The Expediter (16 page)

The storage room was about five feet wide and twice that deep, six aluminum suitcases along one wall and a couple of cardboard file boxes along the other. A bare lightbulb dangled from the ceiling.

“Make sure no one comes back here,” McGarvey said and he went inside and switched on the light.

Starting with the cardboard boxes he found several thick files in Korean, along with what looked like surveillance photographs of men coming out of or going into what might have been office buildings, or in a couple of cases government buildings, getting in or out of automobiles—mostly Mercedeses—or sitting at sidewalk cafés.

One of the boxes contained an assortment of South Korean passports in a number of different names, all with photographs of Huk Soon or Huk Kim, in various light disguises, along with several envelopes that contained as much as $10,000 in cash in various currencies.

“What have you found?” Ok-Lee asked from the doorway.

“Passports, money, and files on what were probably their targets,” McGarvey said. “We’ve got the right people.”

He moved next to the aluminum suitcases, none of which was locked, which he found astounding, considering what they held. In addition to various styles of men’s and women’s clothing, along with wigs and makeup, three of the suitcases were filled with weapons; one of them with the Russian 7.62 mm Dragunov sniper rifle with a high-power scope; one with the very hard to find American-made .50 caliber Barrett rifle that had an effective kill range of one thousand meters. Shaped cutouts in the thick foam lining held a Steiner night vision scope, the ten power Leupold & Stevens day scope, two box magazines, a tripod, and a silencer. The third aluminum case held a variety of pistols, among them a small Beretta and a couple of German-made 9 mm SIG-Sauer P226s, along with ammunition, spare magazines, silencers, and cleaning and repair kits.

Ok-Lee stepped inside and looked over McGarvey’s shoulder. “Shit, those are sniper rifles,” she said. “I’ve got to get my people down here to go through this stuff.”

“No,” McGarvey said, looking up at here. “That’s exactly what we’re
not
going to do.”

Ok-Lee tried to argue but McGarvey held her off.

“We know who she is, we know where she lives, and we know
she’s probably desperate to get her husband out of Pyongyang. She’s probably already turned to the one person in the world she thinks can help her.”

“Alexandar Turov.”

“That’s right,” McGarvey agreed. “But this guy’s a pro. If we take this place apart, or put it under surveillance he’ll spot what’s going on and back off.”

“If we get the woman, and Pyongyang has her husband, we can convince the Chinese—”

“Convince them of what?” McGarvey demanded. “Beijing’s not going to believe Kim Jong Il, and they’re certainly not going to believe your people. At this point they’re convinced that the North Koreans made the hit.”

Ok-Lee nodded to the file boxes. “We have this stuff.”

“Doesn’t prove a thing.”

“What then?” Ok-Lee asked. She was desperate now, and McGarvey almost felt sorry for her.

“We need the Russian, and if we back off the woman will lead us to him.”

“If we lose her, we’re faced with a nuclear war here.”

“Don’t I know it,” McGarvey agreed.

Kim had stuffed what clean clothes she had left into the hanging bag by the front door, and replaced her makeup and a few other toiletries. The fear that had been eating at her gut since Pyongyang was still with her, but now it was tempered by Alexandar’s promise to help rescue Soon.

She took the four potted plants off the stepladder by the living-room window and carried it out into the corridor where she stopped a moment to listen at the rail for any sign that the old woman was snooping around on the landing below. Everyone else in the building was still at work, and the stair hall was quiet.

Taking the stairs silently, in her bare feet, Kim raced to the top floor where she placed the ladder beneath the opening to the attic crawl space, climbed up, pushed the cover aside, and hauled herself through.

Careful not to slip off the joists, she scrambled to the far corner, where she retrieved a small plastic bundle, about the size of a loaf of bread, returned to the opening, and lowered herself to the top rung of the ladder where she pulled the cover back in place.

Her heart was hammering now. She had no idea how long it might take for them to find the storage locker and discover what it contained, but she didn’t think she had much time left here.

She hurried downstairs to the apartment, where she placed the pots back on the ladder, and went into the kitchen where she cut open the bundle from the attic. Inside was their emergency kit in case something went drastically wrong. Passports in work names they’d never used, driver’s licenses, credit cards, family photographs, even an overdue parking ticket for a car they didn’t own, along with a few thousand dollars in cash, and two Walther PPK pistols, with silencers and one magazine of 7.65 ammunition each.

The kit was never meant to support them for much longer than a few days, but if they ever had to get out of the country in a hurry, and this was all they could take, it would be enough.

She stuffed the empty bag into the trash can then put everything except for her passport and papers into the hanging bag. Her things went into her purse, along with a camera cell phone, and she changed into a dress and decent shoes, her heart hammering even harder by the time she was finished.

For a few seconds she hesitated at the door, gazing at the apartment where for the past few years she and Soon had been deliriously in love and happy. They had planned on finding a small villa or house
somewhere along the Mediterranean coast either in France or perhaps northern Italy once they had enough money in their Swiss account. Soon had figured ten million euros would do for a modest retirement. With the money from their latest hit they were more than a third of the way there.

But all of that was finished, or at least it was on hold until they could get Soon out of Pyongyang, and even with Alexandar’s help she didn’t know how it was possible.

