Omega Cult Read online

  Los Angeles had been a bold experiment. Park could not say, as yet, whether it had been a success or a failure. Certainly, Americans were frightened now by the Omega Congregation—due to the actions of three of its devotees—from the West Coast to Washington, DC Because Shin Bon-jae had a longtime reputation for supporting right-wing and reactionary politicians in the South, almost a knee-jerk fascist, that was bad for South Korea’s ties to the United States. It smeared the government in Seoul through its association with the billionaire and his peculiar cult of personality—but in and of themselves, the terrorist attacks were not enough to swing the White House toward acceptance of uniting the peninsula under a leader Washington regarded as a madman.

  It would take another war to reach that goal and, at the moment, Park did not feel much like a combatant.

  Not that he would have a choice when it occurred.

  Picking up his suitcase, making sure the Beretta 3032 Tomcat Inox was snug inside the waistband of his trousers, Park headed for the garage where his Mercedes-Benz CLS 350 four-door sedan sat waiting for him. Park loved the car, but at the same time he would feel no qualms at leaving it, key still in the ignition, at the airport’s short-term parking lot.

  The main thing now—the only thing for Park Hae-sung—was to get out, away from the United States, airborne to the Far East.

  His dream of thriving in the States had been short-lived. Now it was over, but he still had access to the coded bank account he had established in the Cayman Islands, readily accessible by phone or by computer from wherever he might land on Earth.

  If things went badly for him in Korea, Park already had plans in place for a more permanent escape. His outward loyalty was to Pyongyang and the nation of his birth, specifically the Worker’s Party of Korea and its aged Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, founded by Kim Il-sung in 1946. In fact, survival was his first priority, and there was no risk he would not take if it meant staying alive.

  Now it was time to fly—and hope his unknown enemies were not in place to bring him down.

  * * *

  BOLAN PARKED HIS rental one block over from Rhode Island Street and hiked through graveled alleyways to Park’s house. Once again, he found a fenced backyard, but cinder blocks this time instead of redwood. Checking out the wall, he saw no broken glass or other hazards waiting to receive him at the top, nor any sign of closed-circuit TV cameras, alarms or any other relevant security devices.

  Up and over, with the M-4 carbine slung, Bolan paused at the wall’s apex and whistled softly, just in case Park had a dog on watch. When there was no response, he dropped into the yard, crouching, unslung his piece and made his hunched way toward the back door of the house.

  One there, he checked the door’s glass pane and saw alarm tape rimming it. He had no glass cutter, no lock picks, and a smash-in meant he’d trigger the alarm: either a clamor ringing through the neighborhood or only heard in the SFPD’s Bayview Station, which served Portrero Hill and its environs.

  To hell with it.

  He gave the door a solid kick and shoved through into a stylish gourmet kitchen, wincing slightly as the squawk of the alarm rang in his ears. He started clearing ground-floor rooms, proceeded to the stairs and mounted them without a trace of opposition. Sweeping through the second floor, room after empty room immediately disappointed him as he found no one home.

  Bolan took stock. Sometime between his vigil earlier and his return from blitzing the Omega Congregation, Park had left. The yawning space of his garage confirmed he had left in his Mercedes-Benz. Why he had left and where he planned to go was anybody’s guess. Bolan had a hunch the agent had been tipped somehow about his raid on Lee and was now on the run. No answers for him here in that case.

  Bolan knew time was limited before some nosy neighbor phoned in the alarm that had to be ringing through adjacent walls, the posh town houses crowded cheek-by-jowl along the sloping thoroughfare. The tenants might not know one another if they passed on the sidewalk, but nobody wanted crime to jeopardize the value of their property.

  He bailed, crossed the dark backyard a second time and clambered back across the wall. No sirens sounded as he retreated, revved up the Passat and rolled away.

  What next?

  If Park was on the run, long range, Bolan could only hope to trace his path by reaching out to Stony Man, three time zones to the east.

