Nothing.
He pulled again, then remembered he had not pulled back the slide to chamber a round. He reached to do it but a jackboot slammed down on his right hand, pinning it to the floor of the plane. Kuzumi could feel bones crack in his hand.
The Russian officer stooped over and took the pistol. The man laughed and shook his head as he tucked the souvenir into his belt. Then he spit in Kuzumi’s face as other soldiers clambered into the wreckage. They dragged Kuzumi out of the remains of the plane. He spent a few days trussed there at the airfield, lying in his own excrement and in agony before a senior officer arrived. They cleaned Kuzumi up and took him on a Russian plane to a camp in the middle of Siberia. Kuzumi had only a glimpse at it as they dragged him off the plane to the prison building. He didn’t see the world outside that building for eight years.
Kuzumi looked down at his right hand. The fingers had never healed properly. Nothing had. The Russians had used every injury he suffered in the crash for their torture and then made new ones.
Eight years. Eight years of needles directly into his spine where the bone had been broken. The nerves manipulated to bring forth pain. Eight years of the fingers being bent back again and again and again. The drugs, the lack of sleep and food. The water dripping through his cell. The illnesses. The total lack of communication with any human being other than his torturers. Then the brief moments where they reversed the process and lavished food and rest upon him for a day or two to make the lack even more noticeable. Then they would kick the door open and take it all away and begin the torture anew.
But they let him keep the picture. He now knew why. To remind him of another life and to quicken his breaking under then-control. But it had worked the opposite way. The picture gave him strength. There was life out there. Or so he had thought. So he had thought for those eight long years.
Kuzumi leaned back in his wheelchair. The Russians had wanted information. They had seen the blast from Genzai Bakudan. They had known of the program from their own spies. They wanted the secret of the atom. But Kuzumi had never spoken. Never said a word. No matter what they did. For eight years. The Russians got their secrets to develop a bomb elsewhere and when they finally exploded their first one, Kuzumi was no longer valuable in that capacity.
The Society saved him. The Russians no longer needed the secrets in Kuzumi’s head. A bullet in the brain would have been par for the KGB men who controlled his fate. But the Society made Kuzumi valuable to the Russians through a discreet Red Chinese agent. They offered money, minerals, and other valuables for the wreck of a body that Kuzumi was. There was a discreet exchange of man for treasure on one of the small Kuril Islands that were in dispute between Russia and Japan.
Kuzumi never walked again. He was returned to Hokkaido. And found out the strength he had drawn from the picture was long gone. So he had embraced the Society that had saved him with all his heart and soul, knowing that never again would he open a space in there for another human being.
Kuzumi took the picture and refolded it. He put it back in the box. The Russians had gone through great lengths for eight years trying to unlock the secret of Genzai Bakudan. Now, what were the North Koreans after and how much of a price were they willing to pay?
CHAPTER 6
“… and on top of all that, you didn’t get paid.”
Lake removed the special satellite phone from his ear and looked at it for a second, then put it back. “At least I didn’t kill everyone this time,” he said.
“Thank God for little favors.” Feliks’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Where are your friends now?”
Lake looked out the grimy windshield of the battered Bronco II. He’d checked the homing device as soon as he’d got back to his hiding place and tracked down the bug he’d planted in the Ingram. It had led him to this section of the San Francisco port. He’d parked behind a large abandoned Dumpster with a clear view of the trawler the electronic device told him the Koreans — or, more accurately, the guns the Koreans had stolen — were on board. He relayed that information to Feliks along with the name of the ship: Am Nok Sung.
“It’s flying the South Korean flag,” Lake added. He’d stolen the Bronco II two days ago from the outer parking lot of the airport after making sure its parking ticket had just been issued that morning. It wouldn’t be missed for several days and Lake planned on dumping it sooner than that.
“I’ll run the registry on the ship,” Feliks said. “I don’t understand why the South Koreans would be running an operation in the United States.”
“There’s no love lost between the Koreans and the Japanese,” Lake said.
“Do you think they might be connected to the event the other night?” Feliks asked.
“I don’t know,” Lake said. “There’s no indication they are except that they went to the Patriots to get weapons, but they could have picked that information up anywhere.” “What do you think they have planned?”
“I don’t have a clue,” Lake said, a little tired of the questioning. “That’s why I’m sitting here watching them.”
“Let’s not get some friendlies killed with weapons we sold,” Feliks said. He paused. “I’ve got the registry information on the Am Nok Sung coming up on the screen right now. It might be flying the South Korean flag, but it’s registered in Nigeria. That’s a pretty common practice to save on registration fees.”
“Who registered it?” Lake asked. A burst of static rippled through the phone and he pulled the phone away from his ear for a second.
“That will take a while,” Feliks said. “We found the message that recruited Starry and Preston on the Internet. I’ll have a copy put in your drop, but it’s not much help. It simply gives them an agency to call and leave a message with their own number. We checked the agency and the drop was paid for in cash. No one remembers who placed it. It was discontinued after two weeks.”
“A dead end,” Lake said. He was surprised at that. The computer whizzes at the Ranch should have been able to do more. Unless, of course, whoever had placed the message was as smart as they were. Which pointed beyond the Patriots, who weren’t exactly known for their collective IQ level.
“We’re scanning the Internet, looking for any other similar messages in case whoever sent the first one sends another to get it done right this time.”
Not likely, Lake thought. He was beginning to respect whoever was pulling the strings here.
“By the way,” Feliks added, “who fired the other shots last night? The ones that saved your butt?”
“I don’t know.” Lake had been asking himself the same question all day. He knew it meant one of two things: either he was being followed or the Koreans were being followed. He’d used all his skills earlier in the day when he’d stolen the Bronco and gone to the meet site to make sure he wasn’t followed, so that left the latter as the only viable possibility. He told Feliks that.
“Well, if you don’t figure out what these people are up to in the next couple of days I’m going to have to tip off the aTF. and have them recover the guns,” Feliks said. “That will also take care of our Korean problem.”
“They’re moving,” Lake said.
“Excuse me?”
Lake watched a party of six men wearing long tan raincoats walking down the gangplank off the trawler. “The Koreans are moving,” Lake repeated. “I’ll send you a postcard when they get to their destination. Out.” He turned off the satellite phone and watched. He had no doubt that each man had a MAC-10 hidden under his raincoat.