The Gate

by Bob Mayer

  Now it was a waiting game and Nishin had never lost a wait. First, though, he needed to check in. He went to a pay phone and called in a report to Nakanga, then he returned to the crane.

  *****

  The man in the van also waited as the sun came up. Nishin didn’t move from his perch. The man had seen the bag and metal case Nishin carried, which indicated he wasn’t going back to wherever he’d come from. The man typed commands into his computer tracker. It was now set on alert. If Nishin moved it would come alive and beep him. He headed back to his hotel room.

  SAPPORO, HOKKAIDO, JAPAN

  SUNDAY, 5 OCTOBER 1997

  10:00 P.M. LOCAL

  Nakanga had just reported to Kuzumi that Nishin had located the North Koreans on their ship. Kuzumi did not acknowledge the report. If it was spoken in his presence, he heard it. Acknowledgment was a waste of time and energy. It was a trait he had used since first graduating the university over six decades ago. His Sensei departed the room, leaving him in peace.

  Kuzumi’s office was on the top floor of the temple. There were no windows and the walls were hung with tapestries, muting the hard armored walls underneath. Kuzumi’s desk was a massive semicircular piece of highly polished dark teak. On the wall to the left were a bank of TVs tuned in to various channels around the globe. The sound on all of them was currently muted. A small box on the left side of the desk controlled all the TVs and a computer sat there awaiting his instructions. Several phones were on the right side of the desk. Behind the desk, a three-drawer file cabinet squatted beneath a large painting. The painting depicted the same tattoo that was on Kuzumi’s chest, in startling, brilliant colors.

  It had been a long day for Kuzumi. There were always deals to be made, information to be absorbed, people to be dealt with, plans to be made. The last was always the most difficult. Kuzumi often felt like those chess champions who played in a large room against multiple opponents, moving from table to table, remembering the setup of each one. Except his stakes were much higher than simply losing a game. Kuzumi dealt in life and death and fortunes and the future of his country.

  The Black Ocean was a legitimate organization most of the time, although Kuzumi saw the law as simply a set of rules the government had to abide by, not the Black Ocean. If he had to break it, so be it. He answered to a higher authority than words written by men in a book.

  The Black Ocean controlled a vast amount of industry and land, both in Japan and overseas. What caused the government to cast a suspicious eye on it and the other secret societies was the fear of history repeating itself and the simple fact that the societies represented power. Any government with half a brain would keep an eye on the powerful organizations that existed within its borders and weren’t directly under its control.

  Kuzumi had become Genoysha in 1968. He had done so primarily because of his strength in the scientific and manufacturing field. He was one of the key architects, through the Black Ocean, in helping rebuild Japan from its wartime wreckage into the powerful economic juggernaut it currently was. Kuzumi being chosen by Genoysha Taiyo to be his successor was an indication of the appreciation of the role he had played in Japan’s economic rebirth. Always before, the Genoysha had been selected from among the field operatives. A man of unquestioning loyalty and proven ability to fight for what the Society stood for. Kuzumi’s field record was weak, but Genoysha Taiyo had done his job correctly, seeing the direction that Japan was heading in and picking the right type of leader the organization needed to change with the times. When the cancer that had been eating his insides finished Taiyo in 1968, it was Kuzumi’s destiny to get the tattoo of Genoysha of the Black Ocean.

  Kuzumi had wielded the power for the past thirty years, keeping the Black Ocean on a narrow path between the government, the people, the influence of other countries, and the Yakuza. There was no doubt he had succeeded so far in that he had much more influence among those other groups than they had with him. The Society controlled more wealth than many countries. It employed more people than most major corporations, although many of those who worked for it were unaware of the exact nature of their employer. But wealth and power was not the ultimate goal of the Society. The glory of Japan, and beyond and above Japan, the Sun Goddess and Emperor were.

  Japan was the center of the world and as such all events must turn in the direction that benefited the islands. The Black Ocean and the other societies existed because the government and the people often lost their way and a steady hand behind the scenes was needed. It was Kuzumi’s job to exercise that steady hand here and abroad.

