by Bob Mayer
“Are you sure it is from your organization?” Harmon asked, looking at the portable phone from Jonas’s apartment in Lake’s hands.
Lake took out his own and put them side by side on the console between the two of them. They were identical. “These are made to government specifications. They aren’t available on the civilian market because of their scrambler ability. It also has no serial number, which is a requirement of equipment that my organization uses.”
“And your organization is?” Harmon asked.
“It’s called the Ranch. I don’t really have time to get into that right now.”
“What does it mean that Jonas has a Ranch phone?” Harmon asked.
That was the question Lake had been asking himself and he didn’t like the potential answers. “I don’t know for sure,” he said, checking the number on Jonas’s portable. He looked at his watch. “We need to get to the meet. I want you to drop me off a couple of blocks away.”
“You don’t think it will be dangerous, do you?” she asked as she started the truck up.
“I don’t know what I think anymore,” Lake said. He was running the area of the meet through his mind. “Park at the South Beach Yacht Club,” he said. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
They made the drive in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Lake was starting to put pieces together, various events that he had participated in since joining the Ranch and he wasn’t enjoying the picture his new perspective was showing him.
“How long do I wait?” Harmon asked as she pulled into the parking lot for the yacht club.
“Until I get back, or I call you on the portable, or two hours go by.”
“And if two hours go by and you haven’t come back and you haven’t called?” she asked.
“Go home and forget you ever met me,” Lake said.
“I can’t do that,” she said, stopping the truck.
“Then, remember me and remember me well,” Lake said.
Harmon grabbed his arm. “This isn’t the time for humor.”
“I’m sorry,” Lake said. He turned to her and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I don’t know what’s going to happen and I don’t want you to get caught up any further in this. No matter what, I’ll get back in contact with you. All right?”
“I suppose that will have to do. Be safe,” she added, giving him one last kiss.
Lake wasn’t certain what to say in turn, so he returned the kiss, then jumped out of the truck and began walking swiftly to the north. As his feet hit pavement, he pushed thoughts of Peggy waiting for him out of his mind and began to focus on what was coming up.
As he got closer, he had the distinct feeling that he was being watched, something that had not happened last time when he had met Randkin here. Of course, Feliks would not have come here alone. Security personnel were standard whenever the number one man at the Ranch went traveling, but it didn’t make Lake feel any more comfortable. The up ramp for the Bay Bridge loomed directly overhead. Several piers beckoned off to the right and Lake could hear the gentle lap of water on rotting wood and concrete. Where there wasn’t pier, there was a concrete retaining wall built at the water’s edge.
“You’re late.” The familiar voice echoed in the dark.
Lake turned to the shadows across the street and Feliks appeared out of them, a darker shape, his white hair standing out. He wasn’t alone. Two men wearing long black raincoats flanked him. They walked up to Lake as if to sniff him, then took up flank position, about ten feet off on either side. Feliks took Lake’s right arm in his hand and nudged him toward a deserted pier. “This way.”
Lake allowed himself to be guided. They walked along until they were out of sight of the Embarcadero. The sound of traffic overhead on the Bay Bridge sounded loud above their heads.
“I’m very disappointed in your recent performance,” Fe liks said. He pulled out his cigarette case and lit up. Lake noted that he ignored offering him one and remained quiet.
“You have broken quite a few rules and shown poor judgment,” Feliks continued. “Is there a point to this?” Lake said.
“I want whatever information you have about this Genzai Bakudan situation that you haven’t given me,” Feliks said.
“I briefed you fully on the phone,” Lake said. The two guards had shifted position, both making sure they would have clear shots of Lake without Feliks being in the way. Each had his right arm under his coat, no doubt resting on the handle of a weapon as Lake had been taught at the Ranch school.
“Oh, come, come,” Feliks said. “You know I am not stupid so do not treat me that way. Your story was full of holes. I want those holes filled. For example, who got you the information about the Japanese fleet during World War II? How did you figure out where Cyclone and Forest were?”
“I went to the library and looked it up,” Lake said.
Feliks was now just a shadow with a glowing red tip in the center of his face. “I thought I could count on your loyalty.”
“I am loyal,” Lake said. “My oath is to defend the Constitution and this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” He remembered swearing that oath for the first time on the parade field at Annapolis so many years ago as a young seventeen-year-old plebe. Even at the Ranch, despite the cynicism and covert angle, they worked under the same oath. Or, Lake amended his thoughts, at least they were supposed to.
“The Constitution and the country,” Feliks repeated.
“Very nice. You also are legally bound to obey orders. So again, tell me all the parts you left out of your report to me.”
“I’ve told you all,” Lake said.
“You’re lying,” Feliks said. “You don’t lie well. Oh, I know you can keep your cover well and lie within the confines of a mission, but when it comes to doing it on your own, you just can’t cut it.”
“I suppose you can,” Lake shot back.
“When I feel it is necessary and serves the higher good,” Feliks said.
“Who determines the higher good?” Lake asked. He felt like he was walking on ice, pushing his foot ahead slowly and testing whether it could take his weight.
