Ian Slater - WW III

Chin had been ordered to proceed on what he was told would be the most important mission of his career. He was flown out of Seoul by one of the few remaining helicopters to Pusan and then to Tokyo. The Apache chopper ferrying him across the Sea of Japan barely made it, being mistaken for a split second by an F-15 out of Japan for a Soviet Mi-28 Havoc, the ROK pilot ferrying Chin frantically firing off packs of flares lest the heat-seeking missile be fired by the Americans by mistake.

From Pusan, Chin had flown to Tokyo. The immaculate khaki-uniformed and white-gloved Japanese police were out in force at Narita, the airport having become a target once again for the Japanese Red Guard terrorist faction, who, encouraged by North Korea’s bold move, were now issuing more than their usual weekly number of bomb threats.

The sight of the Japanese police was at once reassuring to Chin and disturbing. In his grandfather’s day the Japanese had been the ever-present enemy, not only from across the East Sea but as occupying troops whom it had taken Korea over thirty-five years to evict; their loyalty to the emperor and their legendary cleanliness and cruelty were inextricably linked in Chin’s mind to all the images of childhood hatred. But now, as allies of the United States, Japan and the ROK were in the same boat, one that, as South Korea’s ashen-faced president told Chin, was rapidly sinking, doomed if the Americans could not stop the NKA. Washington, he confided in Chin, as if Chin were hearing it for the first time, had lost all stomach for another fight in Asia. After the humiliation of Vietnam, said the ROK president, the American public simply would not tolerate another Asian “adventure. “

Ninety minutes after he had left the president and was en route to Pusan, Chin heard that Seoul had fallen. The shock of it caused him to walk about Narita’s crowded rotunda-shaped waiting tower all but oblivious to what was going on around him. No one seemed to be talking about it, most of the passengers Canadians, Americans, and Australians on stopovers out of Shanghai and Communist Hong Kong. Didn’t they realize what was happening? If Korea went, the Western world would not have a single foothold on mainland Asia.

Chin sat down, listening carefully to the public address system, worried he might have missed the first call for his flight to Europe. Everything was strange: the disinfectantlike odor of the waiting room, the buzz of tourists preoccupied, like him, with the TV arrival and departure monitors, the fresh fruit juice counters, the doll-like complexion of the young girls in white behind the counters — above all, the absence of familiar smells. Nothing was familiar, nothing reassuring.

“Heard about Seoul, mate?” he heard an Australian asking a friend. It reminded him of the old beer ads by Crocodile Dundee.

“Nah,” said the other Australian. “Last I heard, the Commies’d surrounded it.”

“Surrounded it? They’ve taken it, mate. Lock, stock, and barrel. Yanks threw in the towel — hour or so ago.”

“What? The whole shebang?”

“Not yet. Only Seoul so far. But it’s just a matter of time, I reckon.” The Australian made a joke about the South Koreans having four gears in their tanks, one forward, three for reverse. The other Aussie indicated Chin sitting near him, the Korean Airlines bag at his feet, its loop handle around one ankle.

“Sorry, mate,” said the Australian to Chin. “Me and my bloody big mouth. Just skylarkin’, sport.”

“Skylarking?” Chin had never heard the expression before, but it was an old joke, usually made by Americans about the ROK. It hurt. And though the two Australians had no way of knowing it, in Chin’s mind their comments had confirmed the necessity of his mission. Even if the U.S. reserves from Japan arrived, they were not battle-tried. They might not even be able to land their convoy if blocked or otherwise engaged by the Soviet Eastern Fleet steaming south, or if they were attacked by one of the NKA’s diesel submarines. President Rah had been right — if the Republic of Korea was to be saved from communism, from utter defeat, drastic actions were called for.

The announcement came over the PA for the Lufthansa flight to West Berlin. It was surprisingly clear-voiced, unencumbered by the usual hollow echoes of most other airports he’d been in, and Chin took it as a good sign.

