by Ashton, Hugh
Obediently, the other stopped the slide-show. Sharpe examined the face on the screen carefully.
“I’m not completely sure, but that certainly looks like one of them. The one who was holding the gun on me. I remember him better than the other.”
“Not really surprising, is it? Thank you,” making a note. “We’ll come back to him.”
This is where Katsuyama’s face recognition gadget would be handy, Sharpe thought to himself. Ironic. The faces continued to flick past on the screen. On two of them, Sharpe indicated that there was a possibility they might match the other of his assailants, but he wasn’t sure. At last the line of faces came to an end.
“Thank you, that has been most helpful. Let us continue.” Sharpe’s legs were aching from the uncomfortable position he had been forced to adopt to stay seated on the chair, but he nodded grimly. The first photo that he had identified reappeared on screen, together with other, very similar faces. Despite the similarities, Sharpe stuck to his original choice.
“Now for the others.” The process was repeated, but Sharpe couldn’t single out the other face with any degree of certainty.
“Thank you, Mr Sharpe. That is most helpful.”
“Am I free to go? Once you’ve returned my passport, that is.”
The other spread his hands. “You are free to go at any time. Here’s your passport. However, I’m going to tell you why you are here now.”
“I’m helping you identify criminals?”
“Of course you are doing that. The main reason you are here, and not being interviewed at the hotel, which is where we would normally do these things, is for your safety?”
“Am I in danger now, then?”
“We believe so. The man you identified is known to us as a member of one of the DPRK intelligence agencies, specialising in assassination. Unfortunately, we have been unable to arrest and hold him, though we are aware of his activities.”
“You’re telling me that the North Korean spy service is trying to kill me?” Well, that completes the set, Sharpe thought to himself. Japanese, Americans, British, North Koreans. He wondered when the Russian KGB, or whatever had replaced them, was going to turn up and have a go at him.
The other nodded. “Quite frankly, with this man and his accomplice at large, we feel you’d be safer here until you can be returned to Japan.”
Returned to Japan, Sharpe noticed. Why the passive voice? Wasn’t he considered capable of making the journey on his own?
The phone rang on the desk, and a brief conversation in Korean ensued before Sharpe’s questioner switched to English.
“Yes? Major Barclay from Tokyo, is it? Yes, Senior Superintendent General Lee speaking. He’s here now with me. At the National Police Agency. How long? When? About 10 this evening? We’ll have a car to meet you at the airport and bring you here. Thank you.” He put the phone down and addressed Sharpe. “As you may have gathered, your friend from the British Embassy in Japan seems to be looking out for your welfare. He will be flying here this evening and he will make sure you return to Japan safely tomorrow morning. According to my superiors, he has ways of ensuring your safety. Of course, we will provide complete protection to you and him on the way to the airport, and until you board the plane. After that, our jurisdiction ends.”
“Someone’s been bending some very important ears, it seems to me.”
“I agree, it does sound like that to me. We would greatly prefer it if you would remain here until he arrives.”
“Here?”
“Not in this room, for which I apologise, by the way. Quite honestly, until I’d had a chance to talk to you, your status was somewhat suspect. You might have been in league with these DPRK agents working against the man you spoke to earlier, Dr …” he consulted his notes, “Katsuyama.”
Totally cracked, Sharpe thought to himself, but he said nothing.
“Now that we’ve talked, I am satisfied that you are the victim, not the perpetrator and we’ll find you somewhere more comfortable to wait. I am sorry that we can’t live up to the standards of the Grand Hyatt, but we can find you a nice quiet cell to yourself – the kind we use for our special guests. I assure you it won’t be as bad as it sounds.”
Aloud, “What about my bags and things from the hotel?”
“We’ll have them fetched from there and brought to you. I believe you settled your bill already. I’m sorry about this, Mr Sharpe, but it does appear that you have become a target, and I would much prefer you out of the country for our own peace of mind, as well as for your own safety, of course.”
“I hope you won’t take it as personal insult if I say that I will be glad to leave.”
