The Gate (10 page)

At first it had been easy to work Nira as an agent and to be her lover. Another part of the job coupled with certain distinct advantages. But the more he spent time with her and talked, the more Kuzumi realized he wasn’t being honest or fair with Nira. He knew her Caucasian blood would keep her from being racially accepted in Japan. In fact, to be honest, he had to admit that she was treated better in the United States than she would be back in the Islands. And there was no doubt she could not study atomic physics in Japan. There were no women in the higher scientific fields. She would have to be a wife, but no true Japanese man would take her as wife because of her Western blood.

Kuzumi knew he could not take her back when he left and the orders of the Black Ocean reinforced that. She understood. As she understood everything about her situation. Her understanding disconcerted Kuzumi for a while until he realized it was because she was acting like a man would. Accepting reality stoically and with a sense of duty.

But she was still a woman, Kuzumi reminded himself. He should have remembered that. He looked at the picture again and the child in Nira’s arms. He had left in the fall of ‘39, unaware of her condition. And she did not even tell him in the letters she sent, forwarded through the spy network the Society had tapped into. He was informed by his Sensei in the Black Ocean. They kept track of all their people and Nira could not hide the birth and the child from the spies who spied on the spies.

By then Kuzumi was wrapped up in Genzai Bakudan. As Nakanga had briefed Nishin, the government and military in Japan had not been impressed with the potential of the atom that Kuzumi had put into his report upon his return to Japan in 1939. But the Genoysha Taiyo had given him the go-ahead with all the resources of the Black Ocean to support him. “We do not have the time to wait on those fools,” had been Taiyo’s explanation. “They drive the country to war but they realize not how to negotiate the path. You have seen the beast we must fight. The United States will not break as easily as the General Staff thinks. We must have a weapon that will break them.”

Kuzumi had to agree with that. Crossing the breadth of the United States by way of New York to San Francisco coming from Germany he had been numbed by the sheer vastness of the country. The industrial might and the numbers that the country could throw against Japan were chilling. But Kuzumi had understood something even more profound, something he had not shared with anyone. His relationship with Nira had shown him something, a paradox. Although Nira was not treated as equal, she was American. All Americans had come from other places at various times. To believe that the national psyche could be encapsulated so easily into a caricature of a weak-willed white man as the military would like was foolish. Kuzumi believed there was much more to the people across the great ocean, and he knew that to defeat them Japan would need more than it presently had.

Kuzumi was working at the Rikken, the national laboratories, when his Sensei told him of the birth of his son. In the same telling, he had been informed that nothing would be done. Nira was to stay in San Francisco and continue her duties. Kuzumi was to continue with Genzai Ba- kudan. And the boy, the boy was just a baby for now and not a factor to be considered yet.

Those were the exact words: “Not a factor to be considered yet.” Kuzumi ran a liver-spotted finger across the picture. Nira had named him James and kept her American family name. James Foster. Strange for a child so clearly of Japanese ancestry. Her unmarried status piled another boulder on top of the many she had to shoulder. But she continued to work at UC-Berkeley and she continued to spy for the Society. And Kuzumi, well, he received this one photo at least in the beginning.

Genzai Bakudan. Nira. San Francisco. Kuzumi pressed his hands against the arms of his wheelchair. What were the Koreans up to? What had they discovered and what were they looking for? How had they found the cave? What had they learned about San Francisco and what were they looking for there?

This whole thing was making Kuzumi search memories he had long hoped had disappeared from his mind. A light blinked to his right. A line to his high-ranking contact in the Parliament. Another fire to be put out, probably something to do with the trade war being waged with the United States.

Kuzumi put the picture away and picked up the phone.

SAN FRANCISCO

SUNDAY, 5 OCTOBER 1997 9:14
p.m
. LOCAL

Lake watched the figure in the mirror. Muscles flowed as the legs and arms performed one of the required movements of a fourth-degree Aikido black belt.

“Kai!” Lake yelled, his fist halting a millimeter from its reverse image. He slowly pulled the fist back as he returned to the beginning stance. The windows in the one-room efficiency were open and the chill night air hit the sweat pouring off his bare chest, creating a thin layer of steam. He wore only a pair of cutoff white painters’ pants. His feet slid across the floor as he began another formalized kata. The calluses that years of working out had built up made little notice of the rough wood floor.

The room was empty except for his clothes hung and stacked in the closet. A bed sat near the window but Lake had never used it. He slept on a thin mat, moving its location on the floor every night. Sometimes he slept right under the window; sometimes just behind the door; sometimes he folded his body into the scant space in the bathroom, a gun always laying close at hand.

Lake’s leg snapped up high: front kick to the face. He froze for a second, then slowly lowered the leg, his head canted to one side. A phone was ringing down at the end of the hallway. A door slammed. Footsteps. Lake reached down and picked up the Hush Puppy, pulling the slide back and taking it off safe.

“Hey, man,” a voice outside his door yelled. “You got a call.”

“All right.”

