“They didn’t have any trouble smuggling two truck bombs into Manhattan.”
When Radford spoke, the anger coloring his voice was razor sharp and unmistakable. “Commander, listen to me, and listen to me carefully. The director general of JDIH wants you out of Japan in twenty-four hours. As for the reasons why, he seems to have plenty, starting with all the trouble you and Ms. Kida stirred up. If you’re not out in twenty-four hours, he’ll have you arrested, and if he does, there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about it without going through diplomatic channels, which the president will not permit.”
“Sir, perhaps you didn’t hear me. I’m convinced that Tokugawa’s people killed Mr. Higashi and tried to kill us. They didn’t kill us and instead kidnapped Fumiko. I’ve got to find her if I can — I owe her that. If I wait too long, they may kill her.”
“Goddamnit, Scott, you don’t seem to understand that we can’t end up in a fight with the Japanese. Try getting that through your head.”
“Sir, the Japanese are covering up for Tokugawa and the North Koreans. Fumiko’s kidnapping is all the proof you need.”
“Scott, I want you out of Tokyo and at Yokosuka for debriefing ASAP.”
“What about Fumiko?”
“I’ll spell it out for you: She’s expendable! Just like Higashi. Do you understand that?”
Scott said nothing.
“Did you hear me, Scott?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve got twenty-four hours. What happens to Ms. Kida is none of our business. That’s how it is.” Radford signed off.
Scott looked at the dead cell phone in his hand. “That’s not how it is,” he said to the room.
He heard the young whores cavorting with their johns. He tried to ignore them while he reran in his mind the events of the last two days and sorted out as best he could the mess he’d gotten mired in. He knew it wouldn’t take long for the man tailing him to find the cab driver who had dropped him in the Pink District at Sammy Shin’s: He gave him two hours at the outside. Enough time to make Yokosuka, or…
He reviewed notes he’d made from Fumiko’s file on Tokugawa, then looked at a map of Tokyo and its suburbs. He found Noda, a city twenty-two miles north of Tokyo. A cab or subway was out of the question; so was a bus. Which meant there was only one way to get there. He activated his cell phone and made a call that was answered by voice mail. He left detailed instructions, then settled down to wait.
35
Despite his stay in Key Largo, the president looked worse than he had before leaving Washington for a rest at his Florida mansion. Radford and Freidman had discussed his condition via SVTC, while they’d waited on the chief executive’s arrival in the Situation Room, where the teleconference had been set up.
“Sir, are you feeling all right?” Freidman asked when the president strode in.
“How I feel is the least of our worries,” he snapped and took a seat. He looked at Radford’s image on the video screen, piped from Crystal City. “Karl, have you located those nukes?”
“No, sir. The images sent by the Global Hawk are inconclusive. We don’t see the trucks in Najin, nor do we see them anywhere near Vladivostok.”
“Then for sure the warheads have been moved and we didn’t see it happen.”
“But how?” Friedman asked. “We’ve had that area under surveillance for days.”
The president turned his head to the national security advisor but kept his eyes on Radford. “If those nukes can be made as small as Commander Scott and this Dr. Kida claim, how hard would it be to walk them out of Russia and back to North Korea? Not too hard, I’d say.”
Radford gestured to get the president’s attention. “Sir, we’re reviewing all of our Global Hawk takes, looking for something we may have missed. I think the warheads are still there, we just haven’t found them. As I said earlier, I wouldn’t put too much stock in Scott’s claim that Tokugawa has the means to miniaturize them.”
“Karl, unless you can find the goddamn things right now, I’m putting all my stock in his claim. I certainly can’t put any stock in the SRO’s ability to find them, can I?” The president kneaded his forehead. “If in fact we’ve missed them, by now they could be anywhere. And if we don’t find them, then like Scott said, they could end up in New York City, Chicago, or here in Washington.”
Radford and Freidman said nothing while the president consulted a handwritten aide-memoir. “All right,” he said, “so far we’ve heard nothing from our conduit in Pyongyang. Karl, any idea why?”
Radford tugged an earlobe. “I think it’s understandable — given the situation, he’d not want to risk it. Perhaps in time—”
“Karl, we don’t have time.”
“Is there any way we can initiate contact with him?” Freidman asked. “I mean, could we give him a nudge, open a secure channel, say, one of our satellites, that he could upload a signal to?”
Radford frowned. “Paul, for his safety, we didn’t supply him with any specialized comms gear. If they were to find it, he’d be dead meat.”
“How do we normally communicate with him?” the president asked.
“He passes information to the Danish chargé d’affaires. But that method is dependent on cultural and scientific exchanges hosted at their embassy in Pyongyang. Since the coup, there haven’t been any exchanges, so I have to assume our man has had no way to get information to them.”
“Have you considered the possibility that he’s been exposed?” the president asked.
“Sir, if he had, I think the NKs would have announced it to the world to bolster their contention that we’re about to attack them.”
“Then ask the Danes for some help. I don’t know what, maybe they can set up a conference, throw a cocktail party for NK bigwigs.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll ask them,” Radford said.
“Now, what is Scott’s status? He’s done a good job for us, but I want him out of Japan before he gets himself arrested or… worse. If they go after him again, he may not be so lucky. I don’t want to stir up any more trouble with the Japanese.”
“Sir, he has his orders, but he also believes he has an obligation to find Ms. Kida.”
“I knew it,” Friedman moaned, “I just knew it.”
The president said, “You tell him, Karl, that if he doesn’t get out of Japan immediately, I’ll have him court-martialed.”
“Sir, I’ll do better than that: I’ll dispatch Colonel Jefferson to bring him in.”
“You do that,” the president snorted.
Commander Deng Zemin eyed the decrypted message:
PLAN ˜ NORTHSEA ˜ LUSHUN ˜ NAVAL AIR ARM ˜
SH-5 FLT 007 [STOP]
TO PLAN UNIT 002 ADMIRALTY [STOP]
SURFACE RADAR CONTACT 0643 ˜ EAST POSITION GRID
21X ˜ 80 NM EAST SHIDAO [STOP] BEARING 190
DEGREES ˜ SPEED ESTIMATE 8 KTS ˜ POSSIBLE DPRK
SUBMARINE [STOP] CONTACT SH-5 FLT 007 FOR LAST
REPORTED COORDINATES [STOP] CALL SIGN EAGLE
[STOP] LOCATE ˜ IDENTIFY ˜ REPORT SPEED-POSITION-
HEADING-TASKING IF POSSIBLE [EOM]
Zemin tapped the chart with a stylus. “Comrade First Officer, this unidentified diesel-electric is not too far from our present position. Perhaps thirty nautical miles.”