Tokyo
Early morning sunshine warmed the spacious grounds of Aoyama Cemetery. The tranquil setting and the endless rows of headstones seemed magically isolated, far removed from the noises of the surrounding city.
The Kurita family burial plot was beneath a towering, giant old maple. Critical space shortage in Japan had resulted in a law against burying the dead, and so Kentaro Kurita's ashes, readied at a crematorium outside Tokyo, were laid to rest in a six-inch-square magnolia-wood box, wrapped with traditional ribbons of black silk. The funeral service was sedate, respectful, underscored by the irregular beating of a drum struck by a Shinto priest while other priests, in elaborate robes and ceremonial black headdresses, burned incense. There were close to one hundred mourners in attendance, including a full contingent of the titans of Japanese industry.
Meiko wore a dark-blue Meikoono with a matching sash. She, Sachito and Trev were the last ones to depart the gravesite, leaving behind them only the cemetery workers who then undertook the final internment of Mr. Kurita.
Sachito wore a long, modest, Western-style black mourning dress with pearls and black pumps.
Galt looked like something out of GQ, thought Meiko, in his stylish yet somber dark suit, shirt and tie. He escorted the two women, one on each arm, in the wake of the last of the non-family mourners walking along the narrow asphalt pathway leading from the burial site. The only audible sounds were the shuffling of feet and the polite murmur of some conversations from up ahead. Trev had handled himself throughout the ceremony with style and dignity, in Meiko's estimation, standing there beside her and Sachito like a soldier at his post throughout the ceremony, through the extended agony of the greetings and the service. He'd been the pillar of strength she knew him to be.
Her emotions were numb. The debilitating grief, the soulful weeping that she and Trev had heard coming from Sachito's bedroom last night, these would come to her soon enough; that razor-edged inner pain that had yet to slash her. Perhaps she was in a sort of shock, but she remained cool-headed. The extreme readjustment from her job in Washington, DC to this Tokyo graveside at her father's funeral had somehow sharpened her senses, bringing into finer detail, in a cold, analytical sort of way, everything that was happening around her.
They reached Trev's car, which was parked with the others on the crowded blacktop parking lot. About them, other mourners were exchanging farewells.
Trev said to the women at his side, "Again, I hope both of you will please accept my deepest sympathies." He extended his hand first to the widow. "And my apologies for having to leave so abruptly."
A brief handshake. A traditional Japanese bow.
"Your being here was a show of respect for a great man," Sachito said. "Thank you."
His gaze shifted to Meiko, who wished again that she could hug him for being such a good man. But propriety dictated that she say nothing intimate in this setting.
She said, "I know that you have your work. Like Sachito, I too am only glad that you were able to be here for us."
"It was my privilege, Meiko. I'll be in touch, I promise."
And he was gone.
She and Sachito stood side-by-side then in a moment of silence, watching his car merge with the flow of vehicles leaving the lot. Sachito's hair was carefully, regally coifed as always, but her lower lip trembled. Thin lines of mascara traced down her cheeks from moist eyes. Meiko could not help but feel sympathy for the woman her father had loved at the end. Sachito's grief was as anguished and real as was her own. They shared that, at least.
And that's when she overheard the faintest bit of a nearby conversation, frittering in and around and through the activity of departing mourners, of chauffeurs holding open limousine doors for family friends and industrial titans. She overheard a precise Tokyo dialect.
Male voices spoke confidentially; voices pitched low, but not low enough; voices accustomed to commanding crowded board rooms from behind CEO lecterns, not adapted to conspiratorial intimacy in public. The first word that caught her attention, because it was an English word in an otherwise earnest conversation in Japanese, was Liberty.
At first she doubted her ears. Had she heard correctly? She'd watched the small television set in her bedroom as she prepared for the funeral that morning before leaving the Kurita home, and there had been no mention on any of the Japanese or international news networks about the Americans having lost a space shuttle, which would surely have been the top story if the American government went public with the news that they'd "lost" the Liberty…
She saw that the man she'd overheard was Ota Anami, a short, barrel-chested man, of serious demeanor, with a receding hairline and thick hornrimmed glasses. She had never met Anami before today, here at the funeral. He was the acting company president of Kurita International, Sachito had informed her upon performing the introduction. Mr. Anami, Sachito added, had long been her father's right-hand man, as the Americans said.
