by Ian Slater
“But you knew it was a spy ship — right?”
It was Ellman’s face turning a salmon-pink that gave him away. “We, ah — we were informed that an American communications ship was, er, ah — available.”
King and millions of viewers were on to it. “You didn’t know it was a spy ship?”
“Not at the time.”
“Well, when did you know?”
“Ah, I can’t recall exactly, but—”
“After or before the ship was sunk?”
Viewers could see Ellman exhale, almost in relief.
“After. The President certainly didn’t. The President didn’t — I mean it was the Pentagon — to be more exact, it was, I believe, the job of the MSC—”
“What’s that?” King cut in.
“The, ah, Military Sealift Command.”
“So you didn’t know—”
“Not until later.”
“After it was sunk.”
“Ah — yes. That’s right.”
The second caller was irate. “I’ve been waiting half an hour—”
“Your wait’s over, sir,” King told him. “What’s the question?”
“You guys in the media make me sick. You’re tryin’ to make it look like the President’s fault. How about who started it? First we lose, what, twelve Americans on that oil drill ship, and now we lose a whole crew. How many I don’t know. What we should be asking is what are we gonna do about it? Sit on our fannies while some Korean egomaniac—”
“We don’t know it was a Korean sub that hit it.” King turned to Ellman. “There was some talk of the possibility of a mine.”
“Ah, mine, shine,” the caller said. “What’s the difference? We got Americans dead all over the place, and you guys in Washington are doing nothing but talking. We’ve got to let these tin-pot dictators—”
“Out of time, sir. Have to move on. Good question, though, Bruce. What’s the U.S. response going to be now?”
“Well, the Joint Chiefs’ll be meeting with the President this evening.”
“Uh-huh. But you know, Bruce, we’ve had a couple of good questions here tonight. Isn’t there a larger picture here? I mean, let’s see…” King picked up a news clipping. “New York Times asks, ‘What kind of message is our apparent inaction sending worldwide?’ And you know the Times was one of the papers to advise caution in the first instance — in the, uh, Chical business.”
Ellman was visibly relieved. “And that’s exactly what the administration is doing.”
“Yeah, but that was in the first instance. Now it and — well, you just heard from the callers — a lot of people — I should say, a lot of Americans—are asking, What are we going to do now that the T-AGOS 1 has been sunk?”
“We’ll still move with caution. This administration isn’t about to commit the lives of young Americans without duly—”
“ ‘Scuse me, Bruce, but isn’t the point this — that you are now being criticized for precisely the kind of thing you people criticized the previous administration for—”
“No, I don’t think we—”
“Sorry,” King cut in, “but we didn’t clear one point up. How many Americans have now died in this sinking and the attack by whoever it was on the Chical—wasn’t it Chical?’
“Yes…”
“Yeah, and on the Chical drill ship?”
“Forty-one, I believe. But Larry, let me just say something here. We’ve already ordered the Seventh Fleet into the general area, but we still don’t know who it was that attacked the drill ship or — and I must emphasize this — or the T-AGOS 1.”
“I understand, but isn’t it a bit late for who started what? I mean, China has invaded Vietnam. And everyone — and by that I mean mainly the other countries — is disputing these oil-rich islands. Who are the others, by the way — besides China and Vietnam?”
“Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei,” Ellman replied.
“Well,” King continued, “isn’t the danger here that if we— the United States — don’t make up our minds quickly on that, that all these countries could be at war? The South China Seas trade route to Japan and the U.S. could be a war zone.”
“I, ah — possibly. That’s why I think it’s prudent to be careful.”
“Nobody’s denying prudence, Bruce, but isn’t it true that the longer we wait, the more the danger of it spreading? I mean this war between Vietnam and China.”
“I think it’s more likely that the other countries will want to see which way the wind blows.”
“You mean go with whoever wins the war?”
“Possibly.”
“All right — last caller. From Oklahoma.”
