Adjusting his grip on the Scorpion’s controls, Jonah exhaled and watched his breath crystallize within the damp chill of the command compartment. The yoke felt loose now, almost drunkenly unresponsive. Each nudge to the course was accompanied by an anxious delay before the rudders shifted, the stalk rattling in his hands like it was about to snap. He sighed and stretched before glancing at the glowing green dials of his analogue dive watch, the only timepiece to survive its encounter with the biomechanical parasite. The hour he’d waited had finally expired. It was time, again, to check the haphazard collection of gauges and instruments atop Vitaly’s dead navigations console.
He stood and stuck a penlight in his mouth as he went from gauge to gauge, tapping each one with an extended index finger to verify the needles hadn’t frozen. The onboard energy discipline they’d resorted to was extreme— every light bulb extinguished, heat off, ventilation systems disabled. The resulting stillness made the dark interior feel smaller somehow, the Scorpion’s cold walls dripping with condensation as they closed in. Jonah could smell the mold already developing in every hidden seam and recess of the ship; a flowering black rot infecting the already stagnant air.
Vitaly slept on the deck in a shared bedroll. The freezing temperatures had brought the two men closer with each passing day, the Russian curled at Jonah’s feet, and each change in shift swifter than the last as they conserved the lingering body heat within the blankets and single pillow. The rest of the crew sheltered with a small heater in the bunks alongside five air-scrubbing calcium hydroxide canisters salvaged from less critical compartments.
Vitaly had completed the most recent battery recharge just three hours earlier, a hazardous maneuver that required the careful piloting of the Scorpion as she raised her exhaust snorkel and intake pipes just above the darkened, stormy surface of the Yellow Sea. The Russian selected a new site within the Japanese convoy every time, running the diesel engines hot and hard for as long as he dared before slipping back beneath the waves. Each twenty-four hour cycle required two recharging periods, one early in the night, and a second just before first light. In the meantime, their days were spent in permanent midnight, stretching each battery to the last trickle, every interminable hour moving them incrementally closer to the tantalizing promise of escape.
Jonah glanced down at a crinkled regional map with Vitaly’s penciled notations upon it. The helmsman had traced a vague extrapolation of the convoy’s route based on compass headings and approximate speed. But dead-reckoning precise coordinates was wholly impossible as each passing hour without GPS or a stellar fix, introduced new uncertainty to his equations, slowly turning them into an exercise in futility.
The convoy had skirted Kagoshima Province, at least as best as Jonah could tell, threading between the southernmost islands of Japan before turning sharply to the northwest. By now they were well past the East China Sea, passing Jeju Island and the western coast of South Korea. Jonah found himself wondering if the convoy was an invasion fleet—it’d make sense, given how fast the region was falling apart.
Vitaly stirred at Jonah’s boots. “Time for Vitaly shift?” he asked sleepily, the darkness answering him with silence. The ships above had become almost comforting in their familiarity. The swish-swish of patrollers was distinct from the churning troopships and rumbling tankers. The Scorpion was a fox at the feet of elephants, concealed and protected so long as the lumbering herd overlooked the sharp-toothed intruder beneath them.
“Your shift isn’t for another two hours,” Jonah lied. “Go back to sleep.”
Vitaly mumbled something and turned over, the last of his frosty breath clinging to the cavern-like damp as he pulled the blanket over his face.
They were getting close now. One more day and they’d make their move. The plan was simple: shut down the electric engines, dive deep, and drift with the abyssal currents for as long as their thinning air held out. The fleet would be far away by the time the Scorpion surfaced, leaving them free to find a quiet atoll in the South Pacific and lay low for as long as it took the coming war to end.
Jonah lowered his head and gently touched the control yoke. The Scorpion was a good, reliable ship, even beaten to hell. But she was also a target on their backs—he’d have to scuttle her in deep waters and scatter the crew for any of them to have a chance.
I’m sorry, old girl. It’s the only way.
