When his head felt ready to pop, he was pulled back into the welcome world of air.
"Take a deep breath. Got it? Okay, here we go again."
The toilet was flushed again.
Three times the Dear Leader was forced to endure the dreaded Sinanju Swirlie, and when his head came out for the third time, he was allowed to take more than one breath.
"Change your mind now?" Remo demanded.
"Yes. Yes. I will return the Americans alive with full and complete apologies. Just do me a favor."
"What's that?"
"Make sure Captain Yokang pays dearly for all this unfortunate trouble he's caused each and every one of us."
"That," said Remo, "comes at no extra charge."
Captain Yokang Sako of the frigate SA-I-GU had divided the gold among his crew, keeping the greater portion for himself. He removed the batteries from his cellular telephone so that the mysterious Comrade could not reach him with demands for half of the gold that would never be his and was going through the motions of his routine patrol as he considered his next move.
Defecting appealed to him. But to where could he defect? Not to China. Beijing would confiscate his gold and send him back to Pyongyang in irons. The hateful islands of Japan held no appeal. And with all the crazy talk of unification, who knew that within a few years Kim Jong II would be in control of the south, and Yokang Sako would find himself swinging from a scratchy rope.
More and more it was beginning to look as if remaining in the North Korean Navy made the most sense. After all, with the gold now in his hands, he could live like a king, assuming he did so quietly and without attracting notice to himself.
There remained the problem of his crew. Not all could be trusted to keep this secret. Still, what alternative did they have? They had all been party to an illegal aggression punishable by death.
Unless, of course, Pyongyang decided to retroactively bless their adventure.
The thought brought a frown to Captain Yokang's face. Those who bless, he knew, required blessings in return. He went to his personal closet and admired the neat gold ingots stacked there. There was more in a storeroom under lock and key. He could well afford to spread half of the gold on those in power—but what if they wanted all?
A knock at the door to his private cabin brought a gruff "What is it?" from Captain Yokang.
"A radio message from fleet, sir."
"What do they want?"
"They are recalling us to port."
"We are not due back at Pipa-got Naval Base for five days."
"They are telling us to put in at Nampo."
Nampo! Yokang thought. Narnpo was not the home port of the SA-I-GU. But at the terminus of the Tae- dong River, it was the nearest port to the capital. Could Pyongyang have gleaned the truth behind the lost U.S. submarine?
"Send acknowledgments," Yokang said. "And inform the first mate that we are defecting to South Korea."
"Why?"
"Because somehow Pyongyang has learned the truth!" Yokang snapped, locking the door to his closet.
All choice had fled in the night. All that remained was to save their skins. It was something Captain Yokang Sako had learned to do very well over the course of his career.
Chapter 26
Chip Craft was having second thoughts as he drove downtown to his Park Avenue town house in his frosted gold Idioci coupe.
Maybe he had been too hasty. After all, Friend had made him wealthy and powerful beyond his dreams as a mere installer not so many years ago. He had catapulted XL into the stratosphere of information-systems technology and was poised to take complete advantage of the coming new age of fully integrated interactive computer and television and telephone networks.
Personally Chip couldn't imagine what people would want with five hundred channels. And being able to send and receive faxes at the beach or on roller coasters seemed to defeat the point of beaches and roller coasters.
But it was progress. And if there was money to be made from it—and the numbers being floated were incalculable—Chip Craft figured he deserved a big chunk of it.
A little matter of blackmailing the US. government seemed almost incidental, given the power and position the new technological revolution promised.
Chip seat his Idioci into the cool confines of the building garage and took the elevator to his town house with his mind actually humming.
Yeah. Why not? He was thirty-five years old in a business climate that almost guaranteed that you were washed-up once you turned forty. Unless you turned forty as king of the mountain.
Besides, Friend had never failed before. Not once. He was a perfect thinking machine, and machines like him never made mistakes. If he promised success, then success was assured.
Besides, there were those decomposing inner-city bodies sealed in the XL SysCorp world headquarters subbasement.
Chip unlocked his door and flicked on the indirect lighting that brought out the simple elegance of his two-tiered living room. This, at least, wasn't virtual. It was as real as concrete.
He tossed his hand-tooled leather briefcase onto a chair and walked over to the bar to mix himself something relaxing. It was Saturday night. He had two days off before having to go into work on Tuesday. Coming back from vacation the Saturday before Labor Day wasn't so bad with two additional days to relax.
"Do not bother mixing that," a dry voice warned from a shadowy corner of the room.
Chip dropped the frosted glass and turned.
"Who's there? Who said that?"
A figure sat in the shadows, his back to the curtained picture window. He stood up now, and a beam of moonlight showed the blunt gray snout of a .45- caliber automatic.
"Take whatever you want," Chip squealed. "I won't stop you."
"What I want is information," said the indistinct individual. He stepped forward so that his face came into the bar of light.
"I don't know you, do I?" Chip asked, gulping.
"You tell me," said the man whose crisp white hair and rimless glasses looked vaguely familiar.
"I'm sorry, did you work for XL before? Are you one of the programmers we were forced to lay off?"
"My name is Smith."
"Harold Smith?"
"You do know me."
"I thought you had been neutralized," Chip said, unthinking.
"You thought wrong."
"Am I under arrest?"
"I have no power to arrest you—you know that."
Chip Craft breathed a hot sigh of relief.
"You know too much to be allowed to tell your story," Smith said flatly.
"I don't know that much. The computer—"
"The ES Quantum 3000, you mean."
"Yes."
"The ES Quantum 3000 is behind this?"
"Behind what?" Chip said, trying to keep the betraying flutter out of his strained voice.
"That is all I need to know," said Harold Smith, stepping up to Chip Craft and, with his face a cold mask of repressed anger, pumping eight closely spaced shots into Chip's jerking body. Chip Craft collapsed on the rug, gasping and gurgling and trying to explain that it wasn't him. It was Friend. All that came out was blood. In a spray at first, but as his heaving lungs ruptured, in a flood that carried with it all the warmth and life and intelligence that had been Chip Craft's in life.
His face stiff, Harold Smith wiped his automatic clean of fingerprints. He wore gray gloves as he had while breaking into Chip Craft's town house, but he was not a man to take chances.
Leaving the weapon beside the body, he searched the still-jerking body and found nothing of interest. A billfold with too little cash and too many credit cards. A digital watch that was too elaborate by half. But nothing that remotely resembled an office or building key.
A stray beam of moonlight caught the peculiar design of Craft's heavy gold tie clasp. Smith noted the bar code and pocketed the clasp.