From the Fatherland, with Love, page 63
The meeting in the lobby must have ended, because Pak and Jo now came into the hall. Jo was steadily gaining a large fan base with his regular TV appearances. A senior officer asked him something as he came in and was told, “I’m going to NHK Fukuoka this morning to prepare for the afternoon broadcast—I’ll be talking about the fleet’s arrival, so I have to be sure to get it right.” It was easy to see why this good-looking fellow was popular with women, but there was something about him that didn’t quite click with Chikako. It wasn’t just him, though—she felt the same way about all of them. She couldn’t put her finger on it at first, but eventually realized that it was a certain grubbiness they all shared, which must be the result of a more general poverty and ignorance. There was an unsophisticated feel to even the slightest thing they did.
The women never shaved their underarms or facial hair, while the men weren’t bothered if they smelled of sweat—in fact, they made it worse with a liberal use of cheap cologne. Chikako herself was from a provincial town on the border of Kumamoto Prefecture, and had grown up surrounded by people of similar personal habits. It had been when she came to live in Fukuoka City as a college student that she’d had her first taste of “culture”—in fashion, make-up, food, music. Even Jo and Pak had a touch of that grubbiness about them, and the others were worse. They also displayed an obedience that verged on servility, the flip side of which was a domineering attitude toward subordinates and a strong mistrust and dislike of outsiders. Looked at another way, of course, submissiveness might be regarded as sincerity and aggressiveness as strength, and mistrust and dislike of outsiders could also signal solidarity with your own group. How you thought about it depended on who you were.
The desks for seconded staff were next to the Logistics and Supplies section, diagonally across from Construction and Engineering. Her colleagues weren’t in yet. When Chikako had first come to the command center accompanied by seven other people from City Hall, she’d been so nervous her legs were shaking, and a petrified colleague had muttered, “This’ll be the end of me.” On arrival, however, they had been greeted by the entire body of KEF officers, lined up and applauding as they were handed bouquets of flowers. The commander himself had presented the bouquets. Of course, it was the kind of performance the North Koreans were so good at, but Chikako had been both relieved and impressed. At City Hall, new staff members were just made to line up and listen to a long sermon on how hard they were expected to work. After this enthusiastic, flower-filled reception, on the other hand, the eight of them had immediately felt motivated to make themselves useful.
Chikako had just arrived at her desk, taken her laptop out of her bag, and was opening up a file when Second Lieutenant Kim Hyang Mok came over and said good morning. She was younger than Chikako, and always very polite to her. She was small, with a sweet face, and this morning she was dressed in civilian clothes instead of the usual combat fatigues. Her suit was plain, with yellow pinstripes on a gray background, but it looked good on her. She was probably due to meet a local trader. That was the only time she was allowed to wear anything other than a uniform.
“I am going out for a little while later this afternoon,” she told Chikako, “so I hope it’s okay if I leave the list for canned-seafood purchases until this afternoon?” Chikako asked whether she was going to Hawks Town to negotiate with shops there, but Kim said she had to go to the Kyushu Medical Center. It seemed she’d been told to settle the bill for treatment of the soldier wounded in the attack that had led to the public execution. It had nothing to do with food or clothing supplies, but Kim was responsible for all payments in yen. “No problem. It’s just a matter of delaying the calls to the canned-food suppliers,” said Chikako. “Thank you,” said Kim, bobbing her head before returning to her desk.
Chikako looked at her watch. Ten-forty already. It looked as if the whole morning would be taken up with calls to contractors and City Hall. The mayor was out making arrangements to welcome the North Korean fleet, delaying the response from the finance department even further. First thing in the morning a call had come from the contractor laying the pipes for water, sewage, and electricity at the temporary accommodation. He wanted to know when they would receive the payment for materials. The work to make the elementary school and housing complex in Odo habitable had been contracted between local businesses and City Hall—in other words, it was being treated as a public-works project to be funded by the KEF. Chikako had initially thought she could check the payment dates by herself, but there were twenty-six contractors involved, with work being carried out at over three hundred points, and for each of these there were almost twenty documents, from estimates to orders and provisional contracts. These all needed further checking by the KEF, which meant they had to be translated into Korean. Her computer was already cluttered with purchase agreements on supplies of clothing, medicine, and food, as well as provisional contracts for the disposal of sewage and garbage. She was struggling to keep track of everything.