Several hours later, Jonah woke to a pandemonium of stomping feet and disorganized shouting, the bright interior lights of the command compartment blinding as he tried to open his eyes. He staggered to his feet, awkwardly kicking the bedroll underneath an unused console. Half the crew had already gathered with Sun-Hi at the center of the maelstrom, headphones on her ears as she furiously scanned the radio spectrum. He stared at the signal strength—the needle barely retreated from full red as she wrenched the dial back and forth, a hundred shouting voices transmitting simultaneously over the airwaves.
“Who ordered us to surface?” demanded Jonah, glaring at Vitaly.
Vitaly tapped the depth gauge at his console, verifying its accuracy. “We have not surfaced, Captain!” he shouted. “We at same depth, 400 feet!”
“But that’s impossible,” said Jonah as he stared at the radio. “We’re too deep. We shouldn’t even get a whisper of signal strength down here.”
“Impossible, yes,” said Vitaly. “But depth not wrong! Check yourself!”
“I hear voices on every channel,” said Sun-Hi, dropping one of her earphones as she swiveled in her chair to face Jonah. “All coded North Korean military communications—I cannot make sense of them!” She turned the dial again as ear-popping electronic noise erupted from the interior speakers until Jonah ordered her to switch it off.
Silence fell as Jonah glanced up at the rounded ceiling of the hull above him, trying to imagine how any transmission could penetrate the four hundred feet of water between themselves and the surface.
“You hear that?” said Alexis, looking at the ceiling as well.
“Yeah,” said Jonah. “I hear it, too.” The familiar acoustic signals of the fleet above had begun to change, once-familiar engine notes increasing pitch as they scattered. The convoy was falling apart.
Jonah checked his watch—0340 hours, still well under the cover of darkness. “Let’s find out what we’re dealing with,” he said. “Prepare to surface. We’ll make a run for it if we find a shooting war up there.”
Vitaly pulled back on the control yoke, the Scorpion shuddering as it climbed through the water column, steel structural members groaning as they expanded. Jonah watched the depth gauge creep up fast, too fast.
“Easy there!” said Jonah. “They’re going to hit us with everything they got if we breach the surface like a goddamn whale!”
“Da, I know this!” protested Vitaly between gritted teeth as he adjusted their rapid ascent. “You do your job— Vitaly do this!”
Jonah raised the periscope just as the submarine leveled out, the lens slicing through the water like a shark’s fin. The view was in night vision, a grainy, green-tinted periscope feed duplicated on the command compartment’s one working monitor. His slow pan revealed a fleet in disarray, uncoordinated as they each turned in separate directions, a few desperately flashing signal lights at each other in a last-ditch effort to send a message of distress.
The gargantuan, building-sized wall of a ship’s hull suddenly slid before them, blocking their view. “Hard to starboard!” Jonah shouted. The crew collectively held their breath as the turning submarine rocked in a fleeing tanker’s massive bow wave, the passing colossus missing by mere feet as it rumbled by.
“What’s happening?” shouted Alexis. “Are they shooting at each other?” Now lost to the frothy wake of the tanker’s stern, Jonah swiveled the periscope hard to the left. A single sharp bow rose before the low horizon, a metallic-grey superyacht easily parting the storm-wracked seas as she approached the scattered convoy like a stalking hyena. She was larger than a football field, a long, seamless aluminum hull blemished only by sections of blocked-out floor-to-ceiling privacy glass.
“It’s Himura,” Freya whispered. “He’s here.”
“The fleet—we have to warn them!” said Hassan.
“It’s too late,” she said. The Japanese ships had already began to power down, their onboard lights flickering and dying. Last to lose her engines and steering, the largest of the patrol boats smashed hard against the double-hull of the tanker ship, metal screeching against metal as the patroller nearly rolled under the larger vessel.
“He’s leaving his pawns in play,” said Jonah. “All stations, check systems. What’s our status?”
“Communications offline,” said Sun-Hi. “Too much interference!”
