Sammy looked Jefferson up and down as if seeing him for the first time. “No such man or giru,” he said. “I said you go, man. This place, Japanese only. No gaijin. No niggers. Fuck off!”
Jefferson produced a wad of yen. “I’ll buy talk.”
Sammy considered for a moment, then motioned that Jefferson should follow him down a narrow hallway. A man at the bar slid off his chair, but at a nod from Sammy, he stayed put.
Sammy led the way into a reeking men’s room. He ordered a man to zip up his pants and get out. Sammy turned to Jefferson and said, “How much you pay—”
Jefferson slammed his left forearm into Sammy’s throat, driving him back against a wall, pinning him there. He flashed a silenced H&K pistol and jammed it into Sammy’s right ear.
“Amerika-jin. Where’d he go, asshole?”
Sammy’s hands clawed at the thick arm crushing his throat. Jefferson bore down harder, until the flat face contorted in pain and a slimy gray tongue bulged from between two rows of brown teeth. “Talk to me, you fucking Nip, or this nigger’s gonna put your brains in the toilet!”
When Sammy finished telling Jefferson what he wanted to know, Jefferson stepped back and thanked him, then drove a knee into his balls and kicked his feet out from under him. He threw the wad of yen at Sammy and left him doubled over on the filthy restroom floor, retching his guts out.
39
The Red Shark hovered, not quite motionless, above a sea bottom that rose gently from the continental shelf toward the coast of China. The first officer thrust his head into the sonar room to say something, but Park held up a hand.
Park had an ear to the speaker; he was listening to a faint sound, what he thought might be a submarine’s creep motor. Filtered and enhanced by computers that had flushed out the extraneous noise generated by small coastal craft and large commercial vessels, even the cry of biologicals, the sound Park heard had been analyzed and compared to known sources stored in the computer archives.
A Romanized label crawled across the upper sonar monitor: KILO 636-CLASS CREEP/MANEUVERING MOTORS.
“Now we know,” Park said.
He exited the sonar room and, with the first officer, crossed to the chart table behind the periscope stand.
“We have a Chinese Kilo, almost dead in the water,” Park said. He sketched a narrow, wedgelike shape on the navigation chart’s acetate overlay and saw that it encompassed the area of littorals along the coast of China in which the Red Shark was now hovering. Park made two Xs on the chart and scaled the distance between them: less than 10,000 yards — five miles. We’re virtually within hailing distance of each other, thought Park — within the sure kill radius.
Zemin heard the sonar officer report, “Possible dead zones here, here and here.”
Zemin marked their positions the length of a shallow six-mile-long arc that ran roughly southeast to southwest along the coast. The zones he’d seen on the monitor were not clearly defined and, to his disappointment, looked more like amorphous blobs than profiles of a submarine. Still, they were better than nothing, but whether they had been caused by the target’s sound-masking effects was another matter altogether.
“Range to the farthest zone?” Zemin said.
“Ten thousand yards, sir.”
“Range to the nearest zone?”
“Three thousand yards but fading.”
Zemin knew that somewhere on that arc was the submarine he’d been tracking. He also knew that the zones wouldn’t last much longer and saw that even as he was viewing them on the monitor they had begun to evaporate.
“Disengage creep motor; main motors ahead together; speed seven knots.”
The first officer relayed Zemin’s orders: The main propulsion plant’s quiet hum changed pitch to a lower register, and the Kilo lurched forward and gained speed.
Zemin saw the officer’s questioning look and said, “We will close with the near zone, then stop and secure all motors and coast in the rest of the way to see what we can find.”
“He’s moving again,” Park said as the Red Shark’s sonar monitors and data displays lit up like exploding fireworks. “He can’t possibly know where we are,” he added, aware that he didn’t sound convinced.
“Hold position, Captain?” asked the first officer.
“What? Of course. Until we see what game he is up to. We’re in his territory, where we shouldn’t be. He doesn’t know who we are and won’t attack unless he feels threatened, and then not without approval from his headquarters. If he can’t find us, he might give up and move on to a new search box.”
Park settled down to wait him out. He doffed his cap and ran a hand over his sweaty, cropped head. We’ve coexisted with the Chinese in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea for centuries, Park thought, and have never had an armed conflict. The Chinese are a cautious people and do not like to engage in direct confrontation with their adversaries. Taiwan, for instance. Park put on his cap and frowned. He hoped that the Chinese skipper wouldn’t prove him wrong—
“Captain!” The startled sonarman pointed to the twin video monitors on which data captured from the Kilo was being displayed. As Park watched, both monitors rescrolled their data maps to zero. The sonarman, eyes locked on the monitors, furiously punched the system’s function keys, but nothing changed. “Sir, the target stopped his engines… we are losing contact…”
A chime tone warning sounded as the monitors went black, then to solid flashing red.
Karl Radford watched rush-hour traffic outside his Crystal City office inch past the Pentagon on Shirley Highway. He turned away when a slightly out of breath Navy captain entered the office.
“Sorry I’m late, General. Our translator had problems with the file.”
Radford’s gaze went to the mini-disc the captain held in his hand, and he saw that it was labeled Purple — Eyes Only. The officer, whose ID tag hanging around his neck identified him as Roth, Allan J., went directly to Radford’s desktop computer terminal and inserted the disc, then tapped the proper keys.
A page scrolled up; Roth stepped back. Radford took his seat and skimmed the monitor while Roth eyed the hard copy he’d brought along. Radford looked up. His disappointment, if not bewilderment, wasn’t lost on Roth.
“This is it? This is what the Danes flew in for us from Copenhagen overnight?”
“Yes, sir. Ambassador Schlüter confirmed that it went out in the diplomatic bag immediately after they received it at the embassy in Pyongyang.”
Radford went back to the page on the monitor. “Okay, well, our man’s alive and functioning, but this…” He shrugged. “This makes no sense, does it to you?”
Roth said, “No, sir. I don’t get the meaning at all. The translation section thinks its an allusion to some Korean mythological being or cultural artifact. G-Section’s running it down now while they’re working on the second part of the message.”
Radford stared at the words on the computer monitor. They were beyond comprehension, perhaps a flight of fantasy concocted by a frightened man trapped in one of the most dangerous cities in the world: Red Shark, Red Shark, Red Shark.
Scott got out of the Lexus parked in front of the Prince Kota Hotel in Noda and leaned into the open window. “I’ll call you at the Embassy when this is over. Now get out of here.”
“Jake, don’t go.” Tracy reached for him, but he walked away quickly. Fearing she wouldn’t leave if he looked back, he didn’t. He waited to be sure she had departed, then entered the hotel’s dingy lobby and roused the sleepy manager.