Читать книгу: «Omega Cult»

1

Arlington, Virginia

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, had been enjoying a rare few days of R and R, hiking in the Rocky Mountains, when a call came from the man he considered his closest living friend.

As he’d driven in from the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, the soldier wondered just how long it had been since he’d had a face-to-face with Hal Brognola. Not that long, he supposed. There was always some hotspot that demanded the Executioner’s special touch. He looked forward to the lunch date with the big Fed, a veteran honcho at the Department of Justice and Director of the Sensitive Operations Group based at Stony Man Farm.

Now Bolan was seated at a booth in a slick chain restaurant, sipping a beer and glancing at his watch, noting with some concern that Brognola was twenty minutes late. Bolan had placed his order at the quarter-hour mark, checking his cell phone for a message from Brognola yet again and finding none.

Tied up, no problem, Bolan thought. At Justice, those things happened on a daily basis, covering a range of crimes from white-collar finagling to espionage, domestic and foreign terrorism, cyber theft, high-power drug deals and the patchwork quilt of global organized crime. A sudden call from anywhere on Earth could dump the day’s plans in a heartbeat, sending special agents and their bosses off on hazardous exploits they’d never planned.

So he would eat. If Brognola didn’t put in an appearance by the time he cleared his plate, he would leave and reach out to Stony Man to learn if anything was wrong, whether he should plan another rendezvous or just forget it.

It was his call, a failsafe built into the system when the Phoenix Program and the hardsite in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains were first established. Bolan had been “dead” then, publicly incinerated with his old war wagon in Manhattan’s Central Park, all trace of him erased from law-enforcement records if not from old newspaper files.

For all public intents and purposes the Executioner was now a part of history. On the record, he’d gone down fighting—but in truth, he’d never stopped. The list of criminals and terrorists who’d learned that to their sorrow was a long one, growing day by day.

While Bolan waited for his meal, he watched the flat-screen television mounted in a nearby corner of the restaurant. It was tuned in to CNN, the sound muted in favor of closed captioning so diners wouldn’t be distracted from their small talk if they chose to shut the news out of their minds. This afternoon, as for the past two days, the lead story on every channel with a news feed focused on Tuesday’s LA suicide attacks. By now the butcher’s bill had topped two hundred dead, including three “suspected” terrorists. Nearly half again that number had been confined to Southland hospitals, some of them not expected to survive.

Sarin was like that, ranked by toxicologists as twenty-six times more deadly than cyanide. Certain antidotes could save its victims, typically atropine and pralidoxime, but they had to be administered without delay. The greater any given victim’s personal exposure, the more rapidly they lapsed into the final, agonizing moments of their lives. That last stage was captured in mnemonics: the “Killer Bs” of bronchorrhea and bronchospasm, coupled with salivation, lacrimation, urination, defecation, gastrointestinal distress and emesis.

In short, it was one hell of a way to check out.

The three dead men who’d gassed LA had been young Korean immigrants. According to the media, all three had entered the United States through legal channels and were known to hold steady jobs. Beyond that, any information known to the LAPD, FBI or Homeland Security was strictly under wraps. And that naturally fueled rabid speculation on talk radio, websites dedicated to conspiracies and the kooky netherworld of the Dark Net where certifiable fanatics and false prophets rubbed shoulders with self-styled psychics, gunrunners and child pornographers.

Something for everyone, from sea to shining sea.

The Asian angle fueled no end of fervid speculation as to motive and the ultimate ID of whoever had devised the lethal plot. Coordination—a conspiracy by definition—couldn’t be denied. But how far did it reach? How high? Where were the roots of the attack? So far, China, Japan and both Koreas had been implicated by those claiming to be “in the know,” while others aimed accusing fingers at the US government in Washington. It was a “false flag” plot, they said, conceived by Democrats, Republicans, conservatives or liberals, to bring on Armageddon and a state of martial law ending with tyranny.

The waitress came with Bolan’s steaming plate and he dug in after he checked his watch once more. From long experience, he knew it would take him half an hour, give or take, to finish his lunch. If Brognola had not appeared by then...

A shadow fell across his table.

Bolan glanced up, found Brognola standing over him, frowning. “Sorry I couldn’t call,” he said. “This thing is getting out of hand.”

