The Korean Intercept (25 page)

Their group returned to the trucks, the prisoner roughly shoved along by soldiers, away from the bodies of the bandits and past the sobbing of the farmer's family over their dead.

Kwan reloaded his pistol as he walked. He had impressed the general. And now they had a destination.

Now, they had a target.

 

Tokyo

 

Meiko sat at the keyboard of her father's personal computer. She was alone in his private office in the executive suite.

Her stepmother's connections had gained her access to this Olympus of Kurita Industries. When she and Sachito had at last found themselves alone together after that morning's sad, grueling funeral service for her father, her stepmother had seemed to genuinely want some sort of bond of shared grief between them. Meiko had taken the opportunity to profess her restlessness, and her curiosity. Even at a time like this, especially at a time like this, her innate investigative instincts were functioning. She could not erase from her mind that barely overheard conversation between Anami, the acting president of the company, and the dapper man in the aviator sunglasses who had used the occasion of Kentaro Kurita's funeral to approach Anami in a confrontational way. With such inappropriate behavior, she could only surmise that whatever was being discussed between them had been extremely important. What little she'd managed to overhear at the cemetery, her father's name and mention of the
Liberty
, would not cease nagging at her mind, though she chose not to confide this to Sachito. She did make her request, which Sachito granted without hesitation.

Meiko was chauffeured into the city, to this enormous factory complex. Madam Kurita had called ahead and made all of the necessary arrangements. This facilitated her quick passage through security, to the somber executive suite overlooking a small portion of the factory below, where hundreds of laborers were busily assembling small engine parts beneath a bright red company logo sign with yellow letters in English and Japanese ideograms. Practically all signs in Japan are in English as well as Japanese, English being the most common second language spoken in Japan. The workers were clad in coveralls, safety helmets, goggles and ear protectors. The plant workplace was cleaner and better organized than factory assembly lines she'd seen in America. Conversation seemed minimal.

After being shown into her father's office, which was an airy, sparsely yet comfortably furnished office of white carpeting and cedar paneling, she had made but a cursory inspection. She felt an uncertain twinge of displeasure when she saw the portrait of her mother on one side of her father's desktop, opposite Sachito's photograph. Then she put that out of her mind, sat at the computer terminal, booted up and began exploring, spending more than thirty minutes accessing the private document files stored on her father's hard drive. She followed links to business-related sites, scanning whatever she found, then backtracking and accessing more, learning more about Kentaro Kurita's holdings, his investments, becoming posthumously acquainted with her father not as a father but as the titan of a mighty commercial empire.

She missed him so.

Her ascendancy through the ranks of Hakura News, becoming their White House correspondent, was related to her father's prestige and influence. It would have been naive to think otherwise. In the cutthroat competitiveness of global communications, she had thrived and risen to prominence because she was good at her job. On two occasions she had actually scooped her American media counterparts on big Washington stories concerning domestic American politics. But yes, family ties had helped. She could only hope to pass on through example what had been a gift to her; to let her countrywomen know that she was proving to the men, and to the women of Japan, that a woman could do a "man's" job. Today as in the past, marriage was the only truly acceptable goal of any Japanese woman. Those forces that motivated the women's movement in the West—the quest for self-expression and satisfaction—did not seem to appeal much to Japanese women. It was Meiko's experience that the majority of Japanese women considered western women and their search for self-fulfillment to be rather selfish. In Japan, every man, woman and child ideally regarded the well-being of the group before his or her own self-interest. Combining a career with marriage was an idea whose time was far from coming to Japan. She entertained hopes of someday starting a publishing company to help raise the public consciousness about women's issues. In Japan, a woman's salary was one-half that of a man's, even though women comprised forty percent of the work force. Meiko's prominence was unique.

As was that of Madam Kurita, a woman who had owned the heart of her father, the man who had controlled Kurita Industries, which put her stepmother at the heart of power.

Meiko absorbed the data scrolling down her screen until she felt that she had a sufficient overview of her father's business profile and portfolio. She was amazed at how extensive were her family's holdings. Strangely, she thought, the notion that she had inherited such enormous wealth, and curiosity about the terms of her father's will, were crossing her conscious mind for the first time since she'd received news of her father's passing. Satisfied that she understood the big picture, she next got more specific in her cyber investigations, following through on some links and cross-references until they proved to be dead ends while discarding others, like following the clues in a mystery novel. She had written down the license plate number of the limousine that had carried away the dapper man who had worn the aviator sunglasses, the man who had seemed so out of place at the funeral and whose behavior toward Anami, the CEO of her father's company, had compelled her to note the license plate number. The vehicle was registered to what proved to be a subsidiary of a corporation she had never heard of, Trans-Asian Enterprises, a transportation company leasing and owning everything from shuttle transportation to mail to export-import shipping.

Her eyes began to ache. She started thinking about taking a break when the name of a major shareholder from Trans-Asian matched with Tokyo police files. Every journalistic instinct she possessed told her that she was onto something and rejuvenated her.

The man's name was Rikihei Ugaki.

She clicked her way into his file and there he was, in a half dozen photographs, various street scenes and other public places, snapshots obviously taken from secret surveillance because the participant appeared wholly unaware that he was being photographed. She determined that there were no police photos, what they called mug shots in the States, because nothing had ever been proven in a Japanese court of law against Ugaki. There was plenty in the file for her to speed scan, and the truth was obvious enough, even if not to a court of law.

Ugaki was
yakuza
.

