The Poksu Conspiracy (Post Cold War Political Thriller Book 2)

by Chester D. Campbell

  "The number two survivor?" Yun repeated. "Horangi-chelmun's friend?"

  "That's what I took it to mean. It's my guess the new information Dr. Lee received identified the two, probably had pictures of them."

  "Somebody prominent enough that identifying him would make the book a best seller," said Yun.

  "Somebody with enough to lose that it was worth killing Dr. Lee to stop its disclosure. Either the re-written chapter or the information from the old partisan, probably both, were in the briefcase and the computer."

  "That would indicate Horangi-chelmun is likely the man behind the conspiracy," said Captain Yun. "The man who hired Hwang Sang-sol to eliminate the people who campaigned for close relations with the U.S."

  If only I could tell him about Operation Pok Su, Burke agonized. It would show him that this thing was much larger than a simple conspiracy against leaders of the Korean-American Cooperation Association. But there was no way he could breathe a word about it as yet.

  "Captain, do you have any suggestion on how we could get somebody up to Pyongyang to track down that old partisan, find out what he told Dr. Lee?"

  "How would you identify him?"

  "The bibliography at the end of the manuscript cites the sources. It mentions documents in the Japanese Foreign Ministry Archives, the History of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Police, articles in Chosun Ilbo, records seized by U.S. military forces, some biographies of Northeast Anti-Japanese fighters published in Harbin, Manchuria, and several volumes of reminiscences of the partisan guerillas published in Pyongyang. Most of them are dead, but Dr. Lee lists a handful who should be still around. One of them has to be our man."

  Yun had stopped in front of a stall piled high with boxes of fruit. Only a few samples of each variety were lying out in the open, the rest covered to protect them from the cold. He crossed his arms, deep in thought, and rubbed his chin. Finally, he looked up at Burke.

  "I'd better go," he said, his jaw jutting forward in a determined set. "I'll see if I can arrange it."

  "What are the chances?"

  "President Kwak is sending a delegation from several of the ministries to Pyongyang. They're to meet with their counterparts from the North and talk about unification. The police bureau will have a contingent of officers from a Special Security Group as bodyguards. The Blue House doesn't intend to take any chances."

  "Can you get assigned to the group?"

  Yun smiled. "Their commander is an old schoolmate, one who thinks a lot like me. I'll speak to him today. The delegation leaves the middle of next week."

  A plainly dressed young woman, her cheeks rosy from the cold, her hair cascading down on both sides to frame her face right up to her sparkling eyes, approached them from the rear of the stall. She spoke to the Captain and bowed.

  The detective turned to Burke. "Remember my telling you about Mr. Chon, the fruit vendor? This is Mrs. Choe, widow of his grandson, Kim Yong-man." He looked back at the woman and spoke in Korean.

  Burke heard his name and saw Mrs. Choe bow. He nodded to her with a smile.

  "I'll have to say most Korean women I've seen are very attractive ladies. I don't know what you do to grow 'em this way."

  Yun grinned. "Arranged marriages. Remember, I said it improved the stock? Who knows what they will be like in future years?" He shrugged.

  Burke just shook his head.

  Mrs. Choe handed the Captain a large envelope and spoke in measured tones.

  Yun took the envelope and said what Burke recognized as "thank you" in Korean. As he led Burke back toward the car, he slipped a loose leaf notebook out of the envelope. "They found this hidden away among some of Mr. Chon's things. It's a record of transactions with people the family knew nothing about. Apparently some of his sources. It may provide a clue to the identity of whoever told him about Hwang. Of course, it's equally likely that it won't."

  "Let me know what you turn up," Burke said.

