The Spy Across the Table

by Barry Lancet

  I felt her stiffen. “Brodie, in my dream—”

  Behind us, the elevator chimed and the doors parted. Noda, stout and still and stone-faced, stood in the interior. He nodded at Rie and she nodded back.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  Rie released me with reluctance, shooting me a last pleading look.

  “It’ll be fine,” I said, the cliché ringing false the moment it left my lips.

  “You don’t even know what it is,” Rie said, a justifiable rebuke to everything shallow and inadequate in my attempt to comfort her.

  And, as no one could have foreseen, entirely true.

  CHAPTER 57

  3:10 A.M.

  YOKOTA AIR BASE, TOKYO PREFECTURE

  RETURNING to the roof, my mind still on Rie’s parting look, I boarded the Black Hawk. The roar of the rotors whipped up an ever-faster syncopated beat and the powerful machine lifted into the night.

  Below, the city slept, dark and still and laced with strings of lemon-yellow streetlights twisting and turning with the scramble of boulevards and backstreets.

  A few minutes later my personal phone came alive, vibrating to signal an incoming text message. The source was cloaked but I hit open anyway.

  B, we’re your rear guard. We’ll have your back as soon as you land. This has come straight from the top. Your line is not secure so do not reply. Just know J sent us.

  —KC

  * * *

  Straight from the top. The president and his team, with the first lady riding shotgun. Or maybe Joan whipping the horsemen forward behind the scenes.

  My phone quivered a second time, though not with its signature tremor. Something lighter. Feathery and foreign. No notification appeared on my screen. No window popped up. As I sat in ten tons of throbbing machinery, I watched as the text rose and fell in waves. Letters stretched upward like taffy toward the crest of each wave before dropping back in place and returning to form.

  This was new.

  I planted my elbows on my knees and clasped the phone in both hands, holding the instrument steady, isolating it from the Black Hawk’s pulsating core. The phone continued to quiver. The waves continued to ripple through the text. The distortion originated from a source other than the helicopter’s pumping pulsations.

  Your line is not secure.

  Then the quivering ceased and the text clarified.

  Someone had reached inside my phone.

  * * *

  The Brodie Security ops team hit the tarmac first. The men bent low, hustled to a point beyond the rotor, then spread out in a protective circle behind the Black Hawk.

  Noda and I exited next and stepped into the circle.

  Since then, seven minutes had passed and KC’s team had yet to show.

  We stood in the middle of the tarmac for general activities, alert, on edge, and exposed. At our backs was the taxiway paralleling the main airstrip. In front of us stood a line of humpbacked hangars, each with its own oversize shutter.

  “Can’t hardly see my hands,” Yasuhiro “Shooter” Watanabe muttered under his breath. The wiry leader of the Brodie Security team was a sharp-eyed former member of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Military from head to toe, and Brodie Security’s one armed-forces asset.

  “I can engage the navigation lights,” the pilot said from the cockpit. “Port or tail?”

  “Keep her dark.”

  “Roger that.”

  No sense in pinpointing our location, even if we were supposed to be on friendly turf. The ambassador’s residence should have been friendly turf.

  The pilot, who knew KC, had no luck raising him. My men grew increasingly nervous. The rotor blades had long ago wound down to a standstill.

  “How many times have you tried?” I asked.

  “Auto-calling every sixty seconds.”

  “Any pickup at all?”

  “Nothing. It’s like a graveyard out there.”

  The row of hangars ran in both directions into the night. They were shuttered and unlit except for number 26-B. Behind us, the taxiway and primary runaway stretched into the unseeable distance, dim blue pinpoint lights flickering at their edges. Aside from the airstrip illumination, our surroundings were steeped in total darkness.

  “Code beacon for approaching aircraft is operating,” the pilot said, “but the tower isn’t answering. Somebody could have taken it out or it’s shut for the night.”

  “Which do you think?”

  He shrugged. “Hard to tell.”

