“No. But I’m done with it, so you’re on your own.”
Araki stood. “It was good to work with you.”
“Yeah, right.” Lake turned and walked away. After turning the corner, he went into a side door of Wellman Hall. Harmon was in her office, waiting for him.
“How did it go?”
Lake settled down onto the old battered couch next to a bookcase. “I told him what he needed to know but not about what we just found out. If nothing else happens, at least the Japanese will stop the Koreans from recovering the bomb.”
“Why not tell Araki where the bomb is and let the Japanese take care of it? They put it there,” Harmon said, “why not let them take it away?”
“I don’t know,” Lake said, rubbing his forehead.
Harmon came over with a mug of fresh coffee and sat down, handing it to him. “How are you feeling?”
“Beat,” Lake said, taking a sip, then leaning his head back against the wall.
Harmon put a hand on his forehead and gently pressed down, her fingers strong and firm, massaging from the center around to his temples, then again.
Lake slowly felt himself relax, the stress of the past weeks receding for a little while at least. He felt her lean closer, her breath on his neck, her side pressing up against him. He opened his eyes and turned his head, looking into her eyes so close. He cradled her head with his hands and drew her to him. He felt her lips on his, then was briefly startled as her tongue snaked out, ran around his lips, then darted inside his mouth and just as quickly was gone.
Lake turned, sliding his hands down until he had his arms around her waist, then he stood, easily lifting her. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her skirt sliding up around her hips. “I—” he began, but she quieted him with a finger to his lips. “Not a word.”
He pressed her back against the wall between the bookcase and couch. She reached down and unbuckled his belt. It was awkward but their sudden passion overcame each obstacle, unzipping, pushing aside, until he slid into her.
Lake felt her mouth on his neck, her teeth biting. He pulled his head back slightly and tried to see her eyes, but they were closed. She leaned her head back and it thumped lightly into the wall with each stroke he made. She didn’t seem to notice but he did. He carried her over to the desk and laid her down on top of the message folders from the Japanese Navy in World War II.
“What if one of your students walks in?” he softly said to her, leaning over, nibbling on her neck.
“They’ll get the thrill of their life,” she whispered in return.
“What about—” Lake paused.
Her eyes opened. “God, ever the practical one. I’m on the pill. Now shut up.” She punctuated the sentence by grabbing the collar of his windbreaker and inducing her own rhythm over his. Lake shifted his own body, feeling the flow of her body under his, the pressure of her hands, the pace of her breathing.
Nishin looked around the hotel room. It was as bare as a room he would have occupied. He’d searched it thoroughly, although there wasn’t much to search. An empty dresser. A bed with one sheet on it that looked like it had never been slept in. An empty closet. An empty medicine chest. If Nishin had not confirmed that the phone number Jonas had given him was the pay phone down the hallway, he would have thought no one had been in here in days.
He walked over to the grimy window and looked out on a debris-filled alley. The room was on the second floor and a fire escape was right outside. It was exactly the type of room Nishin would have chosen.
There were footsteps in the hallway. Nishin drew his 9mm and slid across the room so that he would not be seen as soon as the door opened. The door swung wide open and an Asian man wearing a leather jacket and a black watch cap stepped in. Nishin drew a bead on the back of the man’s head.
“Do not move or you will die,” Nishin said in English.
He was surprised when the figure answered him in fluent Japanese. “I come from the Oyabun. He had more information about the man you are seeking. The man from this room.”
The barrel of the gun didn’t waver. Nishin wondered why they couldn’t have told him this when he was at the Japan Center. “Go ahead.”
“He is an agent of the American government who spies on the Patriot movement. He works for an organization called the Ranch, which is headed by a man named Feliks.”
“Why wasn’t I informed of this earlier?”
“I am relaying a message for the Oyabun,” the man simply said.
“Anything else?”
“That is the message.”
“Go.”
Nishin left via the fire escape on the chance that the Yakuza might be waiting for him below. He hurried to the first pay phone he could find and called in what he had just learned to Nakanga.
“The American government had an agent on board the North Korean trawler that was sunk,” Nakanga said. “He perished with the ship when it went down, but the man was aware of the North Koreans and the breakin at Berkeley, so we must assume that the American government knows something.”
Genoysha Kuzumi watched his chief sensei without expression or comment.
“The American’s name was Lake and he worked for a secret organization called the Ranch. His superior’s name is Feliks. I do not know whether that is a code name or not. This information was given to Nishin by the Yakuza. I do not know where they got their information from. We do have a file on the Ranch and a man named Feliks,” he added, but he didn’t seem overly happy about that piece of information.
Kuzumi looked at Nakanga’s hands. They were empty. He felt great irritation. “Where is the file?”
“There was just a file folder, Genoysha. There was nothing in it. It is among the old records. We do not know when it was started or what happened to the material in it.”
Kuzumi stiffened. Only the Genoysha could permanently remove material from the intelligence files and he knew that he had not done so. That meant it had been done before his time. Genoysha Taiyo must have hidden or destroyed the material. It also meant this went back many years.
Nakanga hurried on. “The second North Korean trawler will arrive in the vicinity of San Francisco after midnight, local American time. About eleven or twelve hours from now.”
“Why is it heading there?”
“I do not know, Genoysha. Perhaps to recover something from the sunken first trawler.”
I do not think so, Kuzumi thought. Not if it was equipped to search for radioactivity. There was much Nakanga did not know, that Kuzumi was getting from his own source. The American named Lake had not perished. The Koreans were on the trail of Genzai Bakudan itself. It was all bad news, but inside the dark cloud of this information there was something that thrilled Kuzumi: to think they had made it so close with Genzai Bakudan!
Kuzumi’s mind had been racing ever since receiving the news about 1-24. He cursed Taiyo even more. What had the man held back from him? The only thing Taiyo had ever told him about the second bomb was that it had been lost at sea en route from Hungnam to Japan. Obviously that was a lie.
Kuzumi stiffened. He could see clearly the first Genzai Bakudan, lying in the entranceway to the cave, ready for its journey to the dock. The second bomb right behind it.
He had done the final preparations on both bombs himself. The thought that sent chills up his spine was the realization that he had prepared the two remote detonators for the I24 bomb. One had been taken by an agent of the Black Ocean a week prior to the bomb’s departure. Kuzumi remembered the man now, and he remembered asking him where the detonator was going.
The man had not answered him other than to say that he was working under direct orders of the Genoysha. He had left the cave, the detonator in a black leather bag, such as that carried by doctors, and gone to the airfield to fly out. Kuzumi had never heard what had happened to that detonator. But now that he knew what had happened to the bomb, he knew what had happened to the detonator.