  That was the sort of thing you hoped for in an investigation like this, he reflected. Turning up something innocuous most people might overlook. A name. A date. A few key words. Although the break in a criminal investigation often came from plain blind luck, it was how you exploited it that would mean success or failure. Intelligence work was not so different. All the sophisticated gadgets, the satellites, the ultra-sensitive cameras, the unbelievable listening devices, the supercomputers, the radio and telephone intercepts, none of what they turned out would be worth more than a few grains of sand without the perception of a savvy human brain to translate the raw data into meaningful information. And as often as not, in the end it would require a lone individual, digging where the ground looked most fertile, to provide confirmation of what the gadgets could only hint at.

  That was the role Yun had to play now. There was ample evidence of what was being planned and done, but the who and the why remained elusive. Yun had demonstrated a sharp eye and a quick mind. If he could maneuver his way into the North Korean capital and track down the old partisan who was willing to talk about his comrades-in-arms from half a century ago, they might soon possess the critical facts that led to Dr. Lee's murder, the identity of the brain behind Operation Pok Su. Eliminate the brain and the body withers away, Burke thought. But would that happen here, or had the project gone so far that it would be propelled forward on its own momentum?

  Chapter 45

  A light snowfall had blanketed Seoul overnight. It lent a hightened sense of relevance to the boots and bells and reindeer and other symbols of the Christmas season that decorated the streets, and it turned the city's palace grounds into pure winter wonderlands. Damp and fluffy, the white stuff clung to the bare limbs of the trees, lay like icing atop the stone walls, and transformed the tiered tile roofs of pavilions and pagodas into corrugated white umbrellas. It was the day of Captain Yun's scheduled departure for Pyongyang. His early call found Burke just out of the shower. At first he took the guarded note in the Captain's voice as an indication that the weather had postponed the trip north. But that was not the case.

  "I need to talk with you this morning before I leave," Yun said. an urgency in his voice. "Could we have breakfast at your hotel?"

  "Sure, Captain. I can be ready in about fifteen minutes."

  They met in the coffee shop and requested a table in the corner, away from most of the other patrons. After they had ordered, Yun leaned forward over the table and spoke in a lowered voice. "I'll be gone for five days. Will you still be here when I get back?"

  "Yeah. I'm scheduled to stay another week and a half." He noted the look of concern in the detective's dark eyes but couldn't imagine what was troubling him.

  "I've just learned something that tells me the president may be the next victim of Poksu.'

  Burke's face dropped like a mask cut loose. He stared across the table. "The president?"

  "Yes. I was at a briefing early this morning for the officers going to Pyongyang. Some of the ministry people were there. Afterward, I was standing behind a couple of high officials, one from education, the other from labor affairs. They didn't realize I was there. The education man had just learned that President Kwak will issue a decree in a few days changing the foreign language emphasis in the schools from English to Japanese."

  "You're kidding?"

  "No. The rationale is that we will be increasingly involved with Japan following the de-emphasis of trade with the United States. The younger generations probably won't give a particular damn. But these men worried about how the older people will take it, those who still hate Japan with a passion. Since it's apparent whoever is behind Poksu is both homicidal and militantly anti-Japanese, I have a great concern about the president's safety. This Poksu leader has already killed a member of the president's family for less obvious reasons."

  Burke was shocked. Not so much at the potential threat to the president but at what lay behind Kwak's move. What were his motives? The president was a member of the older generation, wasn't he? Why would he want to cozy up to the Japanese?
They were far and away South Korea's biggest trading partner, but that had been true for some years. No other president had felt obliged to go out of his way to placate Tokyo. In fact, the government had complained in the past about discrimination against Koreans in Japan.

  "If you're all that concerned, maybe you should talk to your superintendent," Burke suggested.

  The Captain grimaced, narrowing his eyes, a gesture that said he'd as soon try to fly off the Seoul tower. "Superintendent So and I are not on the best of terms at present. A little disagreement over political interference. Anyway, I don't want to have to explain the details of the case until I get the information in Pyongyang. Then I should be ready to wrap it up."

  "How did you get him to okay the trip to Pyongyang?"

  That brought a purely neutral look, the closest he would allow to a smile today. "I never mentioned it to him. My old classmate in charge of the Special Security Group requested that I be included. Superintendent So was probably happy to get me out of his sight for a few days."

