"Not a catch. I am trading information, and you are trading the brute force needed to seize this cargo."
"The risk is all mine," Captain Yokang pointed out.
"The gold is half yours."
"How much gold?"
"Five million. Pure bullion."
Captain Yokang clucked thoughtfully. "This is enough to pay off my crew for their silence."
"There is no need to inform your superiors, either," said the smoothly reassuring voice.
"If this can be done safely, I will do it," said Captain Yokang.
"A United States submarine is steaming toward the West Korea Bay. It carries the gold."
"I cannot commandeer a United States submarine!"
"You can once it enters Korean territorial waters illegally."
"Why is it doing that?"
"It is better that you not know."
"Better or safer?"
"Both."
"Understood. Tell me where this submarine can be found."
As he listened over the satellite telephone, the smooth voice related everything. Course, speed and the exact position at which the USS Harlequin intended to surface.
Captain Yokang looked at a map as he took down the information. The area was off one of the most industrialized portions of west North Korea. An area of steel mills and coal mines and rice paddies. Along the coast lay only rock and a few fishing villages. Nothing of importance.
Yokang noticed a broad three-lane highway that swept up from the capital of Pyongyang to a certain point on the western coast. The highway went right to the edge of the water and stopped dead. There seemed to be no purpose in this. The map showed nothing but a blank area where the highway terminated. No doubt it was one of the Great Leader's many extravagances. North Koreans were not permitted to own motorized vehicles, yet the state boasted of its progressive highway system.
After he had all the information he needed to make himself fabulously rich, Captain Yokang asked the voice a reasonable question. "Who are you, comrade?"
"Call me Comrade," said the smooth voice.
IT WAS just after dusk in the West Korea Bay when Naval Commander John Paul Seabrooke was interrupted by the voice of his executive officer coming over the boat's intercom system.
"Captain, we're approaching Point Sierra."
"On my way," Seabrooke said. He wolfed down the last of his evening meal, wriggled his stocking feet into his spit-polished shoes and pushed his way past rushing seamen through the smelly steel innards of the USS attack sub Harlequin to the control room.
In his hand he clutched his sealed orders. Ripping as he ran, he extracted a single sheet of paper.
The orders were brief. They instructed him to look for a particular beach landmark and, once sighted, deploy his cargo on rubber rafts and simply leave it there on a beach.
The orders were signed, "Admiral Smith." Seabrooke had never heard of Admiral Smith. But the U.S. Navy was full of admirals. It was full of Smiths, too, and Seabrooke wondered why the man hadn't bothered to use his first name or at least his initials.
The instructions were simpler than he could hope for. With luck the boat could surface in utter darkness, do its duty and slip back through the Yellow Sea without being detected by North Korean gunboats.
"All secure, sir," the exec reported as Seabrooke entered the bridge. The Harlequin was running submerged at periscope depth. The periscope was down in its well.
Seabrooke ordered it raised.
A snap of a switch brought the viewer rising to meet him. He seized the handles and turned them. The scope rotated easily as Seabrooke moved his body around.
The viewer showed black water under a thin slice of yellow moon. He looked for the Horns of Welcome, as the landmark had been called in his sealed orders. It had not been described. Evidently, whatever they were, they would be hard to miss even in the dead of the North Korean night.
The thought of where he was sent a shiver through Commander Seabrooke's rangy body. North Korea was practically the only Communist holdout left standing these days. It was also the most insular and dangerous. Estranged from both Moscow and Beijing, Pyongyang was going it alone. The ruler, Kim Il Sung, was nearing the end of his life, and his son, Kim Jong Il, was anxious to take over.
It was well-known that while Kim Il Sung was a despot, Kim Jong Il was a dangerous megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur far beyond the petty vulgar dreams of his father.
There were rumors of food riots and insurrections all over North Korea. The long border with South Korea was tense. Intelligence reports predicted that when the elder Kim finally passed on, the son might make a grab for the south. Because only by involving his people in total war could he hope to hold on to his crumbling country.
No, it was not a good time to be in the West Korea Bay, Seabrooke mused. And it would be an especially bad time to be caught there.
Still, the U.S. Navy would not have sent the Harlequin into off-limits waters unless it was for a damn good reason and the odds of success were great. The Navy still remembered the Pueblo incident. Or Seabrooke fervently hoped Admiral Smith did.
They were running parallel to the coast. Seabrooke scanned the moonlit swatch of land. It was as forbidding as a moonscape. Mud flats and rock ledges. Nothing moved. Not even a sea gull flew. That meant the waters were bare of fish.
Then he saw them. Twin rock formations, one at either end of a particularly dead-looking stretch of mud flat. If they had been closer together, they would have made a pretty fair natural arch. Set apart as they were, they made Seabrooke think of the buried horns of some Precambrian dragon.
The Horns of Welcome. Had to be.
"Captain of the watch, rig controls for black and prepare to surface," Seabrooke barked, snapping up the periscope handles.
"Aye, aye, sir."
Instantly the order was repeated, and the red illumination lights were doused. The bridge became a claustrophobic space in which the tense faces of his executive officers moved in and out of the creepy illumination of control indicators.
"Blow main ballast tanks."
"Blow main ballast tanks."
Air hissed in the tanks. The sub began to rise, its stressed hull plates groaning.
"Contact, sir!" a voice shouted. "Bearing mark 056."
"Belay that blow-tanks order," Seabrooke cried, running to the sonar.
The scope showed a large object cutting across their bow.