Kuzumi gritted his teeth as he remembered packing the labs and equipment for the move. It cost them almost two months in time. In the end the delay probably cost them the war. The worst for Kuzumi was that he had to leave Sakae. The Black Ocean Society was preparing for the eventual U.S. invasion by dispersing its assets and personnel. The Homeplace school was shut down.
Kuzumi gripped the arms of his chair. At the time it had seemed the logical thing to do: Send Sakae to stay with his own parents. So he had said good-bye to his son and departed for Hungnam. Little would he have guessed that he would not return to Japan for over eight years ‘and never see his son again.
In prison the Russians had told him little of what had gone on in the outside world. He had been told that Japan had surrendered. That the war was finally over. And to torment the scientists, Kuzumi in particular, they told him of what the Americans had done to end the war. Of the atomic bombs that had been dropped and their targets.
For eight years Kuzumi did not know whether his son had lived or died in the atomic attack. He also did not know what had become of Nira. When he was flown back to Sapporo by the Black Ocean after being released by the Russians, Nakanga took him directly in his wheelchair to this very room to meet Genoysha Taiyo.
Taiyo had stood upon Kuzumi’s entering the room, a very great sign of respect, especially as Kuzumi could not stand himself. Kuzumi remembered the words as if they were being spoken now, drawn back out of the walls that had absorbed them so many years ago. “I have been told of your concerns in reference to your son and your wife. I regret to inform you that your son perished in the atomic attack on Hiroshima. There was no sign of him or your parents after the attack. Your family house was completely destroyed.”
Kuzumi had prepared himself for this. His face had betrayed nothing, although he felt the knife of truth cut the thread of hope he had held onto for so many years. Hope that had kept him alive in the dark hole of his cell and through the torture sessions.
“Your wife is also dead. As best we have been able to determine, she committed suicide after learning of the attack on Hiroshima and your son’s death.”
The second blow had landed on a dead heart. “Did she know of my imprisonment?” Kuzumi had asked. “We informed her in the last message that we know she received that your plane had gone down and you were missing and presumed dead. In the same message we replied to her request about your son, confirming that he was lost.”
Poor Nira. Even now Kuzumi could well imagine her grief receiving two pieces of news in one message. Grief that she would have had to have borne alone among a country full of enemies. Grief that she could tell no one about.
“How did she die?” he had asked. “We have a report that she jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. The body was washed out to sea.”
All gone. All he had left was the Black Ocean. And now it was threatened. He looked at the wooden box that held all his memories. What had the Koreans found in their cardboard box? What memories were they delving into?
CHAPTER 8
The proper papers had been filed and all was in order. The Am Nok Sung was cleared to leave San Francisco Harbor any time between 2200 and 2400 local time. The ship was 20,000 tons, less than mid-sized as oceangoing ships went. The forward deck consisted of several large hatches leading to refrigerated holds for the fish. At the rear a three-story bridge complex rose up, overlooking the ship.
The Am Nok Sung actually had a complement of twelve men on board whose only job was to indeed conduct fishing operations to maintain the ship’s cover and sail the ship. A platoon of North Korean Special Forces made up the rest of the crew. Minus the two men they’d lost on Yerba Buena Island, whose identity baffled San Francisco police, there were still sixteen combat-hardened men left on board.
They only had seven MAC-10s between them for firepower, but a black belt in a Taste Kwon Do was a requirement for every member of the North Korean Special Forces. When getting ready to depart on this mission it had been a most difficult decision to not bring their own weapons on board the ship. The platoon commander had demanded that he be allowed to bring weapons, but the overall mission commander in North Korea had overruled him. The American customs officials had too good of a record. A platoon of soldiers on board a ship with hidden weapons would have been a most unfortunate discovery. Thus, when the ship had come into port, customs had found nothing other than a very strange-looking crew; but there was nothing illegal about that.
There was a twenty-ninth man on board, neither soldier nor crew, who answered only to the platoon commander. This man was a linguist, fluent in English and Japanese, and he was currently locked in a room on the second floor of the ship’s bridge tower, three-quarters of the way back on the deck. The bridge and radio shack were one floor above him while the main quarters were one floor below. The twenty-ninth man, Kim Pak, had the box that so many people were now interested in sitting on the desk in front of him. He was going through it, one document at a time, reading carefully, looking for a couple of key items.
In the center of San Francisco Bay, Nishin stood on the bridge of an old tugboat, watching the Am Nok Sung through a set of night-vision goggles. He could see the crew moving about the deck of the trawler.
“They will be leaving shortly,” Oyabun Okomo said. “We must follow until they clear the inner shoals.” He nodded toward the man standing inside the bridge at the wheel. “My friend Captain Ohashi says he will be able to follow with all lights off. He knows these waters quite well.”
“How will we get on board?” Nishin asked. “Oyabun,” he added after getting no immediate response.
“Leave that to me,” Okomo said. “You are paying but I command.” The old man smiled. “My men will make short work of those Korean pigs on board.”
Nishin glanced down at the deck of the tugboat where two dozen Yakuza toughs armed with automatic weapons waited. He had fought the Koreans at the university and fort. He’d seen what they’d done in the tunnel. They had been disciplined and professional. He knew it would not go as the Oyabun thought it would. That was fine with Nishin. Because in the end, he preferred no one, North Korean or Yakuza, came off the trawler alive.
Lake grabbed the duffle bag out of the back of Araki’s van. “How’d you arrange for the chopper?” he asked as they walked down a set of stairs to the concrete landing pier built out over the harbor. A four-seat Bell Jet Ranger sat waiting, blades slowly turning.
Araki smiled and pulled out a small piece of plastic. “MasterCard Gold Card. No credit limit. I have promised the pilot a very generous bonus if he ignores whatever he sees tonight.”
“Your government treats its agents better than mine,” Lake said as he slipped into the back seat while Araki sat in the right front seat next to the pilot. He put a set of headphones on and pulled the boom mike in front of his lips as the blades increased velocity and the skids lifted.
As they swooped over water, Lake began emptying the contents of his duffle bag on the back seat.
The Am Nok Sung rounded the northeast side of the San Francisco peninsula and the Golden Gate Bridge have into view. Fog was beginning to swirl about the top of the towers, slowly descending. The trawler slipped underneath the arch of the roadway.
Screws picked up speed. Going with the current, the Am Nok Sung was making good time, as was the tugboat that followed unseen. Point Bonita was several miles off to the right, not visible as the fog cut visibility down to under three miles.