The Korean Intercept (29 page)

This was the main terminus of all military communications systems connecting Washington to every military and naval command in the world. Tiered areas, overlooking a highlighted conference table, hummed with muted, concentrated activity as military personnel worked at desks, computer consoles and communications equipment. All consoles were fully manned, with all evaluators present. Display maps on the wall, changing once every four minutes, reported a running tally on the disposition of American military forces worldwide. Another bank of monitors relayed data updates from the National Command Center, connected to the War Room by a short corridor.

The president sat at the head of the elite group. Before each man at the large hexagonal table was a yellow pad, pencils and a glass of ice water. Their attention was on a large-scale chart of the central Asian landmass.

The president toyed with an aluminum diet soda can, which he'd emptied minutes earlier. He was tapping the can absently on the desktop. Tiredness around his eyes bespoke the lengthy hours that had begun with a transcontinental flight to speak at a fundraiser in California, the subsequent announcement to the world that America was missing the space shuttle
Liberty
and the return flight to Washington, with no opportunity for sleep, not even a catnap.

"Now that we've gone public," said the president, "we'd damn well better ratchet up every resource we have." He crunched up the aluminum can and tossed it absently at a wastebasket, missing by a half-foot. "Damn." He was not referring to the missed wastebasket shot. "Gentlemen, we've got to pull this one out of the fire, and fast."

Reasoner, the army chief of staff, was grim. "The DMZ face-off had to come to a head sooner or later. The North has those hundred thousand troops primed to attack. The only reason we think no attack is imminent is because we haven't picked up any new code usage by them. And why would they be anxious to take on the combined US. and Republic of Korea forces?"

"The R.O.K. mainly has a draftee army" said Lansdale, "which poses a handicap. On the other hand, to be honest, they have deployed an impressive mechanized corps."

Fieldhouse, the air force man, was studying the map before them like a bombardier's eyes seeking targets. "North Korea would support an attack with its chemical and biological capability, which is massive."

"The threat of U.S. nukes aboard our warships in the region is intended to deter that," the chief of naval operations, Crider, pointed out.

The president stood, retrieved the aluminum can, and dropped it into the wastebasket. "Gentlemen, if chemical weapons and nukes are used, I have been advised that the prevailing winds would carry the poison and fallout south, and destroy most of the people of South Korea and southern Japan. North Korea would be defeated if it invaded the South again, but only after a bloodbath that would destroy the peninsula." He reached under the table, and produced another can of diet soda. He popped the tab. "I want an update on Trev Galt."

Lansdale glanced at his wristwatch. "The special ops insertion package Turtle put together is presently standing by at the operational base site in Yokohama."

"What they need is a target," said Fieldhouse. "The CIAs man on the ground over there, Ahn Chong, hasn't made contact since he transmitted Chai Bin's offer to his CIA control in Japan. We're hoping this Ahn Chong isn't dead."

Crider frowned deeply. "That storm coming at Japan has been upgraded to a typhoon."

"We'll have Galt's strike force airborne and out of the storm track before it hits," said Reasoner. "I hope."

Lansdale grunted. "This strike on Chai Bin's has to be surgical, by the numbers and very precise, and that's the way it will be with that crazy ass staying with Tuttle in Japan to monitor and direct the assault."

The president paused with the soda can halfway to his mouth. "You're joking, of course." He took a long draw of the diet cola. "Galt's gotten us this far by breaking every rule in the book because his wife is among the missing. Do you think he's going to stand down now and obey orders?" The president shook his head, knowingly. "And do you know what? That's all right with me. Let's pray like hell for diplomatic success, gentlemen. But my personal opinion is that one man in this has one chance at seeing that America's best interests are served, and that man is Trev Galt."

 

Tokyo

 

In the first class section aboard the Concorde, orders for pre-flight drinks were being taken.

