The stocky, hard-bitten old frogman had logged over two decades in the simmering war between north and south. North Korea, jealous of the south’s ever-growing prosperity and self-conscious of the north’s own fall from ascendancy, devoted incredible energy and resources to harassing the south. South Korea had no choice but to counterpunch if it was to hold the harassment in check. Consequently, both sides infiltrated, reconnoitered, and sabotaged. Since Korea was a peninsula, infiltration by sea assumed preeminence as the method of choice. Infiltration by sea necessarily meant heavy use of frogmen. Through the years Pak had risen to the position of head maritime counterpuncher. Year after year, Pak, as an officer in the Naval Reconnaissance Unit, had braved the cold, swift currents of the north, had crawled the shingle beaches by night, and had awaited that final searing burst of fire that had yet to come. His expressionless face was as obdurate, unchanging, and unforgiving as his country’s coastline.
Like me, the old campaigner belonged to a thin, uncompromising strain of defenders—defenders, who, in all but the worst of times, the public viewed as embarrassments.
We had met when I was officer in charge of a SEAL Mobile Training Team in Korea. An immediate friendship developed—firmer than most of far greater years. We shared a difficulty in reconciling a sense of duty with the demands of ambitious seniors. The grade of commander was as far as he was ever going to get, and he took contrary pride in that fact.
“Quillon, I would like to think you are here as a tourist,”—fluency in English was mandatory for Korean officers—“to again enjoy our Mongolian beef, drink rice wine, and visit our Kisaeng houses. I’m disturbed, though, by your cryptic message and the fact that you’re carrying a briefcase.
“Come to grips with the fact that they chucked you out, and you let them? Can’t blame them, you were too hard to control. Inflexible men, I think, give them a pain.”
His English was constantly improving. I couldn’t say I enjoyed the way it left me more open to his insights.
“They’ll know they were wrong someday. Anyway, someone will know.
“My people have threatened to throw me out every other year for the last ten. They never do. They’ll put up with me as long as my unit keeps taking the missions.”
No grin, just a slight eye sparkle.
“Your shoulder still bother you?”
The Frazer stoicism amused him. It was a useless pretension to attempt to outstoic a Korean.
I held my palm up, grabbed my bags, and tossed them into his jeep. We drove through the narrow streets bracketed by simple one-story buildings with tiled roofs, past the statue of Admiral Yi, Korea’s fourteenth-century Lord Nelson. When we arrived at his home on the eastern side of town, his wife made the obligatory welcomes in Korean and disappeared.
“Commander, I need to get in touch with someone in your central intelligence agency with enough clout to get me the use of a ship.”
Pak showed no surprise. “Gunboat or submarine?”
“Either. Preferably a submarine.”
A submarine would be a godsend provided he could get one. Korean gunboats were really destroyers euphemistically designated “gunboats” for treaty purposes. Destroyers weren’t well suited for what I had in mind.
He stepped into the next room and I could hear him using a telephone, his voice growing louder. Moments later he returned with tea.
“A Mr. Kim will be here shortly…and reluctantly. I hope you have something to trade, for he will be a hard man to convince to part with anything. He has little patience for non-Koreans of official standing, and within that group even less time for Americans these days. And of course you are an American of no standing whatsoever…from a protocol standpoint, anyway.”
We didn’t have to wait long for Kim.
Tunnel-rat pale, Kim blinked as if the sight of you hurt his eyes. Coldness and oiliness were all mixed up in the man. His feral crew cut splintered in a dozen different directions, like fur on a cat’s arched back.