Presently, Anami was engaged in an earnest conversation with a compact, dapperly attired man, wearing aviator sunglasses, who radiated power and command despite a lithe, physically slight stature. This man had not been introduced to Meiko, and there was something about him that she disliked. He'd arrived late, after the service began. She had caught but one glimpse of him, standing off to the side with men who wore the undeniable stamp of bodyguards forming a half-circle behind him. This in itself was not unusual. Bodyguards accompanied several of those in attendance, men worth billions. What drew her attention was that the man in the aviator sunglasses arrived late, and had seemed to her to be generally uninterested in the service. He and Anami were conversing close by, next to a black limousine where a chauffeur held open a rear door.
The dapper man appeared sternly displeased with Anami. At one point he actually poked Anami in the chest with his index finger to emphasize some point, an almost unheard of physical public display of effrontery and disrespect. As their conversation continued, Meiko did her best to listen in as closely as she could without appearing obvious about it. She didn't hear several words. Then she heard Anami speak her father's name. She was certain of it. A passing vehicle drowned out more of their exchange. But yes, she now had no doubt they were speaking about her father. And they were speaking about the Liberty.
Could such a thing be, or had she completely misheard?
From the corner of her eye, she saw Anami and the man bow curtly, perfunctorily to each other, as was the Japanese custom at the conclusion of any human interaction. Then the passing vehicle was gone and she thought she heard the dapper man say the word "intercept," spoken in Japanese among other, indiscernible words. The man and his bodyguards then boarded the limousine, vanishing from her sight behind heavily tinted windows. The chauffeur closed the door after them. The limousine joined the procession of departing vehicles. She made a point of committing its license plate number to memory for future reference.
Anami happened to catch her eye, and she felt a vague chill course through her. He bowed respectfully in her direction. She acknowledged this with a polite nod. Then the acting president of Kurita Industries strode toward his own waiting limousine.
She returned her attention to Sachito, at her side.
"The man in that car," said Meiko. "The man Mr. Anami was just speaking with. Do you know him? He arrived late and I was not introduced."
Sachito dabbed with a tissue at the mascara traces on her cheeks. "I didn't meet him either," she said absently. She sniffled. "I don't recall having seen him before. Perhaps he's an associate of Mr. Anami. I really don't know."
"One more question, please. The word, 'intercept.' Does it have, any sort of special meaning to you? Any at all? Perhaps it's a name for something, or a code name perhaps."
Sachito frowned. "Why would you ask such questions at a time like this, Meiko? I don't understand."
Meiko frowned. "Neither do I. It's just… I don't know, really. I heard some of the words being spoken between Anami and that man." She interrupted herself with an impatient wave of a hand, hoping to banish the thought. "Sachito, forgive me. My mind is playing tricks on me, and so is my hearing."
Ota Anami's chauffeured white Toyota limo drove by where they stood. They watched the limousine leave the lot, which was by this time mostly deserted, except for their car and a few vehicles here and there belonging to visitors to other gravesites.
"Are you suggesting, Meiko, that Mr. Anami and the man he was speaking to are involved in something… suspicious?"
"I don't know. I really don't. How well do you know Mr. Anami? I mean, personally."
"Hardly at all. We've spoken on occasion during the past few months when your father was too weak to attend meetings and I would relay his decisions to Anami. We've met two or three times, no more. I will confess that I really don't know anything about him."
"I assume they'll be dropping the 'acting' from his title, acting president of the company, now that Father has been laid to rest," Meiko mused. "In other words, Mr. Anami benefited considerably-in money, prestige, personal power-upon my father's death. I wonder who that other man was? I wonder who Anami's associates are outside of Kurita Industries."
Sachito frowned. "Are you suggesting that foul play was involved? Really, Meiko, I don't see how that could be possible. The medical examiner's report… your father died of natural causes. That's a medical fact."
"I'm a journalist," said Meiko. "When I verify facts, then I'm satisfied. When I'm convinced of the truth about how my father died, then I will allow myself to shed tears of grief for his soul."
Sachito studied her for a long time before nodding. Sachito's eyes were no longer moist, but solemn and determined.
"And I will help you."
From the cemetery, Galt again took the freeway downtown.