Meiko ordered tea. She glanced over her shoulder and saw, through a gap in the curtain, the flight attendants welcoming the last of the boarding passengers. Her fellow travelers in the first class section included Japanese businessmen, several already typing furiously at their laptop computers. A Saudi sheik and his family occupied the foremost seats.

Though she knew she looked composed enough, Meiko's mind and emotions were rioting. Yes, she was the top U.S. correspondent for Hakura World News. Yes, the disappearance of the
Liberty
was, thus far, the biggest story of the century and would be the biggest of this decade, the sort of story upon which media stardom careers were built; and her orders were to return to the Washington bureau and resume her duties promptly. Her camera crew would be waiting when she touched down in D.C., where she was expected to quite literally hit the ground running, to use the American idiom. But every indication was that the space shuttle had gone down in this part of the world. Yes, Hakura News had its best Tokyo correspondents assigned to the story. But she had the inside track because of her personal life, which gave her an edge on this story that was being ignored.

She and Stan Hakura himself had had it out over the phone. Stan was fourth-generation Hakura, with the bluster of a street merchant combined with intellectual dexterity and an innate combative toughness. It was Stan who had steered Hakura News into the new millennium, far beyond what must have been the wildest imaginings of his great-grandfather, who had started the company as a four-page provincial weekly so many years ago. As the daughter of Kentaro Kurita, and as Stan's top-rated media star in the Asian market, Meiko was one of the few in Hakura News who would dare protest an order from on high. Their debate was heated, and had degenerated into a noisy argument. Every news instinct in her was telling her that she was flying away from the real story of
Liberty
, not toward it, by leaving Japan. Because this story intersected with her personal life, her wash of emotions was excruciating. Her father's death was a harsh reminder of her own mortality. In one's life, every second, every choice made, mattered. She thought of the conversation she had partly overheard between Ugaki and Anami at her father's funeral. A
yakuza
, and her father's successor as CEO of Kurita Industries; a conversation about
Liberty
. And there were questions about links between her father's death and the downed shuttle: unanswered questions, because no one was asking them. She was the one to pursue the difficult questions. That was her argument to Stan. Was her father's death honestly of natural causes, or had Kentaro Kurita been murdered? She could not imagine her father collaborating with the
yakuza
.

And there was Trev.

Her personal life, yes. Trevor Galt III, the man who had flown to Japan to rescue a wife Meiko had never met. She did not understand her feelings for this man, but she knew it was love. And that had to be resolved before any other part of her life could proceed, and the resolution of those rioting emotions was here in Japan. There was only one proper way for her to feel. She knew Trev well enough to know his true romantic nature. Knowing that side of him, she should have realized before this that he had not yet given up on his feelings for the woman he was married to. He most likely would not realize it himself, but underlying Trev's mission was his impulse to prove to his wife how much he was still in love with her. Meiko understood this because she was a woman. It would be so fine to be loved like that, by a man like that. That had, in fact, been Meiko's unspoken dream, never spoken to Trev, never really dwelled on in her own mind because, in fact, the man she was in love with was married. There was only one thing for her to do now. She must allow this husband and wife, however estranged, the opportunity to work out their problems. She could not allow this to interfere, however, with the fact that her personal life had put her at the center of this news story. But Stan would hear none of it. He told her to start acting like a reporter and less like a woman, and had disconnected their cell phone connection.

Meiko sighed, looking through her reflection in the darkened window beside her at the ground crews, the carts, trucks and personnel, withdrawing from the behemoth aircraft. The vibrations of the Concorde's engines reached a new pitch, and the pilot's voice came over the intercom, delivering the standard greeting in Japanese, to be followed by an English translation. Last-minute arrivals were being ushered aboard.

The flight attendant was approaching with her cup of tea when Meiko left her seat, practically bolting through the first class divider curtain, toward the door which other flight attendants were about to close.

 

North Korea

 

The weekly Communist Party meetings were held in the communal hut, after the evening meal. The three appointed Party representatives of the village sat at a table, facing the others who sat on rough wooden benches. A charcoal brazier took the mountain chill off the room.