  That thought drew his mind to the west. San Francisco. The name of the city brought conflicting emotions. He turned his wheelchair to the file cabinet behind him. The metal it was constructed of was the same used to line jet engines, impervious to heat and blast. The lock could only be activated by his retina placed up against a scanner at his eye level on top of the cabinet. Anyone else attempting to open the cabinet would set off a thermal charge on the inside, destroying the contents.

  Kuzumi leaned his forehead against the scanner and the laser flickered across his eyes. With a loud click, the locks withdrew. Kuzumi opened the bottom drawer and drew out a small, intricately carved wooden box. He turned back to the desk, the box in his lap. He turned the small clasp and opened the lid. Tenderly he drew out a black-and-white photograph that lay on top of other documents. The picture had been folded and the paper was worn around the edges.

  He had not looked at this for over twenty years. He blinked, then refocused his eyes. There was a very young woman standing with a baby in her arms. Behind her the Golden Gate Bridge arched over the water. The woman appeared to be part Caucasian, part Japanese, the blend mixing together to form an exotic beauty. She was tall and slender, the Western-style dress clinging to her body. Her hair was jet black and very long with edges of it framing her waist. Her skin was dark and her eyes coal black. The slant to them wasn’t strong enough to pass in Japan but too far to pass as white in the West. Today he knew she would be considered beautiful, perhaps a model, but back then she was simply a half-breed.

  “Nira,” Kuzumi whispered, slowly putting the photograph down on his desk. Nira Foster. The name was strung like a harp string inside of him. A string that he had long ago thought he had put away by sheer force of will. Over half a century before that string had played hard and loud.

  It was her beauty that Kuzumi had not been able to resist at first. That she was Dr. Lawrence’s primary undergraduate assistant made her that much more attractive. She knew all that Lawrence did. Kuzumi had used that as a justification to get closer to her, not admitting the real reason, even to himself for a long time. That she had returned the attraction had not surprised him. She was half-Japanese and in those days there was much prejudice against Asians in California. She was also a budding physicist and Kuzumi represented the cutting edge of international study. He’d been published and she’d read his articles even before he’d arrived. He was three years older and had traveled the world. And, most importantly, he was the first true Japanese she had spent much time with.

  Nira’s father had been a petty officer in the American Navy. She didn’t know her mother. Her father had dumped her in the care of a convent when she was two. She’d seen him several times over the next decade when he happened to be in port, but then he’d disappeared and she’d never heard from him again. He had never told her about her Japanese mother or where she had been born. There were no records at the convent other than the papers her father had signed to get her into it.

  She’d done well on her own and the nuns had given her a good enough education to get a scholarship to UC-Berkeley, but there was a glass ceiling waiting for her and she was smart enough to know it. Her ethnic background and her gender limited her options in the United States. That intellectual awareness didn’t temper her pain and anger, though.

  Their first talks had been of atoms and particles and cadmium and all the other subjects that made up the burgeon
ing science they both were immersed in. Kuzumi could not recall when the talk had changed. He did remember the first time they had slept together. For two reasons. First, of course, was the experience itself, passionate and exciting beyond anything he had experienced before. But of more consequence was the fact that in his next message to be sent back to the Society through the Japanese Embassy pouch, he reported that he was involved with her, as was required by his standing orders.

  He had been half-afraid he would be ordered to stop the relationship. What happened was worse. His instructions were to continue, build it, make it stronger. Then he was to recruit her. Kuzumi knew he would have to return to Japan soon to begin work on Genzai Bakudan. The Society wanted Nira to stay at UC-Berkeley and keep an eye on Lawrence and his work. They knew that Lawrence would undoubtedly be part of any atomic project the Americans developed and being an American citizen Nira was the perfect spy. Because of her father’s abandonment, she hated the United States deep inside and it wasn’t hard for Kuzumi to tap into that. He told her stories of a Japan she’d never seen and the different life she’d have there. They kept the relationship a secret so that there would be no stories of her liaison with Nishin to filter back to the FBI.

