Rings of Fire

by Gregory Shepherd

  Using the laughter as a cover for any noise he might make, Patrick pulled himself hand over hand to the top before there were any more lulls in the conversation. Once on top of the building, he walked carefully over to the fire door which was locked from the inside but luckily not with a deadbolt. He removed his boots and took out the length of plastic he had cut from the soda bottle and inserted it into the space just above the doorknob. When it was all the way through to the other side, he eased it down between the faceplate and strike plate of the latch and slowly cracked the door open until it began to squeak, at which point he took out a tube of lip balm from a utility pocket, dug out a thick chunk, and worked it thoroughly into each of the rusty-looking hinges. A minute later, he ever so gently opened the door, the hinges still squeaking slightly but not as much as before. He continued easing the door open a millimeter at a time until he could squeeze through.

  Once on the other side, he switched on a tiny penlight whose cone of illumination was narrow but all he needed to make his way down the stairs at the same snail’s pace. He paused when he reached the landing and listened. The conversation had continued as before, but he couldn’t take a chance that his unfamiliarity with the upper floors of the building might suddenly give him away when, say, one of the hardwood boards began to creak.

  He pointed the penlight at the first room he came to. Its door was slightly ajar, and he slowly pushed it open. Shining the light around the room, he could see it was the bedroom of a generic young male, with clothes hanging off of chairs and several items of dishware sitting unwashed on the desk that fronted the room’s only window. Something on the desk caught his attention: a group photo, indistinct in the low light, showing four men, one of them older, and three of them in their late teens or early twenties. He took his phone from his pocket and snapped a flash photo of the photo. Then he noticed that the conversation downstairs had died down.

  He pocketed his phone and moved more quickly out of the room and over to the stairway leading up to the roof. Sure enough, just as he was creeping up the stairs, he heard the voices of two men, one older and one younger, coming up a lower flight. They appeared to be making small talk before heading off to bed, but he decided to wait on the landing outside the door leading to the roof until he was sure he wouldn’t be detected. The two men were moving up the stairs more slowly than might be expected, with the older man lagging behind with what appeared to be an injured leg judging from the way he took the stairs one at a time. They said goodnight to each other, and Patrick had a fleeting glimpse of the older man as he limped into his room. About fifty years of age, Asian, no unusual facial features. He didn’t appear to be one of the men in the photo, but then again, Patrick couldn’t really make out any details in the low light of the room. He would enlarge the image later.

  After waiting almost an hour on the landing, he heard the sound of snoring coming from the room in which he had taken the photo, so he slowly began climbing the stairs leading to the roof. Once there, he grabbed his boots and walked toe to heel in his socks to the other side of the roof. Since space is at such a premium in Japan, the buildings are often constructed directly next to each other, and the one adjoining Toyama Storage was two feet away at most. Desperately hoping that the roof of the adjoining building was sturdy, he crouched on the ledge of Toyama Storage, threw his boots across the divide, and launched himself across to the other building. He lay on the roof for several minutes until he was sure his jump had gone undetected. Then he reverse-shimmied down the drainpipe to street level, where he walked to his Harley, rolled it down a slight hill, and started it up. A minute later, he was on the Shuto Expressway leading to Tokyo.

  After parking his bike in his usual spot at the stadium, Patrick was walking to his office suite when he felt a jolt of apprehension. Kirsten was standing outside his door.

  “Kirsten. Everything okay?” he said, tension tightening his voice.

  “Yes. Well, no.” She took a breath before continuing. “Please please please don’t take this the wrong way, but I need to get out of that embassy. Proctor is driving me and everyone else nuts. Is there any possibility at all I can join you and Mister Choy over here? Again, please don’t read anything else into it.”

  Patrick relaxed and smiled. “Of course. I completely understand. Come on in, but I should tell you, Phibbs is also here.”

  Kirsten grunted and rolled her eyes, but followed Patrick into his suite. Once inside Patrick waved his hand around. “It’s not much, but I call it hell.”

