The Korean Intercept (27 page)

Turtle set down his tote bag, unzipping it.

"Pissing and moaning?" He handed Galt a device about the size of a matchbox, which Galt attached to his belt. Tuttle then dropped a small lapel mic and earpiece into Galt's palm, both of which Galt properly affixed. "Galt, you're about to climb up the face of a skyscraper." He next withdrew and handed over the hand and foot suction-climbing devices that had been requisitioned through his military connections and delivered to the safe house in Yokohama just before they'd left. Tuttle grumbled as he watched Galt securely strap the pads to his shoes and palms. "You do realize that if these babies decide to malfunction, they'll be shoveling you off the street."

Galt checked the fit and feel of the climbing devices, and donned the foot and hand devices. "In that case, tell them that my last words were: 'I'm sorry for blocking traffic'"

Galt approached the base of the wall of the building. Wearing the foot devices, he clumped along with the awkwardness of the Frankenstein monster.

Tuttle looked down to zip the tote bag. He looked up and saw that Galt, an apparition in black, was already scaling up past the second story of the sheer wall and climbing fast, hand over hand, up across the glass and steel. Tuttle scanned the immediate area surrounding his position. He observed minimal vehicular and pedestrian traffic on this side street.

A bright green commuter train rumbled over a nearby intersection.

Tuttle said into his lapel mic, "Good luck, man. Damn but it feels great to be back in the field again. Tell the truth, son, it makes my dick hard."

"Glad you're having a good time, sir." Galt's reply was wry in Turtle's earpiece.

Galt curtailed the conversation, expending considerable physical effort in sustaining his upward mo mentum. He climbed methodically, relentlessly, up the face of the building, feeling more now like Spider-man than Frankenstein. Insistent wind gusts tugged at his hair. He realized amidst all of the sensation and thought that every fiber of his being felt alive. True, it had been awhile since he'd given up drinking, but he realized that on this mission he was shedding that old life like a snake shedding its skin. He felt reborn, and pleased. He still had the edge. The damn desk job in Washington hadn't stolen his abilities, his gifts. He had never felt more alive. The physical stress to his muscles as he climbed only enhanced the sensation of living.

Central Tokyo sprawled out endlessly beneath him in every direction. Smog blanketed the basin, muting its lights, but he could still see Tokyo Tower, the moat and the grounds of the Emperor's Palace. The corporate logos on surrounding buildings were a who's who of Japanese capitalism: Nissan Motors, Fuji Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Steel.

Bells chimed nearby, and for some peculiar reason, breathing heavily with his task, passing what he counted as the twenty-second floor, Galt found himself recalling the day he and Kate were married by a judge in that small-town red brick courthouse. As they were leaving the brief and modest ceremony in the kindly judge's chambers, workmen outside, who were restoring an old bell tower atop the courthouse, called out their congratulations and began gonging the antique brass bell for the whole world to hear. Wedding bells for the newlyweds. The world had welcomed these lovers. He blinked away the memory.

He reached the windows of the penthouse. The spacious conference room had bookcases along one wall and windows along the others. A long polished oak table dominated the room.

A man he recognized as Rikihei Ugaki was seated at the head of the table. The
Oyabun
looked sharp, dapper in a white silk suit. Galt also "made" the other men in their well-tailored business suits, seated around the table:
kobun
, the Red Scorpion Clan's top lieutenants and station chiefs. Each man sat with his left hand on the left knee, his right hand extended palm upward with his eyes turned to their
Oyabun
, the traditional
yakuza
sign of respect.

Galt's foot and hand suction pads securing his weight, he pasted himself against the face of the building, just below and to the side of the window, so that only his left eye peered into the room, at approximately eye-level.

