If it had been handheld computer games that had taken Southeast Asia by storm, then in Japan it was the craze for karaoke, patrons of bars singing to recorded music. And this night Jae Chong was foot stomping and humming along to a raucous rendition of country music, including a tub-thumping version of “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Jae ordered another drink, and though several other people had their hands up ahead of him, he was the one the waiter decided to serve first. The waiter, Jae thought, probably despised him for being Korean, but he was a Korean with money, and that made all the difference. For more yen, the waiter would treat him like royalty, and Jae was spending big. Why not? He was convinced that by now every police station in Japan had his photograph or artist’s likeness and yellow sheet.
The only thing keeping him off Japanese TV’s “Most Wanted” program was, ironically, the very press that had been so vocal in calling for the capture of all terrorists responsible for the bullet train wreck. For while it was widely known that there were Korean terrorists in the country, it was not known that the Japanese Defense Force had a CIA-type agency, and to keep the press off the scent, the JDF had to arrange a cover story for the killing of the three policemen, including the American agent Wray. There were Japanese constitutional restraints forbidding an intelligence agency from having links or even liaison with the U.S. CIA.
But Jae Chong was under no illusion. Once the JDF had its story watertight, then his photo would be flashed across every TV screen in the country as the Korean terrorist responsible for the murder of two Tokyo policemen and a visiting American specialist, ostensibly in Japan to “collect information on American gangs,” a growing problem in North America.
And Jae Chong knew that once his face went public, he’d be lucky to last a week. In any event, his cover was now completely blown. Whatever Pyongyang’s assurances to its agents in South Korea, he knew Pyongyang would make no effort to recover him, because, unlike Moscow’s rules in the old cold war, Chong and other “abroad agents” were considered expendable. There were only two Pyongyang rules, the first being that if you were caught, no recovery effort would be mounted. Second, if you talked, your next of kin would be shot. Not surprisingly, it encouraged North Korean agents to commit suicide when blown.
Jae faced the inevitable in a drunken stupor and a cloud of Lucky Strike, without rancor, without remorse. He hated the Japanese deeply for what they had done to his grandparents during the Second World War, and besides, to tell the truth, he’d enjoyed the relatively rich consumer life in Japan as compared to the hardships of home, where all the money possible had been drained off and funneled into North Korea’s nuclear program. Trust the U.S. President to have believed that a final “understanding,” in short, a financial buyoff in terms of U.S. aid, had caused North Korea to “deconstruct” its nuclear weapons program. True, the factories in question had now been effectively gutted of any nuclear potential, but with Pyongyang’s old ties to the Soviet Union still largely intact with Russia, the men who ran Pyongyang now had Russian and North Korean scientists going back and forth on mutually beneficial cultural exchange programs. Only one thing was needed — a conventional Soviet submarine with its nuclear missiles intact.
The problem now, with the old Soviet Union in disarray, wasn’t the price. There were a half-dozen admirals one could do business with. No, the problem for Pyongyang was simply one of procurement, and enough terrorism in capitalist countries like Japan to play havoc with transport systems, such as the bullet trains, that kept supplying the USVUN convoys that sailed from Japan to be used against Beijing’s soldiers. Whatever North Korea’s agents could do to impede the convoys would be gratefully, if not publicly, acknowledged by Beijing by according Pyongyang increased access to its nuclear secrets.
As Jae Chong contemplated his end, he included in his calculations the chance of pulling off one more coup — something maybe not as spectacular as the bullet train. To go out into the field with this in mind was foolish, of course. Transport police, especially, would be on the lookout for him. No, he decided he would do something less risky but equally devastating. He ordered more scotch and another packet of Lucky Strikes. Even the old tightwads who ran the Japan circuit in Pyongyang wouldn’t begrudge him having a bit of a party, in exchange for what he was going to do for good relations between Pyongyang and Beijing. Jae lit up another cigarette before one of the prowling bar girls giggled and pointed out that he already had one going. He lifted his glass to her and laughed. No, no, he didn’t want any company just now. He was so pissed, he said, he probably couldn’t get it up, but maybe she should come to see him in the morning.
“The morning?” She looked surprised. “That’s a bit odd, lover.”
Yes, he agreed, it was — about as odd as a Japanese twerp singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” and now the silly bastard was going to punish everyone with an encore, “The Streets of Laredo.”