Downstairs the old landlady came out of her apartment. “Are you running away?”

“Soon wants me to come back to Nagasaki,” Kim said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

“Government people come one minute and next minute Mrs. clears out. Something is plenty fishy here.”

“Nothing’s fishy,” Kim said. She patted the old woman’s arm. “I’ll be gone for just a few days. Be a dear and water my plants, would you?”

The landlady’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe Seoul is not such a good place to be right now. But maybe Nagasaki isn’t so good either.” She nodded toward the door. “What do I tell them if they come back?”

“The truth,” Kim said. “That I’ve gone to Nagasaki to be with my husband.”

“Come back if you can. You and Mr. are good people.”

Kim managed a smile, and went out and walked to the end of the block where she hailed a taxi.

“The Westin Chosun,” she told the driver.

McGarvey and Ok-Lee sat in the car across from the storage building, the engine idling. No one on the bustling street had paid them much attention, though McGarvey figured he had to stand out as a foreigner, so somebody was watching.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“If she’s on the run she’ll have to come back here for her papers and money and a weapon,” Ok-Lee said. “This is the one place in Seoul where she’s bound to show up sooner or later.”

“Unless Turov gets here first and kills her,” McGarvey replied. The woman was a loose cannon that the Russian couldn’t afford to ignore. If she had made contact with him, which he was sure she had, he would have to show up here.

“All the more reason to put a watch on the place,” Ok-Lee argued. “We’ve got some pretty good people who know how to blend in.”

“One person, and they’re not to make a move without contacting you first. She won’t do us any good if she gets in a shoot-out. With her husband under arrest in Pyongyang she’s desperate enough try something like that rather then let herself be taken.”

“Done,” Ok-Lee said. She pulled away from the curb and around the corner at the end of the block she made a call on her cell phone and talked in rapid-fire Korean for several minutes.

McGarvey figured that no matter how hard the president was trying to convince Beijing that hitting North Korea was not the answer, the situation here was spiraling out of control. He figured they only had a few days, maybe one week at the most, before Chinese missiles launched from mobile platforms near the border rained down on Pyongyang. Kim Jong Il would only have minutes to respond, which
meant that he would be preparing his missiles right now, which in turn would convince the Chinese that their only option was to make a first strike.

But the part that puzzled him the most was who had hired Turov to find shooters willing to get inside North Korea and make the hit. Again and again he came back to the same question: Who had the most to gain by destabilizing the relationship between North Korea and China? And each time he came back to the same troubling answer: The U.S. had the most to gain.

“Do you want to go back to the hotel now?” Ok-Lee asked.

McGarvey looked up out of his thoughts. “How soon will somebody be in place down here?”

“Within the hour.”

“Good,” McGarvey said. “What did you tell them?”

Ok-Lee was troubled. “I lied, Mr. Director,” she said. “And I didn’t like it very much, because I’ve put my career on the line for you, possibly even my freedom.”

“In that case you’d better start calling me Mac. Mr. Director is too formal.”

Ok-Lee turned away to concentrate on her driving. She shook her head and said something half under her breath in Korean. “My name is Lin,” she said. “Where do you want to go?”

“Back to the woman’s apartment,” McGarvey said. “I want to take another look and have a word with the landlady.”

“I don’t think she’ll tell us much.”

“I’ll ask the questions this time, and you can translate.”

The old woman came out of her apartment the moment McGarvey and Ok-Lee walked through the front door. She was still dressed in old faded baggy gray slacks and a flowered top mostly covered by a worn cotton jacket. She held a broom in both hands as if she was ready to defend herself and she looked angry.

She said something in Korean.

“She wants to know why we’ve come back to bother an innocent old woman,” Ok-Lee translated for McGarvey.

“Because we know that she lied the first time, and liars go to prison,” McGarvey said harshly.

Ok-Lee wasn’t happy. “She’s just an old woman protecting her tenants.”

“Tell her.”

Ok-Lee translated, and the landlady backed up a half step.

McGarvey took out his pistol and transferred it to his jacket pocket. “The truth now, where are the Huks?”

The old woman’s eyes widened in fear, and she mumbled something.

“They’re both gone. To Nagaski,” Ok-Lee said.

“But the wife came back,” McGarvey pressed. “Her suitcase is upstairs on the floor.”

“Yes, but she left again, to go back to Nagasaki. She asked me to take care of her plants for just a few days.”

“When did she leave?” McGarvey demanded. “No lies now,” he said menacingly.

Ok-Lee translated, and the woman replied. “Maybe less than two hours ago. She came in just after you left, and went out fifteen minutes later.”

“Shit,” McGarvey swore. He turned and headed up the stairs in a dead run.

“She knew someone was coming,” Ok-Lee said right behind him. “She was watching the apartment.”

“Call your surveillance people and tell them to get someone over to the storage locker right now.”

At the top McGarvey slammed his shoulder into the apartment door, popping the lock and half tearing the wooden frame away. The hanging bag was gone, the dirty clothes still lying in a heap where Ok-Lee had dumped them.

He stopped for just a moment to see if anything else seemed out of the ordinary, something that was different from a couple of hours ago.