The Expediter

by David Hagberg

  “I’m still in one piece.”

  “That’s something,” Ri said.

  Soon was starting to come around and he looked up, a stupid expression on his face. He’d been drooling and the front of his shirt was spotted.

  “Has he been cooperative?” Pak asked.

  “Says his name is Kwan Sang-hung, he’s an electrical engineer from Seoul, and he came here on a tourist visa because he wanted to see what life was like in the North. He says he never left the hotel.”

  “What do you think?” Pak asked. The prisoner was looking at them.

  “He’s lying, of course,” Ri said. “But there’s something else going on. Like he’s waiting for something to happen. Doesn’t seem to be afraid for his life though. He’s a cool customer.”

  “A professional.”

  “Yeah, but a professional what?”

  “Mr. Kwan, is that your real name?” Pak asked the prisoner.

  “No.”

  “What is your real name?”

  “Huk Soon.”

  “Well, Mr. Huk, why did you come to Chosun?” Pak asked.

  “To assassinate a Chinese intelligence officer,” Soon replied.

  “That was too easy,” Ri said. He was staring at the prisoner and Pak could see that his sergeant was also bothered by something.

  “It’s too bad we had to shoot your partner,” Pak said. “But who hired you to come here and kill General Ho?”

  Soon smiled, more saliva sliding down his chin from the corner of his mouth. “No, you didn’t,” he said, his words slurred and his South Korean accent thick.

  “You were right there, and watched the whole thing,” Ri said.

  Soon’s smiled widened and he shook his head. “You waited too long. She’s already home.”

  “What are you talking about, you crazy bastard?” Ri demanded.

  Soon just looked up, a silly grin on his face.

  “We arrested the wrong man,” Pak said. The more slender of the two figures in the shadows outside the Chinese Embassy had been a woman. It had never occurred to him.

  “It’s a good thing I didn’t shoot this one instead,” Ri said.

  “Find out if any of the passengers on that plane are still in Beijing for whatever reason. Maybe we still have a chance.”

  “They’ll be long gone by now,” Ri said.

  Pak was impatient. “Just make the call, please. Maybe there was mechanical trouble, or a problem with someone’s papers, or a weather delay.”

  “It was the wrong guy,” Ri muttered as he left the interrogation room.

  Pak pulled a chair over and sat down close to the prisoner. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the man’s chin. “What is her name, Mr. Huk, can you tell me that?” he asked pleasantly.

  “Huk Kim,” Soon replied, and Pak was startled.

  “Your wife?”

  Soon nodded. “Yes.”

  “Were you working for the South Korean government? Did the NIS send you here to assassinate General Ho?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re in the military.

  “Not anymore,” Soon said. “We quit.”

  “Who hired you? Was it the American CIA?”

  “Alexandar,” Soon mumbled. He was starting to fade, and was becoming increasingly difficult to understand.

  “Alexandar who or what?” Pak prompted.

  “Used to be KGB, I think. But he’s in Tokyo now. Rich bastard. Mafia.”

  Soon’s head started to loll. Pak slapped him lightly on the cheek to bring him back. “How do you contact him?”

  “Internet.”

  “What’s his address?”

  “Too complicated. Kim knows.”

  Pak sat back. The Russians? It made no sense for them to want to destabilize relations between Chosun and China. So far as he knew no problems existed between Putin and Dear Leader.

  Soon was on the verge of passing out again, and Pak slapped him harder. “Alexandar is a KGB agent. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “He’s a businessman now,” Soon mumbled.

  “Who does he work for?” Pak demanded.

  Soon’s eyes focused for a moment. “Just like us, I suppose. For the highest bidder.”

  Pak nodded, trying to work out the possibilities. The prisoner was not lying, that was impossible under the influence of the cocktail of drugs that had been injected into his system. But he’d talked too easily. Answered every question without evasion. It was as if he was proud of himself.

