CIA Langley’s fax to its Tokyo field agent, Henry Wray, was to the point: EXPEDITE SONGBIRD IMMEDIATE STOP MESSAGE ENDS.
Wray asked his JDF colleagues to bring in the Korean prisoner, Jae Chong, “and put him in the paper box.” It was three feet square, two feet high, and made of slotted cardboard that could be dismantled and reassembled in seconds. The suspect or prisoner had to squat in the middle of the square, and God help him if he moved.
“We may have to wait a long time till he talks,” one of the JDF agents said.
“We can’t wait too long,” Wray countered. He thought of the danger that one person, one mishap, could have on the complicated and vital logistics tail of Second Army that would stretch from Japan to Hanoi. “Give him an hour on his haunches,” Wray suggested. “If he hasn’t talked by then, beat the shit out of him. No bruises.”
“Hai,” agreed the youngest of the two JDF agents. He didn’t like gaijin—foreigners — including Americans, but he especially disliked Koreans, particularly those from the north.
That afternoon at a quarter to three they picked up Chong from his job as a janitor for an apartment complex not far from the Ginza strip. The timing was important for Chong, who knew that sooner or later they would get him. But had they arrested him an hour earlier, he probably would not have withstood the beating until the 2:38 departure of the Joetsu Shinkansen, bullet train, from Tokyo’s Ueno Station to Niigata on Honshu’s west coast, over two hundred miles away. As it was, by the time the beating started, the 2:38 to Niigata was well on its way across the Kanto Plain north of Tokyo, speeding toward the fourteen-mile Daishimizu tunnel, which would take Tazuko Komura from Japan’s “front” or the omote Nihon, to ura Nihon, the “inner Japan” beyond the alps.
Before she had moved to the frenetic glitter of Japan’s east coast, the west coast around Niigata had been Tazuko’s home. In its own way, Niigata was as flashy and as fast as Tokyo, but not far from Niigata you were in the small villages of Japan, hundreds of years old. It was a Japan in which having a life of yutakasa—of great value — was not measured in yen or worldly possessions, but in the spirit of harmony one experienced with the rhythm of the seasons and the wisdom of traditions passed down from one craftsman to another.
For Tazuko, it had still been a land in which she was one of the gaijin, but its affinity for things rural and old captivated her. Her nostalgia, however, was a fantasy, at odds with the often harsh reality of modern industrial Japan, with the kind of industrial wealth Pyongyang wanted to emulate. But Tazuko felt no such contradiction, and knew if she was to give her life to help thrust North Korea onto the stage of major world powers, then she would give that life. And should anyone doubt her courage, then they would soon doubt no longer.
At first she hadn’t planned anything even remotely heroic, but heroism, if it meant self-sacrifice, had more or less been forced upon her by the stringent security carried out by the automatic rail “scout” machines that constantly monitored the tracks of the bullet trains. Had anyone wanted to put the sausage-shaped explosive on the rail tracks or supporting structures, they would have had to do it in darkness, for the moment they used a light, their position would have been immediately identified by the infrared track cameras. Besides, the way to inflict the most damage on the Japanese psyche was not to blow up part of the track, but to stop the train itself, to puncture their much vaunted and worldwide reputation for speed, safety, and quality. Also, if they expected an attack, it would be on the southward Tokyo-Hakata line, where U.S. and JDF troops would most likely travel as part of the buildup of force in Vietnam.
“Tell him,” Wray said, lighting another cigarette, “that if he doesn’t tell us the name and whereabouts of his contact, he’s going to have an accident — a fatal one.”
“I’ve already told him,” the JDF agent replied.
“Maybe he thinks we’re bluffing.”
“No,” the JDF agent assured Wray. “He knows.” The other JDF agent indicated to the American that they should go outside.
In the hallway they talked about how far they really wanted to go. Wray said he didn’t want to kill the son of a bitch, but with the segmented air/sea Second Army supply line stretching from Japan to Hanoi over 2,200 miles away, any sabotage would be disastrous for what the U.N. hoped would be Freeman’s counterattack against the Chinese. The JDF agent said he didn’t mind beating the crap out of the North Korean — it would be a message to the Gong An Bu, Chinese Intelligence, that if they insisted on using gaijin to do their dirty work in Japan, this is what would happen to their agents.
Wray, now that his bluff was being called, wasn’t so tough. He said the trouble with killing the little bastard was all the fucking paperwork involved, but what he really meant was “killing the little bastard” was a contradiction of what they were supposedly fighting for — inconvenient stuff like habeas corpus. Without wanting to sound weak, Wray wanted to convey this to the JDF agent. “Chinese’d just take him out and shoot him in the neck if he was one of ours.”
“We don’t have to shoot him,” the JDF agent said. “There wouldn’t even be a bruise.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Wray said. “But like I said — too much friggin’ paperwork.”
“It’s up to you,” his Japanese colleague said amicably.
“Well, stick a barrel against his head and tell him to tell you who he contacted and why — I mean their specific target.”
The JDF man made a face. It was a question. What happens if he still doesn’t answer? You’ve lost all credibility. Right?
“Try it,” Wray said. “I’ve got a hunch the little bastard’ll sing like a bird.”
“Do you want to try it?” the JDF agent asked. What he meant was, You lose face if you want to, Wray-san, but not me.
“All right,” Wray said. “I’ll do it. Give him another fifteen minutes to think about it, then call me.”