Sea of Fire

Chapter Twenty-five

Shigeo Fujima was standing on the balcony of his apartment smoking a cigarette. The Japanese intelligence officer was tired and had come home early. He wanted to try to relax this weekend. Fujima had worked on several situations back to back. There was Chinese involvement in the attack on Vatican clergy in Botswana; increasing Chinese financial links with Taiwan; and the rapid growth of the Chinese space program, which was about to put a man into orbit. Chinese expansionism on earth, with a workforce of one billion people, was a direct threat to Japan and the entire Asian Rim. Especially with the Japanese economy so hard hit by the worldwide recession.

Fujima lived with his wife and two daughters in a spacious apartment near Yoyogi Park. They had been living here for nearly seven months. The elder Fujima daughter, Keiko, attended the International Trade and Industry Inspection Institute, which was just a five-minute walk from the apartment. Their younger daughter, ten-year-old Emiko, attended the Children's Play International School, which was a six-minute walk from the apartment. They were lucky to get the 2,000-square-foot, two-story place, though the Fujimas' good fortune came at a price. They lived here because the Japanese economy was in turmoil. A commercial photographer used to live here. When retail sales began to struggle, advertising was cut back. If agencies ran advertisements at all, they used text and computer-generated images rather than photographs. The photographer was evicted. The Fujimas moved in from an apartment that was half the size and nearly as expensive.

"These are sad times," he muttered to himself as he flicked his cigarette toward the street. They were difficult for the economy and they were barely manageable in areas of world security. He was lucky to be home this early. To be able to have dinner with his wife. To see the kids before they went to bed. Assuming Keiko got off the phone and Emiko unplugged herself from the computer, that is. He smiled as he turned back to the apartment. He could not really expect them to change their routine for him. Things were not as they were when he was a boy. If he had not gone to his father when he came home from his job as a train conductor, he would have been beaten with a strap.

"Maybe it's good to have things so predictable here," he thought aloud. His life at the office was anything but that.

Suddenly, Keiko came running from her room. Her long raven hair framed her vampire-pale face.

"Father, there's a man on my cell phone," the teenager said. "He wants to talk to you." She held out the purple phone.

"Someone called for me on your phone?" Fujima asked.

"Yes. He cut in while I was talking with Kenji. He said it's urgent. He sounds foreign," she added. "His Japanese is terrible."

Fujima took the phone and thanked her. He turned back to the balcony. "This is Fujima," he said.

"I'm sorry to call this number," said the voice on the other end. "It was the only one listed in the directory."

Keiko was right. The man's Japanese was awful. But the voice was familiar. "Who is this?" Fujima asked.

"It's Paul Hood at Op-Center," he said in English. "I'm sorry. I was using a god-awful translation program on the computer. My phonetic Japanese is not particularly good."

"Neither is your timing, Mr. Hood," Fujima said. "This call is extremely—"

"Unorthodox, I know," Hood said. "My apologies, Mr. Fujima. But we need to speak."

"I was just about to have dinner with my wife," Fujima told him. "And this is an unsecured line."

"I know that, Mr. Fujima," Hood replied. "So I hope you will understand when I tell you that materials are missing from your backyard. Materials that should have been left at the 130-5 site."

"I see," Fujima said. Hood was referring to radioactive waste. Suddenly, dinner did not seem so important. Fujima used his shoulder to hold the phone to his ear while he lit another cigarette. "Please go on, Mr. Hood," he said as he drew hard on it.

"We are looking for it with the help of Singapore and Australia," Hood went on. "But someone is watching us. They're using a Chinese satellite, and we don't believe it is the Chinese. We think it may be the traffickers. We need to know who might have access to that platform. I thought you might be able to get that information."

"I can tell you that right now," Fujima said. "South Korea conducts naval maneuvers in that region. North Korea has full access to three satellites in the region. The satellite you're interested in is called the Fong Sai."

"Who would run that operation for the North Koreans?" Hood asked.

Fujima heard his daughter yelling from behind. "Father, my phone! That man had the operator break in!"

Fujima covered the mouthpiece. "A moment, Keiko," he said. He returned to Hood. "The man you want is Colonel Kim Hwan of the North Korean Reconnaissance Bureau. He's a very low-profile fellow."

"Do you have any contact information for him?" Hood asked.

"We have his office telephone and E-mail," Fujima said. "I'm sure you have that on file."

"If not, I'll let you know," Hood said.

"Is there anything we can do?" Fujima asked.

"Not at the moment, thank you," Hood said. "We have people on the scene and more en route. If anything happens, we'll talk again."

"You had best use my home phone," Fujima said. He gave Hood the unpublished number. "It will help to keep peace here. You have a teenage daughter, as I recall."

"I do," Hood said. "Go and have your dinner. Again, I'm sorry to have interrupted."

"Not at all," Fujima said.

The intelligence officer clicked off the phone and returned it to his daughter. The young woman hit Redial and disappeared into her room. She closed the door with her foot. Fujima shook his head and ran a hand through his short black hair. It was damp with sweat. Anxiety never showed in his stoic expression, his dark eyes, his strong mouth. When he was worried, he perspired.

Fujima continued to smoke his second cigarette. He wondered whether he should go back to his office at Gaimusho, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He felt he should do some research into the 130-5 site. Perhaps get a schedule of the drop-offs, collect background data of the ships and their crews. But Op-Center was probably doing that already. It would be better if he rested tonight. That way he would be fresh for whatever happened the following week.

The slender thirty-five-year-old intelligence officer turned as his wife came from the kitchen. She told him that dinner would be ready in five minutes. He thanked her, winked, and said he would be in shortly. She smiled back. Then Fujima leaned on the railing and looked down at the street.

"What a world it is," he said.

Fujima's father would never have believed it. The nation that had dropped a pair of nuclear bombs on Japan was asking him for help to find missing nuclear material. And Fujima had given that aid. In the space of one generation, loyalties had shifted that dramatically. Yet that was not the most astonishing part. What was remarkable was that warlords and rogue groups could work in the shadows to create Hiroshima-level destruction. And not to end a war but to start one.

"What a world," Fujima said again.

For the moment, however, Fujima was going to leave the responsibility for it to someone else. Dinner and his wife were waiting. His daughters would join them.

He intended to enjoy them.

That, after all, was what he was fighting for.