The Expediter (23 page)

The agent with him touched his sleeve and said something softly in Korean, but Bak pulled his arm away.

“You requested that a storage locker in Yeongdeung-po gu be placed under surveillance this afternoon. Why?”

“I’m trying to find someone who might want to get something there.”

“Who is this someone?” Bak pressed. “It must have something to do with the Pyongyang situation.”

“I’m not sure,” McGarvey said. He couldn’t afford to be hung up here in South Korea answering questions. By now Turov was on his way back to Tokyo, and that was where the answers would be.

Bak stepped closer, an even more menacing expression on his round face. “Well now you can be sure, Mr. Director. The man on surveillance was found by a neighborhood cop semiconscious inside the locker. Can you guess what was found, besides my man, that is?”

McGarvey shrugged.

“False papers, money, clothing, and weapons. Sniper’s weapons. The tools of assassins.” His eyes never left McGarvey’s. “If you expect to get out of Seoul before the bombs fly, you’ll have to tell me the truth.”

“If I don’t get out of Seoul by morning, the bombs just may fly,” McGarvey said.

Bak wanted to pull a pistol and open fire, McGarvey could see it in his eyes, and he suddenly realized that the man was probably in love with Ok-Lee, which just now made him doubly dangerous.

“Who shot her? One of the assassins?”

“No.”

“You’re telling me that whoever shot her has nothing to do with what we found in the storage locker, or what happened in Pyongyang?” Bak asked harshly. “Because if that’s what you’re trying to do here I’ll arrest you right now. Believe me, you won’t like our interrogation center.”

“I’m sure I won’t, but in the meantime you’ll still have the same problem on your hands.”

“One that you’ve come here to help solve for us.”

“That’s right.”

“But you won’t share information with us.”

“There’s no time.”

Bak turned away, and the other agent said, “Witnesses said they saw a tall man, a Westerner without hair leaving the courtyard, and that you came afterward. Would you know this man?”

“No,” McGarvey said.

“Leave Korea while you can, Mr. McGarvey, before we have to arrest you and forcibly put you on a plane out of here.”

“I’d like to stay until morning, at least long enough to find out how Lin is doing,” McGarvey said. “Can you give me that much?”

Bak turned back. “What’s your interest in her?”

“I’m partially to blame for putting her in harm’s way. I want to make sure she comes out of it.”

Bak said something in Korean to the other agent, who gave McGarvey a bleak look.

“I’m going to collect your things from your hotel room, and bring them here. As soon as we learn that Captain Ok-Lee is in the clear I’ll personally drive you back up to Oasan.”

“Thank you,” McGarvey said.

The agent hesitated. “Is there anything I need to be made aware of? Anything in your things that might hurt me?”

McGarvey shook his head. “Just dirty laundry.”

Around midnight the surgeon came downstairs, his gown and paper booties blood-splattered. He looked tired. By now NIS personnel were all over the hospital, inside and out. One of their own had been shot in the line of duty, and it had probably happened because of an American ex-CIA director. No one was happy.

Bak said something to the doctor, who ignored him, and instead came over and sat down in the chair beside McGarvey.

“Mr. McGarvey, Captain Ok-Lee has lost a lot of blood, but the bullet missed her spleen and her liver so that the damage was confined mostly to the walls of her stomach. She’ll recover with no problems, but it will take a great deal of time before she is without pain. Do you understand this?”

“Yes. May I see her?”

“No, not for twenty-four hours at least.”

“I can’t stay that long.”

“She said that you would say something like that.”

“She’s conscious?” McGarvey asked.

“Long enough to ask me to thank you for saving her life,” the doctor said. He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “And for you to find your Russian.”

“Thanks, Doctor,” McGarvey said. “When she recovers tell her that I will.”

Tokyo

Turov took the early morning JAL flight direct to Tokyo, after a big breakfast and a round of hefty tips and good wishes at the hotel. He’d clumped across the lobby, leaning heavily on his cane, and humming an old Israeli kibbutz song loudly enough that everyone he passed had glanced up and smiled. He had played his role to the hilt as he usually did, so that the staff and guests would be sure to remember him as a rich, generous eccentric, not a Russian expediter of murder.

The time before he had been a nervous scholar who had kind words for everyone, and before that he’d taken on the roles of playboy, medical doctor, movie director, and journalist, but always with one common thread, that of generosity and good cheer.

Minoru Hirobumi was waiting for him with one of the Land Rovers at Narita’s international arrivals gate. As usual the airport was a mad house, and as usual his chief of staff was completely unruffled, serene. He was a small man, compact. “Another success, and now we may leave,” he said. “Have you decided when and where?”

“Melbourne, but we have some time yet,” Turov replied. “The U.S. is putting enough pressure on China to hold off the attack for at least a week. Maybe longer.”

“Do you think there will be a war, Colonel?”

“Almost certainly, but don’t you think so? It was a slap in the face to Beijing, an international embarrassment. It’s bound to have an effect. It’s why Haynes is working so hard.”

“The longer the delay the less likely China is to attack, I think.”

“You may be correct,” Turov said absently. “Maybe they’ll need another little nudge.”