Aboard the plane Chin waited till takeoff, watching the passengers watching the cabin attendants watching the video of what to do in an emergency. He knew what to do — it was getting there that would be the problem. They had a safe house in Kreuzberg, three miles south of the old Reichstag and two miles southeast of the Church of Reconciliation. Reconciliation. Normally it would have elicited a wry comment from him to Lee Sok Jo. But Lee Sok Jo was dead, and besides, Chin was too tired.

Before the movie, in which a gray-haired Tom Cruise was playing a dignified old general, forced out of office for opposition to a new space-decked beam weapon, Chin went to the toilet and unbuttoned his shirt, taking a sheaf of deutsch marks from the money belt. They didn’t want him to use any traveler’s checks, and signatures that either the West or East German intelligence services could trace. One of the deutsch marks had been torn in half; the meet in Berlin would take place only when the other half of the bank note was received by Chin. The fact that the note had been hastily torn, ripped rather than neatly cut with scissors, was only a minor detail and made do difference to Chin, but the tear spoke volumes in terms of the urgency with which the operation had been set in place. It was, thought Chin, as if the person in the Chungang Chongbo-bu who had torn the deutsch mark had done it with trembling hands.

When he returned to his seat, Chin sat back and tried to watch the movie. People were laughing, but Chin couldn’t hear it properly, the earphones crackling. Besides, his sinuses were acting up again. He pulled out his Dristan bottle and took a sniff. At thirty-five thousand feet the sinuses cleared, but he knew from his previous trips abroad that the trouble would start as soon as they began to descend, the pain like a red-hot needle being pushed through the bone directly above the bridge of your nose.

The thing that worried him most was that the success of the NKA’s special forces sabotage meant that the NKA network had been extensive and well trained, so that it was naive for him to think that Pusan, a major gateway to the West, had not been carefully watched by NKA operatives. The question was, had they had time to make him and/or follow him onto the same flight?

He looked around. The plane seemed full, and they would have had to bump someone or buy out someone else’s ticket to get space on such short notice. Of course, it wasn’t essential that they start at this end; they could merely fax instructions through to Berlin and follow him out from Tempelhof. If it was someone on the plane, it would be someone, Chin thought, very much like him, no luggage to declare so as not to be delayed in customs. They’d be carrying an overnight bag — maybe a camera. Touristy-looking.

Colonel Douglas Freeman dreamed of war. The thought of commanding vast armies on a European front as battle moved back and forth across the surface of the earth so filled his imagination, the scenes of glory that visited him so powerful, that at times he couldn’t sleep. Then, walking quietly down to the main floor of his house, or rather the army’s house, which overlooked Monterey Beach, he would stare out into the darkness of the sea, beyond the line of fluorescent waves, at once convinced that his destiny was nowhere near fulfilled yet anxious as to what form it might take and when. In his basement den, TV earpiece in so as not to disturb his wife, Doreen, sleeping above, Freeman would replay the videos of all the wars; from the reconstructed sites of the Peloponnesian War to videos of Victory at Sea, the Great War, the long-lost battles of Indochina, and the most recently released footage from Britain’s war office of the Communist insurgency in Malaysia and the Falklands War. Everyone else who Freeman knew in the Armored Corps was busily writing tanks off, the debacle of the M-Is in the Uijongbu corridor supporting them. But Freeman believed the problem was not the team but the tactics. They were still fighting World War II; that was the trouble. The hardest thing, he knew, as did Guderian, Liddell Hart, and Patton, was to get a man to change his habit. Simple things — ask someone who loves coffee to drink water, a smoker to quit, to move anyone out of a mode that, for all its inconveniences and ill side effects, he’s grown familiar with, and you might as well talk to a rock. And after forty forget it. Freeman knew colonels no older than he was at fifty-five who, finding themselves in a crowded field for promotion, had simply stopped trying, accepting that colonel was as far as they’d go. Freeman wanted to “break out.”