“I do, of course.” Feliks tapped the ashes off the end of his cigarette. “I take responsibility, something most people, particularly politicians, don’t want to do. Because I take responsibility, it is up to me to determine the tightness or wrongness of each course of action. Of course, it’s not as black and white as all that, but I make do.” His voice changed abruptly. “Now, I want the information you’ve withheld.”
“Why’d you have Jonas working for you?” Lake suddenly asked, taking a leap across the ice.
“The Patriot bar man who was killed?” Feliks asked.
“You just said I shouldn’t treat you as if you’re stupid,” Lake said, “so don’t act the part either. And you have no need to lie to me anymore. You know exactly who I’m talking about. I just found over a hundred thousand dollars in cash and a Ranch phone in his apartment.”
“He did occasional work for us,” Feliks said with a shrug. “He thought he was working for the CIA. Another poor fool.”
“Why wasn’t I informed of that? It was in my operational area.” Lake was seeing the ice he had jumped over cracking and sinking into darkness. He couldn’t go back now.
“You are told what you need to know to do your job. No more. Having both you and him and others reporting in ensured that I was getting the complete picture. One of the most dangerous things in my job is to trust only one source.”
Lake stared at Feliks. He’d never personally liked the old man, but Feliks had been an efficient boss who’d taken care of Lake when he’d needed help on missions. “So you’re the only one who knows all and decides what the higher good is?” Lake asked.
Feliks threw away his cigarette. “I’m wasting time with you. Even if you know more that you’ve told me it’s no longer important. The Korean trawler will be outside the harbor by two in the morning. It will be dealt with and this entire matter
finally closed.”
Lake folded his arms across his chest. “What do you mean by ‘finally’? Why are you so concerned about this?”
“It’s my business to be concerned about security threats to our country,” Feliks said.
“No.” Lake shook his head. “I think it goes beyond your job and that you’re personally concerned about this matter.”
“I know much more about this then you will ever know,” Feliks said after a pause. “You really don’t understand the way things work in the real world, do you?”
Lake was tense. He kept the two guards in his peripheral vision while he stayed focused on what Feliks was saying and, just as importantly, what he wasn’t. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Feliks ticked off two fingers as he spoke. “Knowledge and the ability to make decisions. Those are the key to everything. I have both traits, which makes me a rare commodity in this world. You have neither. You’ve only known what I’ve wanted you to know. And you were given orders to carry out, which negates your ability to make decisions. So you’re nothing.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?” Lake asked.
That gave Feliks a momentary pause, then the old man smiled, his teeth glinting in the light reflected off the harbor surface. “You think you’re so damn smart, Lake. I’ve run you on ops for years and you’ve done a good job, but you can train a dog to do a good job. You don’t know shit. Yeah, I was running Jonas, but not just him. Who the hell do you think controls most of the Patriots?”
Lake stared at Feliks, listening to words he should be surprised to hear, but somehow he wasn’t. He was glad he hadn’t given up Genzai Bakudan’s location now. It was all he had to negotiate with. Of course, he didn’t think that Feliks was going to do much negotiating.
“Who was it that said,” Feliks continued, ” “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer’?”
“That’s attributed to Genghis Khan,” Lake answered.
“Don’t you think you can determine the outcome of a chess game much more easily if you play both sides, rather than just one?” Feliks continued.
“So you’ve been running the Patriots?” Lake asked.
“That’s a bit strong. Actually, it would be nice if I had them completely under my thumb, but that’s not possible. First off, we didn’t invent them. They came into being and we slid in and took up some of the reins. Enough so that we could keep a lid on them and also have a good intelligence network inside of their operation.” The smile was still on Feliks’s face. “Plus it looks rather good for us to have such a perfect record stopping their terrorist acts. It’s rather easy to stop acts that you instigate. Sort of what was done with other groups like the Black Panthers in an earlier time.”
“You’re a fucking traitor,” Lake said.
“No, that’s not true,” Feliks said. “There are always going to be people who are going to join an organization such as the Patriots, so we must allow such an organization to exist. One we know about, otherwise they will start one we don’t know about until it’s too late. Then, as a natural progression, an organization such as the Patriots is going to do something. We just make sure they do what we want them to do. We direct which way they go so that way we can control the outcome. Remember what I said, knowledge and the ability to make decisions? It works on everything.”
“The incident on the bridge? Starry and Preston? Were they working for you?”
The smile left Feliks face. “No, I didn’t set that up.”
“So your knowledge is lacking, isn’t it?”
“By tomorrow morning I’ll know everything I need to know,” Feliks said.
“You didn’t instigate that, though, so perhaps things are not only getting out of your range of knowledge, but also your range of control?” Lake pressed. “Maybe someone else has the knowledge and is making some decisions?”
“Sometimes damage control is necessary when there is an accident,” Feliks said.
“That was no accident I stopped,” Lake said. “It was a setup.”
For the first time, Feliks had no answer.
“What’s the connection between the Patriots and Genzai Bakudan?” Lake asked.
“There is none,” Feliks said.
