The Korean Intercept (22 page)

"Save your strength, Commander. I think I know what he said."

Han next spat an angry tirade at Paxton, who cowered in a corner, his knees higher than his head, as if Han were ten feet tall, and not some grimy little brute with a gun.

"Sorry, Specialist," said Scott in a neutral tone. "He says you're a worm and a poor excuse for a man."

Being translated seemed for some reason to infuriate Han, who spat angrily at Scott.

Scott said, "He says that he will make you pregnant with his child, but first he will deal with me."

An apprehensive chill traveled through her. "Tell him that if he touches me, I'll kill him."

Han spat angrily at the astronaut with the broken leg who was barely conscious, trembling with fever.

"He says I'm as good as dead," Scott translated. "He says he'll finish the job."

Kate started to snarl a response at the drunken man.

But before she could, Han tracked his pistol from her to Scott and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot was ear-splitting within the chamber. The muzzle flash revealed Ron Scott's head exploding, splashing the wall behind him with his blood and brains like some grotesque mural of modernistic art.

Kate couldn't stem her scream as Scott's corpse toppled sideways.

Han laughed. Holstering his pistol, he withdrew a wide-bladed combat knife and flung himself at Bob Paxton, who cried out shrilly.

"No! Please don't hurt me!"

Han laughed. The stench of alcohol, his body odor and madness assaulted Kate's senses. She realized that droplets of Scott's blood had splattered across her sleeve and cheek. Oh my God! she thought. Oh my God!

Han was atop Paxton's back, pinning Paxton face down to the earthen floor. Han leaned forward, making Paxton extend his arm, bracing that wrist to the ground. With a sadistic giggle, Han lowered his knife blade toward Paxton's fingers that wriggled like spastic worms.

Paxton knew what was about to happen, and even as the blade descended, his index finger was pointing madly at Kate.

"No, please, dear God, don't hurt me. Take her! Don't hurt me! I'll do whatever you want!"

Kate bunched her body to pounce at Han.

The entranceway was abruptly filled with the muscular, imposing dominance of Chai Bin. The old knife scar that bisected one side of the bandit's face was livid. His finely-boned Chinese features trembled with fury. He snarled a single word that crackled with authority.

The tone of voice, whatever single word was spoken, stopped Han, who paused with his knife blade less than an inch from Paxton's fingers, and he froze in that position, physically pinning the man beneath him. He looked up with inebriated, confused eyes, and opened his mouth to speak.

The guard who had been assaulted, and another bandit, appeared to either side of Chai Bin, each of them no more than fifteen, but their faces were hard. They aimed their rifles at Han, and the one who'd been assaulted shouted threatening instructions, gesturing angrily with his rifle.

Han dropped his knife and slowly rose to his feet. He stepped away from Paxton, who scampered back into his corner. Han approached Chai with his eyes downcast, wearing a contrite, hangdog expression, and he again started to speak.

Chai Bin barked orders.

The bandits grabbed Han, each by an arm, and dragged him past Chai from the cavern. Han was pleading desperately, sobering quickly with fright under the realization that he was not about to escape with a mild reprimand due to his exalted rank.

When Han had been led away, kicking and screaming, Chai gazed down upon the sprawled corpse of Ron Scott, and the ghastly mural of blood and brains upon the wall.

"Most regrettable," he told Kate. He ignored Paxton, who crouched in the corner like a child terrified of some unimaginable monster. "Miss Daniels, truly, I am sorry about your friend and commander. I wish I could bring him back."

She crouched against her wall, restraining herself from pouncing at the arrogant son of a bitch. Oh, Ron, she thought, with a glance down at the man she had so admired. Commander Ron Scott. Man enough to command a space shuttle flight, human enough to die voicing his love for his wife. There was a man. He would be avenged. But for her to pounce upon Chai at this moment, even though he appeared vulnerable enough, alone and with his arms folded before him, would be foolhardy. Her moment would come, but this was not it.

"I'll bet you'd like to bring him back," she snarled. "This will take some explaining, won't it, Mister Warlord, and will knock down the price you'll get paid." She tried to keep her voice from choking with emotion, but failed. "You promised me that you would provide the commander with proper medical attention! That was part of our deal for me helping you!"