The big Fed sat across from Bolan at the small table for two. The waitress spotted him and circled back in the hope of doubling her tip. Brognola eyeballed Bolan’s plate and said, “I shouldn’t, but I’ll have the same. Light beer for me.”

When she was gone, Brognola took off his fedora, set it on a corner of the table to his left, and said, “Three guesses why we’re here.”

“Los Angeles,” Bolan replied.

“Got it in one. Have you been following what’s going on?”

“Only what’s on the news.”

“Tip of the iceberg,” Brognola declared. “We’ve got more than the media, as usual. It’s not as wacky as the crap you’ll find if you start Googling, but it’s bad enough.”

“Tell me.”

“First up...” The big Fed hesitated as his beer arrived. He sipped it and then forged ahead. “First up, all three of the known perps were South Korean nationals. They all applied for green cards through the US Embassy in Seoul, over a span of thirteen months, and got approval from the INS as LPRs—lawful permanent residents. All settled in LA and nailed down jobs with different companies. First glance, none seemed to be acquainted with the others.”

“But at second glance?” Bolan inquired.

“As you’d imagine, we’ve put all their lives under a microscope, cooperating with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service and their National Police Agency. None of the doers resided in Seoul for more than a few weeks before they applied for their visas. All three came from different provinces. No shared addresses or employment in the capital. We did find something, though.”

“Which is?”

“Are you familiar with a cult called Omega Hoejung?” Brognola asked.

“It doesn’t ring a bell.”

“In English, that translates to the Omega Congregation, as in final. It was founded nineteen years ago by Shin Bon-jae, a self-made billionaire from Seoul who’s got his fingers in a couple thousand different pies from manufacturing and shipping on to journalism. In the States, he runs the Washington Inquirer, giving any major piece of news a right-wing twist. He sells himself as strictly anticommunist, in line with Rhee Syng-man from the Korean War, through Park Chung-hee, on down to Park Geun-hye. He hates the North Korean crowd and likes to talk about reunifying the Koreas under what he calls ‘benevolent autocracy.’ Dictatorship, in other words.”

“What’s the religious angle?” Bolan asked.

“That’s been the major snag for people trying to decide what Shin’s really about. He’s both a guru and a CEO, which seems to be a contradiction, but he’s made it work for him so far. Worldwide, he has an estimated quarter-million followers, most of them living in East Asia. But they have a good-size group in Russia—five, six thousand by most estimates—and you can find them all around the States. Maybe another six or seven thousand known to follow Shin’s lead work in upper levels of his companies and follow all the Congregation’s rituals. It’s tax exempt on this side of the water, naturally, which is helpful when it comes to money laundering.”

“For what?”

“Pure speculation at this point. None of his people have been jailed for anything, as far as I can tell, but ATF reports persistent rumors of arms smuggling. Interpol and ICE suspect Shin’s got a hand in human trafficking, moving his people here and there around the world without the legal paperwork.”

“And this ties into LA how?”

“All three perps paid their dues to the Omega Congregation,” Brognola replied. When Bolan frowned, he added, “Sure, I know. Coincidence, some might suggest. And if it was a bigger sect—Buddhism or Catholicism, say—I might buy that. But from the records I’ve obtained, they only have about six hundred members of the Congregation anywhere in California. What are the odds that three of them would get their hands on sarin and coordinate attacks on the same day?”

“I’d call it slim to none,” Bolan replied.

“Which brings us here.” The big Fed paused again to thank the waitress for his meal and watched her walk away before resuming. “The Omega Congregation has its US headquarters in San Francisco, led by Lee Jay-hyun. Officially, he ranks below the founding leader as a je yeonghon. That’s ‘second soul.’ A rank applied to what you might call generals of the sect, each one in charge of operations for a given nation. Shin Bon-jae rules over all as cha ui yeonghon, the ‘primary soul.’ According to the Congregation’s doctrine, he was visited by Jesus Christ in person on his sixteenth birthday—Shin’s, not Christ’s—and was anointed as the leader of a new age leading to the Final Days.”

“So, an apocalyptic cult,” Bolan observed.

“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 bolstered an indictment: zero.

It was one more thing for Bolan to determine when he got to San Francisco, and he hoped he wouldn’t leave his heart—or body—there when he was done.