  Eight minutes.

  The only sign of human activity had occurred before our arrival. The plane scheduled to take us to Seoul had been rolled out of hangar 26-B.

  Now it sat alone and unattended, without pilots or ground crew.

  Our helicopter had set down on the designated helipad. On the only vacant landing site in a row of silent Black Hawks with long drooping blades, menacing and ghostly in the shadows.

  Nine minutes.

  “Don’t like this,” Shooter said.

  “Nothing to like,” I said. “Special forces guys roll out of their bunks ready.”

  Shooter’s eyes slid over the outskirts of the landing area. “We’ve been here too long with no cover other than the Hawk.”

  “It’s all open ground. And the hangars are a no-go.”

  Shooter nodded. “Anyone gaming us would expect us to head that way. Damned if I will. Silver lining is they won’t want us dead, just out of commission until the Korean leg is over.”

  I said, “You’re talking about putting us on ice like we’ve done to Habu and his men?”

  “If there’s unfriendlies out there, that’s got to be their plan.”

  “We’re not that easy.”

  “Thing is, we’ve got sticks and electric juice guns. Everyone on base starts with semiautomatics and ramps up from there.”

  Summation: we had no safe cover, no firepower, no options.

  “Which way is base headquarters?” I asked.

  One of the men pointed into the darkness. “About eight hundred meters in that direction.”

  “Anything in between?”

  “No.”

  Shooter walked over to the cockpit. “You have any signal at all?”

  “None.”

  My private phone began buzzing. I answered and a deep bass voice on the other end asked for me by name. Confident, precise, clipped syllables.

  “KC?” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s drop the ‘sir.’ Trouble on your end?”

  “Turbulence, sir . . . Brodie.”

  “Homeland?”

  The soldier let out a low whistle. “Good call.”

  “Traps and trip wires.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  Standing on the tarmac, I’d considered all potential enemies: Swelley, the PSIA, Tattersill, Gerald Thornton-Cummings, a double cross at the White House, or a rogue in the chain of command. I even considered Zhou. Then I chose the closest and most brazen.

  KC said, “Someone makes a call like you just did, I want to be on their team. Certainly don’t want to be on the other side.”

  “Glad to hear it. What happened?”

  “Spooks have their place and job, but neither of them better be in my face. You may not agree, but that’s this military man’s SOP, sir.”

  “We’re going to get along just fine, KC. Assuming you can get here in one piece.”

  “Roger that. Transportation is rolling up as we speak. An armored brown Humvee.”

  “Too much too late.”

  “I hear that. Also heard you have your own team out there. That true?”

  “You’re well-informed.”

  “Always. Brown Humvee. Don’t let ’em shoot at us,” he said, and signed off.

  Swelley’s reach was impressive. With no high-speed cross-city transport available, he’d changed tactics, intercepting KC’s text message, then attempting to hamstring the recon unit.

  What was Swelley up t
o? If the president’s intervention could not deter him, nothing would.

  CHAPTER 58

  THE Humvee roared up three minutes later and a large Marine in green-and-brown camouflage fatigues leapt from the passenger side and advanced with a sure step. He stood six-two and had short-cropped blond hair, a weathered and penetrating look, and bulging thighs.

  I met him halfway and we shook hands.

  He said, “Brodie, I presume.”

  “For better or for worse.”

  He grinned. “We’re here to make it better.”

  “Good to know.”

  “As soon as we load our gear, we can get airborne.”

  His men were already hauling equipment lockers, gear belts, and rifles from the Humvee. One of them shouted over about the lack of crew and pilots.

  KC shook his head. “Same guys probably sent them across base to get them out of the way. I’d better chase them down.”

  “Good deal,” I said. “Got to make one quick call.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “You do, whether you voted for him or not.”

  * * *

  The secure phone rang three times before someone picked up. I identified myself and was told there’d been orders to patch me through immediately. Three rings later, the Homeland secretary picked up.

