As we began our descent, a stewardess pulled down the blinds on each of the windows. After nearly thirty years, the Republic of Korea must still function on a wartime basis. The blinds were pulled to prevent observation of the port defenses of Chinhae, Korea’s principal naval center.
At the small Chinhae air terminal, I was met by a middle-aged naval officer built low and solid like a cinder block. Commander Pak directed the maritime unconventional warfare section of the Korean 25th Squadron and consequently smiled only with his eyes. The rest of the smile had been eroded by too many covert amphibious reconnaissances into North Korea with too many good men lost and too many imprisoned—never to be freed.
The stocky, hard-bitten old frogman had logged over two decades in the simmering war between north and south. North Korea, jealous of the south’s ever-growing prosperity and self-conscious of the north’s own fall from ascendancy, devoted incredible energy and resources to harassing the south. South Korea had no choice but to counterpunch if it was to hold the harassment in check. Consequently, both sides infiltrated, reconnoitered, and sabotaged. Since Korea was a peninsula, infiltration by sea assumed preeminence as the method of choice. Infiltration by sea necessarily meant heavy use of frogmen. Through the years Pak had risen to the position of head maritime counterpuncher. Year after year, Pak, as an officer in the Naval Reconnaissance Unit, had braved the cold, swift currents of the north, had crawled the shingle beaches by night, and had awaited that final searing burst of fire that had yet to come. His expressionless face was as obdurate, unchanging, and unforgiving as his country’s coastline.
Like me, the old campaigner belonged to a thin, uncompromising strain of defenders—defenders, who, in all but the worst of times, the public viewed as embarrassments.
We had met when I was officer in charge of a SEAL Mobile Training Team in Korea. An immediate friendship developed—firmer than most of far greater years. We shared a difficulty in reconciling a sense of duty with the demands of ambitious seniors. The grade of commander was as far as he was ever going to get, and he took contrary pride in that fact.
“Quillon, I would like to think you are here as a tourist,”—fluency in English was mandatory for Korean officers—“to again enjoy our Mongolian beef, drink rice wine, and visit our Kisaeng houses. I’m disturbed, though, by your cryptic message and the fact that you’re carrying a briefcase.
“Come to grips with the fact that they chucked you out, and you let them? Can’t blame them, you were too hard to control. Inflexible men, I think, give them a pain.”
His English was constantly improving. I couldn’t say I enjoyed the way it left me more open to his insights.
“They’ll know they were wrong someday. Anyway, someone will know.
“My people have threatened to throw me out every other year for the last ten. They never do. They’ll put up with me as long as my unit keeps taking the missions.”
No grin, just a slight eye sparkle.
“Your shoulder still bother you?”
The Frazer stoicism amused him. It was a useless pretension to attempt to outstoic a Korean.
I held my palm up, grabbed my bags, and tossed them into his jeep. We drove through the narrow streets bracketed by simple one-story buildings with tiled roofs, past the statue of Admiral Yi, Korea’s fourteenth-century Lord Nelson. When we arrived at his home on the eastern side of town, his wife made the obligatory welcomes in Korean and disappeared.
“Commander, I need to get in touch with someone in your central intelligence agency with enough clout to get me the use of a ship.”
Pak showed no surprise. “Gunboat or submarine?”
“Either. Preferably a submarine.”
A submarine would be a godsend provided he could get one. Korean gunboats were really destroyers euphemistically designated “gunboats” for treaty purposes. Destroyers weren’t well suited for what I had in mind.
He stepped into the next room and I could hear him using a telephone, his voice growing louder. Moments later he returned with tea.
“A Mr. Kim will be here shortly… and reluctantly. I hope you have something to trade, for he will be a hard man to convince to part with anything. He has little patience for non-Koreans of official standing, and within that group even less time for Americans these days. And of course you are an American of no standing whatsoever… from a protocol standpoint, anyway.”
We didn’t have to wait long for Kim.
Tunnel-rat pale, Kim blinked as if the sight of you hurt his eyes. Coldness and oiliness were all mixed up in the man. His feral crew cut splintered in a dozen different directions, like fur on a cat’s arched back.
“Now, Lieutenant Commander Frazer—I hope you don’t mind me calling you that, your rank at discharge, that is—let me see if I’ve got all this straight. You’re without a navy, your current ties with the U.S. are somewhat strained, and you’ve been subsisting on a shoestring for the past decade. It’s a pity a man with your talents just can’t seem to fit in anywhere. Too bad, too bad. No organization, no government… sad, is it not? Granted, you have collected a small nest egg through some of your recent diversions. That Iranian escape was amusing, but unfortunately ‘small change,’ I believe the expression is. Now, at the expense of appearing rude, what makes you think I’m going to give you a submarine? The Korean navy doesn’t have a sub according to Jane’s Fighting Ships. But even if we did have one, why fritter it away on one of your little projects? You’re wasting my time.”
I ignored the statement that denied any record of a submarine; we both knew the reason for the denial. “I don’t want a submarine permanently, just the use of it for about three weeks…”
He blinked at me impassively.
“…and I will be willing to charter it on an arm’s-length, businesslike basis. I will pay all running expenses, manning expenses, repairs and upkeep, plus a weekly charter fee of…” I named a very generous fee. “In addition, I will post security in the amount of one-half the value of the sub, with some additional for pensions for crew members’ families.”
“Out of the question,” Kim droned. “One of our submarines, that is if we had one, would have a value beyond price. Really, Lieutenant Commander Frazer, I never considered for a moment that you wanted one permanently….”
“Furthermore,” I continued, “we would be presenting your country with a means of underscoring the fact that some of the more distasteful methods of communism haven’t changed much in the past thirty years. I would think this fact properly conveyed might be embarrassing to those factions in the U.S. who would have the world believe that Ivan’s methods have changed. Especially when it comes time to renew U.S.-Korean defense agreements.”
He blinked again. I thought his eyelids had moved perceptibly more slowly.
“How?”
I told him about Kurganov, Vyshinsky, and the camp. I was vague about details at this juncture. He could understand why. But he still appeared dubious.
“Yes, we could get some mileage out of Vyshinsky’s escape and subsequent press conferences. His statements would support the allegations Kurganov has been making all along about the hoodwinking of the West. Sort of act as an update. But to risk a submarine…”
Well, at least Kim was finally acknowledging they had one.
“We might get the same mileage out of drawing more attention to the Moscow dissidents, without putting any of our security forces in jeopardy,” he said, thinking aloud.
I had one last move and I hoped that I had primed Kim properly. We needed that submarine.
“Such a camp is likely to serve a secondary purpose for Ivan. If my guess is correct, it is not far from a railroad line that services the Chinese frontier and does occasional duty as a communications station for the border forces.”