“Too late for dinner?” he asked apologetically.
“Afraid so. You missed the chef's special Halibut Oscar, which was truly excellent.”
“Just my luck,” Dirk replied, drawing a chair and sitting down directly across from her.
“What happened to you?” Sarah asked with concern in her voice as she eyed the bandages on Dirk's face.
“Just a little accident with the helicopter. I don't think my boss is going to like the news,” he said with a grimace, thinking about the expensive helicopter sitting at the bottom of the sea. Dirk proceeded to describe the events of the flight, all the while gazing intently into Sarah's hazel-colored eyes.
“Do you think the fishing boat had something to do with the death of the Coast Guardsmen and us getting sick?” she asked.
“It only goes to figure. They obviously weren't too keen on us seeing them poaching sea lions, or whatever else they were up to.”
“The sea lions,” Sarah murmured. “Did you see any sea lions on the west end of the island when you flew over?”
“Yes, Jack spotted several just past the Coast Guard-station on the western shore. They all appeared to be dead.”
“Do you think the Deep Endeavor could obtain one of the cadavers to study? I could arrange to have the specimen sent to the state lab in Washington we are working out of.”
“Captain Burch isn't eager to stick around the area, but I'm sure I can convince him to retrieve one for scientific purposes,” Dirk said before taking a long draw from his coffee. “We are actually headed back to port in Seattle, so could deliver it there in a few more days.”
“We could perform an autopsy of the animal and determine the source of death relatively quickly. I'm sure the Alaska state authorities will take some time to release the cause of death of the two Coast Guardsmen, and they might not want the CDC looking over their shoulder.”
“Do you think there might be a link with the dead sea lions that were found on the other Aleutian islands?”
“I don't know. We believe the cadavers found near the mainland were infected by a canine distemper virus.”
“Distemper? From dogs?”
“Yes. A viral outbreak likely occurred through contact between an infected domestic dog and one or more sea lions. Distemper is very contagious and could spread rapidly through a concentrated sea lion population.”
“Wasn't there a similar outbreak in Russia a few years ago?” Dirk tried to recall.
“Kazakhstan, actually. Thousands of Caspian seals died in 2000 due to an outbreak of distemper near the Ural River along the Caspian Sea.”
“Irv told me you found healthy, uninfected sea lions on Yunaska.”
“Yes, the distemper did not appear to have reached this far west. Which will make an examination of the dead sea lions you saw from the helicopter that much more intriguing.”
A quiet pause fell over the couple and Sarah could see a faraway look in Dirk's eyes as the wheels churned inside his head. After a moment, she broke the silence.
“The men on the boat. Who do you think they were? What were they doing?”
Dirk stared out the porthole for a long minute. “I don't know,” he replied quietly, “but I intend to find out.”
The twelfth hole of the Kasumigaseki Golf Club stretched 290 yards down a tight fairway before it dog legged left to an elevated green tightly guarded by a deep bunker in front. The U.S. ambassador to Japan, Edward Hamilton, waggled the head of his oversized driver several times before swinging hard into the golf ball, sending it soaring some 275 yards off the tee box and straight down the fairway.
“Fine shot, Ed,” offered David Monaco, the British ambassador to Japan and Hamilton's weekly golf partner for nearly three years. The lanky Brit teed up his ball, then punched a long arcing shot that rolled twenty yards past Hamilton's ball before bounding into a patch of tall grass on the left fringe of the fairway.
“Nice power, Dave, but I think you found the rough,” Hamilton said as he spotted his playing partner's ball. The two men proceeded to walk down the fairway while a pair of female caddies, in the unique tradition of Japan's oldest country clubs, manhandled their golf bags a respectable distance behind them. Lurking nearby, four not-so- inconspicuous government bodyguards maintained a rough perimeter around the duo as they made their way around the course.
The weekly outing at the golf course located south of Tokyo was an informal way of sharing information about the goings-on in and around their host country. The two allied ambassadors actually found it one of their most productive uses of time.
“I hear you are making good progress on establishing the economic partnership agreement with Tokyo,” Monaco remarked as they hiked up the fairway.
“It just makes sense for everyone involved to ease trade restrictions. Our own steel tariffs may still get in the way of an agreement. The trade attitudes here are certainly changing, however. I think South Korea will even forge a partnership agreement with the Japanese shortly.”
“Speaking of Korea, I understand that some chaps in Seoul are going to issue another appeal for the removal of U.S. armed forces in the Korean National Assembly next week,” Monaco said in a soft but accented voice.
“Yes, we've heard that as well. The South Koreans' Democratic Labor Party is using the issue as a divisive wedge to gain more political power. Fortunately, they still only represent a small minority within the National Assembly.”
“It's a damn mystery how they can think that way, given the past aggressiveness of the North.”
“True, but it does play on a sensitive cultural issue. The DLP tries to compare us to the historical foreign occupations of Korea by the Chinese and the Japanese and it strikes a chord with the average man on the street.”
“Yes, but I would be surprised if the leaders of the party are operating on a simply altruistic motive,” Monaco said as the two approached Hamilton's ball.
“My counterpart in Seoul tells me we have no definitive proof, but we are pretty sure that at least some party officials are receiving support from the North,” Hamilton replied. Taking a 3-iron from his caddy, Hamilton lined up the pin, then knocked another straight shot that cut the corner of the dogleg and landed on the far side of the green, avoiding the large bunker.
“I understand that support for the measure extends well beyond the DLP, I'm afraid,” Monaco continued. “The economic gains from reunification are catching a lot of blokes' attention. I heard the president of South Korea's Hyko Tractor Industries remark at a trade seminar in Osaka how he could reduce labor costs and compete internationally if he had access to the North's labor force.”
Monaco strode through the rough grass for a minute before locating his ball, then lofted a 5-iron shot that bounced up onto the green, rolling shy of the pin by thirty feet.
“That's assuming a reunification would maintain free markets,” Hamilton replied. “It's still clear that the North would have the most to gain from a reunification of both countries, and even more so if American forces are not in play.”
“I'll see if my people can find any connections,” Monaco offered as they approached the green. “But, for now, I'm just glad we're working this side of the Sea of Japan.”
Hamilton nodded in appreciation as he attempted a chip shot to the hole. His club scuffed the ground before striking the ball, which caused it to plop short of the pin by fifteen feet. He waited as Monaco putted out in two strokes for par, then bent over the ball with a putter for his own attempt at par. But as he swung through the ball, a sudden thump emanated from his head, followed by a loud crack in the distance. Hamilton's eyes rolled back and a shower of blood and tissue sprayed out from his left temple and onto the pants and shoes of Monaco. As the British diplomat looked on in horror, Hamilton fell to his knees in a pool of blood, his hands still tightly clutching the putter. He tried to speak but only a gurgle rolled from his lips before he toppled stiffly onto the manicured grass surface. A fraction of a second later, the dead man's bloodstained golf ball found the rim of the hole and dropped into the cup with a clink.
Six hundred yards away, a short, stout Asian man dressed in blue stood up in the bunker of the eighteenth hole. The sun glared off his bald head and brightened a lifeless pair of coal black eyes that were made more