While she was waiting for a search to be completed of City Hall’s database for the provisional contracts for laying pipes, Chikako got together the documents related to the quarantine inspection and health check of the hundred and twenty thousand people due to arrive at Hakata Port, and cast her eyes over the draft of a contract with a company to provide buses to transfer them all to Odo. Of course her colleagues were helping her, but Mizuki had specifically told her to be sure to personally check everything that involved financial transactions, and so she couldn’t cut corners.
Whenever the mayor was out, liaison with City Hall broke down. Relations between the general staff and those on secondment were becoming increasingly strained. When she grumbled about this to Mizuki, he told her to grin and bear it, and that’s what she tried to do. Many of the City Hall people disliked and feared the KEF, and there was also some jealousy toward the seconded staff, but the biggest problem was simply that there wasn’t enough time to do everything. A city works project would normally take from three to four years from the initial survey to completion. The initial survey alone could take up to a year, after which a preliminary design was drawn up, along with projected costs for inclusion in the next year’s budget.
This whole process had been skipped in the case of projects for the KEF. The size of the budget had not been specified, and there had been no time to submit it to the council. The very nature of city public works was that there could be no exceptions, and it had never occurred to her before that it was possible for someone like her, a mere manager, to bypass the section and department heads and discuss things directly with the mayor. Her first job for the KEF had been to negotiate with Japan Tobacco Fukuoka to scrape together a truckload of Seven Stars, and she had persuaded the mayor to arrange things with the finance department head. They had agreed, albeit with barely disguised displeasure.
Jo Su Ryeon had changed out of his uniform and was leaving the hall, no doubt on his way to the NHK studio, just as the strikingly tall Major Kim Hak Su came in. The other officers saluted nervously. The major strolled over to Commander Han’s desk by the wall, and the two began discussing something, their faces close together. A tense mood descended over the room with Kim’s mere appearance, as if everyone had suddenly become acutely aware of the fragility of life. Feeling shaken herself, Chikako remembered what she’d heard from the restaurateur’s wife. She had to talk to Mizuki about that. She decided to call his cellphone. Just the thought of hearing his voice again was enough to bring a smile to her lips. She tried to avoid phoning him unnecessarily, not wanting to presume on his kindness. She gazed at the huge tapestry of the Mongolian invasions of Japan covering one wall of the hall as she listened to his phone ringing. Suddenly a woman’s voice echoed in her ear. “Hello? Mizuki’s cellphone here.” Chikako almost dropped the receiver. “This is Onoe from the construction department,” she said, conscious of a quaver in her voice. “Thank you for calling. He’s in bed with flu right now, although he told me he would take any urgent calls.” The woman must be his wife. “No, it’s not urgent,” Chikako told her, and hung up.
Her heart was beating so fast that her chest hurt. Her colleagues were staring at her with puzzled looks. The color must have drained from her face. It was the first time she’d ever heard his wife’s voice. Of course she’d known he was married, but still it had disturbed her as surely as a stone sends ripples across a stretch of still water. She had not been to bed with Mizuki. They’d never even sung a karaoke duet together, let alone kissed. She had strictly forbidden herself from doing anything like that. So how come she’d been so flustered just at the sound of his wife’s voice? Was she that fond of him? She began to feel annoyed with him for being in bed with flu at a time like this and, even worse, getting his wife to answer his phone for him. Her irritation brought up a lot of negative thoughts. Why had she really been chosen for secondment? All the seconded workers were senior staff in their thirties—nobody from management. It wasn’t because they were especially capable that they’d been chosen; it was simply because sending management-class employees would have created more problems than it solved. Now that this had occurred to her, she was sure of it. It was a humiliating realization, and tears welled up in her eyes.