Before he had gone a quarter mile, he observed in his rearview mirror that he was being followed. Galt habitually practiced counter-surveillance techniques on a day-to-day basis, the residue of a lifetime devoted to covert ops. It essentially meant remaining constantly attuned to every nuance of his immediate surroundings, be it seated at a table in a restaurant, relaxing at home or especially, as now when on foreign soil, on a crowded freeway on his way to meet an important contact. Traffic flew bumper-to-bumper at a high rate of speed but remained orderly, this being Japan after all, without much lane changing. This made it easier for Galt to note the white Toyota, with a dent in its right front fender, shifting lanes with him, as he angled for an upcoming exit, than it would have been had he been driving in, say, Rome, Mexico City or L.A. Of course there was no reason why he should be the only driver to take the Nihonbashi Street exit, except that this particular Toyota had joined the traffic flow behind him right after he'd left Aoyama Cemetery, and had maintained a four-cars-behind trailing position ever since. He overshot his exit, and took the next one. The tail never lost position exiting the freeway, but things got progressively difficult for the Toyota's driver as Galt drove deep into a market area. The mid-morning streets bustled with multitudes of pedestrians, noisy motorcycles, honking buses and cars. He exercised some basic evasion maneuvers and lost the tail.
He returned to the freeway and, to make sure while keeping an eye on the traffic flow presently surrounding him, he again overshot his exit, using the next off-ramp and this time driving a zigzag route through a residential neighborhood. He satisfied himself that he had lost the tail, whoever they were. He was curious as hell to know who'd been following him. It could have been anyone from the Japanese authorities to U.S. spooks to representatives of those very forces, whoever they were, that he had come to Tokyo to unearth as a means of getting to Kate and the Liberty. But to that end, his top, his only, priority at this point was to make his scheduled rendezvous with General Tuttle, which is why he had passed on the opportunity to waylay whoever was in the Toyota and find out who they were. He did not want to keep the general waiting or, worse, somehow miss their connection.
He took a cross-town avenue to hook up with ten-lane Nihonbashi Street, which he followed, as he'd initially intended, in the direction of Shinjuku Park near the Olympic Stadium grounds. It was slow going at times. It was a sunny day but that didn't mean much in Tokyo, where the smog was worse than any city Galt had ever been to. Tokyo basked in sunlight filtered through a gray overcast that made the sun a dull red ball as if seen through gauze. Several times, while he sat stalled in traffic, Galt's nostrils distinguished the delicate, tangy scent of Japanese cooking, drifting on the air from restaurants, mingling with the acrid, metallic taste of automotive exhaust.
After being all but leveled by the Allied bombing raids of World War II, Tokyo has been rebuilt in a mixture of styles more Western than Japanese. The dense, sharp contrast of old and new, East and West, is everywhere. Bright, modern business buildings stand side-by-side with tiny shops offering the products of ancient arts. Neon signs of every imaginable shape, size and color, in English as well as Japanese ideographs, flicker, jump and whirl. This was the Ginza Strip in midtown Tokyo, centered around Ginza Street, which runs northwest to southwest. This, the main shopping section, is dominated by only the very best department stores, subway stations and flashy neon signs. Ginza Street also passes through the financial district before reaching the city's red-light section.
He had the car's radio tuned to the English-speaking news station, and that's how he learned that the Liberty's disappearance had been made public.
Moreover, the news had engulfed the global media. Galt was not surprised. It had only been a matter of time, and he was impressed that the administration had been able to contain such a potent story as long as they had. The world was in on it now. As for Galt, he heard nothing on the radio that he hadn't known the night before.
He paid to park the car in a crowded lot across from Shinjuku Park, Tokyo's version of Central Park. It was only a short walk from the lot to the Meiji Shrine. He passed through a landscape of public gardens, of little bridges surrounded by hazelnut bushes, aspens, beech and maple, and a wall of oak trees that muted the vendors' cries, the bicycle bells and the unending bustle of street business interwoven with the roar of nearby traffic. There were peddlers of all sorts selling lucky amulets, souvenirs, food; soba sellers with wheeled carts, dispensing soup; stalls offering smoked eels and sushi, noodles or rice. But like Aoyama Cemetery, the park's expansive grounds were for the most part a green oasis of serenity and tranquility amid the urban landscape of neon, concrete and constant noise. Narrow gravel walkways wended across rolling lawns of half-hidden ponds and quiet, secluded teahouses. There were other Westerners here and there.