  "What about your prosecutor? He knows the details, doesn't he?"

  "Not about Poksu."

  "Then maybe you'd better tell him enough to show that the president could be in danger."

  After breakfast, Captain Yun headed south across the Han to the Yongdong area where the prosecutor's office was located. He found Park Sang-mu in an unusually subdued mood. When Yun mentioned President Kwak's impending decree on language education, the prosecutor said he had also just heard about it. While being careful not to connect the assassin Hwang with the Vengeance symbol, Yun revealed the tie-in with the murder of Yi In-wha and explained its decidedly anti-Japanese connotation. He told Park about the missing chapter revision of Dr. Lee's book, which apparently contained the identity of the man behind Poksu.

  "If this man is so rabidly anti-Japanese," said the Captain apprehensively, "there's no telling what he may attempt to do to the president when he hears about this Japanese language decree."

  The reply he got from Park so disturbed him that he stopped at the first telephone after leaving the prosecutor's office and called Burke Hill.

  Burke had left for the office right after breakfast. It was around seven p.m. Washington time when he first tried to call Nate. He didn't really expect to find him at the Sixteenth Street headquarters, but he got no answer at his home, either. He decided to wait an hour and try again. While he was waiting, the call came through from the detective.

  "Prosecutor Park told me things are worse than I thought, though he said I shouldn't worry about the president's safety. The presidential security force has been strengthened for any contingency. But there is talk of dissatisfaction among some of the older Army officers. The Defense Security Command has been put on full alert. There's a question, too, about how the NSP will react. And no one seems to know if the Prime Minister agrees with him. Some people are even suggesting President Kwak might have spent the war years in Tokyo secretly working for the Japanese. There has never been any proof of what he did during the war. I'm afraid this isn't a very good time to be leaving the country."

  Burke knew that should it come to a military coup, it wouldn't be the first for South Korea. And if it would bring a halt to this mad rush toward a threat of nuclear confrontation, perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea. But anything relating to the big bang was out of bounds for discussion, so he chose to reassure the Captain that his trip would be hardly more than routine. "Come on now, you aren't leaving the country. You're just going a short distance north to another region of Korea. Isn't that what your government has been telling us all these years?"

  Yun did not appear totally happy with the situation but seemed resigned to the inevitable. "I have carried out my responsibility by telling someone in authority," he said. "I suppose that is the most that can be expected of me. Hopefully, I can find the evidence in Pyongyang that will clear up this conspiracy once and for all."

  After Captain Yun had left his office, the prosecutor began to mentally sift through what the detective had said and what he had not said. Yun mentioned the Poksu symbol had been found on the body of Yi In-wha. He carefully omitted his earlier contention that Hwang Sang-sol had murdered Yi, but surely he assumed Hwang left the paper with the symbol. Yun said the missing manuscript material dealt with the Poksu mystery. Again, he failed to mention his belief that Hwang was responsible for the murder of Dr. Lee, but obviously he blamed Hwang for taking the missing documents. Yun had not said specifically what he intended doing in Pyongyang, but to Park, logic dictated that it had something to do with Hwang Sang-sol. And that amounted to sheer madness.

  It was not yet lunchtime, but worrying about what this lunatic detective might be up to made his oversize stomach growl and groan in protest. It demanded to be filled, and he was in no mood to eat alone. He needed somebody to talk to who could sympathize with his plight. He picked up the phone and dialed his old drinking companion, Yoo Hak-sil.

  Burke knew it was urgent now, with this latest development in the situation at the Blue House, that he get in touch with Nate Highsmith. He tried Nate's home again with no results. The Amber Group had a special phone number for what amounted to a duty officer after business hours. The assignment rotated among the staff, with the designated person required to remain home on call. Nate and other senior staff kept the duty officer informed of their whereabouts in case of an emergency. Anyone needing to reach one of them would dial the special number, and their call would be forwarded automatically to the duty officer's home. Burke was about to place a call to the special number when Song Ji-young told him an overseas operator was asking for him.