  At first it had been easy to work Nira as an agent and to be her lover. Another part of the job coupled with certain distinct advantages. But the more he spent time with her and talked, the more Kuzumi realized he wasn’t being honest or fair with Nira. He knew her Caucasian blood would keep her from being racially accepted in Japan. In fact, to be honest, he had to admit that she was treated better in the United States than she would be back in the Islands. And there was no doubt she could not study atomic physics in Japan. There were no women in the higher scientific fields. She would have to be a wife, but no true Japanese man would take her as wife because of her Western blood.

  Kuzumi knew he could not take her back when he left and the orders of the Black Ocean reinforced that. She understood. As she understood everything about her situation. Her understanding disconcerted Kuzumi for a while until he realized it was because she was acting like a man would. Accepting reality stoically and with a sense of duty.

  But she was still a woman, Kuzumi reminded himself. He should have remembered that. He looked at the picture again and the child in Nira’s arms. He had left in the fall of ‘39, unaware of her condition. And she did not even tell him in the letters she sent, forwarded through the spy network the Society had tapped into. He was informed by his Sensei in the Black Ocean. They kept track of all their people and Nira could not hide the birth and the child from the spies who spied on the spies.

  By then Kuzumi was wrapped up in Genzai Bakudan. As Nakanga had briefed Nishin, the government and military in Japan had not been impressed with the potential of the atom that Kuzumi had put into his report upon his return to Japan in 1939. But the Genoysha Taiyo had given him the go-ahead with all the resources of the Black Ocean to support him. “We do not have the time to wait on those fools,” had been Taiyo’s explanation. “They drive the country to war but they realize not how to negotiate the path. You have seen the beast we must fight. The United States will not break as easily as the General Staff thinks. We must have a weapon that will break them.”

  Kuzumi had to agree with that. Crossing the breadth of the United States by way of New York to San Francisco coming from Germany he had been numbed by the sheer vastness of the country. The industrial might and the numbers that the country could throw against Japan were chilling. But Kuzumi had understood something even more profound, something he had not shared with anyone. His relationship with Nira had shown him something, a paradox. Although Nira was not treated as equal, she was American. All Americans had come from other places at various times. To believe that the national psyche could be encapsulated so easily into a caricature of a weak-willed white man as the military would like was foolish. Kuzumi believed there was much more to the people across the great ocean, and he knew that to defeat them Japan would need more than it presently had.

  Kuzumi was working at the Rikken, the national laboratories, when his Sensei told him of the birth of his son. In the same telling, he had been informed that nothing would be done. Nira was to stay in San Francisco and continue her duties. Kuzumi was to continue with Genzai Ba- kudan. And the boy, the boy was just a baby for now and not a factor to be considered yet.

  Those were the exact words: “Not a factor to be considered yet.” Kuzumi ran a liver-spotted finger across the picture. Nira had named him James and kept her American family name. James Foster. Strange for a child so clearly of Japanese ancestry. Her unmarried status piled another boulder on top of the many she had to shoulder. But she continued to work at UC-Berkeley and she continued to spy for the Society. And Kuzumi, well, he received this one photo at least in the beginning.

  Genzai Bakudan. Nira. San Francisco. Kuzumi pressed his hands against the arms of his wheelchair. What were the Koreans up to? What had they discovered and what were they looking for? How had they found the cave? What had they learned about San Francisco and what were they looking for there?

  This whole thing was making Kuzumi search memories he had long hoped had disappeared from his mind. A light blinked to his right. A line to his high-ranking contact in the Parliament. Another fire to be put out, probably something to do with the trade war being waged with the United States.

  Kuzumi put the picture away and picked up the phone.

  CHAPTER 5

  SAN FRANCISCO

  SUNDAY, 5 OCTOBER 1997 9:14 P.M. LOCAL

  Lake watched the figure in the mirror. Muscles flowed as the legs and arms performed one of the required movements of a fourth-degree Aikido black belt.