Those present, including Ugaki who sat facing the window from the far end of the conference table, were wholly involved in a drama unfolding at the conference table. Even these most jaded of human sharks found the illusion of security in this cocoon, aloft on the thirty-fourth floor, which is why Galt had chosen this manner of gathering intelligence. Unfortunately, he was "dropping in" about twenty minutes into their conference. Galt needed the cover of night. Anyone spotted scaling a skyscraper would surely draw attention during the daylight hours. On the other hand, he suspected that the first part of this meeting would be the ceremonial greeting of the
Oyabun
as each of the
kobun
arrived individually, in order of their rank within the organization. And so he and Turtle had chosen to wait until night cloaked the city. He was hoping that he had only missed the introduction ceremonies and the customary serving of sake.

He used his feet suction pads, and that of his left hand, to maintain his adhesion to the sheer face of the skyscraper. He undipped a small microphone component from the device at his belt and attached the mic to the window. With its miniature suction cup to the glass, it looked like a child's dart. Galt heard guttural exchanges in Japanese between two of the men seated at the table. Japanese was one of the six languages in which he was fluent.

Far below, Tuttle would be keeping watch. There was the building's normal security staff, which was minimal. Far more importantly, there was the collective security force of Ugaki and his
yakuza
. The interior of the Tanaga Building, every hallway, would be thick with them. Ugaki could have the outside of the building under surveillance from street level or from surrounding buildings. The worst-case scenario was that they would be equipped with infrared Night Vision Devices, in which case they would see him. That was the risk. But he had come halfway around the world to find Kate. Too far to be dissuaded by the element of risk.

At the conference table, amenities and ceremonial greetings were past.

Ota Anami, seated at Ugaki's right, was engaged in heated debate with a man who sat opposite him, to Ugaki's left. "We have invested too much time and resources to double-cross the Korean, this Colonel Sung, now," Anami was saying. The CEO had a softness about him that looked out of place amid the others seated at the table, but he spoke with authority. "The airfield has been monitored through every phase, has it not?" Anami nodded deferentially to the dapper man, who sat unmoving, implacable, statue-like, at the head of the table. "Most often it has been
Oyabun
Ugaki who flew into North Korea at great personal risk to supervise Colonel Sung's preparations. Sung will gain possession of the shuttle before the Americans or the Chinese or the North Koreans, because he is the nearest one to it. He will not betray us, because he fears the power of
yakuza
. It is a matter of honor."

Despite longstanding and deeply rooted inter-clan warfare among some of these men, an officious air of business permeated the room in observance of
enryo
, a highly respected part of the Japanese culture: the code of proper conduct, which emphasizes reserve, restraint and emotional control.

"Honor." There was scorn in the opposing gangster's tone. "I disdain the notion of letting the Korean live. They are not people, but one step above baboons in intellect and honor. Sung has fulfilled his purpose. We should kill him and take command of his troops. Events will overtake themselves in a situation as fluid and volatile as this. Sung could be persuaded by his superiors to tell them everything. He must be eliminated at this crucial phase."

There was no surprise to Galt that a Japanese gangster would not trust a North Korean. Koreans were essentially the Asian "blacks" of Japan. Discrimination in Japan is subtle, never mentioned to foreigners, but it is common. The Japanese do their best to isolate those of Korean heritage from the mainstream of society, segregating them into ghettos like Heuisa Street, with housing projects and their own shopping areas.

At the conference table, all eyes remained on Ugaki who considered, at some length and without comment, what he had just heard.

This made for dead calm in Galt's earpiece. From his birdlike perch, so far removed from street level, he again vaguely heard the sound of the city, which, at this height, was merely a faint, metallic cacophony.

"You are both persuasive in your points of view,"

Ugaki said finally. "At this stage, I concur with Anami-san. It is not yet time for the removal of Colonel Sung. I will personally take possession of the, uh, merchandise after the colonel has possession of it, and I will oversee its importation into Japan. Colonel Sung is in preparation to attack and eliminate Chai Bin. Retrieval of the shuttle is imminent." Ugaki paused and smirked. "I will deal with Colonel Sung at the appropriate time, after he truly has fulfilled his usefulness." He glanced at the
yakuza
who had argued with Anami. "Doing so will eliminate the only connection to us from within North Korea, and their government will take the blame internationally."