  Kirsten smiled, the first time he’d seen her anything but morose since he’d broken off whatever had been developing between them.

  “Charming,” she said facetiously, indicating the takeout boxes littering the floor. Patrick pointed to a small desk off to one side.

  “It’s all yours, if you’re still interested in relocating to this dump.”

  “I’ve seen worse, believe me,” Kirsten said, and she set her briefcase down on the desk and took a seat. “Where’s Phibbs?” she asked guardedly.

  “Probably skulking around dark alleys looking for lost spies. Don’t worry, his workspace is in one of these back rooms. He won’t bother you.” Patrick went directly to his desk and sent the photos he had taken on his phone at Toyama Storage to his computer and proceeded to enlarge them. As the images appeared on his computer screen, he felt a jolt of adrenaline. The older man in the photo with the three young men he recognized right away. All doubt about who was behind the attacks evaporated. He called Choy in from his small lair off of Patrick’s office. Choy came out, greeted Kirsten, and took one look at the unsmiling face on the screen. He let out a long “Hmmmm” that started high and ended low and put his hands backwards on his hips as he rocked from back and forth. Hearing the emotion in Choy’s voice, Kirsten came over and lowered her head close to Patrick’s computer screen.

  “His name is Pung Min-ho,” Patrick said to her. “I had the pleasure of meeting him in North Korea. I bet you anything he’s the one sending the texts.”

  Choy added, “Comrade Moon’s right-hand man. I was sure he was dead.”

  “And I’m sure he hates my guts for killing Moon,” Patrick added. “But I don’t see him being the leader of these attacks. If he’s the best Chosun Restoration can do, they’ve got problems.”

  Choy said “Mmmm” again, but this time in an appraising way. “I agree. The real leader has to be someone smarter.”

  Kirsten said, “I still don’t get why he didn’t just kill you at the stadium if he hates you so much?”

  “I have to believe it’s so he can have the last laugh. When I was in North Korea, I made him lose face in front of Comrade Moon. This is his way of turning the tables. That’s my theory, anyway.”

  He was about to continue when he heard a sound outside his office. Choy and Kirsten had heard it too and were looking at Patrick expectantly. Patrick tiptoed to the door and opened it quickly. Minoru Kaga stood outside with his hand raised to knock on the door, but the look on his face telegraphed the debate going on in his head. He took a step back.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mister Featherstone,” he said sheepishly.

  “Patrick. Call me Patrick. Come in. What can I do for you?”

  Kaga entered the room and took a deep breath which he then expelled quickly. “I would like to work for your team.”

  Patrick laughed. “My ‘team’ is getting bigger and bigger all the time. Aren’t you with Hayashida’s ‘team’?”

  “Yes, but…” He looked to one side and paused.

  “But what?”

  “Actually, he was the one who sent me over here to spy on you. He also told me not to tell you about debris they found at the Yoyogi Gymnasium. There was a fragment of a license plate from the truck that blew up. He said he wanted the JIA forensics lab to analyze it.”

  “Did he say why he kept that information from me?”

  “He wanted
the JIA to get the credit.”

  Patrick shook his head and spat air. “Yet again with these stupid power games. Hayashida on one side, Proctor on the other. And with this license plate thing you’d think he’d want as many hands on board as possible to try and find leads.”

  Kaga looked down again. “As it turned out, there wasn’t enough information on the license plate to follow up on, but that’s the way he operates. I don’t like it. Or Mister Proctor, to tell you the truth.”

  Kirsten laughed at the last comment. “You’re not going to find a lot of people who would find any fault in that.”

  “Mister Hayashida also wants it so that if anything else happens, he can blame the Americans. He was the one who gave NHK News your photo that appeared on the television after the Yoyogi attack. He was hoping you would resign.”

  “Surprise, surprise. That’s one reason I moved my office over here. Come on in and close the door. And welcome to the ‘team.’ You can be the resident double agent and let me know what Hayashida is up to.”

  Patrick went on to tell the group about Toyama Storage in Yokohama.