As the daughter of old Ahn Chong, the village elder, and wife of Cho, the commune Party leader, Toi could feel the eyes of every member of the commune on her. The bench space beside her was vacant. Her father traditionally sat there, at her side.

Her husband rapped a hammer that served as a gavel to call this meeting to order. Cho's eyes connected with hers, and he indicated the vacant spot next to her.

"I cannot recall your father ever having missed a meeting before."

"And so you voice personal concern for your father-in-law?" she asked sarcastically.

She and Cho had barely spoken since that terrible visit from the military to their village. She still trembled with revulsion at the sensation of the soldier, Colonel Sung, the commander of the airfield, grasping her, right there in front of her father, and aiming a pistol to her head! Cho had intervened on her behalf, but that had hardly endeared her husband to her father, or to her. Her husband was the informant who had put her and her father in jeopardy. And where was her father? She had last seen him near dusk, ambling off from the village, the wind whipping at his ragged clothing, on a path leading away from the village. She had not called out to him. It had been such a trying day, why should he not have been entitled to a time of solitude? But he had not returned. Where was he?

Cho glared at her as if they were strangers. "Your father does know where this… this space shuttle… is. Do you know where he is?"

She had prepared his evening meal, which Cho had eaten in silence, glowering. Now, she understood why.

She stood. "I don't know where my father is, but if I did, I would never tell you. You should know that much about me."

Cho sighed deeply. "I suppose I do."

"I doubt if you do understand me. I would never betray my father, as you betrayed our family."

"You and your father do not understand that loyalty to the Party must take precedence over mere personal relationships in times of crisis. The Party is, after all, the community, the commune."

She could not pretend, as he did, that they were not husband and wife.

"Cho, you think that you are following your conscience. They have stolen your soul."

He winced. His officiousness evaporated, and his eyes dropped from hers. He shuffled the papers before him and, when he returned her gaze, conveyed a plea.

"But you must try to understand," he said in a persuasive tone. "This business of soldiers harassing us, terrorizing us, concerns a thing that should have nothing to do with this collective." There were grumbled assents from those present. "We are but simple peasants," Cho continued. "The soldiers and Colonel Sung, an American space shuttle, these are not our problems. And yet the military terrorizes us because of your father and whatever he knows."

Anger and confusion swept through her, and took control. "I don't know where the space shuttle is." She whirled to face the assembled villagers. "And I want nothing to do with any of you!"

She stormed out of the hut, into the night.

The wind had picked up. Roiling black clouds blotted out the starlight. She sensed no one following her, perhaps because her action had been so unexpected, as it was even to herself. But she could not tolerate hearing her father maligned, or seeing the man she loved, poor Cho, become so corrupted by a soulless political machine. She had not lied. She did not know where their space shuttle was. But she suspected that they were right, that her father did know.

She darted around the communal hut and continued on into the gloom, leaving the village behind, avoiding the main path upon which she had last seen her father walking, yet following that same direction using a shortcut she'd learned as a child. Branches reached out from the darkness and scratched her, and the rocky ground made her lose her footing twice. She pushed on and rejoined the path about one-half kilometer farther on, after the village had disappeared behind her. She hurried on. The wind howled. She was quite certain that she knew where she would find her father.

The soles of her sandals crunched on the cold ground, the only human sound she heard. Her pace quickened as the path approached the crest of the hill where the path would lead down to her mother's gravesite.

She tripped over something and tumbled forward, breaking her fall with her hands. Human movement scurried toward her. She had tripped over someone's extended ankle. She started to twist around and rise from the ground, but before she could do so of her own volition, an arm snaked around her from behind and roughly dragged her to her feet. She was aware of an additional presence, moving toward her from the side, even as she recognized by touch the stocky build of the man whose forearm braced her throat, pressing her back to him.