“Engines are five-by-five,” said Alexis. “They’re here when you need ’em.”
“Navigation and helm operational,” said Vitaly. “No worse than before.”
Jonah stared at the passing superyacht on the monitor as he addressed his crew. “How are we still running? Himura just took out an entire invasion fleet without firing a goddamn shot.”
“The lobotomization of our computer servers,” said Alexis. “It must have worked!”
“You’re saying we’re too dumb to kill?” asked Jonah. “It’s practically our ship motto,” she confirmed with a grim smile.
Yasua Himura’s superyacht slid past the Scorpion. The entire rear third of the stunning vessel was encased in clear glass; forming an immaculately terraced greenhouse complete with thick vines, trees, flowering plants and tropical canopy. Sun-Hi’s communications console squawked, overwhelmed by the sheer power of the yacht’s electromagnetic transmissions.
As he panned the periscope, Jonah spotted a shape behind the futuristic ship; a blurry haze on the horizon almost lost to the faint green tones of the night vision display. Jonah flipped the monitor to real-color and zoomed into the darkness. Sun-Hi gasped with horror—the orange haze was a burning coastal city, with massive curling flames the size of houses leaping up into the night. Artillery shells silently detonated in the distance, lighting up the night with sudden popping flashes. Growing clouds of black smoke hung over the city, forming an eerie nocturnal sunset as the expansive fires reflected against them.
“It is the city of Nampo,” said Sun-Hi, barely above a whisper. She deftly activated her communications console without permission. “Nampo is burning.”
“Has Japan attacked?” asked Jonah, ignoring the fact she’d defied his orders. “Did the air war start while we were in transit?”
Dalmar shook his head. “Look at the trails. Those are not bombs. It is artillery—land-based artillery.”
“But we’re nowhere near the border,” said Hassan. “You’re suggesting North Korea has begun attacking itself?”
“I have picked out un-coded transmissions!” said Sun-Hi, gingerly holding the dial to the reconnected communications console between index finger and thumb, as though the slightest wobble or lapse in concentration might lose the signal forever. “The 25th Infantry Brigade has attacked Nampo! The 78th Infantry Regiment is defending! They fight each other!”
“Himura’s deployed Meisekimu,” said Freya. “He’s in the North Korean defense network, sending fake messages and orders. He’s tearing the country apart from the inside out.”
Hassan blanched. “It’s sickly brilliant,” he said. “Why fight when you can trick your enemy into destroying themselves?”
“It’s a tactic of cowards and liars,” growled Dalmar. “So . . . maybe we leave now?” said Vitaly. “We have seen all we have come to see?”
“Vitaly’s got a point,” said Alexis. “Half of coming to a party is knowing when to leave, especially when you ain’t invited.”
“We’ll never get a better opportunity to slip away,” added Hassan. “The Japanese fleet is in total disarray.”
Sun-Hi couldn’t tear her eyes away from the monitor, tears silently sliding down her face as she watched the burning city. Nobody else spoke for the longest time.
“So what are we doing, Cap?” asked Alexis as she looked up at Jonah. “You got that look about ’cha.”
“Anybody beside me itching to kill this motherfucker?” said Jonah as he watched the shrinking superyacht in the distance.
“I always have that itch,” grunted Dalmar. “I have scratched it many times and with many men.”
“I’m not big on the whole murder thing,” said Alexis with a glance towards Sun-Hi. “But I’m not big on sitting on our thumbs while whole cities get hammered to shit, either. You really think we got a shot at taking him down?”
“Get me aboard,” said Freya. “And I’ll get you Himura.”
“Sun-Hi—you got a guess where that ship is headed?” “Nampo is on the Taedong River,” answered Sun-Hi, pointing towards the monitor. “Leads to Pyongyang, our capital.”
“Given what we know about Himura’s technology, it’s all over if he reaches Pyongyang,” said Hassan. “It’s the center of their entire leadership and command structure. And they’ve got nukes.”