Lake waited as the footsteps retreated and the door slammed shut. He threw on a T-shirt and tucked the gun into the waistband of his shorts, making sure the shirt covered the handle. He checked the peephole, then pulled the chain off. He quietly walked down the hall and picked up the receiver on the battered pay phone.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, it’s me.” Jonas’s voice was surprisingly clear. “I asked for the room number like you said. Man, when are you going to upgrade your facilities?”

Lake didn’t feel like chatting. “What do you have?”

“They want their shit tonight.”

“I said Monday night.”

“Yeah, well, change of plans. They’re throwing in an extra five grand for early delivery. And no deal if you don’t deliver tonight.”

Lake closed his eyes briefly, then they snapped open. “When and where?”

SUNDAY, 5 OCTOBER 1997

10:27
p.m
. LOCAL

Two and a half miles away from Lake’s hideout, the computer awoke with a chime. The man had been reading a newspaper which he carefully folded before flipping open the lid. The display told him Nishin was moving. He shut the lid and gathered his equipment.

* * *

Nishin was indeed moving. He was following four North Koreans who had just left the ship. Two of the men carried duffle bags, but the ease with which they carried the folded bags told Nishin there was nothing in them.

Once they were off the pier he slithered down and followed, staying in the darker shadows, blacker than the night sky. The Koreans made little attempt to lose a tail, which Nishin had expected. They were not spies. They were soldiers.

North Korea’s idea of covert operations was to take the uniforms off some soldiers and send them to a foreign country with specific orders on the mission to be accomplished. Subtlety was not a prized trait, as the North Koreans had demonstrated time and time again in their operations. Being on the other side of the Sea of Japan from the Korean Peninsula, Nishin was familiar with their operations. On top of that, his preparations for the mission into Hungnam had required intelligence preparations that had updated him on his potential foes. He had to know their history to know what they could be capable of in the present.

History said the North Koreans were direct and to the point when it came to taking action. In 1968 thirty-one North Korean soldiers had infiltrated across the DMZ and made their way down to Seoul to raid the Blue House, the home of the South Korean president. The mission had failed, with twenty-eight men killed, two missing, and one captured.

Shortly after that attack, on 23 January 1968, North Korean Special Forces men in high-speed attack craft seized the U.S.S. Pueblo with highly publicized results. Later that same year, a large North Korean force of almost a hundred men conducted landings on the coast of South Korea in an attempt to raise the populace against the government. It failed, but such failures didn’t daunt the North Korean government. In 1969, a U.S. electronic warfare aircraft was shot down by the North Koreans, killing all thirty-one American service members on board. To these transgressions it looked like all the outside world could do was sputter in indignation. World opinion meant nothing to Pyongyang.

The Korean DMZ was the hottest place on earth, and contrary to what most people believed, Nishin knew it was active with both sides probing the security of the other side. People died there every year, but usually they were only Koreans, and Nishin was worldwise enough to know that in the West that didn’t mean much. When an American officer was beaten to death in the same place by North Korean guards with ax handles—now that was news over here.

As security stiffened in South Korea over the decade of the seventies, North Korea moved its attentions overseas, not caring about the international effect. In 1983, three PKA officers planted a bomb in Rangoon in an attempt to kill the visiting South Korean president. That mission also failed, although of course there were those in the way who died. Later in 1983, four North Korean trawlers—similar to the one Nishin had been conducting surveillance on— infiltrated the Gulf of California to conduct monitoring operations against the United States mainland. One of the ships was seized by the Mexican authorities, but that didn’t prevent the North Koreans from continuing such operations.

The breakup of the Soviet Union had never been acknowledged by Pyongyang, except in cryptically worded exhortations to the people, telling them they were the last bastion of communism in the world. The North Koreans truly believed they were part of the final line in the war against Western imperialism, especially with Cuba crumbling around the edges.

Nishin had never heard of the North Koreans conducting an active covert operation on American soil, but he also had never heard of the Genzai Bakudan project or Hungnam before this month. With stakes this high, who knows what they were capable of? That wasn’t the question that concerned Nishin, though. The question was what were they here for? What evidence of Genzai Bakudan was here in San Francisco? Nishin hoped he would soon find out and leave this country of no values.

The Koreans continued up the Embarcadero, through the center of the waterfront tourist district. It wasn’t hard for Nishin to follow. He made sure he was inland of them, prepared if they turned in the only other direction they could go. After twenty minutes they passed Fisherman’s Wharf. They circled around Fort Mason, moving purposefully and ignoring all other pedestrians. As they passed the marina, there were less and less people around. Then they were into the Presidio, the former army post that had been turned over to the National Park Service.

First established in 1776 by Spanish explorers, the Presidio evolved into a military post for the area. Covering sixty-eight square miles of land at the northern point of the peninsula, the terrain that didn’t hold former military buildings was covered with pine and eucalyptus trees, making it an ideal site for covert operations at night, Nishin knew. In 1993 as part of the base-closings trend the post had transitioned from the military to become the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which removed the gates and the military police that used to patrol the area.