“Now, Lieutenant Commander Frazer—I hope you don’t mind me calling you that, your rank at discharge, that is—let me see if I’ve got all this straight. You’re without a navy, your current ties with the U.S. are somewhat strained, and you’ve been subsisting on a shoestring for the past decade. It’s a pity a man with your talents just can’t seem to fit in anywhere. Too bad, too bad. No organization, no government…sad, is it not? Granted, you have collected a small nest egg through some of your recent diversions. That Iranian escape was amusing, but unfortunately ‘small change,’ I believe the expression is. Now, at the expense of appearing rude, what makes you think I’m going to give you a submarine? The Korean navy doesn’t have a sub according to Jane’s Fighting Ships. But even if we did have one, why fritter it away on one of your little projects? You’re wasting my time.”
I ignored the statement that denied any record of a submarine; we both knew the reason for the denial. “I don’t want a submarine permanently, just the use of it for about three weeks…”
He blinked at me impassively.
“…and I will be willing to charter it on an arm’s-length, businesslike basis. I will pay all running expenses, manning expenses, repairs and upkeep, plus a weekly charter fee of…” I named a very generous fee. “In addition, I will post security in the amount of one-half the value of the sub, with some additional for pensions for crew members’ families.”
“Out of the question,” Kim droned. “One of our submarines, that is if we had one, would have a value beyond price. Really, Lieutenant Commander Frazer, I never considered for a moment that you wanted one permanently.…”
“Furthermore,” I continued, “we would be presenting your country with a means of underscoring the fact that some of the more distasteful methods of communism haven’t changed much in the past thirty years. I would think this fact properly conveyed might be embarrassing to those factions in the U.S. who would have the world believe that Ivan’s methods have changed. Especially when it comes time to renew U.S.-Korean defense agreements.”
He blinked again. I thought his eyelids had moved perceptibly more slowly.
“How?”
I told him about Kurganov, Vyshinsky, and the camp. I was vague about details at this juncture. He could understand why. But he still appeared dubious.
“Yes, we could get some mileage out of Vyshinsky’s escape and subsequent press conferences. His statements would support the allegations Kurganov has been making all along about the hoodwinking of the West. Sort of act as an update. But to risk a submarine…”
Well, at least Kim was finally acknowledging they had one.
“We might get the same mileage out of drawing more attention to the Moscow dissidents, without putting any of our security forces in jeopardy,” he said, thinking aloud.
I had one last move and I hoped that I had primed Kim properly. We needed that submarine.
“Such a camp is likely to serve a secondary purpose for Ivan. If my guess is correct, it is not far from a railroad line that services the Chinese frontier and does occasional duty as a communications station for the border forces.”
Kim had stopped blinking and was leaning unconsciously toward me. The bargaining center of gravity had shifted in seconds from him to me. Not bad for a stiff-necked old frogman. He could hardly keep from rubbing his hands together with anticipation.
A communications station meant crypto gear, encrypting devices possibly common to North Korea’s code devices. In any event, these devices would be barterable to some other intelligence agency for North Korean code machines. The prospect of surreptitious capture of crypto gear was enough to make an intelligence czar sell his own mother, though I doubted Kim had one unsold this late in his career.
“We could be persuaded to carry back a few key assemblies,” I said as he silently mouthed the words after me.
Kim’s smile was positively chilling. He cleared his throat officially. “You will, of course, need weapons, ammunition, and explosives. We will obtain them
for you. The Japanese government has a very unenlightened attitude regarding such matters.”
I proceeded to tell him my plan in detail, granting some allowances for the lack of specific information on the camp and its location. He offered a few suggestions and suddenly I was the proud charterer of a diesel-powered submarine of unspecified origin and vague description. I hoped the camp was indeed used for a communications station. In any event, I would soon find out.
Commander Pak, beside me, smiled—but only with his eyes.
CHAPTER 6
The next evening I returned to Yokohama and found a telegram waiting for me from Ramsund, Norway. Petty Officer Heyer of the Marinejaegerlag had accepted my offer, but could only get leave for three weeks in late February. After climbing the wooden steps, I slid the door to one side, kicked off my shoes, and sat cross-legged on the tatami mats.
