“Folks, Jack Fitzroy will be giving a briefing down in his basement lair today. Fitz is our resident expert on everything to do with spycraft that might come in handy for the Olympics. Patrick is still at his JIA office, but he’ll join us shortly. He’s pretty familiar with Fitz’s work, so it’s okay if he misses the overview.”
They all then filed downstairs via the ornate curving staircase leading to the main floor and to a nondescript door that Hooper unlocked. He ushered the group down a narrow spiral staircase that opened onto Fitz’s top-secret technical area. The staircase was like something out of a European hotel of the 1920s, but it served the dual purpose of impeding progress up or down in the event of a security breach in either direction.
Once downstairs they were greeted by Fitz, a tall, thin, bearded man in his sixties who greeted them warmly with his usual cup of coffee in hand.
“Here’s where the magic happens,” he said with a smile as he came over to them. “Come on in and feel free to take a seat anywhere.”
After everyone was seated and Fitz was about to begin his briefing, the door to the basement flew open and Patrick entered, out of breath. “We’ve gotten another message.” He held up his phone.
“What’s it say?” Hooper asked. Patrick read the text.
“Discern what cannot be seen with the eye.”
“Is that another quote from the samurai guy?” asked Phibbs.
“That’s right, Miyamoto Musashi. It’s from his Book of Five Rings.”
“Did you trace the phone it came from?” Fitz asked.
Patrick nodded. “It was a burner. Probably a single-use and then straight into the Sumida River.”
There was a knock on the door, and a Marine guard burst into the office.
“Very sorry to interrupt, Mister Hooper,” the guard said in an urgent voice, “but there’s just been a nerve gas attack on the Sendagaya metro station. There’s been at least fifty fatalities.” The room erupted into confusion.
“Sendagaya? That’s the closest station to the Olympic stadium,” said Fitz. “What kind of nerve agent was it? Sarin? That’s what was used back in 1995 on the subway.”
“They think it was Novichok, sir,” said the Marine, trying to catch his breath. “It could have been a lot worse. Those four-person elevators in the subways the foreign tourists have been complaining about backed things up a lot, otherwise there would have been twice as many people on the platform.” With that, he turned and hurried out of the room.
“Well, I guess we know what that text you got was all about,” said Kirsten.
“Novichok. That’s ten times more lethal than sarin,” Fitz said.
“Where’d they get that?” said Kirsten Beck. “It’s banned everywhere, even in Russia.”
“The component parts aren’t,” said Fitz, “and they can be carried safely and then mixed at the site of the attack.”
“Hopefully, we’ll be finding out soon who did this,” said Hooper looking at this phone. “I just got word that they have a good description of the guy.”
“I think that a good place to start would be to investigate anyone connected to the 1995 sarin attack,” said Hayashida. “They hanged the cult leader, Shoko Asahara, a few years back, and this might be an act of revenge. It also undermines the theory that the attacks have a North Korean connection. This is clearly homegrown.” He directed his statement to Hooper and Patrick with a hint of triumph in his voice.
Kirsten Beck weighed in: “We can investigate all we want, but the problem is, the clues Patrick is getting are too vague to use in any kind of preventive way, and it’s pretty clear the attacks are going to continue. We can’t exactly ask whoever’s sending them to be more specific. Plus, we don’t know how many attacks he, or they, are planning. Is this going to be like 9/11 or a longer timetable?”
“No way of knowing,” said Patrick. “As it stands now, we’re totally helpless to predict anything. The Olympics are the perfect target of opportunity for terrorists. The whole world’s attention is focused on one thing. Plus, Japan has had more than its share of disasters. Whoever’s behind this is probably thinking that the country will just fold in the face of their demands. And unless I’m very wrong, we’ll be seeing demands before too long.”
