“Of course, of course,” Feliks said. “You did well. But this is very serious. Beyond what they planned to do, we don’t have a clue who wanted this done. And the body from the boat complicates matters. This might not be a simple Patriot plot.”
No shit, Sherlock, Lake thought, but he kept the words to himself. Feliks seemed worried, which was a first in the years they’d worked together. Lake rubbed his forehead. “There is an advantage to them all being dead.”
“There is?” Feliks waited.
“My cover is still intact.”
“Ah, yes.” Feliks smiled without any humor. “And, of course, our three friends have just vanished off the face of the earth, correct? Or perhaps they should be in an accident? The van perhaps?”
“I think disappearing would serve better,” Lake suggested. It was the way they worked. Outside the law. Even if he had taken any of the three alive, Lake knew from experience that the man would never have seen the inside of a courtroom. And the people of San Francisco would never know how close they had come to disaster.
“Starry and Preston were supposed to disappear,” Lake added. “The guy in the boat not coming back is the one that’s going to rattle someone’s cage.”
Feliks touched Lake’s arm and indicated that they should walk over to the van now that everything was loaded. “And? With your cover intact? What then? Can you find out whose cage is getting rattled?”
“I’ll try.”
“You have any leads?”
“I don’t know,” Lake said. “I’ve heard rumors.”
“You don’t know. Rumors,” Feliks repeated. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“All right. You have two weeks.”
CHAPTER 2
“The helicopter cannot take off,” Nagoya said, removing the earplug for the satellite radio.
Nishin simply looked at his partner, waiting for an explanation. The two men were crammed into a niche two thirds up the side of a six-thousand-foot mountain. The only thing keeping them from tumbling down to the valley floor below were snap links hooked into ropes attached to cams they had lodged in small cracks farther in the niche. It had taken them four days of climbing, all done at night, to go over the top of the mountain and make their way down to their present position. They’d been here for six hours, watching and waiting for the final word.
“The North Koreans have spotted the ship and are shadowing it,” Nagoya explained, carefully coiling the earplug cord.
Getting in was always easier than getting out, Nishin knew. Getting in they’d been flown on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter to a point forty miles off the North Korean coast. The entire flight had been made barely ten feet above the wave tops to avoid radar. Then the helicopter had slowed to a forward speed of ten knots, the back ramp had been lowered, and a rubber boat had been pushed off the rear, Nishin and Nagoya following right behind in their wet suits.
They’d used the engine to get within a kilometer of the shore just south of Hungnam Harbor, checked their position, and then sunk the boat, swimming the rest of the way. Then across the rocky shore, to the base of the mountain, over the mountain, and now here overlooking the valley.
They both knew the ship could not launch the recovery helicopter with the North Koreans watching. It would be like turning a spotlight on the entire mission.
“What did Nakanga say we should do?” Nishin asked, looking into the valley. Smokestacks billowed black smoke filled with sparks into the night. With almost unlimited power fed to it from reservoirs such as Chosin, the Hungnam valley was one of the manufacturing centers of North Korea and had been so for over sixty years, ever since an enterprising Japanese industrialist had first spied the valley’s potential in the decade before the Second World War. It was one of the spin-offs of that industrialist’s efforts and vision so long ago that had led to the two men clinging to the side of this mountain on this early fall night.
“The mission must go,” Nagoya said.
Nishin’s face didn’t betray any reaction, even though he knew Nagoya’s statement was a death sentence. He peered down the rocky slope. A hundred feet below them arc lights brightly lit the mountainside. A new path from the valley floor had been cut with great effort into the rock, switching back and forth up to an opening in the side of the mount am It was impossible to get heavy equipment up the slender path. So a line of men slithered into the opening every day with shovels and picks, carefully unearthing what had lain hidden inside for the past fifty-two years.
At night there was a squad of guards protecting the dig, their main post on the path itself. The guards would not be a problem, Nishin knew. The men were oriented toward the road and downward. The guards did not suspect that someone would come from above. As far as the North Koreans were concerned the mountain was impassable. In fact, they probably were not expecting anyone since Nishin had no doubt that they did not know what they guarded. He himself did not know exactly what the cave held. He only knew that whatever was in there must be kept in there.
The site could not be spotted from the air. Camouflage nets draped over the cave mouth and the vertical slope prohibited that. If Nishin and Nagoya had not been given the exact location during the mission briefing they would have never found it. He briefly wondered if Nakanga, the man who had briefed them on the mission and given them their orders, knew what was so important. It had to date back to the war. Of that Nishin had no doubt. He also wondered how Nakanga knew the cave had been opened if it couldn’t be seen from the air. Information did not flow freely out of North Korea.
Why now, why here? These were questions Nishin accepted he would never know the answer to. Nagoya was checking the charges one last time. They were a powerful new explosive, each containing three kilograms of liquid in a thick rubber container shaped like a large sausage. The fuse was built into the end of the container and Nagoya was checking the connections. They had twenty-four of the charges, twelve each, and Nakanga had assured them it would be more than enough to take down the mountainside around the cave.
“Now that we have made it this far, I can plant the charges myself,” Nagoya said, not looking up from his hands, the delicate fingers tracing wires in the dark.
“Without the helicopter…,” Nishin began.
“You can head back up as I start down,” Nagoya said. “I will give you enough time to get over the top of the mountain before I proceed. They will find my body among the rubble, but that will not be a problem and it should make any further search less intensive as they will think they have found the infiltrator. You can also remove all signs of us having climbed down as you go back over. It will confuse them greatly. They will suspect a traitor in their own ranks.”
Nagoya was half-Korean. His mother one of the many women who came over to Japan in the sixties to do domestic work and his birth was never legitimized. If his father had not been a member of the Society — and Nagoya’s loyalty tested on several missions — Nishin would have had his own doubts about the man and the new course of action he was proposing. But he knew Nagoya was true.
“If they find your body, that will not be good,” Nagoya continued. There would be no denying Nishin’s racial makeup. He was pure Japanese. “You must escape or, at the very least, your body must not be found. You can make it to the ocean. Swim out and activate your beacon. Maybe you will be picked up. If not, you must make sure you puncture your life vest so that your body sinks.”
Nagoya’s logic was cold and practical, something Nishin could appreciate. The other man was not suggesting he plant the charges alone out of some sense of misguided heroism. It was what would be best for the mission, and the mission always came first. Nishin did not consider the new course of action in terms of his own survival but In terms of mission accomplishment. It would be best.