“I’m done playing defense. Let’s go fuck that guy up,” said Jonah, slapping a hand down on a darkened console. “We’ve gotten our asses kicked up one way and down the other. Statistically speaking, we’re due for a win. What do you say?”
“I do not believe that is how statistics work,” protested Hassan. “But I say we go.”
“This will be a good day. I shall bring many weapons,” said Dalmar with a sinister grin.
“Good,” said Jonah. “Vitaly—steer as close as you can. Dalmar and Freya, you’re with me. The rest of the crew will beat a fast retreat back to sea the moment we’re aboard. Find a quiet spot to stand by and wait for instructions. If you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes, move the hell on. We barely escaped our last encounter and the Scorpion is falling apart. So don’t be heroes.”
“We return as victors or we will not return at all,” said Dalmar. “This is as it should be.”
“That’s right,” said Jonah as he looked to each one of his crew in turn, satisfied that they understood. “If we fuck up or get captured, there will be no half-assed rescue attempts of any kind—and that’s final. Hassan, you’re in command until I’m back. Let’s do this thing.”
“Engine to full!” announced Alexis, increasing the throttle as the throaty diesels roared to full pitch.
“In position in three minutes!” shouted Vitaly from his console. Jonah checked the periscope monitor—the distant superyacht grew closer with each passing second as the Scorpion begun to chase her down. “We only have one chance, so get ready now!”
Jonah nodded, allowing himself a shadow of a proud smile. “Dalmar, Freya—let’s gear up.” He clutched his ribs as the trio ducked underneath one low hatch after another, Dalmar and Freya following at his heels as they made their way to the stern armory. His chest wound had begun to heal, and Hassan had exchanged the flutter valve for ten careful stitches to his pectoral. But it still hurt like hell, the pain fading as adrenaline coursed through his veins, even as the familiar sensation of fear crept up through the recesses of his exhausted mind. Arriving in the weapons locker, Jonah first threw heavy armor around his chest, velcroing it up tight against his broken ribs. Good, it’d hold them in place, maybe even stop a bullet to boot.
“You won’t be able to swim in that,” said Freya as she quizzically eyed Jonah’s armor.
Jonah yanked a short-barreled KRISS Vector .45-caliber submachine gun out of the armory locker and slung the strap around his shoulders. The futuristic-looking weapon was designed for a fast reload, reduced recoil, and a heavy, short-range knockdown load, a decent enough choice for a harebrained boarding scheme. He hadn’t trained with it as much as he would have liked—hell, he’d barely shot the thing before. But it’d do.
“I can’t swim with a busted rib, either,” he said as he slammed a heavy magazine into the receiver. “So thanks for that.”
Dalmar hefted his twin-tanked flamethrower from its cradle and onto his back, squeezing one massive shoulder after another into the heavy canvas straps. His smile widened, brilliant white teeth almost iridescent in the armory’s harsh lighting.
“Leave Florence,” Jonah ordered. “I’m not boarding a hostile ship with a walking napalm bomb.”
Dalmar stared at Jonah in shocked disbelief, disappointment etched deep on his face before it faded into an outright furrowed brow and angry frown.
“Alexis taught me a word for what you are,” he hissed, slamming the flamethrower back into its cradle. “This word is micromanager.” Still glaring at his captain, Dalmar lifted a massive Belgian-designed machine gun from the weapons locker instead, brandishing it before his critical eye. The fully automatic weapon drooped under the weight of the heavy belt-fed ammunition box slung just under the open bolt, holding no less than 200 high-powered rifle cartridges.
“You’re welcome to take up any of my managerial shortcomings with the Human Resources department,” said Jonah. “Did you name this one, too?”
“She is not worthy of a name,” snapped Dalmar as he wrapped two long, bullet-laden belts around his body, crossing his shoulders and chest like bandoliers. “Not like my beautiful Florence.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Nothing burns like a man.”
“So you’ve said. I assure you, I have not forgotten.”