  The light faded from the prisoner’s eyes and he slumped forward, the straps holding his wrists to the arms of the chair keeping him from falling to the floor.

  Ri was just coming down the stairs, a sour look on his face, when Pak emerged from the interrogation room. “No luck,” he said. “The flight to Seoul landed two hours ago.”

  “Have someone get our prisoner cleaned up and back in his cell, I’m through with him for now. But I want him treated well. Give him all the food he wants, showers, clean uniforms, and exercise every day,”

  “I don’t have it that good,” Ri complained.

  “No. But we’re not going to trade you to China.”

  “What’s next?”

  “You and I have to do some homework, and then I have to arrange for a flight out.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “New York.”

  New York/Sarasota

  THIRTEEN

  The only decent jetliner in North Korea’s small fleet was an aging Tupolev Tu-134 twin turbofan, on which their Russian-trained mechanics lavished loving care. If the need ever arose for Kim Jong Il to get out of the country in a hurry this was his personal aircraft.

  It was five in the morning and still dark when Pak’s car was cleared through the gate and Sergeant Ri dropped him off at the rear of the terminal where the plane was being refueled and inspected. The entire area was bathed in harsh white spotlights, armed soldiers everywhere.

  “Make sure that nothing happens to our prisoner,” Pak said getting out of the car. He retrieved his single nylon sports bag from the backseat. “Especially no more drugs. When the time comes I want him perfectly sane.”

  “Dr. Gi might have something to say about it.”

  “If you get into any trouble while I’m gone call Dear Leader’s people. Tell them that you work for me and you’ll be protected.”

  Ri looked at him like he was crazy. “The last thing I want is to be noticed by his people.”

  “If you need help you can get it.”

  Pak started to turn away, but Ri called after him, “Who’re you going to see in the States?”

  “Someone I think can help us,” Pak said. “Maybe.”

  His credentials were checked before he was allowed to get anywhere near the airplane, and then when he went aboard the flight attendant, a pretty girl in an Army sergeant’s uniform glared at him. “Welcome aboard, sir.”

  “Am I late?”

  “Yes, sir. May I take your bag?”

  Pak shrugged. “No.” He glanced at the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer who had finished their preflight inspection and were on the flight deck preparing the jet for takeoff, then went down the aisle to a window seat a few rows back next to an emergency exit hatch.

  The only person aboard the plane other than himself, the cockpit crew, and their replacements seated forward, was Lin Hun-Haw, deputy ambassador to the U.N. who was on his way to New York to try to convince the Security Council that North Korea was not responsible for the assassination, a task nearly everyone thought would fall on deaf ears. Lin was in his early sixties, slightly built and somewhat stoop-shouldered, with a scowl that seemed to be permanently etched on his face.

  “You’re late, Colonel,” he said sharply, as Pak was stowing his bag in an overhead bin. “Explain yourself, before I allow you to continue with me.”

  Pak and Ri had spent the afternoon, all of the evening, and most of the morning trying without success to come up with something on an ex-KGB age
nt named Alexandar who apparently lived in Tokyo and had ties to the Mafia, but Internet service in North Korea, even for high-ranking intelligence officers, was practically nonexistent. They’d also secured a second set of papers, including credit cards, identifying Pak by name, but as a South Korean-born American businessman, as well as the flights and rental car he would need once he got to the States. Right now he was tired and impatient. What he was going to the States to do was nothing short of dramatic and had about a zero chance of success, but so far he’d been unable to think of anything else.

  “Telephone Dear Leader, I’m sure that he will be happy to answer your questions,” Pak said. He took down a pillow and a blanket. The flight from Pyongyang straight through to San Francisco, then on to Chicago, and finally New York, including fuel stops, would take nearly twenty-four hours. Once on the ground Pak figured he wouldn’t be getting much sleep for a few days, so he wanted to get as much as possible in the air.

  Mr. Lin was glaring at him.

