The Eleventh Hour td-70 Read online

  "I did."

  "No, you did not. But MacCleary knew. He knew of the legends. He understood. I should have trained him."

  "You don't believe that, Little Father. Too much has gone on between us."

  "Too much for me to understand your ingratitude. You think that Sinanju is just killing? Just fun, fun, fun? How typically white to eat of the fruit and neglect to return the seeds to soil so that others might enjoy the goodness of it in a later season. One grandson. It is all I ask. Is that too much? Even Nuihc would have given me that."

  "We got him, though, didn't we?"

  "And soon I will join him, unhonored, without assurance that my line will continue."

  "Let's talk about it later," Remo said. "Would you like some rice?"

  "I am too shamed to eat."

  "I'm going to make some anyway," Remo said pleasantly.

  "I would choke on the grains."

  "White or brown?" asked Remo.

  "Brown. I have sworn off all white things," said Chiun, and closed his eyes again.

  Captain Lee Enright Leahy had made the run from San Diego to Sinanju harbor every November for more than a dozen years. He had once kept a log of every trip in his personal diary in case the truth behind his missions ever came out and he had the chance to write his memoirs. But after his wife had pointed out that Captain Leahy had somehow aged ten years each November, he stopped counting. He didn't want to know. He was only fifty-five, but he looked seventy.

  But who wouldn't look seventy, if once a year he had to command the United States submarine Darter on a suicide mission? It might have helped Captain Leahy's peace of mind if someone had told him what it was all about. But no one ever did. In the early days, Leahy had assumed it was a CIA operation. Then after the Congress had reined in the CIA in the mid-1974's, the operation continued undisturbed. In fact, it had loosened up. The Darter no longer had to run across the Pacific at flank bell speed and take all kinds of evasive action off the coast of China to reach the Yellow Sea. The fix was in, Captain Leahy knew. That made it an NSC operation. Had to be. Only the cowboys at the National Security Council could pull off something this big once a year like clockwork.

  But it was crazier this year. The Darter was being refitted for the mission when emergency orders came in: ship out a week early. It was an impossible order. But the cargo was loaded and ready. All Captain Leahy had to do was recall the crew, who were scattered to the four winds. Captain Leahy had never seen such a mobilization. He would have thought World War III was about to break out. Instead, two civilians were airlifted to the sub under cover of darkness. A Caucasian and an elderly Korean. Leahy assumed the old one was Korean. They were bound for Korea, weren't they? Leahy had seen them both before. He had ferried them to North Korea before. Whoever they were, they were VIP's with two V's-Very, Very Important People.

  On this run, as on the previous crossings, the pair stayed in their stateroom. They even cooked their own food there. Captain Leahy had once sent them a couple of London-broil steaks from his personal larder. The steaks were found in the trash-disposal unit on the leg home. Were they afraid of being poisoned? Entering Control, Captain Leahy wondered, for the thousandth time, who they were. His wildest imaginings didn't even come close to the truth. "We've reached Point Sierra, sir," the executive officer told him, giving the code name for their destination. It snapped him out of his glassy-eyed reverie. "Captain of the Watch, rig controls for black and prepare to surface," Captain Leahy barked.

  "Aye aye, sir."

  The scarlet illumination lights in the control room winked out. Only the eerie glow of the control indicators shone.

  The Darter broke surface two miles off the North Korean coast. The Yellow Sea was cold, gray, and running high. It always ran high at this time of year, which was probably the reason the dropoff was always in November.

  "Pop hatches," he said, getting ready to climb out on deck. "Get the rafts ready."

  Dressed in oils, Captain Leahy stood on the icy upper deck trying to keep his teeth from chattering. Cold waves crashed against the conning sail, sending needles of spray into the air.

  It had been years since Leahy had to land the gold in the rocky Korean harbor by frogmen. Now they let him surface off the North Korean coast and land the cargo by rubber raft. NSC for sure, he said to himself. The fix was in. But the knowledge didn't relieve his peace of mind one whit. He remembered what had happened to the crew of the Pueblo so many years ago, when they had been captured in North Korean waters.