  “Kai!” Lake yelled, his fist halting a millimeter from its reverse image. He slowly pulled the fist back as he returned to the beginning stance. The windows in the one-room efficiency were open and the chill night air hit the sweat pouring off his bare chest, creating a thin layer of steam. He wore only a pair of cutoff white painters’ pants. His feet slid across the floor as he began another formalized kata. The calluses that years of working out had built up made little notice of the rough wood floor.

  The room was empty except for his clothes hung and stacked in the closet. A bed sat near the window but Lake had never used it. He slept on a thin mat, moving its location on the floor every night. Sometimes he slept right under the window; sometimes just behind the door; sometimes he folded his body into the scant space in the bathroom, a gun always laying close at hand.

  Lake’s leg snapped up high: front kick to the face. He froze for a second, then slowly lowered the leg, his head canted to one side. A phone was ringing down at the end of the hallway. A door slammed. Footsteps. Lake reached down and picked up the Hush Puppy, pulling the slide back and taking it off safe.

  “Hey, man,” a voice outside his door yelled. “You got a call.”

  “All right.”

  Lake waited as the footsteps retreated and the door slammed shut. He threw on a T-shirt and tucked the gun into the waistband of his shorts, making sure the shirt covered the handle. He checked the peephole, then pulled the chain off. He quietly walked down the hall and picked up the receiver on the battered pay phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey, it’s me.” Jonas’s voice was surprisingly clear. “I asked for the room number like you said. Man, when are you going to upgrade your facilities?”

  Lake didn’t feel like chatting. “What do you have?”

  “They want their shit tonight.”

  “I said Monday night.”

  “Yeah, well, change of plans. They’re throwing in an extra five grand for early delivery. And no deal if you don’t deliver tonight.”

  Lake closed his eyes briefly, then they snapped open. “When and where?”

  SUNDAY, 5 OCTOBER 1997

  10:27 P.M. LOCAL

  Two and a half miles away from Lake’s hideout, the computer awoke with a chime. The man had been reading a newspaper which he c
arefully folded before flipping open the lid. The display told him Nishin was moving. He shut the lid and gathered his equipment.

  * * *

  Nishin was indeed moving. He was following four North Koreans who had just left the ship. Two of the men carried duffle bags, but the ease with which they carried the folded bags told Nishin there was nothing in them.

  Once they were off the pier he slithered down and followed, staying in the darker shadows, blacker than the night sky. The Koreans made little attempt to lose a tail, which Nishin had expected. They were not spies. They were soldiers.

  North Korea’s idea of covert operations was to take the uniforms off some soldiers and send them to a foreign country with specific orders on the mission to be accomplished. Subtlety was not a prized trait, as the North Koreans had demonstrated time and time again in their operations. Being on the other side of the Sea of Japan from the Korean Peninsula, Nishin was familiar with their operations. On top of that, his preparations for the mission into Hungnam had required intelligence preparations that had updated him on his potential foes. He had to know their history to know what they could be capable of in the present.

  History said the North Koreans were direct and to the point when it came to taking action. In 1968 thirty-one North Korean soldiers had infiltrated across the DMZ and made their way down to Seoul to raid the Blue House, the home of the South Korean president. The mission had failed, with twenty-eight men killed, two missing, and one captured.

  Shortly after that attack, on 23 January 1968, North Korean Special Forces men in high-speed attack craft seized the U.S.S. Pueblo with highly publicized results. Later that same year, a large North Korean force of almost a hundred men conducted landings on the coast of South Korea in an attempt to raise the populace against the government. It failed, but such failures didn’t daunt the North Korean government. In 1969, a U.S. electronic warfare aircraft was shot down by the North Koreans, killing all thirty-one American service members on board. To these transgressions it looked like all the outside world could do was sputter in indignation. World opinion meant nothing to Pyongyang.