Freya looked to the two men, uncomfortably shifting from foot to foot as though she didn’t know what to do.
“Grab something already,” ordered Jonah as he gestured to the veritable cornucopia of light arms.
“I don’t really know guns and stuff,” Freya admitted. Dalmar placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “The best weapon is the weapon best wielded,” he whispered. Freya looked to Jonah for a moment before finally reaching past the weapons and pulling a large, red-handled fire axe off the bulkhead. Dalmar grinned again, patting her muscled arm with one of his massive hands. “She has made an excellent choice. I believe she will kill many men today.”
“I’m just glad she’s on our side,” said Jonah, and patted his ribs.
Vitaly looked up from his console as Jonah, Dalmar, and Freya stormed into the command compartment. Jonah gripped the ladder with one hand, preparing to climb up the conning tower to the topmost hatch. He steeled himself, breathing deep, slowing his heart rate in preparation. And then he felt a tiny squeeze as Sun-Hi grasped his hand in hers. He looked down to see her staring up at him, eyes wide. “I knew that you are good man,” she whispered.
“Good men get killed doing stupid shit like this,” said Jonah, returning the squeeze. “But maybe a pirate, an anarchist, and their outlaw captain have a chance. Hassan, you have command.”
The doctor nodded in acknowledgement, a strange saddened resolve in his eyes as though this were the last time he might see Jonah. No other words were exchanged between them.
“Approaching position!” Vitaly announced as he suspiciously glanced at Freya and her massive fire axe. Jonah felt the familiar shift beneath his feet as the Scorpion rose through the waters, splitting the waves as she surfaced beside Himura’s sleek superyacht.
Jonah began to climb the ladder. “Come back in one piece!” shouted Alexis from her station, her voice fading below him. “Or at least one big piece and maybe some smaller pieces you won’t miss if Hassan can’t reattach them.”
The hatch popped open with a hiss, freezing night air snatching Jonah’s breath from his lungs. The darkness was all consuming, illuminated only by the haze of the burning city in the distance. The Scorpion kept pace with its quarry at a frightening velocity, paralleling the railing of the yacht’s starboard forequarter. A slight flurry of snow danced around Jonah as Dalmar and Freya emerged from the hatch beside him, a single flake landing on the side of his cheek. He gently pressed a fingertip against it, but it was hot and gritty, smearing to the touch. The flake wasn’t snow—it was ash.
They were in the wide, flat mouth of the Taedong River now, the speeding vessels slicing through translucent sheets of drifting river ice, swollen, snow-laden banks passing on either side. The smoky haze of the night was illuminated by massive flames, the arcing salvos of artillery fire in the distance.
“Ten seconds!” said Jonah, slinging his submachine gun around his back as he prepared to leap. Neck and neck, the two vessels jockeyed for position like Kentucky thoroughbreds, the Scorpion’s angular bow slipping ahead by a nose before sideswiping the unblemished walls of the superyacht. A groaning, ear-shredding scrape reverberated between the speeding ships, jostling Jonah from his precarious foothold on the lip of the conning tower. Freya hurled her fire axe onto the yacht’s empty helicopter pad with a hammer-throw before leaping across the gap, feet barely touching the yacht’s railing as she deftly landed on the open pad. Dalmar and Jonah jumped after her simultaneously, the pirate landing hard on the deck, while Jonah awkwardly tumbled into a painful heap behind him.
The massive yacht reacted like a thing alive, engines roaring as it twisted away from the Scorpion with erratic precision, throwing Jonah to his knees. Dalmar grabbed Jonah by the loop of his bulletproof vest, dragging him to his feet as hidden illumination flickered to life beneath their feet. The length of the bow erupted with bright security lights like a performance stage—they’d already lost the element of surprise.
“We must advance!” shouted Dalmar. “There is no cover!”
