track record there led to his promotion to section director for internal affairs; there he consolidated his grip on the orga ni za tion and moved up the ladder quickly.

  “He is still very close to the Red Army,” said Tosho, referring to the Japanese Red Army, or JRA. The JRA’s heyday had long passed—the high point came in Israel in 1972 when they struck Lod airport. Since then, all the members have managed to do is get arrested, thanks largely to the efforts of Kunika. “He has many sources in Japan. He may even be watching you now.”

  “If State Safety is so powerful, why wouldn’t he be looking for Yong Shin Jong himself?”

  “You assume he wants to find him.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “Wouldn’t he be a rival for power?”

  “A puppet maybe. If he was a rival,
wouldn’t he just kill him?”

  “He will feel more constrained to act in China, because they are North Korea’s only ally,” said Tosho. “But if I were you I would not think I had been given the entire story. More than likely there is much more here than meets the eye.”

  “Well, I’m not involved in it, so I don’t care.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No.”

  “You went just for dinner?”

  “And the booze. I also expected women, but there weren’t any.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah” is one of those little words that means absolutely nothing on its own, but gains almost cosmic meaning depending on how it is said. This “ah” meant “I realize you have another reason but don’t want to say, therefore being Japanese I will not press you for it.”

  “Stepping back from the business?” asked Tosho.

  “No.”

  “I think of retirement myself,” said Tosho. “I want to devote myself to my family.”

  “That’s not it, Tosh.”

  “You’re not thinking of retiring?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “You’re just like the rest of us, you know. Age will catch up.”

  Nothing like an old friend telling you to your face that the gray hairs are starting to show. But Tosho has earned the right to say anything he wants.

  “You watch out for Sun,” he told me as we left the restaurant.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not getting involved in this.”

  Tosho laughed. “Watch out for him anyway.”

  [ III ]

  WHILE I WAS having lunch, Trace was riding a bullet train down to Kyoto, where she met Polorski and began exploring the sights.

  Kyoto is the ancient capital of Japan, and there are over two thousand Buddhist and Shinto shrines there. Some are magnificent works of art; others are basically falling down shacks with donation bins out front. Trace saw none of them. Her devotions were of a much more personal nature.

  As for my love life, being thousands of miles from Karen made me cranky and cantankerous. No different than normal, at least when I’m not blowing things up. But I did miss her.