“There’s one thing we can do, though,” said Hayashida. “If this attack was revenge for the cult leader’s execution, we should be able to track down his followers and see if we can get anything that way. And I know exactly where to start. We’ve had the offshoot groups under our surveillance for some time.” Hayashida tapped the screen of his phone and called his JIA field operatives, relieved that the latest attack seemed to vindicate his and the Prime Minister’s decision not to draw a connection to North Korea.
When a SWAT team from the JIA arrived at Hikari no Kami headquarters, sure enough, they found stockpiles of chemicals that could be used for producing enough Novichok to kill tens of thousands of people. However, the packages were labeled in Korean hangul characters. The puzzling thing to the Korean language speaker on the team was that the order of the characters was different from what he had learned as a child in Seoul. A child in Pyongyang, on the other hand, would have found nothing at all unusual about them.
The team also found a list of members, and they set about tracking them down for questioning.
Toyama Storage
Yokohama
The air conditioning at the corpse hotel was not functioning properly owing to the power drain in the area from the ongoing heat wave. The windows were wide open, and the cacophonous racket of cicadas in the trees outside echoed in the viewing room where the young Bonghwajo had recently enjoyed their meal of ortolan songbirds. A disheveled Japanese man in his mid-forties, dressed unstylishly in black slacks and a wrinkled short-sleeved white shirt, walked into the room. Mr. Lee and Tyson rose to greet him.
“Mister Sekitori. Your vengeance is complete,” said Mr. Lee, shaking the man’s hand. Tyson did likewise. Mr. Lee reached into his pocket for his wallet.
“Thank you for the opportunity,” said Sekitori without smiling. Tyson had invited the would-be Messiah to the corpse hotel, where he promised a hefty donation and more followers.
One of the sons of the corpse hotel’s manager then came up behind Sekitori and shot him twice in the head with a silenced .22 using hollow points.
“Thank you, young man. Unfortunately, Mister Sekitori was attracting too much attention.”
The young man hung his head in guilt. The only reason he had shot Sekitori was because Mr. Lee threatened to kill his father if he hadn’t. He bowed quickly and left the room before Lee or Tyson could see his tears.
CHAPTER 18
Saturday, July 25
Early the next morning while Olympic preliminary events were commencing, Patrick, Kirsten, and CIA Station Chief Norm Hooper met again in Hooper’s office at the American embassy prior to being joined by Hayashida and Kaga. The subject of interagency communication had been raised, and Hooper brought up the failure of American agencies to coordinate their efforts prior to 9/11. He happened to be looking at Kirsten as he delivered his remarks, and she immediately assumed a defensive posture with her arms folded in front of her.
“I don’t dispute that the 9/11 attacks were preventable, Norm, but I do take issue when you say it was the FBI that was at fault for not following up on intelligence with your team.”
The issue of intelligence communication was a sore point for Kirsten. Six weeks earlier at her home base in Honolulu, she had been called on the carpet for failing to follow up on a credible lead, resulting in the escape of a possible Chinese agent who had been seen taking photographs at Pearl Harbor. Kirsten’s posting to the Olympics wasn’t meant as a junket. It was a compassionate move by her Honolulu boss to give her time away from a personal loss she had recently suffered, as well as an opportunity to learn from colleagues in other agencies. Her b
oss had tried to dissuade her from coming back to work so soon, but Kirsten had insisted that she was fine, when actually she wanted to be back on duty to take her mind off her grief. She vowed to her boss that she would never fail to follow up on a lead again, and the boss agreed to keep the incident off her record.
“Believe me, I’m not casting aspersions on you personally, Kirsten. For one thing you were too young to have been part of the Bureau back then.” Kirsten breathed an inner sigh of relief. Her boss in the Honolulu office had been true to his word about not divulging her screw-up.