No sooner had he spoken than a trio of recessed panels slid open along the bridge tower. Long, cruel barrels emerged from within, erupting with tracer fire. Jonah threw himself behind a heavy anchor winch as bullets split apart the night air, pouring withering automatic fire into the winch and the Scorpion’s exposed conning tower. The submarine’s heavy steel hull could hold against the barrage—but not for long. A massive geyser of water burst upwards from behind the Scorpion’s tailfins as her engines reversed full, propellers biting into the water as the ballast tanks filled, plunging her beneath the yacht’s wake.
Jonah, Dalmar, and Freya were on their own.
Helplessly pinned down, Jonah blind-fired over the top of the winch, his barely-aimed bullets scattering ineffectually across the yacht’s bridge tower. The turrets simultaneously returned fire with quick, staccato bursts. There was no hesitation, no adrenaline-fueled spurts—the turrets were autonomous, activated without the uncertainty of a human hand.
Jonah dared a quarter-second glance around the edge of the winch, pulling his head back as six rounds zinged by. The turrets were each connected to an insectoid-like stalk of multispectral cameras, laser rangefinders, and motion trackers. Exactingly precise, every arcing bullet would be analyzed in real time, adjusted for the sway of the ship, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure. The artificial mind behind the barrel would never get tired, never stop tracking him. It would learn with each shot, becoming only more accurate the longer they were pinned down.
“We should have brought smoke!” shouted Jonah. But even his wishful thinking fell short of a solution; the heat-sensing cameras on the turrets would be able to see right through even the thickest cloud.
Dalmar grimly smiled. “Do you trust me, brother?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Jonah went to grab the pirate’s arm, his fingers slipping before they caught purchase. “Don’t you fucking do it, Dalmar!” he screamed.
But it was too late—Dalmar leapt to his feet with impossible speed, heavy machine gun at his waist as he took aim at the first of the turrets. He pulled the trigger, his opening salvo bursting apart the guns’ insectoid eye stalk. Jonah and Freya sprinted across the helicopter pad towards the bridge tower. She’d hoisted the heavy fire axe high above her head, hurling it one-handed like a tomahawk toward the second turret, the axe blade smashing into the turret’s control unit.
Dalmar had only made it a quarter of the way before the final turret opened up, a long arc of bullets tracing their way across the open deck. He twisted to the left, but not fast enough. Dalmar crumpled as bullets ripped through his thigh and abdomen, throwing him over the railing like an oversized rag doll before he disappeared into the freezing waters below.
“Dalmar—no!” screamed Jonah, his heart in his throat as he charged. The turret swiveled back towards him just as he and Freya slid into a covered entryway beneath the muzzle, tumbling across the deck and into an open bulkhead door a heartbeat before the weapon could fire.
Jonah cursed himself for his stupidity. His eyes hadn’t even adjusted to the interior darkness before he felt the cold steel of a pistol barrel pressed against the back of his neck. Doors didn’t open on their own, not for men like him—Himura had allowed them in. There were three men behind Freya as well, wrestling her powerful arms behind her as a fourth yanked a canvas bag over her face and held it tight. Jonah knelt to the floor in impotent silence as she was violently subdued with fists and feet and left facedown and tied, her lungs wheezing through the scratchy fabric.
The lights of the yacht’s interior began to brighten, revealing an immense open chamber running nearly the length of the ship. Steep, glinting aluminum walls rose a stunning sixty feet to meet at the awe-inspiring ceiling apex, forming a perfect triangle. Five black-suited security personnel were behind him, guns raised as rough, unseen hands yanked away his submachine gun and patted him down for other weapons.
Jonah felt chills as he looked down at the chamber’s expansive floor. The bamboo paneling had been retracted, revealing a grotesque, pulsating assemblage of wire-connected organs within glass vessels. The organic mass was surrounded by massive screens across nearly every wall, displaying blossoming, fractalized images of a thousand intercepted camera feeds across North Korea, forming a dreamy montage of chaos and war. A soft, commanding voice echoed from the far end of the chamber, its speaker lost to the darkness.