  “Both of us are on important missions, Mr. Deputy Ambassador,” Pak said. “Either telephone Dear Leader, or give the order for us to take off now.” He turned to the attendant. “In the morning I’ll want breakfast, and I’ll require that the crew patch BBC London back to me on my headset.”

  The girl opened her mouth to say something, but Pak sat down, buckled himself in, reclined his seat, and closed his eyes. By the time the engines were started and began to spool up, he was asleep dreaming of the faces aboard the tourist flight to Beijing. One of the women had been the second assassin. For some reason the thought astounded him.

  FOURTEEN

  The interminable flight east over the vast Pacific Ocean was made bearable for Pak because he slept most of the way. In the late morning when he awoke, he took a sponge bath in the head, then ordered an American breakfast of bacon and eggs, which, according to the attendant, was quite impossible. He settled for a Tsing Tao Chinese beer and a cigarette, and sat by himself staring out the window at the continuous deck of clouds far below, wondering how it would be to return to California.

  His four years at U.C. Berkeley seemed like a dream to him now. He’d enrolled undercover as a South Korean adult student so he’d been allowed to live in an apartment off campus. Blend in, he’d been told by his handler back in Pyongyang. “But take care that you do not assimilate. The culture is seductive.”

  But he had assimilated, at least to a degree. It would have been impossible to operate undercover as a student otherwise. He’d developed a taste for Coca-Cola, but not for American beer and definitely not for McDonald’s hamburgers, though he liked the fries. Television had been too frantic for his tastes, traffic on the highways too intense, and most of the music too loud, too discordant.

  But there’d been a girl, a graduate student in international studies, who’d come to live with him his last year. She’d be forty now, in a good career, possibly at the U.N., married with children. She’d said that she was in love with him, but that nothing could stand in the way of her career. Maybe later, she had told him.

  He’d never married, never had the time or found any of the North Korean girls very interesting, and he thought about his U.C. Berkeley lover from time to time, wondering how it would have been had he defected, gone to work for the U.S. government, maybe even the CIA, and looked her up.

  Deputy U.N. Ambassador Mr. Lin slipped into the seat beside him. “I just looked at the passenger manifest. You’re not on it.”

  Pak turned from the window. “No.”

  “How will I explain your presence when we land in New York?”

  “It won’t be necessary, because I’m getting off in San Francisco,” Pak said. “So far as you and the crew are concerned I was never aboard.”

  “You can’t just walk off an airplane. There will be customs and immigration officers, security police, officials watching our every move.”

  “That’s not your concern, Mr. Ambassador. I simply ask that no matter what happens you have no reaction.”

  “Impossible,” Lin fumed.

  The attendant came back. “Captain Lee informs me that if you wish to listen to a commercial radio broadcast you will have to join him on the flight deck. We do not have the provisions to feed it here to the main cabin.”

  Pak unbuckled his seat belt. “If you’ll excuse me, sir.”

  Lin got up and stepped back in the aisle. “I don’t think you’re going to like what you’ll hear.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Pak said, and he went forward to the open flight deck door.

  The flight engineer was in the galley drinking a glass of tea, and the pilot invited Pak to have a seat at the officer’s position.

  “We can pick up BBC London on shortwave, Colonel,” the pilot said. “But if you’re interested in what’s happening down there, I can give you the CNN feed from Hawaii, we just passed over the islands.”

  “CNN is fine,” Pak said, and he donned a set of headphones as directed and a moment later an announcer was speaking in English about the developing serious situation between the Chinese and North Korean governments.

  In Pyongyang, the Korean Central News Agency had made no mention of the assassination or of the escalating tensions with China, but CNN featured the incident as its lead story. The facts were from the Chinese point of view. They were identifying General Ho as a high-ranking diplomat who’d been sent to Poyngyang to discuss ongoing terms of the nuclear disarmament agreement that North Korea had made, and the increased Chinese aid that was being offered in exchange for a new stability on the peninsula.