It was a woman’s voice, strangled by sobs. “My husband is one of those missing in the Chical attack — I mean, the attack on the Chical…”
There was a long pause.
“Take your time, ma’am.”
“He’s one of those missing…. He fought in Vietnam…. His sisters served. They were lost. He was decorated twice. I just want to know, is Washington doing anything to—” She couldn’t finish.
“Bruce.” King’s tone was more solemn now. “What do we tell this lady? Is there a possibility that Americans may have to fight again in Vietnam, only this time with Vietnamese to repel China?”
“Yes — if that’s the way we have to go to stabilize the region as you suggested we should.”
“Wait a minute, I didn’t suggest that. I merely asked what the administration is prepared to do.” King then returned to the caller. “You still there, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“Ma’am — and I know this is an awfully hard question — but you’ve seen your two sisters-in-law… Were they in combat support roles or—”
“Yes, they were nurses.”
“Uh-huh. Now, you said they were killed?”
“One was, the other’s been listed as MIA.”
“Uh-huh. Ma’am, if we — if the United States had to send troops again into Vietnam — this time to fight with Vietnamese, both North and South, against Communist China — what would be your response after the pain and the suffering you’ve—”
“I… oh, I’m sorry…”
“No — take your time, ma’am.”
“I think a bully has to be stopped.”
“You mean China, right?’
“Yes.”
“You’re one brave lady. Thanks for calling.”
“Whew!” King said. “Some lady. Bruce, thanks for coming at such short notice.” King turned to his worldwide audience, which, among dozens of other capitals, included Beijing and Hanoi. “Don’t go away. Next — the Mongrels talk about their new album, Struttin’ Stuff.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tokyo
Jae Ghong, carrying a brown shopping basket, emerged from Shinjuku Station in west-central Tokyo. He walked a mile south, past the Meiji Shrine in Yoyogi Park, then caught a cab to go a mile east to the National Stadium, where he was part of the huge crowd watching Osaka’s Hanshin Tigers beating Tokyo’s Seibu Lions. After the game he caught the subway to the Ginza district, where he walked down past ritzy stores and viewed the Western-style mannequins with a mixture of envy and contempt. He wished that he could afford the clothing he saw — to buy something for his wife Mia back in Pyongyang. He could work for a year and still be unable to afford anything in the Ginza.
All the money he earned, less what it cost him to live in the far outskirts of Tokyo, went back as a remittance for his wife and two children. They all had to make sacrifices if North Korea was to become a great nation. Without many products to export to earn vital foreign exchange, the remittances of Chong and all other North Koreans living in Japan were vital to North Korea’s economy. But the Great Leaders — first Kim Il Sung and now Kim Jong Il — were correct: everyone had to make sacrifices if North Korea was to take its rightful position as Communist leader of Asia.
The new decadence of Japan was everywhere. The young Japanese part
icularly were a spoiled race. While their parents, the post-World War II generation, subscribed to Yamato damashii, the Japanese determination to succeed against all odds, the young Japanese, despite their commitment to the shiken jigoku, or hell of examinations, upon graduation from the universities became part of the moyashiko, the bean sprout generation — because, like sprouts, they grew up fast but were in the dark. They had no staying power. More and more they wanted more leisure time, and soon. With such weaklings in power, the great Japanese giant must falter and stumble, and then North Korea would be ready to strike.
Of course, there were those who said the Japanese were too powerful a nation to falter, let alone fall, but Chong believed the great leader Kim Il Sung’s prediction that capitalism’s decadence, its immorality, would undermine its industrial achievements, and his, Chong’s, job was to help expedite this “historical process” by whatever he could do as a member of the North Korean expatriate organization, the Chongryun. What made it easier for Chong to believe in Kim Jong Il’s prediction was the way in which the Japanese treated the Koreans as second-rate citizens. The Koreans did all the low, menial, dirty jobs, but were not accepted into Japanese society. How to redress such a situation, how to deal with the humiliation that assailed you like the death of a thousand cuts, one slight at a time? The only way Chong knew was to strike back, and not on their terms but your own, to shatter their Japanese spirit, their sacred and exalted Yamato damashii.