  Captain Leahy scanned the distant shore with his binoculars. The horizon was a broken line of rocks. But he was looking for two rocks in particular, the formation that his original orders called the Horns of Welcome.

  When Captain Leahy spotted the Horns of Welcome, he sent word below.

  "Tell the passengers we're here."

  "Where?" asked his officer of the deck, who was new to this operation.

  "Don't ask. I looked at a map of North Korea once. I think we're off the shore of a place called Sinanju."

  "What is it?"

  "Sinanju. That's all I was able to learn."

  "Tells you a lot."

  "It's more than we should know."

  Two sailors brought the old Korean up the weapons-shipping hatch in a strap-in stretcher. Once topside, they undid the webbing restraints and transferred him to a wicker wheelchair. The Caucasian issued the orders.

  "Be careful with him."

  The old Korean looked like a pale wrinkled mummy, as if he were near death. But when one of the sailors carrying the cargo-five crates of gold ingots-tripped over his own feet and dropped one crate, the old man's long-nailed hand seemed to drift out and lightly touch the offending crewman's right elbow.

  "Be careful with that, white!" the Korean hissed. The sailor grabbed his elbow and went into a dance like a man who had stuck his tongue into a wall socket.

  The crewman had to be replaced while the crates were loaded onto five collapsible motor dinghies, each manned by one sailor.

  Next came the fourteen lacquered steamer trunks. They were loaded into rubber rafts, one for each trunk.

  Finally, the Oriental was gently set in another raft, and the Caucasian got in with him.

  "My God, this looks like a beach-assault operation," the officer of the deck groaned. "What happens if a North Korean destroyer stumbles across us?"

  "It happened once, two years ago," Captain Leahy said grimly.

  "Oh? What happened?"

  "They hung around long enough to identify us as American. Then they came about and ran."

  "They had us dead to rights and they ran?"

  "No. They had us dead to rights and dead in the water. We were sitting ducks. That's when they ran."

  "My God, what kind of operation is this?"

  "I don't know, but my guess is we're making some kind of history here."

  "I hope I live long enough to read about it," the officer of the deck whispered.

  "Me too," Captain Leahy said fervently. He watched the progress of the rafts through his binoculars. Half the time they were invisible in the choppy seas. He waited. It was a bad place to wait.

  When the boats at last returned, empty, the leader of the landing party climbed aboard.

  "Mission accomplished, sir!" he said, saluting.

  "Excellent. Now let's get the hell out of this place."

  "Until next year, anyway," the officer of the deck said.

  "Shut up, mister," Captain Lee Enright Leahy snapped. "You may be here next year, but I won't. They've got me up for early retirement. I just hope I have enough good years left in me to enjoy them."

  Chapter 7

  The package arrived in the office of the General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at ten-thirty in the morning. It was addressed to the General Secretary personally and carried the following warning, in letters of the Cyrillic alphabet: "FOR THE EYES OF THE GENERAL SECRETARY ONLY. IMPORTANT SECRET ENCLOSED.

  Mysterious pack
ages did not often come to the Kremlin's bustling mailroom. The package was immediately placed in a lead-lined bucket and sent by dumbwaiter-a relic from czarist days-to a basement bunker.

  There, a team of explosives-disposal experts placed it under a fluoroscope. The X ray revealed the ghostly outlines of a rectangular box containing what appeared to be two coils. That was enough for them to bring in the dogs.

  They sent in the German shepherds, specially trained to scent explosives. While the dogs sniffed the package, their trainers hunkered down behind a five-foot-thick concrete buttress.

  When, after five minutes, the dogs did not howl, the experts emerged timorously, shedding their protective outfits.

  "It appears to be harmless," muttered the head of the team.

  "What if you are wrong?" asked the second member of the team.

  "Then we will be wrong."

  "You will sign the certificate of safety then, comrade."

  "Then I alone will get the credit."