The airport was fifty miles to the northeast of the city and the Ueno Park District where his expansive home was located behind bamboo walls. Traffic was nearly impossible as usual, but the morning was bright and lovely and Minoru was an excellent driver. Turov stared out the window and let his thoughts drift to the coming confrontation.

In the early days with the KGB he had carried out the occasional assassination, and although he was a ruthless, efficient officer in the field he was even better planning hits. His specialty had been, and still was, finding the right people for the job at hand and then motivating them to do it.

Afterward he killed his assassins, which was ridiculously easy, because none of them ever saw it coming. Fresh off a kill they were usually so hyped-up, adrenaline pumping, that they kept an eye out for the authorities, not their paymaster.

In each case Turov got a particular pleasure not only because a dead assassin would provide a lousy witness, and that he got his money back, but because each kill had given him a sexual rush.

As a fifteen-year-old on the soccer field in Leningrad he’d felt his first surge like that when he’d seriously hurt a forward, breaking the kid’s leg, a couple of ribs, and the second and third vertebrae. The forward never walked again, which was a matter of total indifference to Turov, and although he had been kicked out of the game for unnecessary roughness he never forgot his feelings as he walked off the field. It had been better than an orgasm.

He’d never told anyone that, of course, but he was sure that he’d seen the look of comprehension in the eyes of more than one of his victims just before they had died, which made his feelings even more intense.

Minoru had been with Turov since the mid-eighties, and besides his monumental patience he understood his boss sometimes better than Turov understood himself. Among other things he knew when to
back off. There were times for questions, times for action, and other times, like now for silence.

Turov knew and appreciated this in Minoru, who had become as near to being a friend as anyone ever had or could, and he settled back in the rear seat with his thoughts about the upcoming battle with McGarvey.

Somehow the CIA had found out about the Huks, and McGarvey had been sent to find Kim, but only to interview her, not make an arrest. Otherwise the NIS would have staked out the apartment, and kept a watch there until she finally showed up. The fact that they hadn’t was significant, though it hadn’t made sense to him until the clumsy attempt had been made to contact him with a job offer. Then he had understood.

Against all odds the CIA had found out who had hired the Huks to go to Pyongyang and make the hit. Of course what they didn’t know was who had hired Turov to expedite the assassination. Had they known that, McGarvey would never have come to Seoul. He would have had another more interesting, and certainly a more devastating target to keep him occupied.

Soon was safe in Pyongyang, because all the drugs in the world could not extract more information than the man had in his head. All he knew was that his paymaster was a man by the name of Alexandar, and that after each hit money was deposited in a Swiss account.

The North Koreans did not have the laptop computer that Kim admitted had been taken from their apartment. McGarvey had it, and Turov was enough of a realist to believe that, however unlikely, it was at least possible that the computer’s memory could be read despite the encryption programs and fail-safes.

It was on that basis that he suspected McGarvey would be coming here. And he’d found that he was looking forward to their meeting. It was time for him to kill someone interesting. Someone worthy. Someone capable enough to offer resistance.

Someone, given the right circumstances, who could provide the nudge necessary to inadvertently make the U.S. push China into attack.

McGarvey had come out here to unravel the mystery of who had killed General Ho in Pyongyang and why. When he was gunned down, apparently by an agent of the North Korean government, the hue and cry from Washington would be immediate.

China would attack, Kim Jong Il would send his missiles flying, and the entire region would go up in flames in a war from which Japan and the Koreas might take a half-century or more to recover, and because of which the U.S. might sink to a second-class power, bankrupt and ineffectual.

Ueno, Tokyo’s museum district, was located in the hills northeast of downtown with a lovely view of the city and the bay. Turov’s compound was on a broad street of similar compounds above the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Wealthy Japanese businessmen maintained second homes up here, usually for their mistresses. This was an area of secret, secondary lives, a place where everyone minded their own business to an even higher degree than was common in polite Japanese society.

Minoru had telephoned ahead so by the time they’d pulled up at the rear gate, discreetly hidden behind a screen of foliage, one of the house staff let the Rover pass, first checking to make sure who was in the car.

Security here was tight 24/7. In addition to Minoru, the six people on his staff included two cooks and two maids, plus Sokichi Tanaka and Kotaro Hatoyama who’d come from the ranks of Japanese Self Defense Forces Special Action units. They were not particularly bright, but they knew how to handle themselves. They’d been court-martialed and drummed out of the service for excessive violence after the two of them had taken on seven fellow servicemen after a poker game that had gone bad. All seven had ended up in the base hospital, two of them in critical condition. Only the fact that no one had died, and that the seven had started the fight kept Tanaka and Hatoyama out of the stockade.

All of them, except for the maids, had been recruited eight years ago by Minoru who had the uncanny ability to find the disgruntled, disaffected man, angry with a system that valued discipline and proper reports over action, because he himself had been just such a man.

His father had been a Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force colonel working as liaison to the embassy in Taiwan after the war. He’d married a Chinese woman, and Minoru had been born in the late sixties. When they’d returned to Japan their lives became a living hell. The colonel was kicked out of the army because his wife presented a security risk, and Minoru had been so severely ostracized at school that he was pulled out of classes and homeschooled by his mother, who was a mathematician, and by his father, who had been a military combat officer.