Pieter Heyer was a painfully quiet naval commando from Norway. His angular features, his pale blond hair, and pinkish-white complexion all seemed hewn from the ice and snow of his North Sea homeland. Equally at home in fins or on skis, he seldom moved or spoke unless he absolutely had to, but once he did, his actions were resolute and invariably faultless. As a group member, Heyer assumed the role of a valuable individual rather than a leader. He felt more comfortable working with the constants of objects than with the variables of people. A rifle you could rely on; people were a sometime thing. He was the man to assign to equipment and rations. He, too, spoke fluent Russian—more fluently, though less often, than Dravit.
The components were clicking crisply into place. I was ecstatic, a submarine and a technical man with a strong background in two days. With this kind of luck we might pull the thing off, after all. My exhilaration turned to a sudden uneasiness at my rush of good fortune.
I rose from the mats. As I crossed the room I heard my name called from the landing at the bottom of the stairs and turned.
The caller struggled up the stairs with a slightly out-of-sync gait that, with the marbling of scars across his too closely shorn scalp, made recognition immediate. He was a former SEAL point man—one of the best in his day—now patched and mended, but not quite complete.
“Mr. Frazer, how ya doing? Have you seen…”
He named a former SEAL, one we both had known, who was currently in Yokohama on a merchant ship. There was sake on my visitor’s breath.
“Sir, you think you could spare me a little, you know, to tide me over, just this once?”
I couldn’t, nor could I the other times, either. His disability check never lasted him very long. I wasn’t sure whether it was the liquor or the high cost of living out here that made the money vaporize so quickly. The steel plate in his skull seemed to cause money to evaporate faster than hope. His color was poor.
“Step in.”
He took off his shoes and shuffled around the room inquisitively. When his back was turned, I popped a small wad of bills from their hiding place behind a beam. “Trust them…but only with your life,” I’d heard a chief say.
“Thanks, sir, now don’t forget I gotcha covered.” God, he looked vulnerable. It was hard to believe he was the same man I’d seen that night in the U Minh Forest. He’d been badly wounded and, when put on a dustoff chopper, had swatted aside aircrewmen in a raving frenzy. In delirium, he’d hunkered down apelike, and the Army medics didn’t go near him until he’d passed out from loss of blood.
“No sweat. Things have been looking up,” I said, and winked.
He grinned.
“Get it back to me when you can.”
There was no thought of recruiting him. He’d given all he had.
With much bonhomie, he trudged unevenly down the stairs.
Where and when had I become angel to him and so many others? Strange bonds. Trust them…but only with your life.
For a beached frogman who took little notice of money, I seemed ever sensitive to the manner in which it fell between my fingers.
Not too much later, I ambled down to Keiko’s restaurant. Seconds after I had entered, I felt her squeeze my hand as she glided by into the teppanyaki room. Tall by Japanese standards, she bore herself like a princess of the Ama among the restaurant’s well-heeled clientele. Her vibrancy and striking, athletically trim good looks stole your attention. Everyone else in the room seemed bland, part of the background. A Chinese-style yellow sheath dress, a cheongsam—one of my favorites—made her particularly desirable in the soft lights.
A faint piston-like fidget of her hips indicated she had more than one thing on her mind. Ever restive, she could still move through a room with a presence that made rough seas placid.
Keiko Shirahama was the hamlet girl who had grown to want more.
Japan, more than most countries, looks to the sea for sustenance. The Ama, as divers for shellfish and edible seaweed, shared breadwinner status with their fisherman husbands. Their fathers and brothers served as boatmen and tenders while these women divers, equipped with the natural feminine superiority provided by an insulating layer of subcutaneous fat, plunged to the sea bottom day after day.
The term Ama in Japanese was a homonym for the Japanese word for “nun.” There were other similarities; their white scarflike headgear, for instance, bore an eerie resemblance to a nun’s headdress. Ama, however, unlike nuns, had a reputation for being, as one Japanese friend put it, “women with sharp tongue.” Even spicier in personality than most of her fellow divers and quick to translate her moods physically, young Keiko had publicly boxed the ears and berated the fishing cooperative’s headman after a family dispute with the cooperative.