  "I will sign the certificate also," said the third member of the team, who was in charge of the dogs. They all signed the certificate and the package was run up the dumbwaiter to the office of the General Secretary.

  The secretary to the General Secretary brought the package in to her superior.

  "I did not open it, Comrade General Secretary," she said.

  The General Secretary regarded the package. His high forehead wrinkled in perplexity, sending the wine-colored birthmark that rode high on his skull into convulsions. There was no return address on the outside of the package.

  "You did well. Now leave me."

  The General Secretary slit the edge of the package, which was of reinforced cardboard, with a letter opener and undid the end flap.

  Out popped a black video cassette wrapped in a copy of Izvestia. Within the page was a thick sheaf of pages, closely typed. There was also a note, handwritten.

  The note read: General Secretary,

  This tape contains information of global import. I beg you to watch it in solitude. Enclosed is a transcript of the person speaking on the tape, first in his native language, then in English, and again in Russian. The Russian transcript is mine. If you wish to speak to me on this serious matter, I am in the Military Ward of the Kremlin Clinic.

  Yours faithfully, Viktor Ditko, Colonel, Committee of State Security

  The General Secretary buzzed his personal secretary-"Do not disturb me for the next hour"-and went into the adjoining conference room where there was an American-made video cassette recorder. He watched the tape in deep silence, transcript in hand. When he was done, his face was two degrees paler. His cranial birthmark, by contrast, was livid. He grabbed for the intercom like an alcoholic.

  "I wish to know the status of a KGB colonel currently being treated at the Kremlin Clinic."

  The secretary came back with a verbal report: "Comrade General Secretary, Colonel Viktor Ditko is awaiting an eye operation, and is considered under arrest for possible dereliction of duty."

  "The specific charge?"

  "That he deliberately caused severe injury to his eye in order to avoid duty." The secretary wore a disapproving expression when she gave the report.

  "His station?"

  "Head of security, Soviet embassy, Pyongyang, People's Democratic Republic of Korea."

  "I will see him in this office, within the hour."

  "He has a history of shirking his responsibilities," the secretary added.

  "He will not shirk this appointment, I assure you."

  "As you wish, General Secretary."

  * * *

  Colonel Viktor Ditko smiled as he was ushered into the baroque office of the General Secretary. He looked pale. His uniform was not fully pressed. The General Secretary took his measure. Ditko appeared to be a dull, studious sort, not very personable in appearance, but there was a hint of cunning in his eyes. Or rather, in the one eye that was not covered by a black eyepatch. The rakish look that eyepatches normally give a man was undercut and made incongruous by the horn-rimmed glasses he wore.

  The General Secretary waved him to a chair without a word.

  "Thank you, Comrade General Secretary," said Colonel Ditko. He looked overimpressed by his surroundings. The General Secretary thought for a moment that he was going to do something stupid, like bowing from the waist.

  "I have watched the tape," the General Secretary said after a long pause.

  "It is important, da?"

  The General Secretary nodded. "It may be. Who has seen this tape aside from you?"

  "The person who recorded it. He also prepared the transcripts."

  "No one else?"

  "I swear. I understand its importance."

  "You came by this how?"

  And Colonel Viktor Ditko let the story spill out, the words tumbling from his prim mouth so swiftly they ran together and the General Secretary was forced to ask him to slow down.

  When it was over, Colonel Ditko said, "I knew I had to get this to you. I dared not send it by diplomatic pouch. I had to inflict an injury upon myself to facilitate my return. My superiors believe I was derelict in my duty. But of course, you know differently."

  The General Secretary dismissed the subject of Colonel Ditko's superiors with an impatient wave. "Your eye. What did the doctors say?"

  "Repair is possible. We have excellent eye surgeons in Moscow."

  "I will see that you get the best. What do you want from me?"

  "Sir?"

  "Your reward," asked the General Secretary.

  "A better post. One in Moscow."

  "You have something in mind?"

  Colonel Viktor Ditko hesitated, and the General Secretary began to suspect that the colonel was merely a clever fool. When Colonel Ditko forced the trembling answer out, the General Secretary knew he was a fool.