  “Shouldn’t we tell the others?” Kirsten asked.

  Patrick stood with his head tilted sharply down to the left, his eyes looking up and to the right, his forefinger pressed against his lips as if telling himself, “Shh.” But to the observant eye, the finger was twitching as if pulling a trigger as he thought the situation through. Hayashida would no doubt lead a raid on Toyama Storage for the greater glory of Japan, and any hope of getting to the bottom of Chosun Restoration would be lost. For his part, Mr. Subtlety Garrett Proctor would probably call in a Hellfire strike.

  “Tell them what?” Patrick asked Kirsten, all wide-eyed innocence.

  CHAPTER 37

  The next morning

  “Meet now!”

  Bozu’s gut clenched when he read the text from Patrick.

  “Where?” he texted. It took his fingers several tries to find the right letters.

  “Yokohama Landmark Tower twenty minutes.”

  Patrick arrived at the Tower and was about to go up to the observation deck on the seventieth floor when he saw Bozu sitting off by himself on a bench by the vending machines. From twenty feet away, Patrick could see Bozu’s leg jiggling up and down like a piston as he chewed on a plastic straw while squinting at nothing. As Patrick approached, Bozu jumped up. Patrick pointed with his hand to the elevator, which they entered together and rode up in silence. When the door opened to the deck, Patrick led the way to the side of the building facing the dockland area. He pointed to a building that Bozu knew well.

  “I went there,” Patrick said.

  “But how…?” Bozu exhaled instead of finishing his sentence. “Then you know where they are.”

  “But I don’t know who they are, and you’re about to tell me.” Patrick took out his phone and tapped on the photo he had taken of the group photo in the room he had entered.

  Bozu could hardly string together a coherent sentence as he told Patrick about Toyama Storage’s repurposed function as a corpse hotel and the residence for a dwindling group of young North Korean men, three of whom were in the photo Patrick was showing him. He went on to describe the recent luncheon and ceremony that he had partially witnessed while waiting on those in attendance. The detail of his account that captured Patrick’s attention like no other was that of a coffin being wheeled in for the luncheon.

  “Comrade Moon? You’re sure that’s what they said?”

  “I know they’ll kill me, me and my brother and father,” Bozu said.

  “What else did they say? Come on, you have to hold it together here, a lot of lives are at stake, not just yours and your family’s. What else did they say?”

  Bozu forced himself to inhale deeply. As he exhaled, his eyes filled, and his head rocked from side to side. “The leader is a man they called Mister Lee. He had the young North Korean guys do some kind of ritual where they pricked their fingers with pins and set the blood on fire on wads of cotton. Lee said something like ‘This ritual was created by Comrade Moon who was the founder of Bureau 39.’ I know they’re behind these attacks, Patrick. Mister Lee made my brother kill someone after the nerve gas attack on the subway. I’m so sorry I couldn’t say anything before, I was just too afraid that they’d…” Despite the heat and humidity, Bozu had his arms wrapped tightly around himself.

  “Have you ever fired a gun before?” Patrick asked.

  Bozu nodded his head. “Yes. With the motorcycle gang.”

  “Get on your bike and follow me.”

  During his friendly shooting competition with Tyler at the SDF headquarters in Tokyo, Patrick realized that although Tyler’s skills had been rusty beyond recognition, his own left much to be desired as well thanks to the endless hours he was spending on job-related meetings and paperwork. Since that competition, he had earmarked an hour a day for shooting practice at the same range, sometimes with Tyler, sometimes not. Within a few days, his accuracy had improved somewhat, but he was nowhere near where he wanted to be. Thus, Bozu’s need for some serious armament gave him the perfect opportunity both to refresh whatever meager skills Bozu had learned in his motorcycle gang and for Patrick to hone his own prowess.

  After they left the Yokohama Landmark Tower, Patrick had Bozu follow him to the SDF’s Asaka Shooting Range in the northwest part of Tokyo. It would be the venue for Olympic shooting competitions, and after Patrick flashed his security creds, he introduced Bozu to the sergeant in charge as a member of the South Korean shooting team. The sergeant waved them through.

