Harmon shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I mean, don’t you think someone high in the Japanese command would have realized that they had a sub with a nuke on board heading to blow the crap out of San Francisco while they’re in the middle of suing for peace? Don’t you think someone would have said, well, whoa, wait a second, let’s call that bad boy back?”
“I do think that would be logical,” Harmon said. She tapped the folder. “But there’s no further message to the 1-24.”
“Very odd,” Lake said. “The submarine most likely was operating under radio listening silence, but that only means they wouldn’t transmit. They would have still been able to receive messages at night when they ran on the surface recharging their batteries.”
Lake felt his pocket buzz. He wished they had stayed in the basement. Feliks was the last person he wanted to talk to right now. He pulled his portable out and flipped it open. “Lake.”
He recognized the voice on the other end immediately. “Araki here. I have been trying to get a hold of you for the past hour. Why do you not answer your phone?”
“I was underground,” Lake said.
“Underground?”
“Why were you trying to get a hold of me?” Lake asked.
“It is not over. I have received some information from my headquarters,” Araki said. “They intercepted a message from Pyongyang to another North Korean trawler already at sea. It is a spy ship just like the Am Nok Sung.”
“And?” “The message ordered the ship to immediately proceed ‘to San Francisco.”
“Maybe they’re trying to find out what happened to the Am Nok Sung,” Lake said.
“Maybe. But the message also told them to conduct a search for radioactive material. Now, why would they do that?” Araki asked.
Because they know where Forest is, Lake realized. He didn’t know how they had found out, but he knew they had. And they were going to follow the path the 1-24 had taken.
“Can your people keep tabs on that trawler?”
“Yes. It is well east of Hawaii, so it will not take them long to get here. Perhaps two days, maybe even less, since we don’t have an exact fix on it yet. I suppose you are not going to tell me why they are heading this way right now, are you?” Araki asked.
“Not right now. Meet me here on the campus at three. I’ll explain then.” That would give Lake time to figure out what he was going to do and how much to say. “I will see you at three, then?” Araki repeated.
“Yes.” Lake closed the phone.
“Nothing, right?” Harmon asked with a slight grin.
“No, actually it was something,” Lake said. He explained that another North Korean trawler was headed this way, with orders to search for radioactive material.
“So the Koreans must know about where 1-24 was supposed to go,” Harmon said when he was done. “Maybe they’re taking a shot in the dark that the 1-24 made it close to San Francisco.”
She poured them both another cup of coffee. “Again, I don’t think the 1-24 surrendered,” she said. “It would have been against the nature of the crew and officers. No matter what you say, I think we would have heard something if a Japanese submarine carrying an atomic weapon had been captured at the end of the war.”
“The other factor to consider,” Lake said, “is that if it did surrender, then the Koreans can look for it all they want and they’ll never find it. So let’s assume it didn’t. You said the most likely course of action for the^ sub was for the captain to take it down for a mass suicide.”
“That was my initial thought,” Harmon said, “but the more I think about it, the more I believe that the 1-24 might have kept on going no matter what. I don’t think the captain of the submarine was in charge. Remember that the commander was supposed to follow all orders of”—she flipped through message flimsies—“this fellow Agent Hatari, of the Kempei Tai.
“The Kempei Tai was the Japanese military’s secret police during the war. But it’s just as likely that this Hatari fellow was an agent of the Black Ocean. They often used the Kempei Tai as cover, especially when they had to deal with the military because a Kempei Tai agent on special assignment, no matter what his rank, could order any senior regular military officer to do as he said. I believe that the 1-24 may have pursued its mission to the end.”
Lake wondered why she was following this train of thought that they’d already derailed once. “But there was no explosion,” he pointed out.
“That doesn’t mean that the 1-24 didn’t make it to San Francisco or somewhere close by,” she said. “It just means that the bomb didn’t go off. The North Koreans are the ones who triggered this whole thing in the present day,” she added. “They’re coming to San Francisco again. I have to believe that they have access to more information than we do.”
Lake thought about it. If the 1-24 was down in deep water, it was probably lost forever. The Koreans had the same messages he did and they were sending a ship in this direction. Maybe they knew something more, like Harmon said. Or maybe they were just gambling that the 1-24 had gone down in shallow water and could be found. Either way, Lake couldn’t afford to ignore the situation.
“Do you have any suggestions?” he asked.
Harmon smiled. “As a matter of fact, I do. During World War II San Francisco Harbor was protected by a submarine net. It stretched for three miles across the main channel entrance from the St. Francis Yacht Club at the Marina to Point Sausalito.”
She sketched on a pad. “It was inside of the Golden Gate because the currents were too strong there. Two ships serviced the net, anchored on either side of the thousand-foot movable part. They each had winches on their prows which could move the net. One pulled it open, the other pulled it shut. If the 1-24 was going to launch a midget kamikaze sub attack, they would have to have considered how to breach that obstacle. Perhaps they planned on sneaking the midget sub through along with a ship passing in. Of course,” she added, “by September 1945, the net might have been left open all the time.”
“This is all fine and well,” Lake said, getting a little tired of all the history lessons, “but what—”
Harmon held up a hand. “The important thing is that the maritime defense forces had the whole harbor and its approaches wired for sound. They had a hydroacoustic listening station at Fort Miley. The duty personnel kept a log of all contacts. I suggest we go take a look and see if anything was heard around the first or second of September.”
“Where would those logs be?” Lake asked.
“Follow me,” Harmon said, grabbing her jacket. She paused, then put her arm through his. “Change that to ‘please come with me.” “
The Chain Drive was empty this early in the afternoon. Nishin had watched it for the past hour from across the street, making sure he had the area memorized. Okomo had called his room two hours ago and told him he could find out more about the American arms dealer from a man named Jonas, who owned this establishment. It would simply be a matter of extracting the information.
Nishin slipped across the street and opened the scarred wooden door. The interior was dark and he stepped aside from the door and stood still, allowing his eyes to adjust to the lack of sunlight.
“What do you want?”
The voice came from the only other occupant of the room, a large bearded man who stood behind the bar. There were numerous bottles laid out in front of him and he had a clipboard in his hand.
“Are you Jonas?”
“Who wants to know?”
Nishin checked out the rest of the bar. “I will assume you are Jonas, since I was told Jonas owned this place and there is no one else in here.”
“Yeah, I’m Jonas. Who the hell are you?”
“I am looking for someone,” Nishin said. Now that he could see better, he was looking around the room. He could see the various posters on the walls.