  It was speculated that Kim Jong Il had refused to give up the six to eight nuclear weapons already built, and had threatened to unleash a nuclear war unless Beijing backed him up. And some analysts were predicting that China would invade its ally and take Kim Jong Il down, which would in all likelihood mean an exchange of nuclear weapons that would probably spread to Seoul, Taipei, and even Tokyo.

  So far there had been no response from North Korea, though Deputy U.N. Ambassador Lin Hun-Haw was currently en route from Pyongyang and was expected to make a statement tomorrow to the Security Council.

  Pak lowered the headset and glanced back at Mr. Lin, who was seated on the armrest of one of the seats, staring at him.

  “Are you finished, Colonel?” the pilot asked.

  “Yes, thank you, I’ve heard enough. How soon before we land in San Francisco?”

  “Depending on ATC, we’ll be there around 2000 hours.”

  “Do you understand what is required?”

  The pilot was uncomfortable, but he nodded. “Yes, we understand what you mean to do. We’ll cooperate with State Security.”

  “Good man,” Pak told him. “If something goes wrong you’ve never heard of me. Perhaps I was a stowaway.”

  FIFTEEN

  Pak, dressed in gray slacks and a dark blue windbreaker with SFO SECURITY in gold letters on the back that had been hastily prepared for him by Special Branch, dropped down into the electronics bay beneath the cockpit floor when the aircraft came to rest to be refueled. It was twenty minutes after eight, local, which made the timing tight, but not impossible.

  He glanced up at the captain and copilot and nodded, but said nothing. Their nonpassenger was leaving by the basement door, and once he was on the tarmac he was no longer their concern. Captain Lee reached over his armrest to close and lock the access hatch, plunging Pak into nearly complete darkness, except for the jewel lights on the equipment panels.

  A star fastener tool had been taped to the wheel well hydraulics maintenance hatch, and Pak set to work removing the twelve fasteners that held it in place. Five minutes later he set the tool aside, and carefully prized the hatch up from its seal and set it down.

  The pavement was two and a half meters below, and Pak immediately smelled a combination of odors; kerojet, hydraulic fluid, diesel fumes from the refueling tanker, and another, perhaps that of the sea. He climbed down into the well, replaced the hatch overhead, then threaded
his way through the landing gear struts down to the nose wheels where he held up for a moment in the relative darkness.

  Strong lights bathed the aircraft and the fuel truck that had rumbled out one hundred meters from the main terminal building. No one was being allowed off the aircraft, and no one would be subject to a customs check until they landed in New York City early tomorrow morning, so security was minimal.

  Pak climbed down off the wheels, and nonchalantly walked around to the other side of the truck so that it was between him and the airplane, and headed across the tarmac to the open door of the baggage bay beneath an empty Delta jetway.

  A few people were at the terminal windows above, watching the airplane and the security officer walking away, but he didn’t expect anyone would be sounding an alarm. A North Korean diplomatic aircraft had been isolated and was being refueled, and a San Francisco Airport security officer was walking back to the terminal. Nothing was out of the ordinary, yet Pak was relieved when he reached the empty baggage bay and discarded the blue windbreaker that had covered his sport coat, laying it nonchalantly in plain sight on one of the rails.

  He took out the thick manila envelope stuffed in his belt at the small of his back and his small nylon bag, which he had strapped to his waist, and looked around.

  A small pile of luggage was stacked ready to be transported out to a connecting flight due in sometime tonight. Pak selected a small, dark blue overnight bag, and stuffed his things inside with what appeared to be a man’s dirty laundry. He crossed to a security door into the access hallway that connected all the airlines’ baggage handling areas in the international and domestic terminals, as well as the Bay Area Rapid Transit station beneath garage G.

  Passengers arriving on international flights had to pass through customs and immigration before they could reach the BART trains. But there was no security in the access tunnels, because entry from the terminal side could only be made through code-locked doors.