Red Ice

Someone had tipped them off convincingly that there was an operation afoot. Japan didn’t want to awaken one chilly morning to find that it had been the springboard for a surprise attack against one of its neighbors. Japan had had a bad experience with surprise attacks. Its stance was no different from the United States’ squeamishness over Cuban refugee attacks launched from Florida against Cuba. The conventional diplomatic wisdom deplored such vulgar self-help. I felt the foul, self-serving presence of the Ackert hand in all this.

The next morning, Sato showed the talents that had earned him a Ginza letterhead. Immediately, with a flurry of accusations, he put the police on the defensive. Furthermore, it developed that he had considerable political clout with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His coup de grâce was suggesting deportation as a solution. That jewel of an alternative could save face for everyone.

“To where? Who would accept them? They’re bound to be the focus of an international incident wherever they go,” Horikawa stammered.

I waved Sato over for a whispering session. Then he turned to the two officials. “I believe the Republic of Korea would react favorably to a visit from a small anticommunist veterans group.”

The chief inspector looked bored, and Horikawa exasperated. Again I was led to my cell.

Twenty-four hours later, Sato—using the contacts I had suggested—secured our informal deportation from Japan. Horikawa told us in very strong terms that we would never again be granted visas in any sequence that would allow us to assemble in Japan as a group. When pressed, he did admit that as many as four of us could enter Japan during a given period without sanction. And of course, Matsuma maintained his Japanese citizenship. They couldn’t touch him.

It had been a close call, too close. Our schedule was thrown completely out of kilter. But Korea had been our next stop. What really disturbed me was the uneasy realization that someone—Ackert, perhaps—was determined to stop us and had upped the ante. Each passing day increased our vulnerability.

The walls of the police station seemed suffocatingly close… but never as close as the walls of a Soviet prison would be.

CHAPTER 17

The KCIA put us in isolation immediately upon our arrival in Korea. They quartered us in a hermetically sealed farm village on the eastern coast. For everyone but myself, there would be no further communication with the outside world until we returned from Siberia.

The village complex consisted of several tiled-roof, one-story structures surrounded by rice fields that gradually acquired, with distance, the energy to bunch up into a rugged mountain chain. Our new home had none of the resort charm of our Hokkaido quarters; it was clearly an often-used staging area whose buildings were nothing more than glorified barracks. Our common opinion might have been prejudiced by our lack of freedom. Korean soldiers carrying submachine guns waved at us whenever our maneuvers brought us near the fence that surrounded the village fields—but they carried submachine guns just the same. The mature, rational view was that they were protecting us from ourselves, but there was little comfort in it. Even the occasional evening movie—black and white, in Korean, with subtitles—heightened the dismal sense of isolation. At least our turncoat could not make contact with his parent agency.

Keiko delighted in being the only female among the eleven visitors. The troops adopted her wholeheartedly. She was easier on the eyes than any of them were, and she made the whole setup seem more routine.

Keiko was mesmerized by the Koreans. “Korean people eat with chopsticks,” she observed with great gravity one day.

“Well, what did you expect? Doesn’t everyone in the Orient?”

“I was always told they ate with their hands,” she responded confidentially.

The Japanese and the Koreans were Asia’s eternal Hat-fields and McCoys. Neither nation gave the other much credit. No Korean women ever entered the complex, and despite her growing respect for the Koreans, she was pleased.

Late the second evening, after a long day’s workout with the kayaks, two Mercedes trucks arrived with the equipment Heyer had requisitioned. I ordered everyone out into the crisp night air to unload the ordnance and equipment.

Chief Puckins led the working party, which sorted and stored the gear. “Now here we have,” Wickersham started to lecture in grandiose style, “one AK-47, with Chinese markings and a spike bayonet, sometimes called a Type-56 assault rifle. Designed by Kalashnikov, it is gas operated, and carries a thirty-round magazine….”

They broke open another box.

“And here is a Type 67 light machine gun, also Chicom. Well, well… gas operated, and belt fed with a range of eight hundred meters…. Now here’s a delight. A Dragunov SVD sniper rifle with both Chinese and Soviet markings and a convenient little four-power sight, integral range finder, and infrared night-sight accessories.