The prosperous, successful businessman, an infamous social recluse, was reputed to be the
Oyabun
, the
yakuza
godfather, of the Red Scorpion Clan, the largest
yakuza
gang in Tokyo. The
kumi
, the criminal clans and families that derived their income from illegal sources—prostitutes, drugs, gambling and protection rackets—had many legitimate fronts, including close ties to some of the
zaibatsu
, Japan's giant corporations. The medieval
yakuza
were outlaws and wanderers who, over the centuries, evolved strict rules of honor among thieves and demanded courage and honesty in all conduct. They followed Bushido, the Japanese code of knighthood, which set forth the highest ideals of honor and courage. The modern
yakuza
, on the other hand, were powerful clans and corporate gangs who had perverted the traditional spirit of their code. She knew for a fact that some of the more unscrupulous corporations used the
yakuza
as enforcers for such matters as breaking up industrial disputes or intimidating the competition. The Red Scorpion Clan earned most of its profits via perfectly legitimate means. Trans-Asian was only one of Ugaki's business ventures, she quickly ascertained. He was a respected member of the establishment.

She leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes, massaging them. She considered.

Ugaki and the acting CEO of Kurita Industries have a confrontation at the funeral service for her father. She overhears them speak the word
Liberty
while the rest of what else she'd overheard had been spoken in Japanese. The dapper man in the sunglasses had radiated a primal aura: that of a violent beast barely kept in check. This was not the sort of man her father would abide. Or was Kurita Industries in some way involved in whatever was going on with that space shuttle flight?

Trev's wife was aboard that shuttle.

Life was so strange.

She refocused on the computer screen and continued opening documents in cyber space in her quest for more information about Ugaki.

She would follow this, no matter where it took her.

She owed that to her father.

And she owed it to a woman she'd never met, named Kate Daniels.

 

As acting chief executive officer of Kurita Industries, Ota Anami was used to being chauffeured about. The limousine, in which he was the sole occupant, was furnished with all of the amenities he was used to, including a well-stocked liquor supply and state of the art audio and video. Yet he found himself unable to partake of any of these luxuries during the drive to Ugaki's estate.

Ugaki had sent the limousine. Its heavily tinted windows made the world passing by outside seem like a dark place. Anami felt vulnerable and small in the car's lavish interior. He inwardly rued, for the ten thousandth time, the day he had sold his soul to the
yakuza
. He had been summoned on that day exactly as he was being summoned today by
Oyabun
Ugaki. Anami had sold his soul to the devil.

The limousine turned, without slowing, onto a paved driveway, passing an open wrought-iron gate, waved on through by a uniformed security guard. Anami was certain that the guard was only for show. Ugaki's home would be an armed fortress, with the most sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment and a full cadre of unseen, heavily-armed men no doubt waiting for the first indication of trouble. The main house was large and single-storied, with pink-painted concrete walls and a roof of green slate. The chauffeur braked the limousine to a stop. While the engine idled with the barely audible purr of a contented kitten, he briskly got out from behind the steering wheel to hold the car door open for Anami. When he had debarked, the limousine drove off, past a parked, white Mercedes Benz, and circled around the side of the house.

Anami felt suddenly very much alone.

The latticework front door of the home, before him, slid open. A man with a scarred face and the build of a wrestler bowed ever so slightly and stepped aside, holding the door handle. The top two joints were missing from the little finger of his left hand. It was the sign of
yakuza
. The mark of the gangster. If a
yakuza
commits an offense against his
Oyabun
, he may try to atone and regain his
Oyabun's
favor by offering to sever one of his own fingers as a supreme token of repentance. The man closed the front door.

Anami paused to remove his shoes.

After he had stepped out of his shoes, the man said, "Come this way," and led the way down a hallway lined with sliding partitions. At the end of the hall, he bowed again, opened one of the partitions and gestured for Anami to enter.

Ugaki was seated on the tatami floor behind a low black lacquered table, polishing a samurai katana sword, hand-forged in an earlier century. The room was a formal tatami of rice paper walls and doors, uncluttered and austere except for a massive glass case displaying ten sets of antique samurai swords without scabbards. Ugaki was bare chested. A lurid red and green scorpion was tattooed across his chest. He did not look up, but acknowledged Anami's presence by sternly motioning for him to take the cushion in front of the table as he completed his task.

Anami sat on his knees in the formal sitting position. The servant poured them each a cup of warm sake, then left. At last, Ugaki set down the sword and looked up.

"You are prompt in obeying my summons. That is good."

Anami always felt as if this man's eyes could read his mind and see into his soul. "Truthfully, Ugaki-san, I have wished an audience with you since this morning at the cemetery. May I respectfully inquire why you chose the funeral service as a point of contact? Do we not risk drawing attention to ourselves at this critical juncture?"

"At this juncture," said Ugaki, clipping each word as if with a sword's blade, "I felt it necessary to exhibit to you the power that is
yakuza. Yakuza
is all-powerful, anywhere and at any time." Ugaki sneered to indicate Anami's posture. "Even Kurita Industries kneels before the power of
yakuza
."

Anami felt beads of sweat forming along his hairline. "But Ugaki-san, what of the man, Trev Galt? He was at the cemetery with Kurita's wife and daughter. He is with the American government. He holds a position in their White House."

"I know about Trevor Galt III." Ugaki's sneer remained in his voice. "I know why he has come to our country. He was under surveillance when his plane landed."

Anami found himself wishing that he could dab at the perspiration on his forehead, but dared not in the eyes of his host. Ugaki's skin tone appeared smooth and cool, like polished tan ebony. Anami felt inadequate, as he always did in Ugaki's presence.

"You know where Galt is?" he asked hopefully.

Ugaki's features flared with displeasure, and Anami suspected that this could indicate that the
Oyabun
, the top
Oyabun
of one of the largest
yakuza
clans in Japan, did not know of Galt's present whereabouts; that Galt had managed to elude Ugaki's men who had followed him from the airport.

"Do not fear Galt," said Ugaki. "Fear me. It is important that you understand that, or you will be useless to me, and then you become a liability."