  “Hello again, Jim. This is Carl. Joe will be right here.”

  “Okay. Do you mind a question from my end?

  Over by the open hangar, KC was on his radio, trying to track down the errant pilots and prep crew. His men stacked their supplies and weapons by the locked aircraft.

  “Go right ahead.”

  “You must have others working on this.”

  “We do.”

  “Including Swelley?”

  “Including but not limited to him, by any means.”

  “And no one else has found any trace of Anna Tanaka or her kidnappers?”

  “Currently, only you’ve found the trailhead. You dug out the proverbial needle in the espionage haystack.”

  I sensed an incipient excuse for a congressional committee in the making.

  “I got lucky,” I said.

  Carl’s chuckle was bitter. “Send some of that luck our way, would you?”

  “Are you in on the day-to-day?”

  “No, of course not. Why?”

  “Nothing.”

  I couldn’t throw Swelley’s latest at him without knowing more, and wanted to avoid slinging mud with the president nearby if I could.

  Joe Slater came on, saying, “I assume everything’s gone smoothly since we last talked.”

  “We’re moving forward,” I said.

  The president was no fool. He hesitated for a second before resuming. “Okay, but you yell if you need my help. One reason I’m insisting on bringing you aboard is because you’ve demonstrated an impressive ability on two fronts. Not only did you identify the kidnappers but you also defused the scene at Tattersill’s.”

  “Thank you. But, really, I only want to get Anna Tanaka back alive.”

  “The Tattersill incident could have blown up in any number of ways. Inflexible Lex would not have been unhappy to see this White House take some flack. You heard me mention Homeland had two men undercover at the funeral and we still lost Ms. Tanaka?”

  “Yes. I saw them.”

  “Wait. Did they identify themselves to you?”

  “No.”

  “So how . . . ?”

  “They weren’t passing as smoothly as they believed.”

  The president was startled. “You hear that, Carl?”

  KC called one of his men over, gave some orders, and the Marine jumped into the Humvee and roared off.

  “I did and I’m not liking it.”

  “Neither am I,” Slater said. “Brodie, you’ve done great work, and I mean that sincerely.”

  “Just doing my job,” I said, finding something on my side to dislike. An abundance of compliments usually came with baggage.

  The president plowed on. “You understand the gravity of the current situation?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then we need the landing site on the South Korean coastline and their destination inside the DMZ.”

  There it was. The president didn’t need the locations. Probably hadn’t even thought about them. This was the Homeland secretary pushing, or maybe someone at the Department of Defense.

  “Let me stop you right there, Mr. President. While I understand the desire, I am not supplying anyone with any new information just yet. I’ve come too far and it means too much.”

  “Joe,” the secretary said, “let me take this. Jim, this is national security we’re talking about, and it’s vital we have that information. You agreed to join the team.”

  “No,” I said. “I agreed to allow a team to accompany me to Seoul. There’s a difference.”

  Carl snorted. “I’m not going to argue semantics with you.”

  The Humvee roared up with the pilots and ground staff.

  “It’s not semantics and you know it. I won’t let my work be sabotaged anymore.”

  “If you’re talking about Tattersill’s little temper tantrum—”

  The secretary had shown his hand. Time to lay down mine.

  “No, Carl, I’m talking about a steady stream of run-ins and attempted sabotage by Homeland agents. First, in the National Mall they warned me off the case and talking to the White House. Next, your people pushed Tattersill’s buttons, not me. And finally, just minutes ago, the recon team sent to accompany me was attacked by Homeland men here on the base.”

  So much for saving the secretary’s face. I’d just made a powerful enemy.

  After a long silence in the Oval, the president said, “Is all of this true, Jim? You’re not exaggerating?”

  “Yes to the first, no to the second.”

  “Carl?”

  “Brodie must be mistaken. Or it is a case of a mistaken interpretation of an order.”

  KC flashed me the okay sign. His men hopped aboard and the plane’s engine started up.