  "The Ninth Directorate. Possibly?"

  The General Secretary stifled a laugh. It came out as a explosive grunt and Colonel Ditko wondered if he'd overreached himself.

  The Ninth Directorate was responsible for guarding members of the Politburo. The General Secretary could not believe it. The man had risked his career and maimed himself to deliver a secret of such immense import that it promised to tip the balance of power between East and West, and he asked nothing more than to be appointed glorified bodyguard to the Politburo. The man could have had an appointment that would have led, in the course of a half-decent career, to a position on the Politburo itself. Here was a fool.

  But the General Secretary did not say that. Instead, he said, "It is possible. Where is the person who taped this?"

  "He is a prisoner in our Pyongyang embassy."

  "And he is half-Korean. Good. Do you think you can undertake an important mission for your country?"

  "At your service, Comrade General Secretary."

  "Return to Korea. Send this Sammy Kee back to Sinanju. Get more proof. Better proof. Any proof. Perhaps some of the records in Sinanju, especially any records having to do with America. Bring them to me. I will act on this when I know exactly what cards I am holding. I do not wish to be trumped."

  "I will return to Pyongyang directly," said Colonel Viktor Ditko as he got to his feet. "And I promise you success, Comrade General Secretary."

  "I expect no less," said the General Secretary dismissively.

  As he watched Colonel Viktor Ditko give a crisp salute and turn on his heel, the General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics wondered where in the Ninth Directorate he could bury this fool of a career colonel. He was too much a buffoon to trust with guarding anyone of importance. Perhaps he would assign him to one of his political rivals.

  Sammy Kee was more frightened than he'd ever been.

  He huddled in a corner of the interrogation room in the basement of the Russian embassy in Pyongyang and breathed through his mouth to keep the stench out of his nostrils. Sometimes he retched. Only by sticking his mouth and nose down into his peasant blouse could he stop the gagging reflex caused by
the odor emanating from the big wooden bowl in the far corner.

  It had been four days since Colonel Viktor Ditko had locked the door on Sammy Kee. Ditko had said he would be gone only three days. Had something happened? Had Ditko gotten into an accident while driving to the airport? Had his plane crashed? A thousand possibilities ran through Sammy Kee's frightened mind.

  Sammy Kee didn't know what to do. He was out of canned food. There was no more water. The room was empty except for the plain table and two old hardwood chairs. He wondered if it was possible to chew wood so that it was digestible. He had never believed a Russian could be so cruel. He wanted to write Peter, Paul, and Mary to tell them.

  Heavy footsteps sounded outside the door, and Sammy's heart leapt at the sound. He crawled to the door, as he had at every noise for three days, and pressed his ear to the panel. But no scrape of a key in the lock came. No rattle of a doorknob. Sammy wanted to cry out for someone, anyone. But he didn't. He never did. He wanted to live. More than anything, he wanted to live.

  And he knew that, in his position, Colonel Viktor Ditko meant life itself.

  As if it would help his predicament, Sammy Kee cursed the day he heard the name of Sinanju. He cursed his grandfather, but he knew it was not his grandfather's fault. His grandfather had been an old broken man. One who should have stayed in Korea. Maybe all of Sammy Kee's family should have stayed in Korea. He cried when he thought of that.

  Maybe it would be better in Moscow, Sammy Kee thought. He toyed with the idea, even though deep in his heart he doubted he would ever leave Korea alive. But the human spirit is an unconquerable thing. And so Sammy imagined what it would be like to drink in the bitter cold air of Red Square, to shop at the big Moscow department store, GUM. Or maybe they would let him shop at the Intourist stores, where he could get Western goods at cheaper prices. And then Sammy thought again of San Francisco, and he broke down.

  He was still crying when someone rattled the doorknob. The door lock turned. And before Sammy Kee could even begin to register hope or fear, Colonel Viktor Ditko stood in the room, regarding him with a single cold eye.

  "Uggh!" Colonel Ditko said, reacting to the wafting stench. "Out, quickly."