At the Meiji Shrine, as per Galt's request as relayed through Barney Markee, General Clayton Tuttle stood waiting directly beneath the curved horizontal top of the torii, the enormous redwood pillars and beams that form the gateway that distinguishes Shinto shrines. The area around the shrine was crowded with people in meditation, tourists snapping photographs and lovers strolling by.
Tuttle was doing his best to fit in, to look like an everyday tourist in mismatched polyester and not like the spit-and-polish ranking military man that he was. But strutting back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back, an unlit cigar poking from the corner of his mouth, he needed only a swagger stick to make him the spitting image of Douglas MacArthur inspecting the troops. At first sight of Galt, Tuttle ceased his pacing. He glanced irritably at his wristwatch, much as he had greeted Galt with a glance at a stopwatch on their previous encounter during the training exercise aboard a yacht anchored on the Potomac.
"Goddammit, man, I get your call in the middle of a staff briefing at the Pentagon, fly halfway around the world to rendezvous with you here on time, and you stand me up for fifteen minutes."
Galt couldn't help but smile at the crusty old salt, and practically had to restrain himself from saluting. "Sorry, sir. I took a wrong turn getting here. Thanks for coming."
"Well, the cat's out of the bag." Like Galt, like most desk jockeys in covert ops, Tuttle was a seasoned field operative. His eyes panned their surroundings. "By the end of this day, everyone we're looking at right now in this park is going to be discussing the missing American space shuttle. Oh, and by the way, you do know that you're on the Washington shit list, right?"
"Goes without saying, I'm not proud to say. That's why you got my SOS. I'm in serious need of a military liaison I can trust implicitly, with intel background and Asian contacts. That would be you, sir. You're not only at the top of my A list, you are my list. I've, uh, been on the move for the last few hours, General. But I need to know what you know."
"Let's get the small stuff out of the way first," said Tuttle. "That turncoat NASA engineer will be spending the rest of his life in custody and is presently under a twenty-four-hour suicide watch. That little Japanese tart who sex-trapped him into selling out has been a tougher nut to crack. She was a stripper in a yakuza-owned joint that went out of business months ago. These guys were backtracking and covering their tracks big time."
"That would put me at the top of Wil Fleming's shit list," Galt conceded. "The chief of staff told me yesterday that the stripper was sure to turn on whoever sent her. Fleming's a wet-behind-the-ears pup. That girl was sent over, operating on a strictly need-to-know basis. They gave her Fraley's name and address and told her to go to work on him. The money was good enough, and she was street-smart enough, to do everything they paid her to do without asking any questions about who she was working for, or their motives."
"And so we move to the big picture," said Tuttle. "We're on top of all Chinese and North Korean electronic communication, as no doubt they're listening in on a lot of our traffic. No one seems to have a fix on Liberty as yet, although a Chinese force has made an incursion across North Korea's borders and their commander is confident that he's close enough to call in an armored column. The North Koreans, on the other hand, appear to be clueless. Their regional commander in the area where Liberty may be is a guy named Sung, who seems to operate with pretty much complete autonomy, given the fact that no one in Pyongyang gives a damn about Hamgyong Province… until now."
"What about a CIA ground intel in the region?"
Tuttle jerked the unlit stogie from the corner of his mouth. "His name is Ahn Chong, and what I'm about to share with you all comes from his single coded transmission thus far. Here it is, Trev. We have confirmation from our ground contact inside North Korea that some of the Liberty crew has survived. The shuttle is more or less intact."
Galt's heart skipped a beat. "The hell you say. Kate… is she-"
"We don't know yet." Turtle's gruffness could not conceal his own concern. He said, "A North Korean mountain bandit named Chai Bin claims to have possession of the shuttle and the satellite and the crew survivors, and they're for sale. Guy calls himself a warlord. The CIA has routed me pertinent b.g. which, unfortunately, isn't much. The North Koreans want to nail him. He's been a thorn in everyone's side for years in that region. He's elusive, well entrenched and has his own private army."
"Just the same, we've got plenty if this Ahn Chong knows the exact location of the shuttle."