“Remove your shoes, please.”
Jonah snorted until he almost gagged and spat a foul mixture of blood and snot on the immaculate bamboo. The men behind him shoved him to the ground as a knife blade flashed, slicing through his laces. He stole a backwards glance as his boots were ripped from his feet. Jonah’s eyes went wide with surprise as he took in their wrinkled, deeply lined faces, their close-cropped white hair. There wasn’t a man among them younger than seventy-five.
He was yanked to his feet once again and marched forward alone, leaving Freya tied and immobile on the floor. The interior was immaculate, hundreds of glass-encased historical artifacts under soft LED lighting. Jonah wallowed in his own overwhelming sense of regret and dread; walking beneath the ornate ceiling and above the pulsating organism felt like traversing between hells of Dante’s Inferno.
The geriatric security personnel silently prodded Jonah forward toward a figure beside a mahogany art-nouveau writing desk, his hand atop an empty wheelchair. Massively overweight, the figure’s long, dark hair dripped from his balding scalp before falling over his shoulders, his sickly face defined by the thick, pinched lids covering his bright eyes. The security personnel retreated a few steps as Yasua Himura stepped forward into the light.
“Mr. Blackwell,” said Himura, tilting his head as he addressed Jonah. “I’ve so wanted to—”
“Can I have a chair?” interrupted Jonah.
“You want a . . . chair?”
“Yeah, a chair. Or a stool. I’ve got a couple of broken ribs and I’d really like to take a load off. You mind?”
Himura nodded, refusing to show irritation for having been cut off. He gestured towards his own unoccupied wheelchair, and Jonah started to step forward until the security guards lurched to intercept him, warily putting themselves in front of Himura before Jonah could reach striking distance. Himura calmed them with a wave before gently pushing the wheelchair across the smooth floor. It rolled easily, bumping against Jonah’s leg.
Jonah gratefully took it, flopping down in the seat and sighing as he yanked the straps of his bulletproof vest free, loosening the pressure against his chest. He snuck a glance over one shoulder—the other security personnel had already carried Freya away, disappearing into the recesses of the ship.
“I’m good,” said Jonah, waving Himura on. “You can keep talking or whatever now.”
Himura cocked an ear towards Jonah, reluctant to speak lest he be interrupted again.
“I’ve watched you quite closely over our short, shared history,” he finally said. “You speak with such unvarnished braggadocio, call yourself an outlaw, a smuggler—and yet your actions betray such little regard for self-interest. North Korea exports many things . . . illicit weapons, counterfeit currency, narcotics. But you, Jonah Blackwell, sailed into the most dangerous waters on the planet to transport what the world wants least: starving North Korean refugees.”
“It wasn’t a mission of mercy or anything,” said Jonah. “More like a mission of moolah.” He forced himself not to think of the drowned Koreans, their wide-eyed, unseeing faces staring accusingly at him within the freezing waters of the sunken carrier.
“If this were true, you would have abandoned them on the ice the moment you spotted incoming DPRK military forces,” said Himura. “Instead you chose to stay and risk your life for men and women with whom you shared nothing—not nation, not race, not even language. And even now, after presented with an opportunity to escape, you instead take a suicidal risk in boarding my ship. Why?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I believe it’s because you thought stopping me was the right thing to do.”
Jonah said nothing as he glared at Himura.
“And your inherent contradiction is combined with a seemingly inexhaustible ability to simultaneously survive the impossible and resurface in the most secret and unexpected of places. I’d hoped I’d get a chance to meet you, see for myself how a single man could embody such vast incongruity. I gleaned much from your submarine’s computer system, but there was always a missing element, an unanswered question—what does Jonah Blackwell want?”
“Yeah, I’m a mystery wrapped in an enigma inside a crispy tortilla shell,” said Jonah. He grasped at the curved handles of the wheelchair, rotating them back and forth as he absentmindedly tested their smooth, exactingly machined motion. “Also, we may need to break out Webster’s if you plan to keep using words like incongruity.”