“Of course not. May I show you to your quarters?” rising. “Please follow me.”
Sharpe rose to his feet, the muscles in his legs aching as he stretched. They walked down the corridor and into an elevator, which took them to the fifth floor.
“Not a basement dungeon?” smiled Sharpe.
“Far from it.” The doors opened, and Sharpe was led to a comfortable room, which reminded him of the better class of business hotel in Tokyo. “Bathroom here,” opening a door.
“This is a cell?” Sharpe asked incredulously.
“We have some very high-class criminals here sometimes. If they are found innocent or get pardoned in some political reshuffle, they tend to take it out on the police authorities later on. It’s wisest to keep them as happy as possible while they’re in detention.”
“I see,” said Sharpe. It seemed different from the British way of doing things. Well, maybe not that different, when he considered it a little more.
“We’ll have something to eat sent to you, if you want.”
“Yes, please,” Sharpe replied. He’d skipped lunch, having been fed on the plane from Tokyo, and expecting to eat dinner with Katsuyama. Well, that hadn’t turned out as planned, had it? He realised that he was actually ravenous. Maybe fear and adrenaline did that to you. He was left alone, but after about ten minutes, there was a knock on the door, and a uniformed policeman entered with a tray.
“Beer?” asked the policeman. Sharpe shook his head, both to decline the offer, and to indicate his complete bafflement at the increasingly surreal nature of the situation in which he found himself. He was left alone (he noticed the door was locked as it was closed) to eat a surprisingly reasonable meal of rice and grilled meat, with what seemed to be the traditional Korean soup of seaweed and sesame seeds.
After eating, he felt tired and lay on the bed and closed his eyes. It only seemed a few minutes later that he was awakened by the sound of the door opening, and a familiar voice calling to him.
-oOo-
Chapter 16: Seoul, Tokyo
“Wakey, wakey, Kenny-boy.” Barclay was standing by the foot of the bed. Somehow Sharpe’s baggage from the hotel was beside him. “Not quite the Hyatt, is it?”
“It’s the best cell I’ve ever been in,” Sharpe grinned.
Barclay looked around and sniffed. “I agree. Hell of a smell of garlic in here. Is that you who’s taken up the habit?”
“Hardly a habit. I had some with my meal.”
“And I’ve got to sit next to you on the plane back? Oh well, the things I do for Queen and country.” He gave an operatic-scale sigh and sat on the edge of the bed. “Do tell,” he invited. “I really want to know everything about what happened to you with Katsuyama and our friends from north of the border.”
“Can it wait until we get back to Tokyo? Or at least we’re on the plane?”
“If you must, I suppose. Maybe these walls have ears. I’d be disappointed in these people if they didn’t, put it that way. I’ll bid you a fond goodnight. I have the cell next to yours, it seems, and the management of this establishment have promised to give us a wake-up call at 6:30. See you in the morning.” He left, and Sharpe prepared himself for bed. Before he went to sleep, he tried calling Mieko using his mobile phone, but hardly to his surprise, there was no signal inside the room. He woul
d have to call from the airport, he guessed.
-o-
True to their word, the Korean police provided cars and an escort for Barclay and Sharpe the next morning. Motorcyclists with wailing sirens and flashing lights flanked their car as they sped down the highway to the airport.
“I feel somewhat important,” Sharpe said to Barclay.
“Indeed. A bit like royalty. Always wanted to be a queen.” Barclay smirked and started to move his arm in a parody of a royal wave.
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop it. I nearly got killed by those two clowns yesterday and all you can do is make stupid jokes.”
“All right, no need to get hoity-toity. Keep your legs crossed, Missy. But you’re probably wrong about nearly being killed.”
“You mean I was killed? News to me.”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid. I mean that my guess is that you would have been kidnapped.”
“For what reason?”
“To get the Katsuyama gizmo.”
“But I don’t have it with me.”
“So? They didn’t know that, did they? And even if you didn’t, I think you’d make a very powerful bargaining chip when it came to negotiations with your lady.”
