The woman walked confidently through the airport terminal away from all the commotion toward her objective. There. Ahead. Standing in front of a bank of computer screens looking at departing flights, was her contact.
She moved in next to him, her ticket out, and her eyes alternating from her ticket to the screens. The pass was nearly impossible to see; two hands sweeping down past each other. Then the bald man walked away and she kept her eyes on the screen. She would not look at the note here. Take a seat in the waiting area.
Nodding her head to herself, she returned her ticket to her purse and then made her way down the corridor two more gates until she reached an area with a departing flight to Hong Kong. She would stay there until her real flight was about to depart.
●
Standing across the corridor at a table in a small café kiosk, Chang Su watched the woman sit in the half-full waiting area for the Hong Kong flight. There was no way she would go to that city, she thought. Not after making the brush pass with that bastard. She too had been trained to sit in another area until just before the departure of her actual flight.
She looked at the cast on her left arm and thought about Jake Adams. He had been so good to her and so good for her, yet she had been forced to deceive him and run like a rat from a sinking ship. Maybe he would understand.
Focus, Su. There would be no way to follow her if she jumped on a plane at the last minute. No way to get a ticket that fast. No way to be sure the flight was not full.
Where would she go? That depended so much on the buyer, Su was sure. And who would that be?
She would not have to wait long. A half an hour later, the woman got up from her seat and walked down through the terminal only four gates and strolled through the ticket agents toward the aircraft.
What? This made no sense. Standing across from the ticket counter, people flowing across in front of her, Su checked again the destination. That made no sense, she thought.
The woman was boarding a Korean Air flight to Vladivostok, Russia.
Su had to get on that flight. She hurried across to the ticket counter to try to exchange her ticket to Shanghai for one to Russia.
●
Jake Adams, sitting on the cement bench in the small holding cell, shifted his gaze from the dank floor to Agent Fisher across from him. They had been there for seven hours and had not said more than a few words to each other, each knowing they were being observed through a two-way mirror on one wall.
Why had they not tried to question them, Jake wondered? They had pulled all of their identification and were probably doing a thorough check on both of them. What would they find? Not much in the public system on him, that was for sure. However, if they looked beyond the normal law enforcement channels, he could be in trouble, even though he had done nothing wrong. Nothing they knew about anyway. What about his new partner, though?
“I told you to pay those damn parking tickets,” Jake said to Fisher, breaking the silence. He had to do something drastic to get the hell out of there.
Jake got up and went to the mirror, pressing his face against the glass. “Listen you fuckin’ fascists, I’m an American citizen. I’ve done nothing wrong but buy your damn T.V.s and radios for the past ten years.” He pounded his fists against the glass.
Fisher laughed. “You’re a funny guy, Jake. Appeal to their capitalism. I like that.”
“You got a better idea?”
Rising from his chair, Fisher unbuckled his pants, turned around and then lowered them to the floor and bent over, exposing his white ass to the mirror.
“Shit,” Jake said. “That’s gonna show up on the Internet.”
Fisher pulled his pants up and tucked his shirt in before closing them and zipping up.
“Yeah, and I haven’t worked out in weeks.”
Suddenly, the door unlocked and swung inward. The first to enter was a Korean officer in a uniform. Jake expected an escort, but what he saw next surprised him. In walked his friend, Lieutenant Colonel Stan Bailey, wearing civilian clothes.
Bailey shook his head slightly before saying, “My name is Stan Bailey with the U.S. embassy here in Seoul. There has been a huge misunderstanding, gentlemen. It appears that the two of you were mistaken for international terrorists on an Interpol watch list.”
“We’re tourists,” Jake said.
“Yes,” Bailey said. “They know that now.”
The Korean officer, not saying a word, simply bowed his head in shame.
“Well. Thank you, Mr. Barney.”
“Bailey.”
“Sorry,” Jake said.
Bailey opened a folder and handed back their wallets, which the two of them accepted.
Without saying another word, Bailey escorted the two of them out the building into his car in the visitor’s lot. They drove through the center of Seoul, the darkness of dusk and the headlights of cars swerving in and out of traffic a confusing blend of chaos.
Jake said, “What the hell was that all about?”
Bailey shook his head. “Bullshit. They were pissed that we had not turned over the woman to them. They had some shit on you, Jake, but they wouldn’t tell me what.”
“But why pick up me?” Fisher asked.
“We’re not sure. Guilty by association, I guess.”
“Where’d the woman go?” Jake asked him.
Bailey hesitated as he honked the horn and weaved around a small bus. Finally, he said, “Korean Air flight to Vladivostok.”
“Russia?” Fisher asked.
Bailey nodded.
Jake contemplated that. Russia. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but he knew that things were becoming clearer now. “Do you have her by satellite?”
“Clear as day,” Bailey said. “We’re sure she has no idea you slid a tracking device into her leather jacket. From what the guys said, that was one smooth exchange, Jake.”
“Do we follow her to Russia?” Fisher asked.
Bailey glanced at one then the other. “Not officially.”
“What about the other signal?” Jake asked Bailey.
Fisher was confused. “What other signal?”
“Before you got here,” Jake said. “We put a tracker on Chang Su. My contact in China. She helped me get the photos. She had broken her arm. So, we weaved a satellite tracker into her cast.”
“I don’t understand,” Fisher said.
“Su took off,” Bailey explained. “She has been a double agent in the past, so we weren’t sure we could trust her completely.”
“That’s not true,” Jake said. “You weren’t sure.”
“Turns out I was right.”
“She left. We don’t know she’s working both sides.”
Bailey sighed as he entered the southbound freeway toward Osan.
“What?” Jake said.
“She got on the same plane to Vladivostok.”
“Shit. Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Our guys watched her. She stayed back a ways, watching the other woman. Then, when the woman got on the plane, Su followed her.”
Fisher broke in. “Sounds like she was surveilling her.”
“Right,” Jake agreed. “When’d she buy her ticket?”
“Why does that matter?” Bailey said.
“Matters a whole helluva lot.”
“At the counter, just before she got on,” Bailey said. “Traded in a ticket to Shanghai.”
Fisher had a look of incertitude on his face. “Why buy a ticket to Shanghai?”
“Two reasons,” Jake said. “First, she needed a ticket to get past security into the international terminal.” This second part Jake was only guessing on, but he was fairly sure he was correct.
“And second?”
“Second. . . she thought the woman would go to Shanghai. She was just as confused as us.”
“That sounds hard to believe,” Fisher said.
“That she knew where the woman was going?”
“No. That she was as confused as me. Why Russia?”
“I had seen the woman before,” Jake said.
“Li?” Fisher said. “The woman I had been following all across the west coast?”
“Yeah. And she recognized me. When I asked her if she was Kim, there was no way for her to hide her recognition of me. She was truly shocked.”
“Where did you know her from?”
Jake thought about that. He was close to eighty percent certain, even though it had been dark when he had pulled the mask from her head before his run through the snow.
“Russia,” Jake finally said. “Her and a friend took me for a ride and got me into this whole mess.”
They drove on through the darkness toward Osan.