“Onoe-san, what’s up?” asked one of her colleagues from City Hall. Partly to stave off the tears, she blurted out the story she’d heard from the restaurant owner’s wife. “It’s not a rerun of Ohori Park, is it?” he said, blithely referring to the possibility of the government again secretly sending in an SAT team. The very thought sent shudders through Chikako. It’s no joke, she thought. If she were to die, Kenta and Risako would be orphaned. After looking around the room for a few moments, she mustered up the courage to approach Kim Hak Su.
He had finished his talk with the commander, and was now leaning against the desk smoking a cigarette. She stopped a meter away, and greeted him in polite Korean: “Annyeong hashimnikka.” He blew out some smoke, enjoying the Seven Star, and nodded slightly, his face expressionless. Come to think of it, it was the first time she’d ever spoken to him. She had always observed him from a distance, intimidated by his aura of brutality. Seeing him close up, her fear of him only increased. The skin from the corner of his right eye up to the temple was puckered in a deep, narrow scar. How on earth could you get a scar like that? She was wondering how to say “motorcycle gang” in Korean, when he told her she could speak in Japanese if she liked. His voice seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him.
“Last weekend… a motorcycle gang member… told his family… that he had helped… a suspicious group… sneak into this hotel,” she said, enunciating the words clearly. “What was the gang member’s name?” he asked. “I don’t know.” If she said his name, he’d probably be arrested. “I just heard a rumor,” she said. “Where did you hear it?” Kim demanded. “In the supermarket near my apartment,” she lied. “I overheard one of the customers talking about it.”
The commander had also been listening to this conversation, cocking his head as if wondering what to make of it. Then he said something in Korean and Kim shouted “Ne!” and saluted. The commander had been speaking too fast for Chikako to understand, but she thought she caught the words for “arrest,” and “attack.” “Thank you for the information,” Kim told her. “We’ll take care of it,” he added by way of dismissal. Then he picked up the phone and barked, “Send the 2nd Platoon to the hotel immediately!” He listened for a moment, and then yelled, “Fully armed, you idiot! Have them conduct a complete search of the hotel, starting from the top floor!”
Chikako went back to her desk. It occurred to her that what she’d just done amounted to tattling, like a child in elementary school telling the teacher, “That boy was cheating—I saw him!” If the people the Speed Tribe had smuggled in were a commando unit from the Japanese police or SDF, it would mean she’d just sold out some of her own countrymen—heroes come to confront an occupying army, no less. Perhaps the government thought that if they warned anyone locally, the information would leak out and the plan would fail again, as it had in Ohori Park. The country had a duty to protect its people, but that hadn’t happened here in Fukuoka. On the contrary, they’d been cut off. Did a country like that deserve one’s loyalty? Maybe they were planning to destroy the hotel to save the rest of the country. But just as happened in Ohori Park, lots of local people would be sacrificed—and if she herself was one of them, her kids would be left motherless.
Until a week ago, Chikako had just been one of the general public. A sudden change in circumstances meant that she’d now been relegated to a minority—it could happen to anybody at any time. The government knew nothing about a thirty-eight-year-old City Hall staff member with two children currently on secondment to the KEF, and why should they? She went back to her desk and ran her eyes over the documents lying on it, but the word “tattletale” kept weighing down on her. She reminded herself of Kenta’s soft cheeks and tried to imagine touching them, but somehow the image of Kim Hak Su’s thin, deep scar interfered.