  A few moments later, Dr. Chloe Brackin came on the line. "Hello, Burke?"

  He recognized her distinctive voice. "Yeah, Chloe. What is it?"

  "I've sent your little wife to the hospital," she said. Lori wasn't all that small, except to a six-footer like Chloe. "She may be having false labor pains, but at this stage, I don't want to take any chances."

  "Is Lori all right?" he asked, his voice rising.

  In a droll voice she said, "As all right as you can be with a belly full of twins. She's not heading for a picnic, but we should be having a coming out party very shortly. She's a little earlier than I'd like, but I'm hopeful there won't be any problems. She's worried about you. Can you get back now?"

  "I'll be on the first available flight," he promised. "Tell Lori I love her and to hang in there. I'll be back as fast as I can make it."

  The Korean secretary and Brittany Pickerel were the only ones in the office. The others had gone to a special function in the Fast Food Plaza at the DLI 63 skyscraper on Yoido Island. American fast food franchisees there were participating in the Funland USA promotion. Burke told the ladies what had happened.

  "I'll call the travel agent and see what's available," Brittany offered. "Why don't you go on back to the Chosun and get packed."

  "Thanks. You can call me at my room and let me know."

  "Will you need to talk to Mr. Chan?" Miss Song asked.

  "Yeah. Can you reach him over there?"

  "It may take a few minutes."

  "Just have him call me at the hotel," he said, stuffing the things he needed into his briefcase.

  By the time he reached the Chosun, there was a message to call Brittany. She had already booked him on a Northwest flight leaving Kimpo at noon. He would need to leave for the airport right away. The flight through Detroit would put him in Dulles at mid-afternoon of the same day, according to the calendar. Actually it would take about sixteen hours.

  "Thanks a bunch," he told her. "Did Miss Song get in touch with Jerry?"

  "She did. He said he would meet you at the airport. I hope your babies aren't in a big hurry, or else you'll be a daddy by the time you get home."

  He had everything packed in record time, instructed the hotel to send his bill over to the Worldwide Communications Consultants office and caught a cab to Kimpo. He found Jerry waiting at the Northwest counter. After checking his bags
and getting his boarding pass, Burke looked around for a spot where they could talk.

  "I wasn't able to reach Nate," he told Jerry. "There's been a new development he needs to know about."

  He explained the flap over President Kwak's plan to substitute Japanese for English in the schools.

  "Sounds like your police buddy was right after all, about the Japanese angle," Jerry said.

  "There's a Japanese angle all right, but I haven't figured out whether it relates to Captain Yun's cases. Or how it would affect HANGOVER. Tell Nate when I'll be getting there. I'll give him a call first thing after I check on Lori."

  Jerry grinned. "First things first." Then his grin suddenly faded. "There's something I need to tell you before you leave, Burke. You've played it straight with me, and I intend to do the same."

  Burke raised an eyebrow. "Tell me what?"

  "About Song Ji-young." He bit at his lower lip. "I'm afraid we've fallen in love. I know office romances aren't too well thought of in some quarters. I don't know how you feel about it, but I wanted you to know."

  It didn't come as any real shock to Burke. He had suspected something of the kind. Secretaries and assistants could be quite solicitous of their bosses, but Miss Song had seemed to exhibit a bit more than normal concern for Jerry. When he was on his trip to Andong and Kyongju, she had worried constantly about where he was and what he was doing. Burke had wondered if she were not getting overly inquisitive, but said nothing to Jerry after he had sent her on the shopping trip to buy furnishings for his apartment. Burke noted that evening how Jerry had been anxious to get back and decided someone must be waiting for him, most likely Song Ji-young. He couldn't be too critical, though, since he had already mentioned how it would be a good thing if Jerry became interested in one of the young beauties who seemed to abound over here.