"We'll have plenty when Ahn tells us," Tuttle countered. "But so far he's only relayed what I've told you. Our warlord is playing it cagey to see what our response will be."
"Our first response ought to damn well be me. So it's the North Koreans, the Chinese, the United States and a warlord. Warlord. Jesus. Sounds like an Indiana Jones movie."
"Make that a five-way play," said Tuttle. "You forgot to include yourself."
"I thought I was on their shit list."
"You are. That doesn't mean you don't have a part to play. We all have our parts to play."
"Shakespeare, General?"
"This may or may not surprise you, but I have tasked top priority authorization to get an Army Ranger special operations package in-country ASAP And I have your mission orders."
"Is that right?"
"That's right. I was on their shit list too, for taking your call and for walking out on a staff briefing." Tuttle chortled. "And for trying to give them the dodge. I should have known better."
"Mission orders. Is that right?"
"I was contacted en route after Chai Bin dealt himself in. As for you and me, all has been forgiven from on high, considering what's at stake and how fast things have to get done."
"Specifics, sir, if you don't mind."
"I've been handed point position on this operation," said Tuttle. "I have been assigned to honcho a tactical covert ops strike into North Korea once we get target acquisition on Chai Bin's position. Since you have already taken the personal initiative of, er, uh, inserting yourself into the theater of operations, you, my headstrong friend, have been assigned as my right-hand man to advise and help organize."
Galt grimaced. "Advise and organize. We may be in the field, sir, but that sounds like a desk job to me."
"I'm not crazy about the notion either, but for a different reason."
"And that would be?"
"Your personal stake in this, plain and simple. But I'd say you've heard that from others."
Galt nodded. "Including from the president."
"I should have known. So what the hell weight would my opinion carry, right?"
"Plenty, sir, in most cases," Galt assured him. "But this situation is real different, for the reason you just stated."
"It's different for a lot of reasons." Tuttle nodded. "And the bottom line, whether they like it or not, is that you are the best man for the job. So the hell with idle chitchat. Let's get to it before they get any more of us."
Galt hesitated. "Sir, you just got ahead of me. Who have they gotten?"
Tuttle's demeanor softened. "Sorry, Trev. I, uh, was saving the worst for last, from your personal point of view. It's your buddy, Barney Markee."
Galt felt his stomach muscles tighten. He thought, Oh no. Oh no!
"I've been tied up with personal matters since I saw Barney. What happened?"
Tuttle sighed. "He's dead. Car bomb. They caught him coming out of his club this morning after closing, on his way home. Happened about an hour ago. Your friend and his bodyguard were killed instantly."
"Did they get who did it?" Galt realized the question was an automatic response, and added, "Do we have any leads on who did it?"
"No names," said Tuttle. "Someone saw a white Toyota speeding away after the explosion."
"A Toyota with a dent in its right front fender?"
Tuttle's expression clouded. "That's right. How did you know?"
Galt felt a bitter taste in his mouth. "Because I just went through considerable effort to evade them before coming here. They took out Barney and then came after me. If they took Barney with his bodyguard, the boys in that Toyota are a hot ass hit team."
"Why did they hit your friend?"
A chill started at the base of his spine and spread to his stomach, which cramped like a ball of ice. "Because I'd asked Barney to do some checking for me on Connie Yota, the stripper from over here who ended up leading that NASA guy astray in Houston. There's some sort of yakuza connection, because the woman's last address before Houston was a strip club here in Tokyo that was owned by the yakuza. Barney was going to look into that for me."
"Looks like he got too close to the wrong people." Tuttle emitted the sigh of a man who had lost men under his command in combat. "I'm sorry it happened to your friend, Trev, but here's the spin for now. Since the Tokyo cops hopefully know nothing about us, they will write Barney's murder off as some sort of turf war in Little Texas, and that's good for us because it will keep them distracted and buy us the time we need. I'll see that we get a background package on the local yakuza organizations." Then Tuttle did something that utterly surprised Galt. The general extended an arm and placed a hand on Galt's shoulder. "I do feel bad about losing your friend."
"Sir, if I have to shake this corner of the world to its roots, I will find our space shuttle and the ones who brought it down, and when I do, I will kick some serious ass."
"Glad to hear it," said Tuttle. "Let's get started."