Chong stood in front of a store window that sold expensive electronics, and gazed at the mirrorlike reflection to check those who were passing him and anyone who paused at the window. Two schoolgirls in uniform stopped to look at the range of portable compact disc and tape players and to watch one of Sony’s latest HDVs, high-definition video screens which, instead of having the normal U.S. standard of just over five hundred horizontal or scanner lines, had more than a thousand, and made for a dramatically sharper picture. Chong also watched the TV screen, for its camera was outside the store, taking pictures of passersby.
He knew what the American agent looked like: five-foot-six, 150 pounds, brown hair, blue eyes, smaller than the general run of American agents. The CIA presumably had started recruiting smaller men. In Asia they would blend much more quickly in a large crowd like that at the ball game. But Chong could see no Caucasian nearby, and if anyone was tracking him, he had not been aware of it in the taxi on his way from National Stadium, and a taxi would have been sure to flush the agent out — unless the American had radioed the taxi’s number ahead and a tail had been taken over by some Japanese agent from the JDF.
Chong, feeling fairly confident that he was not being followed, moved on down the Ginza back toward Hibiya Park, nearing the Chiyoda-Ku district and the Imperial Palace. He walked down by the moat, looked up at the eye-pleasing greenery that nestled the palace, and then made his way across to Tokyo Station. He could smell himself, having walked so far — about two miles in all — in an L-shaped route that he broke out of by going into Tokyo Station and catching the subway, now full of raucous revelers from the Lions and Tigers game, north a few miles to Ueno Station. Here he bought an iced tea, doing it without putting down his brown paper shopping bag, and made his way by foot another mile eastward to Asakusa Park, his destination the Buddhist Asakusa Kannon Temple.
He was looking forward to its serenity, though he did not believe in Buddhism, another religion of the weak. He made his way up to one of the incense stalls, bought two sticks, and placed them in the holders by the shrine. It was now 9:36 p.m., dark, and in twenty-four minutes, at ten o’clock or as near to it as he could get, depending on the line for a phone booth, he would ring one of his friends in the Chongryun. He walked around to the other entrance to the shrine and, head bowed, quickly scanned the entrance he’d just been in. He was sure no one had followed him. A small child jostled him to get a better look, banging into the bag. The woman began to bow in apology until she saw he was a Korean.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The USS Enterprise at its center, the carrier battle group of the U.S. Seventh Fleet proceeding west from Guam in the Philippine Sea was well protected. There were twelve ships about it: two Aegis-system-equipped antimissile cruisers flanking it within the twenty-mile-diameter circular zone; two more cruisers; three destroyers; five frigates, for antiship protection within a two-hundred-mile-diameter zone; and an SSN nuclear attack submarine at a 230-mile forward position from the carrier.
In addition, the battle group was preceded by an E-2C Hawkeye early warning plane and a Viking antisub plane in the outer zone with two CAPs, or combat air patrols, of two F-18s each in the outer defense perimeter. The defense ceiling of the CAPs extended to sixty thousand feet plus above the battle group. Admiral Rawlings, C in C of the battle group, was sure that nothing would get through the formidable protective screen of ships and aircraft.
* * *
Tazuko Komura was a beautiful twenty-six-year-old Korean woman with an hourglass figure who worked in Tokyo and hated it. Ever since she could remember, she’d been aware of the subordination of women in her country, and her childhood resentment of the fact had passed into teenage anger that had culminated in an adult rage she found almost impossible to contain. She loved modern American movies, for in them there was comparatively little of the utter subservience of women. Of course, she knew not all American women were like the ones she’d seen in the films, but for all they might have to put up with in American men, the American women were free birds compared to their Japanese counterparts.
