While the countryside cruised by to his left, where sprawling high-rise apartments gave way to factories and eventually to rice fields, Jake took the opportunity to check his e-mail on the train’s wi-fi. He rarely had any messages by e-mail anymore. He really wasn’t taking on new cases now. But he still maintained his server that routed his mail through a dozen countries and encrypting them and scrubbing them for viruses before sending them on to him. The scrubbing often dumped legitimate e-mail. But if someone who knew him really wanted him, they could go old school and call him on his cell. He might even pick up. As suspected he had only one e-mail, and that was from an old friend Chad Hunter, who was a weapons designer living off the grid on an island in southeast Alaska. Chad simply asked how in the hell he had come across the technology from Professor Tramil. That and the fact that his preliminary calculations confirmed that this technology would work. Of course Jake guessed as much, otherwise there wouldn’t be people trying to kill to get it.
Smiling, Jake fired back a message saying to keep the info close to the vest, explaining that people are willing to kill to get that technology. Chad was a civilian, but Jake knew the guy could keep a secret.
“Everything all right?” Kim asked Jake.
“Hmm.” Jake put his phone back into an inside pocket. “Did you see the woman in her mid-thirties pass by three minutes ago.”
“Of course,” Kim said. “She was quite the looker.”
“You’re right. But she was pretending to text and she fired off a photo of us from her phone as she passed.”
“Seriously?” Kim looked back behind him toward the car behind them. “I was looking at…”
“Her short black skirt,” Jake finished. “Or her tight white silk blouse?”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Jake leaned toward the young man. “Don’t be sorry. Just be more observant. Did you notice the car that followed us to the train station?”
“Are you serious? No.”
“When you aren’t driving it can be more difficult,” Jake instructed. “But you can usually line yourself up to see out one of the side mirrors. When I turned to talk with you, I verified the car through my peripheral vision. Driver was a Korean in his mid-forties with military posture. He abandoned his car at the station and bought a ticket just after us. His eyes met those of our young lady. And he wasn’t checking out her legs. She bought a ticket just as we were heading toward the KTX, and she barely got aboard before the doors closed.”
Kim shook his head. “How did you see all of that?”
“You need to see without being seen seeing.”
“Is that rule number one?”
“No. Rule number one is don’t let someone get the drop on you unless you want them to.”
“Why would you want someone to get the drop on you?” Kim asked.
“It’s a calculated risk, of course,” Jake explained. “You have to believe that they don’t want to kill you. If you think they might kill you, then kill them first.”
“Of course.” Kim looked confused. “But how do you know?”
“Easy. Their eyes give away their intentions. They don’t teach you that at the Farm anymore?”
“Not really. It’s more high-tech than that. You know, facial recognition software, satellite intercepts, drone surveillance, etc.”
Jake shook his head. “Great. What happens when the Chinese or the North Koreans shoot down our satellites with missiles or pulse weapons? All that technology is great. But it doesn’t do you a helluva lot of good on this train right now.”
Kim looked around. “I count three cameras in this car alone. One on each end and a globe in the center.”
“Don’t forget those on each TV screen. That’s three more. But it’s not my point. Unless we have real-time access to the images, your own eyes are much more useful. Hang on.” Jake pulled out his cell phone, put it to his left ear as if listening, and then clicked a photo as a man passed to his right.
As the man passed, the young woman headed back toward the front of the car — a classic pass-off. Jake showed Kim the photo. Then he attached it to a text and sent it to Pam Suh, the CIA station chief in Seoul, having her run facial recognition to see who this guy might be.
In just a couple of minutes Jake got a text back saying to call her.
“That my boss?” Kim asked.
“Yeah. Hold down the fort. She wants me to call her.”
Jake got up and walked back toward the bathroom at the rear of the car. Once he was there, he called and waited.
Pam Suh picked up on the second ring. “Jake. Where the hell are you?”
He ignored her. “Did you run the man through facial recognition?”
“I didn’t need to. The man’s name is Kwan. Real name is Ryang Myung-Ki. He’s a North Korean intelligence officer. Is he on your flight?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why? Because you’re not on a flight?”
Jake pulled his phone away and looked at it carefully, knowing there was no way she could be tracking him. “Are you tracking your young man’s phone?”
“You didn’t lose him?” she asked.
“Of course not.” Although he had considered it, Jake knew that would be useless since they both knew where he was going. “We’re on the KTX.”
“I know. Making good time at about three hundred K. Heading into Daejon. Why not fly?”
Jake felt the gun in his right front pocket. “I had a couple weapons I needed to carry.”
“Kim would have taken those for you,” she assured him.
“Right. Let’s just say I’m on a mission to travel on every bullet train in the world. All that remains now is China.”
“Might not want to get on that one for a while,” she said. “Let them get the bugs out.” She hesitated, as if unsure what to say.
“What?” he asked.
“Kwan is a brutal, bad man,” she said. “We don’t know how many people he’s killed. He worked for a while with our counterparts here in the south. But he became too difficult. The Agency refused to work with him. We should have put an end to his activities a long time ago.”
“So you want me to take care of…”
“No. That’s not your concern.”
“But he’s following me.” Jake explained how the man had tailed them from the hotel to Seoul Station and got on the train just after them.
“Let him follow.”
Jake laughed. “But don’t let him know I know he’s following?”
“Right. It’s better that we know where he is. He’s just one of many we guess will be lingering around that conference in Gyeongju. There will be just as many at the DMZ meeting. But security will be much tighter there. So you need to be careful.”
“Careful is my middle name,” Jake said.
“That’s not what I’ve heard,” Pam said derisively.
Somebody tried to open the restroom door, despite the obvious occupied symbol outside.
“Gotta go,” Jake said. “Oh, one more thing.” He quickly described the young woman on the train.
“Let’s see. Mid-thirties, nice legs, great figure. You just described half of the young women in Korea.”
“I didn’t get a picture,” Jake said. “But she got one of me.”
“Maybe it was just some woman who thought you were cute,” Pam said, a slight laugh.
“No. I’m too old for her.”
“Koreans respect their elders.”