  Once on the range, Patrick placed his tactical backpack on the ground and took out his 9mm SIG Sauer P226. He thumbed the safety on and off a few times, just to get the feel of it, and handed it to Bozu while looking around to make sure no one was nearby.

  “Two things: One, if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it faster. Two, don’t shoot anybody. Life’s short enough without you making it shorter.”

  Bozu took the gun without hesitation, released its empty magazine, and pinch-pulled the slide to fully clear it. A suppressed smile formed at the corners of Patrick’s mouth, and he handed Bozu a box of bullets.

  “Nice,” Bozu said, holding the box up to inspect. “Nothing says goodbye like a jacketed hollow point.”

  Patrick shook his head. “You’ve been holding back.”

  Bozu smiled. “You have no idea,” he said and began pressing the bullets into the magazine.

  An hour later both of them had gone through two hundred rounds each. Although it soon became clear that Bozu’s skills as an actual shooter paled in comparison to his pose as a would-be gunslinger who read gun magazines, by the end of the hour he was finding the bull about 30 percent of the time and hitting the outer rings the rest of the time with very few total misses. Patrick had been away from any sustained pistol work for months, but by the end of the hour he was shooting bulls 80 percent of the time. Both his own abilities and Bozu’s were a source of relief. Plus, he now had an extra shooter.

  Later that same evening, after they had gone their separate ways, Patrick got a text from Bozu asking to meet him again as soon as possible at the Shinagawa Aquarium.

  “We need to go outside,” Bozu said when Patrick arrived. His tone and manner were agitated. Patrick followed him out to the veranda. Bozu went to the extreme far end of the deck and sat at one of the metal tables.

  “Water,” he said excitedly.

  “What are you talking about?” Patrick asked.

  “Their next targets have something to do with water.”

  “You said targets. More than one?”

  “I think so. I got back and overheard them saying something about taking a train on the Ome Line for one of the ‘picnics,’ that’s what they call the attacks, and that the other picnic is near Iwabuchi. Both are planned for the day after tomorrow.” />
  “The Ome line leads west, and Iwabuchi is north. Hang on.” Patrick began a Google search of the two areas on his phone. He didn’t have far to look.

  “If it’s really about water, then one of the targets has to be the Ogouchi Reservoir and the other one has to be the Aosuimon, the Blue Sluice Gate. Did they say what they’re planning on doing?”

  “I couldn’t hear. I was listening through the wall.”

  “Well, the reservoir supplies most of Tokyo with its drinking water, so it’s huge.”

  “What about the other one?”

  Patrick scrolled down on his phone. “The Blue Sluice Gate is the only thing keeping the Arakawa River from flooding northern Tokyo after this past rainy season.” He looked up from his phone. “Who’s going to do it, all of them?”

  “I’m pretty sure one of them said he was going to try and recruit a woman to do something to that second target you mentioned.” Bozu asked Patrick for his cellphone, went to the camera app, and tapped on the photo Patrick had taken at the corpse hotel. He enlarged it with his fingers and pointed to one of the people in the photo.

  “This is the guy. He’s going to meet the woman tomorrow. He thinks he’s a real ladies’ man, and he calls himself ‘Casanova’ like the K-pop singer.”

  Patrick looked at the photo and memorized the young man’s features the way he would memorize faces of the targets he had been assigned as a sniper. Bozu told him where Casanova would be meeting the woman the next day, and Patrick ran to his bike.

  “Let me help,” Bozu called out, his jaw set in determination.

  “You’re more help where you are,” Patrick shouted back. “I can’t risk going back there, and you already have a cover.” Seeing Bozu’s face, he jogged back to him. “Believe me, if you can get more information like this, then you’re going to be saving more lives than I ever could.”

  Bozu reluctantly accepted Patrick’s explanation and walked dejectedly back to his bike.