“And what if they did have it, what use would it be to them? Would they know how to set it up and use it?”
“Of course they wouldn’t. But you know, don’t you? And I’m sure that a few weeks in a North Korean prison, which, I am assured, is not nearly as nice as the pit whence I have just digged you, would make you more anxious to share that knowledge with your new friends. Not that I’m implying that you’re weak-willed or anything like that. We all have our breaking points when we’re stretched.”
Sharpe considered this, as the landscape sped by the windows. “All right, I’ll give you those points. How the hell did they come to learn of it anyway?”
“Oh, I don’t think that there’s a lot of point guessing that. Someone in Kim’s little gang who was working both sides? Katsuyama himself, for reasons we can’t even begin to guess at? Tomiko, likewise. I think we can rule you out of the picture,” Barclay added, scrutinising Sharpe carefully. “Joke,” he added, as Sharpe bristled. “Maybe Jonny-boy.”
“Now that’s another joke, isn’t it?”
“Ha ha, only serious, sort of joke,” replied Barclay. “Our Jonny’s a prime little shit when he wants to be, and it might be him.”
“Why not Ishihara, or any of his organisation?”
“Could be, could be. I’d put money on it being Jon rather than any of them, though, if you were to ask me for my expert opinion. The point is that North Korean intelligence seem to fancy you something rotten right now, as far as I can tell. Which means we’re going to have to surround you with tender loving care, and get them out of your hair for good and all.”
“And just how do you propose to do that?”
“Right now, my dear Ken, I don’t have the faintest bloody idea. Just trust me, as the bishop said to the actress. Seriously,” his voice dropped and his tone lost the bantering edge, “I have the glimmerings of an idea, but I need more time to work on it. Just be patient for now, and do what I tell you.”
Sharpe considered carefully. He had no doubt that Barclay’s primary interest was Major Tim Barclay. At the same time, he had certainly gone out of his way to keep Sharpe safe and sound in Seoul, and he had shown he had a pretty good handle on things. Maybe it was time to let him into the secret. “Listen, do you have the faintest bloody clue what all this is about?”
“I thought we’d been through this several times. Spy satellites and so on.”
“Something quite a lot bigger than that. I’ll tell you on the plane.”
“You have me intrigued, I must say. But I’ll bite my tongue for now.”
The car sped on, and they arrived at the airport, where they were escorted through the check-in, security and immigration procedures with a speed Sharpe hardly believed was possible in the post-September 11 era.
When they were waiting for their plane, Sharpe suddenly looked up. “I came on ANA. This is a JAL flight. What gives?”
“Well, you’re not on the flight you were meant to be coming back on, are you? We’ve got things arranged for you.”
The boarding call came for first class passengers. Barclay stood up.
“That’s for first class only. No rush,” Sharpe reminded him.
“Look at your ticket, you silly sod.”
Sharpe was amazed to see that he’d been upgraded to first class. There seemed to be no other passengers flying in first on this flight, as, other than the phalanx of uniformed police surrounding them, he and Barclay were the only ones walking towards the gate.
“That’s right,” replied Barclay when Sharpe mentioned it. “We bumped everyone else.”
“We?”
“I’ll explain things on the plane, dear boy,” replied Barclay, returning the farewell salutes given to them by the Korean police.
Sharpe had never flown first class before. He explored the glories of the large seat and its mass of audio-visual controls.
“Only a short flight though,” Barclay reminded him. “But it’s a lot simpler for security if we’re the only passengers in this class. Our heavies are sitting in business, watching our backs for us. And if the flight crew turn out to be North Korean agents cunningly disguised as JAL pilots—” he shrugged. “We’re stuffed. So sit back and enjoy it.”
“Who are the ‘we’ who arranged all this? Surely the British Embassy doesn’t have the power to rearrange JAL seating? Even you, with all your superpowers, can’t arrange this, can you?”
“That’s true,” Barclay admitted. “Ishihara can, though.”
