Red Shark

He watched the two men speak and gesture to each other — there was no sound — and though the image wasn’t sharp or well lighted, he could easily identify Marshal Jin from his bald head and crisp features. Jin stopped, turned toward the lighted room from which they had just exited, and, lit by both incandescent and candlelight, turned again until he was facing the hidden camera that had recorded the images up on the monitor.

“Commander Scott, the man on your left is North Korean Marshal Kim Gwan Jin,” said Kubota.

“Right, we identified him when we viewed the DVD in Yokosuka. It’s the other guy we can’t put a name to.”

“Yes, to put a name to him is not so easy.”

Kubota froze the image, stopping Jin’s guest in midstride. His face was in deep shadow as he conversed with Jin. A faint scrim of incandescent light revealed that he had a head of silver hair.

“Unfortunately,” said Kubota, “we cannot identify this man. Not yet anyway. We have run these images through our identity program, which can turn a figure one hundred and eighty degrees and re-create features we can’t see. Yet we have no suitable imagery of his face.”

One of the aides said something to Kubota.

Kubota said, “Hai,” then to Scott he said, “He says that if we had even a fraction more face to work with, had he turned slightly toward the hidden camera, we could likely reconstruct the face. But without it we are lost.”

“And there are no other images suitable, Director-san?” Fumiko asked.

“No. None. We have tried to open the dark areas in the image, for instance when the two men step onto the veranda, but the shadow densities are so heavily blocked that we can’t alter the pixels.”

Another aide spoke up. Kubota nodded. “He says there is an image lasting less than a thousandth of a second, where this other man passes from light to dark, when his face is turned more to the camera. But motion-drag caused by color temperatures above 5500 Kelvin has distorted the image beyond retrieval.”

“Director Kubota, please run the sequence again,” said Scott.

The men moved from the room to the veranda, then out of camera range. Kubota ran it three more times. Scott, Jefferson, and Radford, via SVTC, had studied the sequence at Yokosuka until they’d been sick of looking at it. Turn them over to the JDIH, Radford had said. They can work miracles. Apparently not, thought Scott.

“If you can’t identify him from this DVD, Director Kubota, what other choices do we have?”

“Ah, but Commander Scott, I did not say we could not identify him, I said we could not identify him yet. We will work on it until we can. We have some experimental software that we can try out. It is not fully developed, but we Japanese rarely are defeated.”

Scott looked around at the smiling faces. At Fumiko with fingers to her lips. “How long will that take?” Scott asked. “We don’t have time to waste on experiments that might not work.”

“That I can’t say. We will start immediately. In the meantime, I can give you some idea what we have been doing to make progress on other fronts.”

Fumiko spoke up. “Director-san, I have begun to develop a list of possible candidates for investigation. Japanese men who might have legitimate dealings with the North Koreans. Or men that have business interests that would put them in a position to have contact with North Korea, specifically, with Marshal Jin.”

“What kind of information?” Scott prompted her.

Kubota interjected, “Ms. Kida is mistaken. We are not investigating only Japanese individuals, but Asian as well as Middle Eastern. The North Koreans conduct business with individuals from all over the world. It would be a mistake to assume that only Japanese have access to North Korea.”

Scott said, “You’ll pardon my American manners, Director Kubota, I’m not inclined to sugar-coat what I say, but we were told that JDIH cell phone intercepts indicated that this individual was a Japanese national.”

Kubota gave Scott a head bob. “I apologize for that, Commander Scott. Unfortunately Miss Kida was wrong, and you were unintentionally given false information.”

Fumiko inhaled sharply and said, “But Director—”

Kubota glared at Fumiko, daring her to contradict him.