"You must surrender at once. Do you do this?"
"He isn't buying it, skipper," the exec muttered dispiritedly.
"We offer no resistance," Seabrooke called back. Boats were lowered, and they waited in fist-clenching silence.
The first boatload of flat-faced Korean sailors secured the deck and sail. The second off-loaded the captain of the SA-I-GU, a squat man almost as wide as a Sumo wrestler with eyes that were unnaturally round for a Korean.
"I am Captain Yokang Sako," he announced. "You are Commander John Paul Seabrooke?"
Seabrooke tried to hold back his surprise. He swallowed and said, "I am permitted to give you my name, rank and serial number only."
"I know these things," Captain Yokang growled. "Do not waste my time with them, and this present difficulty will not be prolonged."
"What do you want?"
"Your cargo, Commander," said the North Korean captain.
Seabrooke and his exec looked at one another with stark, sick eyes. Meeting, their gazes said, We've been set up.
"Is that all?" Seabrooke said quietly.
"Once we have possession of your cargo, we will have no further use for you."
"I don't like the sound of that, skipper," the exec undertoned as the circle of rifles closed around them.
"Maybe he doesn't mean it the way it sounds," Seabrooke said with more hope than he felt.
"Do you surrender your vessel, or must it be taken by force?" Yokang demanded.
"If you guarantee no harm will come to my crew," Commander John Paul Seabrooke said, his ears ringing with humiliation. No sub commander in modern memory had ever been forced to hand over his boat to an enemy. His career was finished. Saving his crew was all that mattered now.
THE NORTH KOREAN seamen secured the Harlequin with hard looks and harder rifle barrels. Not a shot was fired. Not a harsh word was spoken by either side. It was very professional, very efficient, very civilized. Neither side wanted the incident to escalate any further than it had.
Commander Seabrooke led the Korean frigate captain to the weapons storage area and unlocked a storage room. He himself did not know what his cargo was. He had watched the crates as they were lowered through the weapons shipping hatch by crane back in San Diego and came away with the idea that very heavy machinery or weapons were housed in the crates.
The Korean captain proved him wrong when he stepped up to one crate and attacked it with a short crowbar he had picked up along the way.
The crate was stout. It took considerable struggle before nails shrieked as they came out of the wood, and the boards themselves cracked and splintered.
"Gold?" Seabrooke said when the shiny ingots tumbled out.
The Korean captain turned, his flat face twisting. "You did not know?"
"No."
"But you know where you were to drop this cargo?"
"No."
"You lie!"
"My orders were to drop the cargo on the beach and go. We were to meet no one."
The Korean captain stared long into Commander Seabrooke's unhappy face. Evidently he was satisfied that he found truth written there, even if he did not understand it.
A Korean seaman stepped up to Captain Yokang and whispered in his ear. The Captain frowned as he listened. One word escaped his mouth in surprise. "Sinanju?"
The other nodded gravely.
Looking up, Yokang glared at Commander Seabrooke and asked, "Have you ever heard of Sinanju? It is a fishing village near here."
"No."
"Never?"
"Never."
The Korean captain stepped close, standing toe-to-toe with Commander Seabrooke.
"I give you my word as a North Korean officer that if this gold is intended for the village of Sinanju, I will leave it and your vessel to complete your mission without further interference."
Commander Seabrooke blinked. It was an absurd offer. Even if the man had that authority, surely he had already radioed his superiors that he had intercepted a United States submarine in North Korean waters. He could not have depth charged the Harlequin without express orders to do so, not in the rigidly controlled hierarchy of the North Korean Navy. It was a trick question. It had to be a trick question.
So Commander John Paul Seabrooke answered it truthfully. "I'm sorry, I have never heard of any Sinanju,"
"It could not be Sinanju, anyway," Yokang muttered to himself, rubbing his blocky chin. "Sinanju would never work for America, even if America knew of Sinanju. I did not think it was possible. But I had to ask this question. I had to be sure."
As he spoke, the captain drew his service revolver. "You see, if this gold belonged to the village of Sinanju," he continued, lifting the weapon to his right temple, "I would be better off if I shot my brain from my skull than face the wrath of the Master of Sinanju."
Commander John Paul Seabrooke registered the name of the Master of Sinanju and wondered if he was some local warlord. His wondering ended abruptly when the service revolver suddenly snapped out and pointed toward him.
"I thank you for your honesty, fool."
Commander Seabrooke looked into the black barrel of the pistol, thinking, "He wouldn't dare shoot me," when the end turned red three times in quick succession and his rib cage was smashed to kindling.
They left him to bleed to death there in the bowels of his boat as the crated cargo was lifted out through the weapons shipping hatch and taken aboard the frigate SA-I-GU.
Commander John Paul Seabrooke was still alive, but only in the clinical sense, when all hatches were secured and the Harlequin crew were beginning to think they'd see their families again.
While that happy thought was still sinking in, the plastique charges affixed to vulnerable points along the Harlequin's hull went off in unison.
The Yellow Sea poured in cold and black and bitter. Commander John Paul Seabrooke drank more than his fill in the last thrashing minutes of his life, his final thoughts more bitter than brine.
I should never have told the truth. I should never have told the truth, his mind kept repeating like a broken record.
He was thoroughly drowned by the time the Harlequin settled to the rocky seafloor.
Chapter 9
Flashlight in hand, Harold Smith picked his way through the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium. The light roved among the furnaces and came to rest on the glowing grate of the old coal furnace in one cobwebby corner.
Smith approached, knocked the wood-sheathed iron handle upward with the thick barrel of his flash and gingerly pulled open the grate.
The ash-caked coals smoldered resentfully. Smith picked up a poker and stirred them. Sparks flew and hissed. Broken lengths of scorched human bone swirled up from the coals, showing the fractured ends of femurs and tibia.
Buzz Kuttner was coming along nicely. In another night or two, he would be one with the coal ash. Only then would it be safe to pour his cremated remains in an ash can for hauling to the dump.
Closing the grate, Smith continued his rounds. The triple-locked door guarding his computer system was secure. There would be no need to check the machines. No point to it now. They ran, scanning the net, but Smith did not expect to ever access them again.
But from behind the doors, Smith heard furtive sounds.
He pressed an ear to the door, and the sounds became more distinct. They were impossible to describe. Muted organic sounds, like hamburger plopping from a meat grinder.
Fumbling for his keys, Smith got the blank door unlocked and pushed open the door.
His light filled the room.
He saw the Folcroft Four, tape reels turning in quarter-cycle jerks. They were as they always were. But the refrigeratorlike jukeboxes stood ranked like dumb beige brutes. There were no moving parts, no ports, so there was nothing outwardly different or disturbing about them.