“But as for the larger issue,” Hooper continued, “you’re making my point for me. The CIA and FBI were never two teams, or at least they shouldn’t have been. My point was that we were one team, the United States intelligence team. The main problem in 9/11 and other attacks was that we relied only on our agencies to define what the security risks were, instead of getting out of our silos and collaborating. In situations like that, anything that isn’t defined as a risk doesn’t go up on the radar screen until it turns into a full-blown disaster. And then everyone says we screwed up, which we did. But the reason for it was that we defined the problem too narrowly, since we didn’t rely on each other’s intelligence. The Company was just as guilty as the Bureau, so again, I’m not trying to give you guys a black eye.”
There was a knock on the door, and Hayashida let himself in. Kaga followed him.
“Good morning everyone. I hope I’m not late.”
“Not at all, Mister Hayashida. We were just having a chat about what happens when there’s a communication breakdown in the intelligence community,” he said with a barb in his voice. “Come on in, have a seat. Anybody seen Phibbs?” Everyone shook their heads. “Well, let’s begin, anyway.”
The five of them sat down around the round table in the middle of Hooper’s office. Hooper cleared his throat.
“Okay, folks, it’s now quite clear who’s responsible for the attacks,” he began with a look at Hayashida to gauge his reaction through his body language. Hayashida sat still as a stone, his face betraying nothing. Hooper continued.
“This is North Korean all the way, from the Type 58 rifle to the origin of the Novichok components. Plus, one of the three young guys who attacked the SDF headquarters had a map of the area that was marked up with Korean writing.”
Hooper paused and waited for Hayashida to say something, anything. His mouth tightened when the JIA director still said nothing. He looked at Kaga, whose eyes were downcast, his lips pressed into half a scowl. Kaga looked over at Hayashida as if willing him to say something, but Hayashida sat unmoving. With an almost inaudible sigh Hooper got to the point of the meeting. “Mister Hayashida, it seems obvious that the public should be alerted of possible danger. The attacks have clearly been coordinated.”
Hayashida sucked air through his teeth. “Saaa,” he said tilting his head to one side, the universal Japanese expression for not knowing something and/or not wanting to commit one’s self by saying something. “I have to wonder who in North Korea would be in a position to do this kind of thing,” he said. Kaga let out a breath in seeming exasperation. Hayashida shot him a look.
“Well, it’s clear that someone connected to North Korea is,” Patrick said, his voice rising. He was not going to hide his annoyance. “What difference does it make if it looks like someone’s in a position to do something?”
Hayashida sucked more air. “But what if the attacks aren’t coordinated? What if these are lone wolf attacks?” Patrick winced at the cowardly term. It had been overused in Europe in recent years after attacks that were clearly the evildoing of ISIS or other death cults to avoid the label of Islamophobia.
Hooper shifted in his seat. “Mister Director, please. It makes absolutely no difference if it’s one person or ten. You still have a lot of dead bodies in that subway station, and it’s looking more and more like the Olympics are the target.”
“Yes, of course,” said Hayashida, “and that is why the Prime Minister wants us to increase security to a level commensurate with the threat. He’s given me authority to detain anyone suspected of being connected to these attacks for the legal limit of twenty-three days, but the JIA will go about this quietly. As I stated in our last meeting, we do not want a situation where people are too afraid to come to the events. This is too important a moment in our history. And as your President Bush said after the September 11 attacks, if people stop going about their ordinary lives, then the terrorists have won.”
“Oh, come on,” Hooper said. “We have no way of knowing how big this threat is. Are all these incidents related? Are they indicators of more to come? I feel strongly that we should act proactively and at least warn people.”
“As I stated, Mister Hooper, the Prime Minister feels it best not to alarm the public. And as I also said, we will be arresting anyone we suspect is part of this.”
Patrick stood. He’d heard enough. “It’s the Prime Minister’s decision to make, Mister Hayashida. But I want to make it clear that I completely disagree with not issuing any warnings to the public, and I won’t accept responsibility if anything happens. My job is chief security consultant, but if the PM is going to call the shots on this, I’m not going to be hung out to dry if things go south. Are we clear on that?”