11
PRECIOUS MOMENTS
April 11, 2011
HINO ADJUSTED HIS GRIP on the electric cutter. The vibration of the tool made his hands and arms go numb, and he had to concentrate to maintain the correct pressure. He’d been stripping veneer from columns for about ten hours now, but it felt more like thirty. Sweat dripped from his forehead down the edges of his safety goggles, and his leather gloves were sodden on the inside and would need to be changed again soon. He’d taken a number of short breaks while Shinohara or Tateno or Ando tried using the cutter, but they didn’t know the tool like he did, and he always had to jump back in after a few minutes to keep up the pace. When Hino’s team lost time, the whole operation bottlenecked. Takeguchi’s team was close behind them, setting the linear shaped charges. They attached a little styrofoam platform to each newly exposed steel surface, taped an LSC to the platform, then inserted an electric blasting cap and connected it to the detonator.
The columns were about two and a half meters from floor to ceiling, and each had to be cut at an angle in two places in order to blow out the middle fifty centimeters. It was necessary to remove a ten-centimeter-wide strip of veneer from each column surface before attaching the LSC. Hino drew cut lines with a felt pen, then made the cuts with the blade set to a depth of five millimeters. Shinohara used a hammer, chisel, and crowbar to remove the veneer between the cuts and expose the bare steel. At first Takeguchi had been drawing the cut lines, but after a few dozen columns Hino knew the proper height and angle without measuring and began doing it himself. The mark on the front of each column was parallel to the floor, but those on the sides had to be at forty-five degree angles and were trickier. The cuts on the lower half of the columns angled up and those on the upper part angled down. To make these he had to sit on the floor, bending to one side, or lean precariously from a stepladder. With the blade ripping through the stuff at sixty revolutions per second, dust billowed about him and particles and fibers clung to his sweaty skin.
They were just finishing up the column in Room 8033. Hino had already completed seventy-one columns and would have only eight to go after this one. All the rooms here on the eighth floor were regular guest rooms with large windows, and they had to take care not to be seen from outside as they worked. The ten columns to be severed on this floor were along the starboard wall, which faced the Dome. From the windows they could see Koryo sentries outside the stadium—three of them, standing about thirty meters apart. The curtains were opened a mere slit to allow Tateno to watch them with the binoculars.
The operation had begun on the fifth floor, where they had placed charges on all forty columns. There were no guest rooms on that floor but several restaurants, including a tea room for members of the fitness club. The columns there didn’t have any cloth coverings, and a blade depth of three millimeters had been sufficient for the thin veneer, so Hino’s job had been relatively easy. Windows had been fewer there as well, so that the sentries outside the Dome were less of an issue. But for Takeguchi’s wiring team, which included Yamada, Mori, and all five Satanists, the fifth floor had been challenging.
Each of the eight LSCs attached to a column had to be connected to the detonation device, which was of a type known as an exploder or “hell-box.” Takeguchi was laying out the wiring in such a way that even if one section was cut, the rest of the explosives could still be triggered. From the blasting cap embedded in each load of RDX there extended two wires coated in red vinyl—one positive and one negative. “These are called the detonator wires,” Takeguchi had instructed his team. “The two cables coming from the hell-box are called buses, and the wires that connect the detonator wires to the buses are called auxiliary busbars. The three types of wires are of different thickness and colors, as you can see. The detonator wires are red, the buses yellow, and the auxiliary busbars blue.”
He said they would employ both series and parallel circuits, and delivered a brief overview of the wiring diagram. “For our purposes, once the bus from the positive terminal of the hell-box is connected to the auxiliary busbar, we’ll call that the positive bus. We connect the positive detonator wire from LSC number one to the positive bus. Then we connect the negative detonator wire from LSC number 320 to the negative bus. From there, we just connect the negative detonator wire from LSC number one to the negative bus; the positive detonator wire from LSC number 320 to the positive bus; and so on. LSC number two and number 319, three and 318, positive detonator wire and positive bus, negative detonator wire and negative bus, we just connect them all serially.” He demonstrated the first two connections, taking questions and stressing the importance of getting the terminology right. “The terminology for explosives wasn’t chosen by scientists but developed by pyrotechnicians and professional blasters in the course of doing the actual work,” he said. “It’ll make things go a lot smoother if when you hear the words ‘auxiliary busbar,’ for example, you immediately picture the blue wire that connects the detonator wire to the bus.”