“Tell me how you first located my island—no, tell me first how you crossed paths with Freya Weyland!”
Jonah sighed and shook his head. “Don’t take this personally, but I’m not in much of a talking mood. A good friend of mine just got shot to pieces on your helicopter pad. I was hoping to work through the anger stage of the grieving process by gutting you with a salad fork and mounting your bloated corpse on my conning tower as a warning to other like-minded assholes, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. So if you’re going to gloat about it, let’s go ahead and get this over with.”
Himura frowned, for a moment he was a little boy denied the chance to play with a favorite toy. “After all we’ve been through together? You’ll tell me . . . nothing?”
“Sure, I’ll throw you a bone. Your thesis on me is bullshit. Every single thing you’ve said can be traced back to poor impulse control and a stunted ability to think through real-world consequences. Case fucking closed.”
Himura laughed as he circled the wheelchair, the hem of his robe swaying over the bamboo floor. “And yet this is another contradiction—impulsive, reckless Jonah Blackwell is somehow the first man to methodically uncover a conspiracy seven decades in the making.”
Jonah ignored the barb. “So what are you going to do with Freya? She looked like she was having a pretty bad time when she got hauled away.”
Himura widened his hands in acceptance of the changed subject as the security personnel behind Jonah shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not a cruel man, Jonah. I’m disappointed in her betrayal, but not vindictive. I suppose I must thank you for our unexpected reunion—my perfect instrument has returned to me.”
“I don’t think she digs being called that anymore. How did you end up recruiting her, anyway? She doesn’t seem like the type that plays well with others.”
Himura thought about the question for a moment before answering. “Do you know the parable of the magician’s knife?”
Jonah shook his head. “No, but I got one about the man from Nantucket.”
“A stage magician prepares a simple magic trick. He takes a sharp kitchen knife and mounts it upright, the tip of the blade pointed towards the sky. He asks a beautiful woman from the audience to come to the stage, touch the knife, feel the sharpness of its edge, closely examine the plain table it rests upon. The magician then takes a paper bag and carefully sets it over the upright knife, concealing it. He dances and chants, whispering incantations. And then he tells the beautiful woman to crush the paper with her palm.”
“Let me guess—she slaps it down and the knife is gone?”
Himura laughed again, stringy hair brushing against his shoulders as his soft voice echoed throughout the chamber. “No, no,” he said. “You misunderstand the parable. The blade goes through her hand to the hilt. She screams, bleeding. You see, the magic was not in sleight of hand or a hidden compartment. She’d felt the knife, the blade, checked the table for tricks. The real magic was in the words the magician used to convince her to hurt herself. It’s always a matter of finding the right words to create an illusion within the mind—and Freya proved quite easy to motivate. She came to my attention as a creature of incredible talent, yet unmolded. Meisekimu catalogued her life, every phone call, every text message, every email, every photo she’d taken of herself, every website she’d ever visited, every book she’d ever bought, every post she’d ever placed on social media. We fed her own words back to her, bent to our cause—and thus she became mine.”
“So the wheelchair is a lie,” said Jonah. “And I’d be willing to guess that you’re not blind either, are you?”
Himura smiled—and for the first time, Jonah felt he’d caught a glimpse of glinting eyes beneath the man’s pockmarked, mask-like face. “Everyone perceives what they wish,” he said. “It’s only a simple matter of finding the right words to form the illusion.” He leaned over his small mahogany writing desk and whispered into an unseen microphone. Jonah’s own synthesized voice echoed throughout the chamber, every syllable meticulously extrapolated from his spoken words since arriving on the superyacht. He could hear the fear in the transmission, his duplicated voice barely audible over the sharp retort of automatic gunshots in the background.
“Come in Scorpion! I’m under fire—Dalmar and Freya are dead—I won’t make it—retreat, retreat, retreat!”
And then Himura dug his fingers deep into a fold below his fleshy jawline and began to peel it away.