The
yakuza
being addressed responded respectfully to his
Oyabun
.

Galt could hear nothing. The breeze whispered along these heights of the building wall and played with his hair, but his earpiece had gone dead; no speaking in Japanese, no static, just flat-out dead. He considered breaking radio silence with Tuttle.

Before he could say anything into his lapel mic, the doors of the conference room were flung open. Shouting men poured in carrying weapons, everything from pistols to automatic weapons to shotguns, with bodyguards shouting and gesticulating empathetically with a sense of urgency to the men seated at the table.

Ugaki was on his feet, head held erect, arms crossed authoritatively, concentrating on the window dominating the wall before him while the
kobun
around him and a frightened Anami scrambled for cover.

The bodyguards collectively tracked their weapons at the window and opened fire.

 

Gunfire erupted from the window, spewing muzzle flashes that shredded glass.

Galt had reared his head away from where his eyes were pressed to the lower corner of the window. Freeing his right hand from its suction mitt, he delved into a pocket of his black jacket, grasping and activating, with a thumb flick, the sixty-second fuse on a high explosive device, round and no larger than a marble. He slid his other hand from its suction glove and yanked his feet free from their confinement with the right twist that disengaged them. As he fell away, he pitched the HE up and through the hole in the wall that had been a window.

And Galt was airborne.

He went into a backward free-fall, and everything seemed to go strangely into slow motion for him. As he fell, he started picking up speed, plummeting down, down, down, the air rushing by him, flapping his clothes, whipping at his hair, and another thirty-three floors to fall! He tore at the tear-away jacket, revealing the harness strapped across his back, and he yanked at the ripcord. The mini-parachute flapped open with a snap that broke his fall with a bone-jarring jolt.

Ugaki's security measures had extended to having lookout posts for scans of the Tanaga Building with NVDs and motion sensors. They had spotted Galt and radioed the bodyguard inside the building.

He reached for the guidelines and looked up to see the gaping hole full of faces, and guns tracing in his direction. Then came the orange-red blast of the HE, which may have been small enough to roll across the conference room floor without notice amid all the excitement. The window spewed flame and red lightning and human bodies and body parts, belching them into the night like an angry god. Galt worked the guidelines and, less than sixty seconds later, was guiding himself into a running stop on the ground at the base of the building, next to the canopied entrance to the underground garage.

Tuttle emerged into view as Galt was shucking off the parachute, which he rolled up into a ball less than the size of a basketball, and handed to Tuttle, who stuffed it into the tote bag without looking. His attention was skyward, at the point on the penthouse floor where smoke could be seen billowing. Tuttle struggled with the bag's zipper as they hurried away from there. "Was that absolutely necessary?"

"Dunno," said Galt. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, taking out a nest of vipers like that. Uh, watch your back, sir. They had a lookout that made me. I think they lost me in the fall, but I could be wrong."

Fire alarms were going off inside the Tanaga Building. Galt and Tuttle easily negotiated the chain link fence, as they had coming in, and dropped to the sidewalk adjacent to the vacant parking area. They started, at a brisk pace, in the direction of the nearest intersection.

"I trust you have something for us," Tuttle groused. "That bunch you just blew up was our best lead."

"We have what we need," said Galt, "and here it is. Ugaki and his
yakuza
have paid off a North Korean military officer who commands an airfield up north near their border with China. It all ties in, General. The
yakuza
set up that technician in Houston, Fraley, to bring down the shuttle. They'd co-opted their own landing strip, courtesy of this bought-off North Korean colonel. But things seem to have gone haywire. That's, what tonight's meeting was about. So we tap into North Korea's military files as deep as we can, and we find out where a colonel named Sung is commanding an airfield; then we'll know where we're going."

Tuttle sent a parting glance over his shoulder at the sky-scraper and the plume of smoke snaking into the sky from the penthouse. The wailing beeps of approaching sirens filled the night.

"And all we leave behind is a roomful of dead and injured
yakuza
? Yeah, I see your point. Good riddance to bad trash."