  Palming his cell phone, the warrior did not hesitate.

  San Francisco International Airport

  PARK HAE-SUNG WAS on the phone. He booked a fourteen-hundred-dollar flight to Seoul, leaving at midnight and arriving at his destination at noon local time, landing the day before his takeoff on Korean calendars.

  A minor miracle.

  Unfortunately crossing the International Date Line at thirty thousand feet would not rewind this day and wipe it clean. No matter when he landed, Park still had some explaining to do.

  And the worst part: he had no answers yet.

  He did not know who had attacked Lee’s San Francisco home or why, although smart money said there had to be some connection to the mayhem in Los Angeles.

  Park could not say whether the raiders knew of his covert involvement with the Omega Congregation or, if they knew something, how much it might be.

  Too many mysteries and his commanders would expect Park to come up with answers when they asked. If he could not...

  By then, would it be too late to escape?

  One problem at a time, he thought.

  His second call, after arranging for his flight, went to a private phone number in Seoul. The man who answered, perfectly anonymous, never the same voice twice, passed him along and, in another moment, Park was on the line with Shin Bon-jae. Park did not fret about waking the billionaire, since the nine-hour difference in times placed Shin at breakfast. It was bad form, granted, interrupting any meal, but some news simply could not wait.

  “Good morning, friend,” Shin said in his jolly voice.

  “You may not call me that after you hear my news, sir,” Park replied.

  “If it is bad, best speak it quickly then.”

  “May I assume this line’s secure?”

  “As always. Certainly.”

  Park jumped right in. “Someone has burned down the home of Lee Jay-hyun. Your headquarters in San Francisco.”

  “I know where he lives,” Shin said. All jollity had vanished from his tone. “Who is responsible?”

  “Police cannot say yet. They are investigating.”

  “Is Lee intact?”

  “Again, sir, I cannot be certain. There was no sign of him when police informed me.”

  “So, he may have managed to escape.”

  “It’s possible, of course.”

  “But you do not think so.”

  “From the description I received, it seems unlikely, sir.”

  “He was like a son to me,” Shin stated.

  “I know he felt the same way, sir.”

  “Well, life goes on,” Shin said.

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “If you discover those responsible...”

  “In fact, sir, I’m vacating San Francisco. Clearing out, as the Americans would say.”

  “Perhaps that’s for the best,” Shin acknowledged. “Your superiors will wish to know of this immediately.”

  “I’ll be speaking to Pyongyang just as soon as possible,” Park said. He had a number for the SSD, but calling it from the United States might raise red flags at the Puzzle Palace—the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping center at Fort Meade, Maryland. It would be better if he tried it from the air, when he was somewhere over the Pacific.

  “I shall see you soon?” Shin asked.

  “Within the day, sir.”

  “Until then,” Shin said and killed the
call.

  San Francisco International Airport

  BOLAN WAS FIVE frustrating hours behind Park Hae-sung when he dropped his VW Passat in the rental agency’s receiving lot. It had taken that long for Stony Man Farm to access the airport’s facial recognition software databanks and spot Park checking in with a false passport naming him as Yoon Chi-yong, a traveler on business heading home to Seoul. His flight had left at five minutes past midnight and was over open water by the time Bolan confirmed he was gone.

  So be it.

  Bolan had already known he would be flying to Korea, only hoping against hope he still might catch Park in California and question him about his deal with Lee Jay-hyun. Failing that, he’d booked business class on Asiana Airlines, ensuring himself some leg room for the twelve-hour flight. He’d also left his weapons in the Passat’s trunk, where he had found them in the first place, without wondering who would come to pick them up.

  Scheduled arrival time for Bolan’s flight to Incheon International Airport was half-past six o’clock yesterday evening, according to the local calendar. That gave Park six full hours on the ground, at least, to make connections with whomever he was meeting, brief them on events in San Francisco overnight and start to rally their defenses, just in case there was a follow-up at home.