"Yes, but you see, I no longer need your help." A burst of gunfire from nearby startled Kate. Observing this, Chai added, "Everything you say is quite true. Han's disobedience, his summary execution, will provide an ample lesson to the others here that you are to be accorded respect and treated humanely."

The bandit youths appeared, their rifles slung over their shoulders. Chai issued further commands. Each grabbed hold of one of Ron Scott's ankles and dragged the corpse from the cavern, trailing a glistening, bloody slick across the ground behind them.

Chai's eyes roved Kate's curves, evident beneath the flight suit. "You could be my queen," he said. "You remind me of my mother."

"I do, do I? What a strange thing to say."

"You should be honored. My mother was born a peasant, but she was strong and resourceful. She was a queen. My mother was a saint."

Kate snarled. "I'm sickened."

His hands dropped to his sides. His eyes and mouth tightened. "And why is that so?"

"Because you want to fuck me," she snarled. "We have a phrase for sickos like you in my country. It's a filthy, obscene phrase that I never thought I'd hear myself say, but it was made for creeps like you. You, Chai Bin, are a sick son of a bitch." And when she saw his features flush with anger, she threw back her head and laughed without humor, a laugh that, to her own ears, bordered on hysteria. "This whiner," she indicated Paxton contemptuously, "and I are the only human pawns you've got left, so I can say whatever I want and there's not a damn thing you can do about it but take it, you sick son of a bitch."

Chai's expression was stony. "I have business to take care of." He whirled and stormed from the cavern.

Alone with Paxton's blubbering and the smell of death lingering from the blood slick where Ron Scott had been dragged off, Kate felt as if every ounce of her energy had abandoned her in an instant. Her crouching posture became a slouch, and she leaned back against the wall, across the small space from Paxton. She sank into a sitting position, her arms draped wearily across her raised knees, her forehead resting on her arms. She wondered how she had the strength to keep on breathing.

Paxton sneered at her. "Why don't you give him what he wants and spread your legs for him? You've given him everything else. Traitorous bitch." And he relapsed into his incomprehensible blubbering.

He's right, she told herself. She was a traitor. If she hadn't taken Chai Bin to the shuttle, to retrieve everything of negotiable value, would Ron Scott be alive right now? Yes, she was a traitor. She would burn in hell. She was in hell!

 

Tokyo

 

Early morning sunshine warmed the spacious grounds of Aoyama Cemetery. The tranquil setting and the endless rows of headstones seemed magically isolated, far removed from the noises of the surrounding city.

The Kurita family burial plot was beneath a towering, giant old maple. Critical space shortage in Japan had resulted in a law against burying the dead, and so Kentaro Kurita's ashes, readied at a crematorium outside Tokyo, were laid to rest in a six-inch-square magnolia-wood box, wrapped with traditional ribbons of black silk. The funeral service was sedate, respectful, underscored by the irregular beating of a drum struck by a Shinto priest while other priests, in elaborate robes and ceremonial black headdresses, burned incense. There were close to one hundred mourners in attendance, including a full contingent of the titans of Japanese industry.

Meiko wore a dark-blue Meikoono with a matching sash. She, Sachito and Trev were the last ones to depart the gravesite, leaving behind them only the cemetery workers who then undertook the final internment of Mr. Kurita.

Sachito wore a long, modest, Western-style black mourning dress with pearls and black pumps.

Galt looked like something out of
GQ
, thought Meiko, in his stylish yet somber dark suit, shirt and tie. He escorted the two women, one on each arm, in the wake of the last of the non-family mourners walking along the narrow asphalt pathway leading from the burial site. The only audible sounds were the shuffling of feet and the polite murmur of some conversations from up ahead. Trev had handled himself throughout the ceremony with style and dignity, in Meiko's estimation, standing there beside her and Sachito like a soldier at his post throughout the ceremony, through the extended agony of the greetings and the service. He'd been the pillar of strength she knew him to be.