She was prudently hustled off to board with land-bound cousins in Yokohama who treated their novel Ama like a black sheep. Her unmerited status was an affront to her pride, but it offered certain unexpected benefits.
Forced to take a job as a restaurant bookkeeper and hostess in an establishment that catered to—horror of horrors—foreign devils, gaijin, she found it surprisingly to her liking. By Japanese standards, foreigners had rough edges, and so did Ama. She bought the restaurant a year or two later. Only after realizing the world she had been born to and loved had grown too small.
The attraction to life in a larger arena was in constant tension with the values and traits inculcated by time and heredity. Undeniably, she had been forged by hard work and tempered in cold water. The Yokohama waterfront presented as pluralistic a community as Japan could offer. Physical courage and hardship endured were the watchwords of the Izu Peninsula fisher folk, and in her adopted world she gravitated to those who traded in those qualities.
She returned quickly to tow me into one of the more private dining compartments. The compartment had a leg well around the table, a concession to Westerners, which she knew I preferred because of a bad knee. She slid the wood-and-paper door shut. Moments later a waiter appeared with ocha, green tea, and the, ingredients for shabu-shabu, a sort of do-it-yourself beef stew. Another favorite; she wasn’t overlooking a thing.
The meal went by uneventfully as I described some of the less sensitive portions of my trip. We alternated tending the small burner on the table. I finally sat back, sated and mellowed by the onslaught of earthly delights. The uneven graph of my stubborn existence, which had too often plunged me into gritty, bloody, hang-by-your-fingernails valleys, demanded I savor these fleeting soft-rich moments. Sometimes they could be eternities apart.
“Quillon, did you enjoy your trip to Korea?” Keiko said gently, breaking a reverie.
I nodded, swirling the tea in the bottom of my teacup. The Japanese found meaning even in teacups. A good teacup in Japan must be faintly cracked. A minor defect gives character and warmth. Weren’t the best frogmen always slightly flawed?
“More than on those other trips you take?”
“No, about the same.”
“Why didn’t you take me with you?”
No doubt about it. Fattened for the slaughter. Beware, frogman, of sirens bearing gifts.
“Because it was just a s
hort business trip and I didn’t think you were interested in going.”
She thought for a second. “Honto? Next time you take me. Okay?”
Whittled to helplessness in seconds. Keiko looked up at me with a slight tilt to her head. Those big, dark, liquid eyes could have asked for virtually anything. It is the eternal male conceit that we are the masters of our own destinies.
Of course, I knew what lay behind all this. Keiko had—justifiably—little cause to concern herself that I might let my eye wander during my trips to the Middle East, Europe, or Africa. But between Japan and Korea there is an ancient rivalry. No right-thinking Japanese woman would allow her man to go to Korea unguarded against the well-known evils of Korean women. Korean women were without shame.
“All right,” I said, knowing when it was tactically necessary to give ground, “but bear in mind that I’m going to be pretty busy this next time. I may not be much fun to be with.”
She smiled and put her arms around me, her palms drawing me toward her. I could feel the warmth of her body through the sheath dress, her firm breasts burrowing below my rib cage.
“If the restaurant can run itself, perhaps we should continue this discussion topside.”
She looked at me slyly and slid the door to one side. “Yes, I think so. It is a small restaurant, not worthy of too much attention. As for you, you are not worthy of too much attention, either, but I make sure you have very little energy except for business when you go back to Korea.”
As we turned the corner and passed through the bar, I saw something that put an abrupt chill on the evening.
Keiko was quick to sense it. “Koibito, is something wrong? Did…?”
“No, Kei-chan, nothing’s wrong. You run ahead. I’ll be with you in a second.”
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