The Korean Intercept (23 page)

Anami happened to catch her eye, and she felt a vague chill course through her. He bowed respectfully in her direction. She acknowledged this with a polite nod. Then the acting president of Kurita Industries strode toward his own waiting limousine.

She returned her attention to Sachito, at her side.

"The man in that car," said Meiko. "The man Mr. Anami was just speaking with. Do you know him? He arrived late and I was not introduced."

Sachito dabbed with a tissue at the mascara traces on her cheeks. "I didn't meet him either," she said absently. She sniffled. "I don't recall having seen him before. Perhaps he's an associate of Mr. Anami. I really don't know."

"One more question, please. The word, 'intercept.' Does it have, any sort of special meaning to you? Any at all? Perhaps it's a name for something, or a code name perhaps."

Sachito frowned. "Why would you ask such questions at a time like this, Meiko? I don't understand."

Meiko frowned. "Neither do I. It's just… I don't know, really. I heard some of the words being spoken between Anami and that man." She interrupted herself with an impatient wave of a hand, hoping to banish the thought. "Sachito, forgive me. My mind is playing tricks on me, and so is my hearing."

Ota Anami's chauffeured white Toyota limo drove by where they stood. They watched the limousine leave the lot, which was by this time mostly deserted, except for their car and a few vehicles here and there belonging to visitors to other gravesites.

"Are you suggesting, Meiko, that Mr. Anami and the man he was speaking to are involved in something… suspicious?"

"I don't know. I really don't. How well do you know Mr. Anami? I mean, personally."

"Hardly at all. We've spoken on occasion during the past few months when your father was too weak to attend meetings and I would relay his decisions to Anami. We've met two or three times, no more. I will confess that I really don't know anything about him."

"I assume they'll be dropping the 'acting' from his title, acting president of the company, now that Father has been laid to rest," Meiko mused. "In other words, Mr. Anami benefited considerably—in money, prestige, personal power—upon my father's death. I wonder who that other man was? I wonder who Anami's associates are outside of Kurita Industries."

Sachito frowned. "Are you suggesting that foul play was involved? Really, Meiko, I don't see how that could be possible. The medical examiner's report… your father died of natural causes. That's a medical fact."

"I'm a journalist," said Meiko. "When I verify facts, then I'm satisfied. When I'm convinced of the truth about how my father died, then I will allow myself to shed tears of grief for his soul."

Sachito studied her for a long time before nodding. Sachito's eyes were no longer moist, but solemn and determined.

"And I will help you."

 

From the cemetery, Galt again took the freeway downtown.

Before he had gone a quarter mile, he observed in his rearview mirror that he was being followed. Galt habitually practiced counter-surveillance techniques on a day-to-day basis, the residue of a lifetime devoted to covert ops. It essentially meant remaining constantly attuned to every nuance of his immediate surroundings, be it seated at a table in a restaurant, relaxing at home or especially, as now when on foreign soil, on a crowded freeway on his way to meet an important contact. Traffic flew bumper-to-bumper at a high rate of speed but remained orderly, this being Japan after all, without much lane changing. This made it easier for Galt to note the white Toyota, with a dent in its right front fender, shifting lanes with him, as he angled for an upcoming exit, than it would have been had he been driving in, say, Rome, Mexico City or L.A. Of course there was no reason why he should be the only driver to take the Nihonbashi Street exit, except that this particular Toyota had joined the traffic flow behind him right after he'd left Aoyama Cemetery, and had maintained a four-cars-behind trailing position ever since. He overshot his exit, and took the next one. The tail never lost position exiting the freeway, but things got progressively difficult for the Toyota's driver as Galt drove deep into a market area. The mid-morning streets bustled with multitudes of pedestrians, noisy motorcycles, honking buses and cars. He exercised some basic evasion maneuvers and lost the tail.

He returned to the freeway and, to make sure while keeping an eye on the traffic flow presently surrounding him, he again overshot his exit, using the next off-ramp and this time driving a zigzag route through a residential neighborhood. He satisfied himself that he had lost the tail, whoever they were. He was curious as hell to know who'd been following him. It could have been anyone from the Japanese authorities to U.S. spooks to representatives of those very forces, whoever they were, that he had come to Tokyo to unearth as a means of getting to Kate and the
Liberty
. But to that end, his top, his only, priority at this point was to make his scheduled rendezvous with General Tuttle, which is why he had passed on the opportunity to waylay whoever was in the Toyota and find out who they were. He did not want to keep the general waiting or, worse, somehow miss their connection.