Hayashida nodded with his eyes closed. “Yes, Mister Featherstone, very clear.” As Patrick was leaving the room, he could have sworn that Kaga was nodding his encouragement to him in as unobvious a way as possible.
___________________
Later that afternoon, NHK interrupted its coverage with an important announcement. They had received a video and Twitter feed from a North Korea-based group called Chosun Restoration, whose members in Japan claimed responsibility for the Novichok attack on the Sendagaya subway station as well as the attacks on the Budokan indoor arena, Yasukuni Shrine, and Tokyo Tower. Further, the group claimed responsibility for the assassination of two officials inside the Olympic stadium two weeks before the Opening Ceremony. It also said that the attacks were in retaliation for the Rising Tide uprising that toppled the Kim regime four years earlier on the day of their Glorious Triumvirate Celebration, North Korea’s equivalent of the Olympics in terms of spectacle.
Chosun Restoration announced that more attacks could be expected if the Japanese, South Korean, and American governments did not withdraw their support of President Nahm Myung-dae’s Rising Tide government in North Korea and expedite the return of the Kim family to power.
CHAPTER 19
The White House
July 26
Director of National Intelligence Jay Garvida was ushered into the Oval Office for his meeting with President Evan Dillard while Dillard was going over the presidential daily brief.
Garvida took a seat at the table in the middle of the office across from the president.
“I was just reading about these attacks in Tokyo,” Dillard said, looking up from the PDB. “What do we know about this group behind them?”
“Apparently, they’re part of a group in North Korea called Chosun Restoration, sir,” Garvida replied. “They’re loyal to the Kim family and want to bring them back to power by toppling the current Rising Tide regime. They’re growing by leaps and bounds because Rising Tide’s been unable to deliver on its promises of economic prosperity once Kim Jong-un was ousted. Instead, now there’s widespread hunger throughout North Korea. This terror cell of theirs in Japan seems to be trying to use the Olympics as center stage to air their demands and also to take revenge for the overthrow of Kim Jong-un. The word ‘Chosun’ is an old name for Korea before the Japanese colonized it in 1910.”
“Any of them been captured?”
“No, sir.”
Dillard shook his head as he read from the PDB. “‘We demand the immediate withdrawal of American, Japanese, and South Korean support of the puppet Nahm Myung-dae.’ I’ll be damned. Any Americans killed in these
attacks?”
“No sir, but here’s something odd: the guy who pretty much instigated the overthrow of Kim is an American citizen who was born and raised in Japan and…”
Dillard held up his hand. “Wait a minute. Is this the guy the Agency sent over a few years back to look for the mock defector?”
“Correct, sir. His name is Patrick Featherstone. He’s now been hired as the chief security consultant for the Olympics. Anyway, the first attack in Tokyo was a couple of weeks ago, a double assassination of two Japanese security officials inside the Olympic stadium. The strange thing is, this guy Featherstone was standing right between the two guys, but whoever was shooting intentionally left him alone. The question, of course, is why wasn’t Featherstone shot along with the other two if these attacks are revenge for the overthrow of Kim? You’d think he’d be the primary target.”
“Huh,” Dillard huffed. His eyes went up in thought. “What about North Korea itself? Does President Nahm know anything about these guys?”
“Negative, sir, at least not in any detail. Chosun Restoration appears to have started in response to food shortages in the past year or so. The rice crop partially failed after massive flooding a few months back, and Chosun Restoration tapped into popular anger at the government’s inability to do anything about it, especially since China cut off all aid when Kim Jong-un was overthrown.”
“But we’re still sending them aid, right?”
“Correct, sir, but most of it is being looted and sold on the black market, just like under the Kim regime. The big fear this time around, though, is a civil war followed by a refugee crisis. Under Kim, ordinary people had no freedom of movement, but now they can come and go pretty much as they please. The food situation is getting worse all the time, and if there’s a popular uprising against Rising Tide, I think it’s safe to say there’d be a mad rush for the exits. It would overwhelm the borders with China and South Korea, but especially China.”
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