  Park couldn’t know it yet, but Death was on its way, grim and implacable.

  And Death, in this case, would be getting help. The Farm had thought ahead, reaching out to someone with the South Korean National Intelligence Service and arranging for an agent to meet with Bolan on arrival to discuss their common goals, perhaps lay out a strategy. The NIS couldn’t promise the officer in question—a female lieutenant named Chan Taesun—would play by Bolan’s rules, but even if she only helped him with directions to the enemy, he would be points ahead.

  Working with allies in a foreign land raised problems of its own. First, it might turn out they weren’t allies, after all. Bolan, arriving on the scene disarmed, couldn’t be sure Chan Taesun was playing straight or that she didn’t have corrupt superiors directing her to lay a trap for the American intruder on their soil. Even if she and those commanding her were trustworthy, they still might balk at Bolan’s style once he got to work, drawing a line between The Book and how the Executioner dealt with his enemies. He had run into that before on other missions, and it slowed him down at best, placing his life at risk in the worst-case scenario.

  The flip side of that coin—the hopeful side—involved a string of missions overseas in which he’d worked harmoniously with some locals dedicated to improvement of their homelands, weeding out crime syndicates and terrorists while there was time, before they overran society. It wasn’t pretty—when had close-range combat ever been?—but they’d come through for Bolan and their people, sometimes at the price of life itself. Those who had fallen along the way joined Bolan’s retinue of friendly ghosts, accumulated since his days in military service and multiplied around the world since he’d begun his one-man war against the predators.

  A woman’s disembodied voice announced preliminary boarding for his flight and Bolan rose to find his place in line. Like most airlines, they boarded business class before hoi polloi who crammed together like doomed livestock in a cattle car.

  Twelve hours and counting till his war resumed. He would enjoy the lull before the storm.

  Over the Pacific: 40,000 Feet

  PARK HAE-SUNG WAS well pleased with himself. He had escaped in time, no last-minute detention at the San Francisco airport, no untoward flight delays, and he was now winging toward his destination in first class, sipping champagne with what amounted to a gourmet dinner—for an airline, anyway—with hours still ahead of him in which he could rehearse a plausible excuse to save his life.

  The easy way, he knew, would be to place full blame on Lee Jay-hyun. He was the culprit. He had made mistakes that boomeranged against him in the end, from poor selections in his choice of sarin killers for Los Angeles to overlooking loose ends that came back to haunt him, knotting as a noose around his neck.

  What loose ends might those be? Park, in his innocence, could only speculate. One of the chosen cultists might have shared his secret with another, who in turn had spread the word elsewhere. That chain reaction might have led to Lee’s demise, who could deny it? Park could not provide specifics, naturally, since he had not leaked the information and had no earthly idea who might have been on the receiving end.

  All right.

  Park’s headquarters in Pyongyang, steeped in intrigue against the West and virtually every other nation on the globe, would likely buy some variation of that fable, but the tougher sell would be to Shin Bon-jae in Seoul. A man of boundless wealth, he was a lifelong bachelor, had no children he acknowledged, but according to his own admission had regarded Lee as something of a son. Shin would want more than idle speculation when he spoke to Park in—what, ten hours now?—and when the answers he desired were not forthcoming, rage of simple curiosity might prompt irrevocable action against Park.

  A sixteen-year employee of his homeland’s State Security Department, Park knew very well how people could be made to disappear. He had participated in a few such vanishings himself, once as the triggerman and other times as a hard-toiling member of the ultimate disposal crew. The task was never pleasant—even less so, he imagined, for the party in the process of being erased.