Her emotions were numb. The debilitating grief, the soulful weeping that she and Trev had heard coming from Sachito's bedroom last night, these would come to her soon enough; that razor-edged inner pain that had yet to slash her. Perhaps she was in a sort of shock, but she remained cool-headed. The extreme readjustment from her job in Washington, DC to this Tokyo graveside at her father's funeral had somehow sharpened her senses, bringing into finer detail, in a cold, analytical sort of way, everything that was happening around her.

They reached Trev's car, which was parked with the others on the crowded blacktop parking lot. About them, other mourners were exchanging farewells.

Trev said to the women at his side, "Again, I hope both of you will please accept my deepest sympathies." He extended his hand first to the widow. "And my apologies for having to leave so abruptly."

A brief handshake. A traditional Japanese bow.

"Your being here was a show of respect for a great man," Sachito said. "Thank you."

His gaze shifted to Meiko, who wished again that she could hug him for being such a good man. But propriety dictated that she say nothing intimate in this setting.

She said, "I know that you have your work. Like Sachito, I too am only glad that you were able to be here for us."

"It was my privilege, Meiko. I'll be in touch, I promise."

And he was gone.

She and Sachito stood side-by-side then in a moment of silence, watching his car merge with the flow of vehicles leaving the lot. Sachito's hair was carefully, regally coifed as always, but her lower lip trembled. Thin lines of mascara traced down her cheeks from moist eyes. Meiko could not help but feel sympathy for the woman her father had loved at the end. Sachito's grief was as anguished and real as was her own. They shared that, at least.

And that's when she overheard the faintest bit of a nearby conversation, frittering in and around and through the activity of departing mourners, of chauffeurs holding open limousine doors for family friends and industrial titans. She overheard a precise Tokyo dialect.

Male voices spoke confidentially; voices pitched low, but not low enough; voices accustomed to commanding crowded board rooms from behind CEO lecterns, not adapted to conspiratorial intimacy in public. The first word that caught her attention, because it was an English word in an otherwise earnest conversation in Japanese, was
Liberty
.

At first she doubted her ears. Had she heard correctly? She'd watched the small television set in her bedroom as she prepared for the funeral that morning before leaving the Kurita home, and there had been no mention on any of the Japanese or international news networks about the Americans having lost a space shuttle, which would surely have been the top story if the American government went public with the news that they'd "lost" the
Liberty
…

She saw that the man she'd overheard was Ota Anami, a short, barrel-chested man, of serious demeanor, with a receding hairline and thick hornrimmed glasses. She had never met Anami before today, here at the funeral. He was the acting company president of Kurita International, Sachito had informed her upon performing the introduction. Mr. Anami, Sachito added, had long been her father's right-hand man, as the Americans said.

Presently, Anami was engaged in an earnest conversation with a compact, dapperly attired man, wearing aviator sunglasses, who radiated power and command despite a lithe, physically slight stature. This man had not been introduced to Meiko, and there was something about him that she disliked. He'd arrived late, after the service began. She had caught but one glimpse of him, standing off to the side with men who wore the undeniable stamp of bodyguards forming a half-circle behind him. This in itself was not unusual. Bodyguards accompanied several of those in attendance, men worth billions. What drew her attention was that the man in the aviator sunglasses arrived late, and had seemed to her to be generally uninterested in the service. He and Anami were conversing close by, next to a black limousine where a chauffeur held open a rear door.

The dapper man appeared sternly displeased with Anami. At one point he actually poked Anami in the chest with his index finger to emphasize some point, an almost unheard of physical public display of effrontery and disrespect. As their conversation continued, Meiko did her best to listen in as closely as she could without appearing obvious about it. She didn't hear several words. Then she heard Anami speak her father's name. She was certain of it. A passing vehicle drowned out more of their exchange. But yes, she now had no doubt they were speaking about her father. And they were speaking about the
Liberty
.

Could such a thing be, or had she completely misheard?

From the corner of her eye, she saw Anami and the man bow curtly, perfunctorily to each other, as was the Japanese custom at the conclusion of any human interaction. Then the passing vehicle was gone and she thought she heard the dapper man say the word "intercept," spoken in Japanese among other, indiscernible words. The man and his bodyguards then boarded the limousine, vanishing from her sight behind heavily tinted windows. The chauffeur closed the door after them. The limousine joined the procession of departing vehicles. She made a point of committing its license plate number to memory for future reference.