The Expediter (29 page)

McGarvey picked an all-night tearoom on the train station’s upper level from where he had a good bird’s-eye view of the nearly deserted main arrivals hall and the front doors. He’d bought the early edition of
The Japan Times
, Tokyo’s main English-language newspaper, and brought it and a pot of green tea to a table near the railing.

Except for an old man standing at a tall table, and the counterman, he was the only person in the shop. When neither of them was looking, McGarvey laid his pistol on the table and covered it with the newspaper

Turov, wearing jeans and an open-collar white shirt, came into the
station, glanced up to where McGarvey was seated and then headed directly across to the escalators, which hadn’t been switched on yet. He made his way up to the second level, moving easily as if he were a man without a care in the world.

He hesitated for just a moment at the broad entrance to the tearoom, taking in the old man and the employee behind the counter, then came directly across to McGarvey and sat down.

“Glad you could join me,” McGarvey said. This close he could see the irritation in Turov’s eyes. “Though my reception earlier wasn’t friendly.”

The Russian shrugged. “You pushed and I pushed back. No harm.”

“Your man with the shattered kneecap might not agree.”

“He’s expendable.”

“We all are,” McGarvey said.

Turov nodded. “What are you doing here, Mr. McGarvey? What am I to you?”

“I had your shooter cornered in Seoul, until you interfered,” McGarvey said. “But the NIS officer you shot will recover and I’ll find your shooter and a direct link back to you.”

“I suppose it would do no good to say that I haven’t been to Seoul, or anywhere in Korea for that matter, in years. But here you are, looking for something. What answers do you think I have for you?”

“We know your Department Viktor background, and we have some pretty good evidence that you’ve become an expediter, a middleman for assassinations. What we don’t understand are the last three hits you arranged, including General Ho up in Pyongyang, unless you thought that you could start a war out here.”

“It would seem that the situation is heading in that direction,” Turov said. “I too read the newspapers, but it doesn’t mean I had anything to do with the general’s assassination. As for the other two I’m not sure who you mean, though I can guess.”

“It’s not you who wants a war, of course,” McGarvey said. “I suspect that you’re indifferent to what’s about to happen, so long as you can get yourself far enough away until the shooting stops. What we’re interested in is who hired you and why?”

“Even if I had been involved you’d be correct in believing that I wouldn’t care. The motives of my paymasters would mean nothing to me.”

Turov started to reach in his pocket, but McGarvey moved the paper aside for a moment, revealing the pistol.

Turov smiled. “Are you going to shoot me simply because I attempted to take a handkerchief out of my pocket?”

“Russians don’t use handkerchiefs. Keep your hands on the table.”

Again a look of irritation crossed Turov’s eyes. “As you wish,” he said. He glanced down at the arrivals hall. “It will get quite busy here in a couple of hours. Do you mean to hold me until then? Is someone else coming?”

“Only until I find out who hired you.”

“If you do shoot here in public you’ll never leave Japan alive, you do understand that, don’t you, Mr. McGarvey? Doesn’t matter that you once ran the CIA, I’m sure that the PSIA isn’t overjoyed you came here. And even if you told them that you believed I was a killer, they wouldn’t do anything without proof. I have friends here, and at this moment Japan blames the current trouble on your government.”

McGarvey held his silence.

“It’s all about money,” Turov said to fill the silence. “Without proof you can’t fight its power.”

“Witnesses?”

Turov shrugged. “What will she tell you?” he asked. “Assuming you find her. I’m told that the NIS has stopped looking. Curious, don’t you think? In any event the South Koreans certainly would not wish to take the blame for General Ho’s assassination.”

“I know where her husband is,” McGarvey said, letting his voice drop as if he were sharing a secret with a conspirator. “He probably knows more than his wife.”

“No one believes him. Certainly the North Koreans don’t, even if he’s still alive.”

“We’ll see,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime you’ve given me all the proof I need that you set up the assassinations.”

“Won’t do you any good,” Turov replied indifferently.

“Nor you if I put a bullet in your head.”

“I know what you’ve done and what you’re capable of, and even if everything I’d heard is true it doesn’t matter,” Turov said. He got to his feet. “Now that I’ve met you I realize that you’re simply not worth the effort to kill unless you persist.”

“I’ll find the proof and I’ll be back,” McGarvey said.

“Go home or die here in Japan,” Turov warned. He turned and left the tearoom.

McGarvey watched the Russian go down the escalator, cross the arrivals hall, and walk out the front doors, never looking back. He’d found one of the answers he’d come looking for. Turov was their man, there was no doubt about it. But that left the who and especially the why. The business of starting wars usually fell to governments. The issues usually were too sweeping to interest an individual. Power, territory, national self-defense, uprisings, the overthrow of a dictator or rotten regime.

In this instance North Korea had no reason to pick a fight with China, no matter how insane Kim Jong Il was. It was a war that they couldn’t possibly win. Even if they successfully launched all ten of their nuclear weapons into China, it would not be a decisive blow.

South Korea had no reason to start such a war, which without a doubt would spread to Seoul. In any event Kim Jong Il had intimated that he was willing to open another round of peace talks, which would include the nuclear issue.