Nishin looked up. The Golden Gate Bridge was close now, straddling the horizon north of the hills of the Presidio. He felt more comfortable in the park. There were very few people about and there was foliage that he could melt into. The Koreans were more at home also. They left the paths and moved cross-country, spreading out like an infantry squad approaching an objective.

“ Nishin followed until they reached their destination, underneath the arch of the bridge itself. He watched as they slipped into the front entrance of Fort Point, one of the men breaking open the lock that closed the large metal gates. Nishin stayed to the side of the parking lot to the south, considering the situation. He knew this area based on the study he had made of San Francisco on the flight over.

The fort was old, having first been built in 1854 and completed in 1860, just in time for the American Civil War. For over seventy years it had been the dominating man-made feature on the southern land tip of the narrowest part of the Golden Gate. The fort itself was made of brick like a cousin on the east coast: Fort Sumter, which didn’t fare very well against the advent of rifled cannons. But although the brick walls would have quickly crumbled under the cannonade of modern weapons developed shortly after the fort was constructed, in the 1930s the unique construction—for San Francisco at least, a mostly wood and concrete town— saved it, because in 1938 a more spectacular man-made feature made its appearance on the point. The fort was in the way and initial plans for the Golden Gate Bridge called for it to be torn down. Only a strong protest by locals prevented the dismantling of the fort during the building of the bridge. So now the first southern arches of the bridge swoop over the fort, leading out to the south tower.

Nishin knew there was a museum inside the fort. Were the Koreans breaking into that? Was there some document or artifact in the museum that referred to Genzai Bakudan? And what were the duffle bags for? Setting his bag and case down, he opened the latter and pulled out the AUG and made sure he had a round in the chamber, then settled in to wait uphill from the fort, with a good view of both the open courtyard inside and the parking lot in front.

A faint noise up in the hills caught Nishin’s attention. It sounded like a car engine, but the noise was gone as quickly as it had come. He focused on the fort.

*****

The time switch from the following night to this evening was something Lake would have done himself. That set him on edge because it meant the people he was meeting weren’t stupid. The lack of time meant several things. First, he had to rush to the drop site to pick up the weapons. Second, he would not be able to put the meet site under surveillance. Third, any backup team he might request from the Ranch would not be here until tomorrow morning. As he had been working out, he had been mulling over whether he should call the Ranch and ask for help or if he would do this alone. He had pretty much decided to run this op solo and this phone call sealed it. There was no way he could get local backup, which was one of the disadvantages of his deep cover.

Lake also knew that Ranch standard operating procedure required that he not make the meeting. Without backup standing by just in case he would be in a precarious situation, especially since the Ranch didn’t know he was doing the meet this evening. He had told Jonas the meet would be the following night and he should stay with that. Use his leverage as possessor of the weapons to make the buyers stay with the original agreement. But there was also the possibility the buyers might get spooked and go elsewhere. The mysterious Japanese-Patriot connection was too strong of a lure for Lake.

The drop site was in a storage unit. Lake unlocked the combination lock and pulled up the door. Two crates and one small box lay just inside, in front of other boxes containing various equipment The Ranch was anything but inefficient. He didn’t know who had put the guns in there and he was sure that that person didn’t know he was taking them out. The storage unit was a good cutout between operatives and support personnel.

Lake uncrated the eight Ingram MAC-10s and the ammunition. The MAC-10 was American made and very popular with the drug underworld. It was made of stamped metal and very small, easily concealable under a jacket. These were longer than normal because of the requirement to have a suppressor on the end of the short barrel, which more than doubled their length to almost eighteen inches. The stock was made of metal and folded up along the body of the weapon.

The ammunition in the small box was also special, which explained why Lake had charged so much for the 9mm rounds. They were subsonic bullets, designed not to break the speed of sound; they worked in conjunction with the suppressor. The firer lost some power and range with the adapted bullets, but they made hardly any sound at all when fired, just like the ones he had loaded in his Hush Puppy. Because the weapon was automatic, though, the metal-on-metal sound of the bolt working and rounds being ejected would make a sound, but very little when compared to the normal sound of a gun being fired.

Lake worked on one of the Ingrams, secreting a small transmitter underneath the small plastic piece on the back of the pistol grip; a place no one would have any reason to look. He tied the submachine guns together, then wrapped plastic bags around them, waterproofing both them and the ammo. The package was bulky, but he managed to stuff it into a large rucksack.

Lake relocked the door to the bin. He had time to make it to the designated meet site, just barely. He put the rucksack on the passenger seat of his old Bronco II and began driving through the streets of San Francisco.

As he drove, Lake put the finishing touches on the story he would have to give Feliks for breaking Ranch SOP. He considered the upcoming situation, but he knew he would have to play it by ear when he arrived since he knew nothing of the people he was to meet.

By the time he arrived in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, he was shifting into his action mode. He continued down Marine Drive toward the fort. There was no sense trying to sneak up on the meet site since the other party held the advantage of time and place. Lake parked at the far end of the parking lot from the fort. Taking the rucksack, he left the truck.