He took a cross-town avenue to hook up with ten-lane Nihonbashi Street, which he followed, as he'd initially intended, in the direction of Shinjuku Park near the Olympic Stadium grounds. It was slow going at times. It was a sunny day but that didn't mean much in Tokyo, where the smog was worse than any city Galt had ever been to. Tokyo basked in sunlight filtered through a gray overcast that made the sun a dull red ball as if seen through gauze. Several times, while he sat stalled in traffic, Galt's nostrils distinguished the delicate, tangy scent of Japanese cooking, drifting on the air from restaurants, mingling with the acrid, metallic taste of automotive exhaust.

After being all but leveled by the Allied bombing raids of World War II, Tokyo has been rebuilt in a mixture of styles more Western than Japanese. The dense, sharp contrast of old and new, East and West, is everywhere. Bright, modern business buildings stand side-by-side with tiny shops offering the products of ancient arts. Neon signs of every imaginable shape, size and color, in English as well as Japanese ideographs, flicker, jump and whirl. This was the Ginza Strip in midtown Tokyo, centered around Ginza Street, which runs northwest to southwest. This, the main shopping section, is dominated by only the very best department stores, subway stations and flashy neon signs. Ginza Street also passes through the financial district before reaching the city's red-light section.

He had the car's radio tuned to the English-speaking news station, and that's how he learned that the
Liberty's
disappearance had been made public.

Moreover, the news had engulfed the global media. Galt was not surprised. It had only been a matter of time, and he was impressed that the administration had been able to contain such a potent story as long as they had. The world was in on it now. As for Galt, he heard nothing on the radio that he hadn't known the night before.

He paid to park the car in a crowded lot across from Shinjuku Park, Tokyo's version of Central Park. It was only a short walk from the lot to the Meiji Shrine. He passed through a landscape of public gardens, of little bridges surrounded by hazelnut bushes, aspens, beech and maple, and a wall of oak trees that muted the vendors' cries, the bicycle bells and the unending bustle of street business interwoven with the roar of nearby traffic. There were peddlers of all sorts selling lucky amulets, souvenirs, food; soba sellers with wheeled carts, dispensing soup; stalls offering smoked eels and sushi, noodles or rice. But like Aoyama Cemetery, the park's expansive grounds were for the most part a green oasis of serenity and tranquility amid the urban landscape of neon, concrete and constant noise. Narrow gravel walkways wended across rolling lawns of half-hidden ponds and quiet, secluded teahouses. There were other Westerners here and there.

At the Meiji Shrine, as per Galt's request as relayed through Barney Markee, General Clayton Tuttle stood waiting directly beneath the curved horizontal top of the
torii
, the enormous redwood pillars and beams that form the gateway that distinguishes Shinto shrines. The area around the shrine was crowded with people in meditation, tourists snapping photographs and lovers strolling by.

Tuttle was doing his best to fit in, to look like an everyday tourist in mismatched polyester and not like the spit-and-polish ranking military man that he was. But strutting back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back, an unlit cigar poking from the corner of his mouth, he needed only a swagger stick to make him the spitting image of Douglas MacArthur inspecting the troops. At first sight of Galt, Tuttle ceased his pacing. He glanced irritably at his wristwatch, much as he had greeted Galt with a glance at a stopwatch on their previous encounter during the training exercise aboard a yacht anchored on the Potomac.

"Goddammit, man, I get your call in the middle of a staff briefing at the Pentagon, fly halfway around the world to rendezvous with you here on time, and you stand me up for fifteen minutes."

Galt couldn't help but smile at the crusty old salt, and practically had to restrain himself from saluting. "Sorry, sir. I took a wrong turn getting here. Thanks for coming."

