The now easily disseminated mixture was delicately packed into a series of lightweight tubular containers resembling the insert to a roll of paper towels, which were then stacked on a gurney and transported out of the lab. The packaged viral amalgamate was rolled upstairs to the satellite payload assembly bay, where a team of mechanical engineers took over, inserting the tubes into larger stainless steel cylinders that encapsulated a hydrogenation tank and fittings. The process was repeated under bright floodlights several times over until five of the large cylinders were assembled and placed into large shipping crates. A forklift arrived and loaded the crates onto the same white Kang panel truck that had delivered the ordnance, now making a return trip to the covered dock with a highly revitalized form of the weapon.
Sarghov grinned in delight, knowing a large payday was coming his way. His exhausted team of scientists had met the mark, verifying that the ancient smallpox virus still packed a lethal punch, then boosting its strength to murderous proportions. In less than forty-eight hours, Sarghov's biologists had processed the sixty-year-old virus into an entirely new killer, the likes of which the world had never seen before.
What DO you mean the ship has yet to materialize?" Gunn rasped in dismay.
The section chief of the FBI's International Terrorism Operations, a compact man named Tyler, opened a file on his desk and perused the contents as he spoke.
“We've had no information on the whereabouts of the cable ship Baekje. The Japanese National Police Agency has been monitoring shipping traffic in every port in the country, physically checking every ship that remotely resembles the description offered by your NUMA crew. They've come up empty so far.”
“Have you checked ports outside of Japan?”
“An international notice has been posted with Interpol, and it is my understanding that the CIA has been asked to provide inputs at the request of the vice president. At this time, no confirming information has been received. There's a million places she could be hiding, Rudi, or she could have been scuttled herself.”
“What about satellite imagery of the site where Sea Rover was sunk?” “Bad timing there, unfortunately. With the recent flare-up of political tensions in Iran, the National Reconnaissance Office has repositioned several of its high-resolution imaging resources to the Middle East. The East China Sea is one of many dead spots right now that is only covered by periodic scans from non-geosynchronous satellites. Which all means that the Baekje could move five hundred miles between covering passes. I'm waiting for the historical images from the last few days but have been told not to be too hopeful.”
Gunn's anger softened as he realized that the slightly balding G-man in the starched white shirt was a competent professional doing the best with the resources he had available. “Any headway on the ship's history?” he asked.
“Your man Hiram Yaeger gave us a good head start on that one. Yaeger was the one who tentatively identified the ship as the Baekje, based on a worldwide review of ship registries through his NUMA computer bank. Apparently, there are less than forty known cable-laying ships of the size and configuration reported by your NUMA rescued crew. We narrowed the list down to twelve that were owned or leased in the Asia Pacific region and the Baekje came up missing in action.” The FBI man paused as he leafed through the folder before extracting a white sheet that carried the blurred markings of a fax copy across its header.
“Here we are, details of the vessel. Cable-laying ship Baekje, 445 feet long, gross tonnage of 9,500. Built by the Hyundai Mipo Dockyard Company, Ltd.” Ulsan, South Korea, in 1998. Owned and operated by Kang Shipping Enterprises, Inchon, South Korea, from 1998 to 2000. Since 2000, ship has been under lease to the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Tokyo, Japan, for cable-laying services in and around the Sea of Japan."
Setting the folder down, he stared straight into the eyes of Gunn. “NTT's operating lease expired six months ago, at which time the Baekje sat unutilized in a Yokohama dock. Two months ago, representatives from NTT renegotiated a one-year lease of the ship and took possession of the vessel with their own crew. Port records show she was unaccounted for during a five-week period, then appeared briefly back in Yokohama approximately three weeks ago. She was believed sighted in Osaka, where she apparently tailed the Sea Rover to the East China Sea.”
“Was the ship seized from NTT?”
“No. NTT officials were shocked to learn that their name was on a revised lease agreement for the vessel since their fiber-optic cable route had been completed. The NTT corporate representatives that leased the ship were, in fact, impostors who buffaloed the Kang Shipping agents. The Kang people produced the paperwork, everything looked legitimate to them, though one representative thought it odd at the time that the NTT people were providing their own crew, which they had not done in the past. The Kang Shipping people are apparently scrambling to file an insurance claim on the vessel now.”
“Sounds like there must have been some inside information somewhere. Any known links between the Japanese Red Army and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone?”
“None that we've established yet, but we're looking into it. NTT's executives are cooperating fully and seem eager to clear their name from a possible connection. Official corporate sponsorship looks unlikely, so the Japanese authorities are focusing on a possible employee faction somewhere within the company.”
Gunn shook his head discouragingly. “So we've got a four-hundred-foot ship that has vanished into thin air, a U.S. government vessel that has been sunk, and an empty list of suspects. Two of my people have been kidnapped, possibly murdered, and we have no idea where to even look for them.”
“We're frustrated, too, Rudi, but we'll get them eventually. Sometimes, these things just take time.”
Time, Gunn thought. Just how much time did Dirk and Summer still have, if any at all?
The hot shower felt delicious. Summer let the steaming water pelt her body for more than twenty minutes before finally willing herself to turn off the shower control knobs and reach for a towel. It had been nearly four days since her last bout with cleanliness, she mentally calculated, rerunning over in her mind the events of the last few days. Stepping from the marble-tiled shower, she dried herself with a fluffy towel, then wrapped the fabric around her body, tucking the loose end under an armpit. Before her stretched an immense marble counter with double sinks and gleaming gold fixtures set beneath an expansive beveled mirror that stretched to the high ceiling. You had to give these unsmiling thugs some credit, she thought. Someone around here has taste.
After an uncomfortable night's sleep in the motor yacht, where she and her brother took turns sleeping on the twin bed with their hands cuffed behind their back, a trio of armed guards marched them ashore in the morning. Peering at the massive residence perched on the stone bluff above them, Dirk remarked, “Kind of reminds you of the Berghof, doesn't it?” The stone structure with the commanding view over the Han River did bear a passing resemblance to Hitler's vacation lair in the German Alps. The image was made all the more complete with the surrounding array of black shirted henchmen.
Prodded to the rock-enveloped elevator, they rode up to an interior corridor level beneath the main quarters and were escorted to a pair of guest rooms In rough English, a guard barked, “Prepare for dining with Mr. Kang, two hour.”
While Summer showered, Dirk surveyed his plushly decorated adjoining room for a potential means of escape. The windowless rooms dug into the face of the cliff, the only entry or exit being the corridor hall, where two armed guards stood in front of each room's open door. If they were going to make an escape, it probably wasn't going to happen here, he figured.