  Before danger could kill his appetite, Park forced himself to take another bite of rare filet mignon with creamy au gratin potatoes, chewing slowly while he thought about his options. One was to ignore Shin when he got to Seoul, reach out for an extraction team and cross the DMZ into the PDRK without lingering to undergo grilling in Seoul. While logical enough, and thus attractive to his worried mind, that was the second-most dangerous action Park could choose. Shin’s personal connection to the SSD would let him poison Park’s superiors against him, planting unsupportable insinuations in their minds, until they marked him as a suspect in the San Francisco raid and treated him accordingly.

  His second option was to meet with Shin and bluff it out, hoping the billionaire did not become enraged by Park’s posture of innocence—more than a mere facade, since he in fact knew nothing of the Frisco raid beyond what he had already reported. But if Shin had other sources in the City by the Golden Gate—and who could doubt it?—he might jump to rash conclusions of his own and target Park as the betrayer of his unofficial son.

  A third choice—the most dangerous of all. Park could attempt to play Shin off against the SSD’s commanders in Pyongyang, trusting their inbred suspicion and contempt for wealthy men, instilling paranoia that their seeming benefactor, Shin Bon-jae, was actually working contra to their interests, stringing them along until the moment when the mousetrap slammed down on their outstretched necks.

  Yes, that might work.

  Under its current leader, the DPRK’s government and its society at large were rife with paranoia, actively encouraged by the man-child in charge. Sometimes, Park thought the man’s random and erratic style of governance was all a sham, to keep his tools and populace off balance, ever waiting, as a decadent American might say, until the second shoe was dropped.

  But the Supreme Leader’s style, mimicked by his officers, depended on a supposition that subordinates were simple-minded fools.

  In that, at least with Park Hae-sung, his nominal superiors had made a grave mistake.

  5

  Incheon International Airport

  Seoul’s major airport was located in the Jung District of Incheon on an artificially created piece of land between neighboring Yongyu and Yeongjong islands. The airport was considered something of a marvel in Korea, boasting its own golf course, a spa and private sleeping rooms, an ice-skating rink, a casino, indoor gardens and a Museum of Korean Culture, plus the normal complement of shops and restaurants. Aside from flash and style, airport authorities reported processing passengers in o
nly nineteen minutes for departures and twelve minutes for arrivals, outshining global averages of one hour and forty-five minutes respectively.

  Chan Taesun, a young lieutenant South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, could recite those facts as if she were a tour guide, but at the moment she cared nothing whatsoever for the details. She was idling in the airport’s main terminal, waiting for a stranger to arrive on an Asiana Airlines flight from San Francisco, California. Based on what she had been told—not much, which was unfortunately normal—he was an American called Matthew Cooper, or at least using that name for his sojourn in Seoul. His job—referred to as a mission by her captain, speaking for his own superiors—somehow involved Shin Bon-jae’s strange Omega Congregation and the role of several members in the recent, highly publicized Los Angeles attacks.

  Beyond that, she knew nothing, and that made her nervous.

  Shin was powerful by any standard, sitting on more money than a man could ever spend unless he simply started throwing it away, and he had countless well-placed friends in government, finance and industry. His newspapers and a successful television station let him influence Seoul’s politics from the presidential palace and the National Assembly down to shopkeepers, cabbies and other common people on the streets. Disposing of a twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant in the NIS would be as easy for the billionaire as getting some ambitious member of the Korean National Police Agency to lose a parking ticket.

  Nothing to it.

  While she lasted, though, Chan meant to do her job as she saw fit, within the rules laid down by law, and stand her ground against illicit pressure from outside. That might not guarantee professional longevity, but she had long ago decided that she would prefer to be herself rather than known to others strictly for her title in a given job.

  Granted, she loved her job so far: investigations, snooping, riding in a fast car, carrying a Daewoo DP-51 semiautomatic pistol in a fast-draw holster on her hip. A look inside the trunk of her Hyundai Sonata unmarked cruiser would reveal a Daewoo XK-9 submachine gun, chambered, like her pistol, for 9 mm Parabellum rounds. Chan was adept with both weapons, although she’d never fired at anyone in anger during her seven years of service with the NIS.