  “Any way you look at it, they couldn’t all be mistakes,” I said. “I don’t have time for this nonsense right now. Anna doesn’t have time. And, again, she is all I care about. There were four witnesses to tonight’s so-called mistake and I’ll be happy to produce them after Anna is back safely. But right now I have a plane to catch and a woman to find. I won’t allow the information I have to be compromised. So if there’s nothing further, I’d like to be on my way.”

  “Actually, there is,” the secretary said. “At the president’s request, I need to brief you.”

  No apology. No conciliatory comment.

  “And I want to hear it, but I need to get airborne, so it’ll have to wait,” I said, and disconnected.

  KC crouched in the open doorway of the plane ten yards off. “You ready?” he yelled over the roar of the engine.

  Tattersill had hung up on the first lady, and I’d hung up on the secretary of homeland security—in the presence of the president.

  Must be something in the air.

  I said, “Let’s get going before I shoot somebody.”

  “Roger that.”

  CHAPTER 59

  OVER THE SEA OF JAPAN

  EXPERTS agree it’s one of the most dangerous spots on the planet,” said Kevin Wilson-Yun.

  Wilson-Yun, the information officer on the Marine recon team, was talking about the DMZ, the demilitarized zone. The flight was two hours and fifty-four minutes from Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo to the K-16 Air Base in Seongnam, Korea, twelve miles southeast of Seoul. From there we’d make two short hops—a second helicopter ride to our landing spot in the DMZ, then ground transportation to our final destination within the Zone. For security purposes, I planned to phone in the first location thirty minutes before landing and reveal the second after we alighted from the final helo ride. With luck, my scheme would discourage any outside interference.

  “So I’ve heard,” I s
aid.

  “Have you been there?”

  “Yes.”

  “To the Zone?” he asked suspiciously. “Or just South Korea?”

  We sat facing each other in a stripped-down military plane meant for the transport of special fighting units. The six of us occupied thinly padded metal seats against a bare-bones fuselage, three to a side. Blackout curtains covered the windows, and red shoulder harnesses hung from the walls. Everyone ignored them. Overhead were metal lockers and an array of first-aid kits and dressings for battle operations. The loud, rumbling whine of the engine made hearing hard unless passengers leaned forward. Which all six of us did.

  I said, “South Korea a dozen times, the DMZ once.”

  “But how much do you know?”

  Wilson-Yun was a beefy, thick-limbed second-generation Korean-American from Torrance, California, I learned soon enough. Both sides of his heritage were reflected in his hybrid last name.

  “More than most, less than some.”

  “You know your DMZ from your CCZ?”

  “Now you’re showing off.”

  He grinned. “Got to pass the time.” Then the grin vanished. “So do you?”

  “Yes.”

  The DMZ is a restricted area on either side of the border between the two Koreas. It hugs the Korean Peninsula like a tightly cinched belt, measuring two and a half miles top to bottom and 155 miles coast to coast. Every square inch is marked and mapped. Everything not built on or patrolled is mined. Collectively, two million soldiers on rotation are said to guard the border, and on the southern half of the DMZ 1.2 million land mines defend the interior. No one knows how many are on the northern side.

  South Korea has a secondary buffer called the CCZ, or the civilian control zone, which runs below the DMZ. Also controlled by the military, it provides an additional measure of protection against any invasion attempt, of which there have been several. One of the most dangerous occurred in 1968. A team of thirty-one special commandos from North Korea crossed the DMZ to assassinate the South Korean president. Point men came within one hundred yards of the presidential residence.

  In the sweep-up that followed the failed coup, twenty-nine North Korean special-ops soldiers were killed. One was captured; another found his way back across the DMZ. Even in retreat, the special-ops force inflicted heavy casualties, killing twenty-nine soldiers and police and injuring sixty-six others, among them four American personnel and two dozen civilians. It was lost on no one that the elite squad had, even in defeat, meted out a kill ratio of greater than three to one.