Tazuko had two brothers, and all her parents’ attention seemed to be taken up by them. She knew her parents loved her too, but in education especially she had seen the two worlds — one for men, the other for women. And at twenty-six, unmarried, she was called a “Christmas cake,” something whose value plummets after December 25. Her schooling had stopped after her high school graduation, and all the money the family had was devoted to the education of her two brothers.
She worked for a time in one of Japan’s largest clothing stores along the Ginza, where only the very rich shopped. She was one of thirty girls who, dressed exactly alike, every morning received instructions for the day, eyes straight ahead like so many robots, and who then spent the day bowing fifteen degrees and saying, “Irasshaimase”—”Welcome”—to thousands of shoppers. A thirty-degree bow would be necessary for introductions, and a forty-five-degree bow for an apology. Unlike her coworkers, every time she bowed she resented it, and could only get through the day by cursing inwardly. She had made the mistake of confiding once to one of the girls, a paato, or part-timer, about how much she loathed bowing and scraping to everyone who passed through the department store’s doors.
“Why don’t you quit?” had been her coworker’s response.
“Because jobs aren’t easy to come by, that’s why.”
Her coworker had called her wagamama—selfish.
“Yes,” Tazuko had replied, shocking her coworker even more. “I want more than a husband, two children, and a lifetime of drudgery.”
“You should not talk like that.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” Tazuko agreed with an overtone of sarcasm.
After that incident she had not complained anymore. She had decided to act. In time she became an agent for North Korean Intelligence. Whatever else the Communists might be, Tazuko had become obsessed with their promise of equality for women. At times her inner voice told her that the Communist world was no Utopia. But whatever its faults, Tazuko believed that at least its women were treated differently — more like men. Pyongyang told her to keep her job as a greeter — it was perfect cover. Who on earth would suspect someone so subservient, bowing low to the holy customers who passed her as if she were a stick of furniture?
* * *
Aboard the Nimitz-class carrier USS Enterprise, two FA-18 Hornets were readying to take off to relieve the two F-18s now on combat air patrol over two hundred miles in advance of the battle group. The fighters were armed with four hea
t-seeking, Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, two radar-guided Sparrow air-to-air missiles on the wingtips, and a six-thousand-round-per-minute 20mm cannon. In addition, each plane, capable of acceleration from 850 to 1705 kmh in less than two minutes, carried 375 extra gallons of fuel.
The flight deck at first sight seemed a confusion of terrible noise, astringent fuel smells, steam bleeding from the starboard catapult, and groups of men in different colored jackets: red for firefighters and ordnance, green for maintenance, red crosses on white for the medics, white for safety supervisors, blue for aircraft handlers, brown for each plane’s deck captain, green for catapult and arrestor gear crews, grape-vested for refuelers, and yellow for aircraft directors. In front of the water-cooled blast deflectors, a Hawkeye early warning aircraft roared to full power, its twin turboprops twin blurs. As it took off, the F-18s moved into position.
In primary flight control high in the carrier’s island, anticollision teams worked diligently under pressure. Their job was to know and account for the position of every plane coming in, taking off, or parked, the handler closely watching his “Ouija” board, on which there were tiny models of the ship’s planes. The deck was clear, the landing light red, the captain pushing the button for the harsh-sounding warning horn while a quarter mile out to sea the orange rescue Sea King chopper hovered.
Through the blur of rising steam, sea spray, and backwash of exhaust heat, the pilot of the first Hornet prepared to take off and watched the yellow-jacketed catapult officer, his hand up and open, signaling him to go to afterburner. The pilot saluted, then the catapult officer’s left hand dropped behind him, his left leg fully extended at an acute angle to the deck, his right leg bent and his right hand thrust forward, wind speed and temperature and weight already in the belowdeck computer. The deck edge operator pressed the button, and a deck below, the catapult controller let her go, hurling the plane aloft in a cloud of steam — from zero to 150 miles an hour in less than three seconds.