"Well, the cat's out of the bag." Like Galt, like most desk jockeys in covert ops, Tuttle was a seasoned field operative. His eyes panned their surroundings. "By the end of this day, everyone we're looking at right now in this park is going to be discussing the missing American space shuttle. Oh, and by the way, you do know that you're on the Washington shit list, right?"

"Goes without saying, I'm not proud to say. That's why you got my SOS. I'm in serious need of a military liaison I can trust implicitly, with intel background and Asian contacts. That would be you, sir. You're not only at the top of my A list, you are my list. I've, uh, been on the move for the last few hours, General. But I need to know what you know."

"Let's get the small stuff out of the way first," said Tuttle. "That turncoat NASA engineer will be spending the rest of his life in custody and is presently under a twenty-four-hour suicide watch. That little Japanese tart who sex-trapped him into selling out has been a tougher nut to crack. She was a stripper in a
yakuza-
owned joint that went out of business months ago. These guys were backtracking and covering their tracks big time."

"That would put me at the top of Wil Fleming's shit list," Galt conceded. "The chief of staff told me yesterday that the stripper was sure to turn on whoever sent her. Fleming's a wet-behind-the-ears pup. That girl was sent over, operating on a strictly need-to-know basis. They gave her Fraley's name and address and told her to go to work on him. The money was good enough, and she was street-smart enough, to do everything they paid her to do without asking any questions about who she was working for, or their motives."

"And so we move to the big picture," said Tuttle. "We're on top of all Chinese and North Korean electronic communication, as no doubt they're listening in on a lot of our traffic. No one seems to have a fix on
Liberty
as yet, although a Chinese force has made an incursion across North Korea's borders and their commander is confident that he's close enough to call in an armored column. The North Koreans, on the other hand, appear to be clueless. Their regional commander in the area where
Liberty
may be is a guy named Sung, who seems to operate with pretty much complete autonomy, given the fact that no one in Pyongyang gives a damn about Hamgyong Province… until now."

"What about a CIA ground intel in the region?"

Tuttle jerked the unlit stogie from the corner of his mouth. "His name is Ahn Chong, and what I'm about to share with you all comes from his single coded transmission thus far. Here it is, Trev. We have confirmation from our ground contact inside North Korea that some of the
Liberty
crew has survived. The shuttle is more or less intact."

Galt's heart skipped a beat. "The hell you say. Kate… is she—"

"We don't know yet." Turtle's gruffness could not conceal his own concern. He said, "A North Korean mountain bandit named Chai Bin claims to have possession of the shuttle and the satellite and the crew survivors, and they're for sale. Guy calls himself a warlord. The CIA has routed me pertinent b.g. which, unfortunately, isn't much. The North Koreans want to nail him. He's been a thorn in everyone's side for years in that region. He's elusive, well entrenched and has his own private army."

"Just the same, we've got plenty if this Ahn Chong knows the exact location of the shuttle."

"We'll have plenty when Ahn tells us," Tuttle countered. "But so far he's only relayed what I've told you. Our warlord is playing it cagey to see what our response will be."

"Our first response ought to damn well be me. So it's the North Koreans, the Chinese, the United States and a warlord. Warlord. Jesus. Sounds like an Indiana Jones movie."

"Make that a five-way play," said Tuttle. "You forgot to include yourself."

"I thought I was on their shit list."

"You are. That doesn't mean you don't have a part to play. We all have our parts to play."

"Shakespeare, General?"

"This may or may not surprise you, but I have tasked top priority authorization to get an Army Ranger special operations package in-country ASAP And I have your mission orders."

"Is that right?"

"That's right. I was on their shit list too, for taking your call and for walking out on a staff briefing." Tuttle chortled. "And for trying to give them the dodge. I should have known better."

"Mission orders. Is that right?"

"I was contacted en route after Chai Bin dealt himself in. As for you and me, all has been forgiven from on high, considering what's at stake and how fast things have to get done."

"Specifics, sir, if you don't mind."

"I've been handed point position on this operation," said Tuttle. "I have been assigned to honcho a tactical covert ops strike into North Korea once we get target acquisition on Chai Bin's position. Since you have already taken the personal initiative of, er, uh, inserting yourself into the theater of operations, you, my headstrong friend, have been assigned as my right-hand man to advise and help organize."