Lake snorted. “Maybe, maybe not, but you don’t really know, do you? What else don’t you know?” Lake pushed on. “You can’t very well make your great decisions without these pieces of knowledge, can you? That’s why you want what I know.”
“You should be more concerned about what you don’t know,” Feliks said with a trace of anger in his voice. “So what don’t I know here?” Lake asked.
“You don’t know anything,” Feliks almost yelled, then got his voice under control. “You think Genzai Bakudan is something you just discovered? You think I was surprised to hear about it during your report? Hell, I first heard the term in 1944, before you were even born. The Ranch was dealing with this back then and it will finally deal with it now.”
Lake felt his heart rate accelerate. “What happened back then?”
Feliks had half-turned away. His voice was low as if he were talking to himself. “Deals were made and broken, that’s what happened.”
His voice firmed up. “All that hoopla a few years back about Truman and the decision to drop the bomb? That crap about the Enola Gay display at the Smithsonian? The Japanese and the revisionists all whining about what a terrible thing it was, us dropping the bomb on Hiroshima? Hell, not only would revealing the existence of the Genzai Ba kudan project change all that, but how do you think people would react if it was discovered that Truman was informed of the Japanese atomic bomb program at the same time he was told of the Manhattan Project, right after Roosevelt died? And that the day he made the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, it was after being briefed about 1-24?”
“So why wasn’t this made public?”
“It couldn’t be in the interests of national security. You think your little discoveries now are so damn important, they aren’t anything!” Feliks said, his voice disgusted.
“Do you know where Genzai Bakudan is?” Lake asked.
“No, but no one else does either. The key is not the bomb, the key is stopping those looking for the bomb. The bomb was lost long ago. It’s at the bottom of the Pacific.”
“You don’t sound so certain,” Lake said. “Why are the North Koreans heading here? That means the bomb must be here.”
“The bomb never made it here,” Feliks insisted. “The Japanese scuttled 1-24 several hundred miles off the coast in deep water.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because that’s the deal we made with the sons-of bitches!” Feliks snapped.
Lake was momentarily stunned. What the hell was Feliks talking about? “Who did you make a deal with?” When Feliks didn’t answer, he tried another question. “Then why is this second North Korean trawler coming here?”
“Because they’re like you,” Feliks said. “They don’t know shit and they’re blundering around in the dark, hoping to hit a jackpot. They probably know San Francisco was the target for the second Genzai Bakudan, so they’re hoping it’s around here somewhere.”
“Maybe they know more than you,” Lake said. “As you just said, there are gaps in your knowledge.” Lake realized that Feliks didn’t know the bomb was at the base of the bridge. He also realized that whatever deal had been made so long ago, maybe neither side had completely kept their part.
Feliks’s thumb rasped on his lighter and a small flame illuminated his face as he lit another cigarette. In the brief glow, Lake could see that the old man’s face was drawn tight. “This all should have been finalized a long time ago,” Feliks said. “I don’t know why it’s come alive again, but in the morning I will have finished it.”
“Not with my help,” Lake said.
“I didn’t plan on that. I just hoped you might be smarter than I thought and played along.”
“It isn’t a game,” Lake said.
“It is
when you’re winning,” Feliks replied.
“The final move hasn’t been made yet,” Lake said. If Feliks truly believed Genzai Bakudan to be at sea, then that meant there was something else at work here that was beyond both his and Feliks’s knowledge. “And I don’t think you’re winning,” Lake added. He knew he was a dead man. No matter what the emotion, Feliks was too much of a professional to have just told him the information he had if he hadn’t already decided to kill Lake.
Feliks rolled his eyes. “Oh, give me a break with the dramatic statements. It’s over for you.”
Lake smiled. “No, it isn’t. Remember what you said? Knowledge and the ability to make decisions? Well, you just gave me some knowledge.”
“It won’t do you much good,” Feliks said.
“Don’t be so sure.” Lake was moving even as he said the second word. He hit the closest guard with a spinning back kick, his boot smashing into the side of the man’s head. Lake flowed with the kick falling onto the ground on top of the guard, gripping the body and rolling it on top of him as the other guard instinctively began firing.
The guard’s body took the first two rounds, then Lake was over the edge of the pier, falling into the water, still holding the body. As he splashed in, the cold water took his breath away. He allowed the dead weight of the guard to take him down. Then, when he could just barely make out the surface above, he let go and began kicking with all his might due south through the water. In SEAL school he’d had to swim forty meters completely underwater without equipment. Here he broke that requirement, going almost half the length of a football field before he carefully surfaced and looked about.
He could hear Feliks yelling and several vans pulling up on the pier, disgorging Ranch security men. Flashlights were licking the surface, but Lake edged in along the waterfront and continued south without being spotted.
THE PACIFIC OCEAN
WEDNESDAY, 8 OCTOBER 1997
9:15 P.M. LOCAL
The Han Juk Sung was a sister ship to the Am Nok Sung, built along the same lines. Its real job was espionage under the cover of being a fishing trawler. At the present moment; it was steaming at flank speed due east, directly toward San I Francisco harbor. On board were a squad of navy frogmen with specialized equipment for picking up radioactivity underwater.