Nor was Japan interested, because Kim Jong Il had made it plain in public statements that one of his targets would be Tokyo. No one believed it was anything but rhetoric. But the Japanese weren’t about to test it.

Which left the why. What country stood to gain the most?

He pulled out his sat phone and speed dialed Colonel Pak’s number in North Korea.

Pyongyang

A few minutes before midnight McGarvey was waiting on the commercial pier at Nagato, a small town on the north coast of the west end of the main island of Honshu. The night was pitch-black under an overcast sky, with a light fog creating halos around the few lights. Nothing moved along the water’s edge.

Somewhere out in the bay that connected with the Korea Strait what sounded like a highly muffled outboard motor was incoming. It was impossible to tell how close it was or the exact direction from which it was coming, but Colonel Pak had instructed McGarvey to be on this dock at this hour.

“We don’t have much time,” McGarvey had argued. “Can’t you arrange to fly me over?”

“Under ordinary circumstances it would take weeks or even months to arrange,” Pak had told him. “Right now it would be impossible.”

A twenty-foot center console runabout appeared out of the mist, one man at the helm and another figure standing up in the back. As they reached the end of the pier the second figure waved, and McGarvey saw that it was Pak.

The helmsman nudged the engine in reverse for just a second or two and the boat came to a nice stop against the dock. McGarvey tossed his bag down to Pak and then jumped aboard.

“Were you followed?” the North Korean asked.

“If you mean by the PSIA, no,” McGarvey said.

Pak pushed them away from the dock and the slightly built helmsman in the uniform of a North Korean merchant seaman gunned the engine as he swung the wheel and they headed smartly back out into the bay.

“We’re crossing to Wonsan on one of our hydrofoils that makes a twice-a-week run to Nagasaki mostly for medicines and other supplies,” Pak said. “We got lucky with the timing.”

“I wasn’t aware that Japan was still doing this for you.”

Pak nodded tightly. “Even now. In exchange our navy has stopped its incursions into Japanese waters.” He looked McGarvey in the eye. “We would have stopped anyway. We can’t afford the fuel.”

“Kill your Dear Leader.”

“It’s been tried,” Pak said. “Is that why you want to come to Pyongyang? You still don’t believe me? Or have you learned something?”

“I want to talk to Huk Soon, if you haven’t fried his brains yet.”

“He’s alive and in one piece, and you will be allowed to interview him, but he won’t tell you anything that wasn’t in the material I gave to you. And afterward you will have to leave.”

“Then we’re wasting our time,” McGarvey said. “You might as well take me back to the dock. I can reach Tokyo by this afternoon and Washington in the morning.”

“You’re not going to walk away from this, Mr. McGarvey. I know at least that much about you. Considering what’s at stake you’re in for the duration.”

“Not if you restrict my movements.”

“Yes, we know how you operate,” Pak said. “If we allow you to run around Pyongyang shooting at people it will only make things worse.”

“That’s already happened, Colonel,” McGarvey replied sharply. “It’s why you came to me in the first place.”

Pak was clearly uncomfortable. “My hands are tied.”

“Bullshit. You not only made it to the States, but you managed to reach my house without trouble. Your hands are anything but tied.”

A large double-decked ferryboat appeared out of the fog, sitting low in the water, its foils submerged now that it was at a standstill. Pak
said something to their helmsman who immediately slowed down and circled around to the port side of the ship.

“China gave us two of these last year,” Pak told McGarvey. “They’d been used in Hong Kong and Macau. Eighty-five kilometers per hour. They were made in your country by Boeing. We’ll reach Wonsan a little after noon.”

“And then?”

“And then what?”

“We know who assassinated General Ho, but if you want to know how they did it, who hired them, and why, so that you can prove to Beijing that you’re not lying, I’ll need a free hand.”

“I’m afraid to ask exactly what you mean.”

“I’ll need to keep my pistol and my sat phone and I’ll need free access for Huk Soon and myself anywhere in the city.”

Pak said something under his breath that McGarvey didn’t catch.

“I think you’ve been given a carte blanche to do whatever it takes to prove your people didn’t assassinate the general and to do it fast,” McGarvey said.

They’d reached the ladder that had been lowered for them. The gate in the rail above had been opened but no one was there. Davits to lift the runabout back aboard dangled from the stern and their helmsman waited patiently for his two passengers to get off.

“I think you don’t believe me,” Pak said. “You think we may have done it, and now this is an elaborate setup to convince you of our innocence. If we can do that you could go to Beijing and make a case that they’d accept.”

“The thought had occurred to me,” McGarvey said.

“You want to go to Pyongyang to prove that I’m telling the truth.”

“Or lying.”

Pak nodded. “Okay, Mr. McGarvey, we’ll do it your way. Only understand that you’ll never leave Pyongyang alive if I am lying to you and you manage to prove it.”

“Fair enough,” McGarvey said.

He followed Pak up the boarding ladder to the lower deck and
inside through a hatch. What had once been filled with passenger seats was now an open cargo area that was filled mostly deck to overhead with cardboard cartons. Some were marked with the symbol of the International Red Cross while others bore the markings of the French organization MSF Médecins Sans Frontières—Doctors Without Borders.

“You see, at least this part is the truth,” Pak said. “There is a place forward where we can have something to eat and get some rest. It’ll take eight hours to get to our dock.”