Black wind

him personally,” he said, placing a sinister emphasis on the word entertain.
    “Ah, yes, the two missing crew members from the NUMA ship.”
    “Missing crew members?”
    Kwan stepped forward and thrust a news story gleaned from the Internet into Tongju’s hands.
    “It is all over the news,” Kwan said. “Research vessel sunk in East China Sea; all but two saved,” he quoted from a headline in Chosun I/bo, Korea’s largest newspaper.
    Tongju’s face went pale but he didn’t move a muscle. “That is impossible. We sank the vessel with the crew sealed in a storage hold. They could not have all escaped.”
    “Escape they did,” Kang said. “A passing freighter picked up the crew and took them to Japan. Did you not watch the ship go under?”
    Tongju shook his head. “We were anxious to return with the salvaged material at the earliest possible moment,” he said quietly.
    “It is being reported that the ship suffered an accidental fire on board. Apparently, the Americans are afraid of publicizing yet another terrorist incident,” Kwan said.
    “As well as revealing the true nature of their presence in the East China Sea,” Kang added. “Perhaps the lack of media reporting will temper their investigation into the incident.”
    “I am confident that we maintained our false identity. My assault team was of mixed ethnicity and only English or Japanese was spoken while on the American ship,” Tongju replied.
    “Perhaps your failure to dispose of the crew was not a bad thing,” Kang stated with a slight glare. “It will further embarrass the Japanese and keep the American intelligence effort focused on Japan. They will, of course, be searching for the Baekje. The sooner she can be put back to sea, the better.”
    “I will provide a continuous update from the shipyard,” Tongju replied. “And the two Americans?”
    Kang perused a leather-bound schedule book. “I am traveling to Seoul for an engagement with the minister of unification this evening and shall return tomorrow. Keep them alive until then.”
    “I shall give them a last supper,” Tongju replied without humor.
    Kang ignored the comment and stuck his nose back into a stack of financial documents. Taking the clue, the assassin turned and departed Kang’s office without making a sound.
    A half mile from the Inchon enclosed dock where Baekje was undergoing its cosmetic refit, two men in a dingy pickup truck slowly circled a nondescript shipyard building. Empty pallets and rusting flatbed carriers littered the grounds around the windowless structure, which was marked by a faded kang shipping company sign perched over the main entrance. Dressed in worn coveralls and grease-stained baseball caps, the two men were part of a heavily armed undercover security team numbering two dozen strong who patrolled the supersecret facility around the clock. The dilapidated exterior of the building hid a high-tech engineering development center filled with the latest super computing technology. The main and upper floors were dedicated to developing satellite payloads for Kang’s satellite communications business. A small team of crack engineers worked to incorporate concealed eavesdropping and reconnaissance capabilities into conventional telecommunication satellites that were sold for export and launched by other regional governments or commercial companies. Hidden in the basement, and heavily guarded, was a small microbiology laboratory whose very existence was known by only a handful of Kang employees. The small cadre of scientists who worked in the lab had mostly been smuggled in from North Korea. With their families still living in the northern provinces, and forceful patriotic mandates placed upon them, the microbiologists and immunologists had little choice in accepting the nature of their work with hazardous biological agents.
    The I-411’s deadly bombs had been quietly transferred into the lab, where an ordnance expert had assisted the biologists in separating the powdery smallpox virus from the sixty-year-old compartmentalized aerial bombs. The viruses had been freeze-dried by the Japanese, allowing the pathogens to remain inert for storage and handling. The smallpox-laden bombs were designed to maintain their deadly efficacy for the duration of the submarine’s voyage until hydrogenated upon deployment. Over sixty years later, their porcelain casings had repelled all destructive effects from decades of submersion. The aged bomb payloads were