Nothing happened to her, he told himself. She was the lucky one, they’d always known that. The girl who won door prizes. Who picked winning horses. Who’d married him. She was all right. She had to be.
He felt another hand on his arm, and turned quickly. The long black hair was flecked with white, and the fawn-colored dress was smudged with dirt, but Soonji was standing beside him, smiling.
“Thank God!” he cried, and hugged her tightly. “I was so worried, Soon! Thank God you’re all right….”
His voice trailed off as she suddenly went limp. He moved his arm to catch her around the waist, and the sleeve of his jacket stuck to her back.
With a mounting sense of horror, he knelt with his wife in his arms. Carefully shifting her to her side, he looked at her back and choked when he saw where the clothing had been burned away, the flesh and fabric both soaked with dark red blood, white bone peeking through. Clutching his wife to him, Gregory Donald heard himself as he screamed, heard clearly the wail that rose from the bottom of his soul.
A flashcube blazed, and the familiar face of the medic bent close. She motioned to someone behind her, and soon there were other hands pulling at his, trying to wrest Soonji from him. Donald resisted, then let them have her as he realized that his love was not what this precious girl needed now.
Tuesday, 6:13 P.M., Nagato, Japan
The pachinko parlor was a smaller version of the ones made famous in the Ginza district of Tokyo. Long and narrow, the building was nearly the length of ten railroad boxcars laid end to end. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the clattering of ball bearings as men played the games that lined the walls on both sides.
Each game was comprised of a circular, upright playing surface a yard high, nearly two feet wide, and a half-foot deep. Under a glass cover, bumpers and metal flippers jutted out from a colorful background; when the player inserted a coin, small metal balls dropped from the top, banging pinball-like against the arms and falling this way and that. The player spun a knob in the lower right in an effort to see that each ball reached the bottom; me more balls that were collected in the slot, the more tickets the player won. When the player collected enough tickets, he took them to the front of the parlor where he was given his choice of stuffed animals.
Though gambling was illegal in Japan, it was not against the law for a player to sell the animal he’d won. This was done in a small room in the back, small bears earning twenty thousand yen, large rabbits fetching twice that, and stuffed tigers selling for sixty thousand yen.
The average player spent five thousand yen a night here, and there were typically two hundred players at the parlor’s sixty machines. While they enjoyed winning, few men came here to turn a profit. There was something addictive about the way the balls poured through the irregular maze, about the suspense of luck going for you or against you. It was really the player against fate, determining where he stood in the eyes of the gods. There was a widespread belief that if one could change their luck here, it would change in the real world as well. No one could explain why this was, but more often than not it seemed to work.
The parlors were scattered throughout the Japanese islands. Some were run by legitimate families, whose ownership went back centuries. Others were the property of criminal organizations, principally the Yakuza and the Sanzoku-one a league of gangsters, the other an ancient clan of bandits.
The parlor in Nagato on the west coast of Honshu belonged to the independent Tsuburaya family, which had run it and its predecessors for over two centuries. The criminal groups made regular, respectful overtures to buy the parlor, but the Tsuburayas had no interest in selling. They used their earnings to set up businesses in North Korea, potentially lucrative toeholds that they hoped to expand whenever unification became a reality. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, Eiji Tsuburaya sent millions of yen to North Korea through two trusted couriers based in the South. Both men arrived on the late afternoon ferry, carrying two empty, nondescript suitcases, walked directly to the back room of the parlor, left with full ones, and were back on the ferry before it turned about and left for the 150-mile trip to Pusan. From there, the money was smuggled north by members of PUK-Patriots for a Unified Korea, a group comprised of people from both the North and the South, everyone from businessmen to customs agents to street cleaners. It was their belief that profit for entrepreneurs and greater prosperity for the North Korean public in general would force the Communist leaders to accept an open market and, ultimately, reunification.
As always, the men left the parlor, climbed into the waiting cab, and sat quietly for the ten-minute ride to the ferry. Unlike other days, however, this time they were followed.
Tuesday, 6:15 P.M., Seoul
ELEVEN
Kim Hwan saw Donald sitting on a curb, his forehead in his hands, his jacket and pants covered with blood.
“Gregory!” he shouted as he jogged over.
Donald looked up. There was tear-streaked blood on his cheeks and in his disheveled silver hair. He tried to rise but his legs shook and he fell back; Hwan caught him and hugged him tightly as he sat down. The agent pulled away just long enough to make sure none of the blood was Donald’s, then embraced him again.
Donald’s words were swallowed by his sobs. His breath was coming in gasps.
“Don’t say anything,” Hwan said softly. “My assistant told me.”
Donald didn’t seem to hear him. “She … she was a… blameless … soul.”
“She was. God will care for her.”
“Kim… He shouldn’t have her … I should. She should be here….”
Hwan fought back tears of his own as he pressed his cheek to Donald’s head. “I know.”
“Who did she … offend? There was … no evil in her. I don’t understand.” He pressed his face into Hwan’s breast. “I want her back, Kim … I want… her….”
Hwan saw a medic turn toward them and motioned him over. Still holding Donald, Hwan rose slowly.
“Donald, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to go with someone. Let them make sure you’re all right.”
The medic put a hand on Donald’s arm but he wrested it away.
“I want to see Soonji. Where have they taken … my wife?”
Hwan looked at the medic, who pointed toward a movie theater. There were body bags on the floor, and more were being carried in.
“She’s being cared for, Gregory, and you need care yourself. You may have injuries.”
“I’m all right.”
“Sir,” the medic said to Hwan, “there are others-”
“Of course, I’m sorry. Thank you.”
The medic hurried off and Hwan took a step back. Holding Donald by the shoulders, he looked into the dark eyes, always so full of love but now red and glazed with pain. He wouldn’t force him to go to the hospital, but leaving him here, alone, was not an option.
“Gregory, would you do me a favor?”
Donald was staring through Hwan, weeping again.
“I need help with this case. Would you come with me?”
Donald looked at him. “I want to stay with Soonji.”
“Gregory-”
“I love her. She … needs me.”
“No,” Hwan said softly. “You can do nothing for her.” He turned Donald around and pointed to the theater a block away. “You don’t belong there, you belong with those of us you can help. Come with me. Help me to find the people who did this.”
Donald blinked several times, then absently patted his pockets. Hwan reached into Donald’s pocket.
“Is this what you want?” he asked, handing him his pipe.
Donald took it, his movements awkward and halting, and Hwan helped him put it in his mouth. When he didn’t reach for his tobacco, Hwan took him by the elbow and walked him away, through the settling dust and increasing activity in the square.
TWELVE
Tuesday, 5:15 A.M., the White House
The White House Situation Room was located on the first sublevel, directly below the Oval Office. There was a long, rectangular mahogany table in the center of the brightly lit room; there was a STU-3 and a computer monitor at each station, with slide-out keyboards underneath. Like all government computers, the computer setup was self-contained; software from outside, even from the Department of Defense or State Department, was debugged before it was allowed into the system.
On the walls were detailed maps showing the location of U.S. and foreign troops, as well as flags denoting trouble spots: red for ongoing and green for latent. There was already a red flag in Seoul.