“We’ve seen how those worked out before, from Tokyo to Waco, Heaven’s Gate on to the Order of the Solar Temple. Some just kill themselves. Others, like Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, can’t wait to spread the death around.”
“How does that help a self-made billionaire?” Bolan inquired.
“Depends on what he’s thinking underneath. Is he an anticommunist in fact or something else? How would he profit from kick-starting the Apocalypse? There’s money in disasters if you play your cards right—think about the movement to rebuild a new, whiter New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina—and he might have something cooking with the North Korean crowd.”
“Where’s that come from?”
Brognola set his fork down long enough to take a CD from his pocket, sliding it across the table toward Bolan. “You’ll find details on there,” he said. “Long story short, the FBI thinks Lee Jay-hyun’s been meeting with a character named Park Hae-sung in Frisco. He’s another businessman from Seoul, ostensibly, but the Bureau and the Company suspect he’s working for the DPRK’s State Security Department.”
DPRK, Bolan knew, being the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Staunchly communist since 1946 and presently dominated by its roly-poly Supreme Leader, best known for sweeping human rights violations, random executions of his rivals and erratic threats of global nuclear holocaust.
“I’m guessing step one would be San Francisco?”
“That’s if you’re taking the mission,” Brognola answered.
Bolan pocketed the CD. “Sounds like it’s worth a closer look.”
“I ought to tell you this could wind up going transpacific.”
“Following the prey’s a part of hunting,” Bolan said.
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport
BOLAN DROPPED HIS rental car in the agency’s parking lot and found his one-way ticket westward waiting at the airline’s window with three hours to spare before takeoff. He made it through security, booting up his laptop at the request of an inspector in a rumpled uniform, then hiked down to his flight’s appointed gate and found himself a corner seat, placing his carry-on in the adjacent chair so no one could sit next to him.
An earpiece for the laptop solved his problem with potential eavesdropping as Bolan slipped Brognola’s CD-ROM into the laptop’s slot and waited for its menu to appear. Four files popped up a moment later, labeled A through D.
The first broke down the history of the Omega Congregation, founded in July of 1998 by Shin Bon-jae. It started small, a curious religious sect that merged Shin’s nationalist stance on politics with the peculiar notion—previously under wraps it seemed—that he’d been visited by Jesus Christ in person, not just once but half a dozen times. The risen Lord allegedly suggested, then insisted, that Shin share his message with the masses, using the financial blessings already bestowed on him by God, to rally wide support for a reunion of the two Koreas after half a century. The chief means of achieving that reunion, Jesus said—through Shin—would be an arduous campaign of prayer.
Over time, a list of right-wing politicians had signed on to the Omega Congregation’s cause, lending their names and paying dues according to the status of their salaries. Meanwhile, the movement spread through lower levels of society, encouraged tacitly by Seoul’s prevailing leaders as a means to counteract threats and demands from its northern rival Kim Jong-il and his successor. The odd part, given its specific politics, was the Omega Congregation’s subsequent expansion through East Asia, into Europe, North America, and even to Australia, where a small but thriving chapter operated from an office suite in Melbourne.
Initially bankrolled by founder Shin via a paper company created for that purpose, the Omega Congregation was a self-supporting entity by August 1999, turning a profit—which, allegedly, it spent on missionary work—by April of 2000. Granted tax exemption as a bona fide religion in the States, it skated on the thin ice of political persuasion but survived investigations by Internal Revenue in 2002, ’04 and ’09. At that point high-priced lawyers formally protested federal harassment of the cult and won their case in 2011.
And it had been smooth sailing after that—at least, until three members of the sect released sarin nerve gas in LA
The list of dead, including terrorists, had reached 217 when Bolan checked the internet after arriving at his airport gate. At least three dozen more victims were critical, clinging to life in ICU, while close to ninety others were described by hospital authorities as being in “stable but guarded” condition.
It was not the worst terrorist attack in US history, but coming out of nowhere as it had, without a hint of any links to radical jihadists or homegrown fascist malcontents, it had taken the country and its leaders by complete surprise. No one had been alert for trouble from Korean immigrants, much less from those allied with a conservative religious sect.
File “B” relayed the history of Shin Bon-jae in greater detail than Brognola had provided over lunch. Born to humble parents in Gyeonggi Province in 1958, Shin made his way to Seoul as a teenager, worked various jobs to make ends meet, then came up with a stake from who knew where to buy a failing carpet factory. He’d turned the company around in record time and soon expanded. First to trucking, as a mode of transportation for his product, then diversifying into other types of manufacturing, founding a two-ship transport line that had expanded over time a hundredfold, and making lucrative investments with advice from certain wealthy friends in industry and politics. His first newspaper, Seoul’s Truth in Action, had been launched in 1970, spreading globally over the next twelve years as Shin founded affiliated papers on six continents, in nineteen languages.
His great conversion to religion, never indicated in his public statements previously, came a week after Shin’s fortieth birthday. On July 4, 1998, he was prepared to share the word. He put his money where his mouth was at the start, and was rewarded over time by one more profit-making branch of his empire. How many other bootstrap billionaires were ranked among the richest men on Earth and heralded by followers as an enlightened mouthpiece of Almighty God?
Thus far, there’d been no hint of Shin or his hand-picked lieutenants preaching violence, although the Congregation’s doctrine did maintain that the reunion of fractured Korea might require apocalyptic sacrifice. In Seoul, such rhetoric was not unusual: leaders of South Korea had been talking war since 1948 and—unknown to most Americans—illegal border crossings by the troops of first president Rhee Syng-man had motivated North Korea’s Kim Il-sung to order an invasion of the South in 1950, starting the Korean War and ultimately drawing Red China into the fight. Outside Korea, Congregation speakers kept it on the down-low, pressing would-be members to donate whatever they or their extended families could spare to help the cause.
File “C” picked up with Lee Jay-hyun, Shin’s front man in America. At thirty-two, he’d climbed the Congregation’s ladder rapidly, from raw recruit to office aide in Seoul, promoted once again after he’d saved Shin’s life from a demented gunman in October 2002 outside the cult’s Heavenly Palace in central Seoul’s Jongno-gu district. Elevated to the august rank of second soul, Lee soon turned up in San Francisco with a work visa identifying him as a religious missionary. One year later that had been converted to a green card naming him as a permanent resident of the US.
Lee’s church and headquarters in San Francisco was located in Ashbury Heights, on a hill south of the once-notorious Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Bolan had pegged it as one of his first stops when he reached the coast.
File “D” was sparse but interesting, focused on Park Hae-sung, reputed businessman from Seoul, suspected—as Brognola had explained—of being an illegal agent of North Korea’s State Security Department. Since North Korea had no consulates in the United States, the FBI and CIA had no hard proof of any links between Park and the SSD, but agents of the National Security Agency claimed he was in contact with Pyongyang via covert telephones and radio broadcasts, pending decryption that would give an indication of their contents.
Evidence that would have