He told Burke about the tentative identification of Hwang Sang-sol as the killer of the hotel owner and the chaebol executive. And he related the circumstances surrounding the murder of his informer, the old fruit merchant, Mr. Chon.
"I can only conclude that Hwang did not learn my identity," said Yun. "I was sure he would come looking for me. I've had a team maintaining surveillance of this neighborhood for nearly a week now, but he hasn't been seen."
Burke listened intently, his frown deepening. The CIA might well have a line on someone like Hwang. Their anti-terrorism files were impressive. It was an angle he could get Nate to pursue. But he would have to disguise his plans with Yun.
"Have you asked the legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy to see if the FBI has anything on him?" Burke asked.
The Captain stirred as if in discomfort, though Burke suspected it was mental, not physical. "I've queried Interpol. The name meant nothing to them. He probably has many aliases, of course. As for the FBI, I'll be frank with you. I have had problems with your current legal attaché. I would prefer not to have to deal with him again."
Burke wondered what the attaché had done to incur Yun's disfavor. "Maybe I can help there," he said. "I still have several old colleagues I could call on. You say you have some drawings? If you've got copies, I'll be happy to send them along to Washington and see if anything turns up. Might be a dead end, but it wouldn't hurt to try."
Yun liked the idea. "I can give you a set of the drawings before you leave tonight. I appreciate your willingness to help. I know I shouldn't let my feelings stand in the way of doing the job properly, but there are times… " He shrugged as his voice tapered off.
"We all get snared in that trap occasionally. By the way, don't you have a CIA-type operation called the NSP? Could they be of help?"
"It's the Agency for National Security Planning. Unfortunately, it is not really like your CIA. They tend to get too involved in internal security matters, of a somewhat oppressive nature, if you know what I mean."
No doubt more like the KGB's Second Chief Directorate during the old Soviet regime, Burke thought. A knock on the door in the middle of the night. Someone taken in for questioning, never to be heard from again. He would have to be wary of their operation. It could be a potential trouble spot.
"This Hwang character certainly sounds like a good bet for your killer," Burke said. "And if that's the case, he must be the one who left the Poksu symbol. Have you considered that it may have been designed to lead you astray? I'd be inclined to doubt the Japanese angle. I guess we'll just have to wait on the manuscript and see. But it appears to me you've got a pretty good case for your original idea, a plot against people calling for close, friendly ties with the United States."
"Even without Hwang?"
"Well, you'd certainly need him to wrap it up. He could tell you who hired him and save a lot of time and effort."
Yun pressed his hands together in a prayer-like gesture and leaned his chin on his fingertips. "Am I overlooking something here, Mr. Hill? Something that might provide an opening to exploit?"
Burke let his mind wander back over the facts as the Captain had laid them out. "You mentioned a car or taxi parked outside Dr. Lee's compound. Did you turn up anything more on that?"
"Nothing of consequence," Yun said. He told about the drunk taxi driver, adding it did not seem relevant.
Burke gave him a skeptical frown. "I guess I'm more dubious about that sort of thing than most people. My wife's father was with the CIA. It was his death that really got me involved in that Jabberwock operation. A couple of former communist agents staged it to look like an accident caused by drunk driving. But he was murdered, plain and simple. If it was me, I'd take the time to dig into that deal a little deeper."
The Captain's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps you're right."
Chapter 29
It was around ten when Captain Yun pulled up to the Chosun Hotel entrance. Eight in the morning, Washington time. Burke took the elevator up and knocked on the door to Jerry Chan's room, which adjoined his own. The Seoul branch manager reported his three staffers had arrived earlier in the evening. They had checked in and promptly bid him good-night, which brought rememberances of a few days back. Burke knew exactly how they felt. He invited Jerry over to listen in as he briefed Nate by phone.
Opening a leather case about the size of a portable typewriter, he took out an expensive looking fax machine he had checked through with his baggage. It held a telephone handset at one end, along with an impressive array of buttons above a digital display. With the press of a button, a small panel opened to reveal a slot for an ordinary three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk. In a separate case, he had brought a set of special floppies that each contained a unique encoding algorithm selected at random by a computer. There were only two sets of the special disks, one here and one at Worldwide's Washington headquarters. When a floppy was inserted into the drive and an identical one used at the other end of the call, an activate button would turn the fax machine into a perfectly secure telephone scrambler. It could handle either voice or facsimile transmission. After use, the floppy would be erased, eliminating any possibility of the message being decoded later by someone who had recorded it. It was, in essence, a high-tech version of the old one-time pad.
Before using the scrambler, he took out what appeared to be a TV remote control. He pressed a button and pointed it around the room with a sweeping motion, watching the small lights on its face. It was an electronic gadget used to detect hidden microphones. As expected, it found nothing in his hotel room.
Burke hooked the fax device to the phone line, lifted the handset and dialed long distance for the private line on the Chief's desk at Worldwide Communications Consultants' headquarters on Sixteenth Street. He soon had Nate Highsmith on the phone.
"Good morning," Burke greeted him. "How are things in Disneyland on the Potomac?"
"What are you sounding so chipper about?" Nate said. "Figured out a way to overcome the effects of that Embassy madness?"
He had been so wrapped up in Captain Yun's tale that he'd forgotten all about Damon Mansfield's encounter. "No, but I have some information I think you'll find even more interesting." He began to recount the Captain's startling story.
Burke joined Jerry and his newly arrived staffers the following morning in shifting desks and chairs about, locating filing cabinets, setting up everything from a copying machine to computers and printers and a paper shredder. They also unpacked boxes of files and equipment shipped over from the States by air freight. Travis Tolliver left at noon, heading to the hotel to pick up his wife and begin the task of hunting an apartment.
They could have passed for a moving van crew. Brittany Pickerel looked the most decent, dressed in blue jeans and a matching blue shirt. When Burke saw her gritting her teeth in a vain attempt to budge an oversize box, he offered to help. Wedging his fingers under one end, he barely got it off the floor, and then only with a loud grunt.
"What the hell's in this thing, Brittany? Rocks?'
She grinned. "Books, the life's blood of a researcher."
"I sure hope you don't want to move it far," he said, breathing heavily. "That's enough to make a guy pop a vein."
"Sorry." She gave him the tolerant look of a schoolteacher bent on straightening out an errant pupil. "Venous blood flows steadily, Mr. Hill. You would need to pop an artery for the blood to squirt."
He shook his head. He thought of saying lighten up, Brittany, but didn't. "I stand corrected. What about the box?"
"I'd like to get the books near that shelf beside my desk."