Sharpe thought about this. “Oh God, that’s all I need. The Japanese government, the British government, the Americans, the North Koreans. Probably the South Koreans. And the Vietnamese. Why the hell don’t you bring the Libyans and the Israelis into it? Invite the whole damn’ UN while you’re about it?”
“Temper, temper, Ken. The Japanese were in this from the start, weren’t they? You haven’t told me what the gadget does, though.”
“Nor have I.”
“Now sit back and finish your champagne before we take off. Think about how you’re going to tell me whatever it is you’re going to tell me. When we’re nice and safe 50,000 feet up in the air, I want you to tell me a bedtime story. All about poor little Ken, and how he met the bad wicked North Koreans who pointed a nasty-wasty little gun at him, and what led up to all that.”
“All right. I can manage that. When we’re up in the air. Now just shut up for a minute.”
Mercifully, the flight attendant came round and fussed with seat belts and blankets before clearing away the empty glasses.
Once they were airborne, Sharpe kept to his word and started to talk to Barclay. However, there was something that Sharpe felt he had to know before he could trust the other very much further.
“Jon mentioned that he knew Katsuyama’s wife some time ago, at the same time he tried to feed me a load of crap about how you were due to be sent home for insider trading. He said that you and Ishihara were in it together.”
“Did he, now? How very interesting. I’m putting two and two together in my head right now, and it’s all starting to add up to a damn’ sight more than four.”
“I take it you’re not being sacked for insider trading, then?”
“Dear me, no. Not if I can help it, at any rate. I must confess that yes, there were some rather nosy little bastards from London poking their noses around my neck of the woods the other day, and it seemed to me that I smelled Jonny’s dirty little fingers in there somewhere. I knew I should have shipped the little bastard off to Burkina Faso or somewhere some time ago. But I was able to convince the snoops of my innocence, for the simple reason that there is nothing to the story in the first place, and I have all the documentary evidence to prove it.” He paused and sniffed. “So, Jonny knows Mrs K, does he? She’s quite a looker, I believe,
if your tastes run that way?” Sharpe confirmed this. “Well, well. There were always stories about Jonny and the ladies. You open my eyes, my dear Ken, you really do.”
“Let me open them a little further. What if I told you that Katsuyama’s gadget could predict the future?”
Barclay giggled. “I’d probably phone for the men in white coats to come and take you away.”
“Well, it can. Or rather it could. In a very limited sphere, that is.” Barclay looked incredulous as Sharpe explained what he had discovered.
The response was a stream of imaginative phrases, many of them new to Sharpe. “Well, bugger me sideways with a twelve-foot steam-powered barbed wire-wrapped dildo,” Barclay finished. “You could make a fortune out of that.”
“We did,” said Sharpe, and explained how the M&M Trading organisation had indeed made money, and lost it, following the Lehman debacle. Barclay hung on his every word, every now and again taking a pull at the champagne, a full bottle of which had been supplied by the flight attendants. Sharpe went into detail about how Kim had abducted Mieko and subsequently invested his money, including the reasons he had been told why Kim had made the investment. It took some time to tell it all, with Barclay asking questions at appropriate moments, and they were asked to fasten their seat belts before he had finished.
“I’m impressed, dear boy, I really am,” said Barclay, as the plane started its final descent. “Of course, a wee bit hurt that you didn’t see fit to include me in your plans— All right, just my little joke,” as Sharpe started to react. “It does seem as though you’re somewhat in the shit, though. And I am sorry to say that one of my colleagues seems to be one of those who is squatting above you with his trousers down. Quickly, tell me about your dealings with Katsuyama and those North Koreans before we pull up at the terminal.”
Sharpe gave Barclay a fully detailed account of his meeting with Katsuyama, and the North Korean agents who had attacked him. Barclay kept his mood surprisingly serious, compared to his earlier flippancy, and asked a number of incisive questions.
“Katsuyama lifted the guy’s ID and so on before he pushed him under the train?” he asked.
