Fires of War

1

“I gotta be me… I just gotta be me,” bellowed Ferguson, smiling at Sonjae as the karaoke music track pounded out the Frank Sinatra track sans vocal. It was almost four a.m.; they’d been at this for hours, and it was time to call it a night.

Past time: Sonjae’s eyelids looked like disheveled bedcovers sagging toward the floor.

Ferg reached over and killed the machine midsong.

“Ready for some rest?”

“Sounds good,” mumbled the former FBI agent. “Real good.”

Ferguson gave him a thumbs-up. Despite hitting nearly every bar and karaoke joint within five miles of Science Industries, they hadn’t come across the secretary he’d stolen the ID tag from the night before. Nor had he seen any Science Industries employees, or at least none who had admitted to Sonjae that they worked there.

A disappointment.

One of the managers came over as they were getting ready to leave and began peppering Sonjae with questions.

“He’s asking if everything was OK,” Sonjae told Ferguson. His Korean had started to improve, though he was a long way from being comfortable with it.

“Perfect.” Ferguson handed over his credit card. “Except, Sinatra was a off-key.”

“I don’t think I can translate that exactly,” said Sonjae.

“The hotel’s a couple of blocks away,” Ferguson told him. “You’ll be snoozing in a few minutes.”

“Great.” Sonjae shook his head, trying to clear it. “What do you have in mind for tomorrow?”

“We need to make a few phone calls, visit an apartment building, and look for nosey neighbors. Then I have you booked on an eleven a.m. flight to the States.”

“I’m going home?” Sonjae asked as they walked up to the limo. The driver was sleeping in his seat.

“I need you to deliver a few things for me.”

“Like what?”

“Dirt, mostly.”

2

“The president may already have the votes he needs,” Hannigan told Senator Tewilliger and Josh Franklin, the assistant secretary of defense. “My count shows the treaty will pass by two votes.”

The senator nodded. There was one thing you needed to be able to do in Washington to succeed — count — and Hannigan was a genius at counting.

“Even if we lose this one vote — admittedly it’s a big vote and I’m not ready to give up on it yet,” the senator told the assistant secretary of defense, “but even if we lose it, we’re not going to give up. Korea is the fulcrum of Asia, and it will be for the next ten years. We can’t lower our guard against North Korea.”

“I absolutely agree,” said Franklin. “I was afraid you wouldn’t. I got the impression in New Hampshire that the president was convincing you to change your mind.”

“The president can be very persuasive,” said Tewilliger, “but he hasn’t persuaded me on this.”

“You haven’t made a statement against yet.”

Tewilliger glanced across his office at Hannigan.

“Going public in a speech might actually do more harm than good,” said Hannigan. “Right now, McCarthy isn’t exactly sure what he’s up against. He’s courting the senator, spending time with him rather than with other people who might actually be persuaded.”

Franklin nodded.

“Right before the vote, that’s the time to declare your intentions,” said Hannigan, turning to the senator. They’d actually discussed this several times, but the aide made it seem as if this was a new idea. “When you can have some impact.”

And when the media might actually be paying attention. A speech, a press conference, an appearance on the News Hour and one of the Sunday talk shows — that would all come. But only if he waited until the exact moment when the rest of the world caught up with the issue.

“Do you think the North Korean regime is as weak as people are claiming it is?” Tewilliger asked Franklin, changing the subject.

“I wouldn’t trust that,” said Franklin. “That sort of intelligence seems to go in cycles. Besides, if they are weak, that’s an argument for taking a stronger stand.”

“Invasion?” asked Hannigan.

“If it comes to that.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” said Tewilliger. “I think we can be firm without necessarily going to war.”

“Hopefully,” said Franklin.

“So let’s not give up,” said the senator, getting up from his desk.

“No, of course not.” Franklin got the hint and glanced at his watch. “I better get going. I still have a few more stops to make on the Hill.”

“Keep in touch, Josh,” said Tewilliger, showing him to the door.

“What do you think?” he asked Hannigan after closing the door.

“I think he wants to be defense secretary in a Tewilliger cabinet.”

“Probably.” The senator chuckled. “You don’t think he’s a McCarthy plant, do you?”

“Nah.”

“He was with him in New Hampshire. They seem reasonably close.”

“Franklin goes back to the last administration. I think he’s being honest.”

“Mmmm.”

In Tewilliger’s opinion, McCarthy was easily devious enough to send one of his people out to stalk for opinions, pretending to be opposed to the treaty to find out what he was really thinking. Probably Franklin was truly against the treaty, Tewilliger decided… but only probably.

“You know, if the treaty were to be defeated, I doubt anyone would get a better one,” said Hannigan, getting up to go back to his own work.

“Probably not,” conceded the senator. “Fortunately, that’s not really our problem.”

“Not yet.”

“The future will take care of itself,” said Tewilliger. “Don’t be so pessimistic.”

“I’m not,” said Hannigan, closing the door.

3

The USN LHA-5 Peleliu was an assault ship, a veritable floating city that could deliver an entire marine expeditionary unit ashore in a matter of hours. Looking like an old-style aircraft carrier, it had enough hovercraft, airplanes, and helicopters to re-create a good portion of the Korean War’s famous landing at Inchon, a bold stroke by 261 ships that broke the back of North Korea’s army in 1951.

To Rankin, though, the USS Peleliu was a claustrophobic tin can that smelled like a floating gym locker. The navy people had strange names for things, and funny places to eat. The idea of being surrounded by water was not very comforting. And it was tough to sleep with the weird noises that echoed through the ship: bells, intercom whistles, and metallic groans that half-convinced him the whole damn thing was being ripped in two.

The Little Birds had come here after refueling aboard a frigate about a hundred miles off the Korean Coast. A CIA debriefer was due out any minute to meet Rankin and their “guest,” who’d said very little before going to sleep earlier that morning.

“Helo’s landing now, sir,” said the ensign assigned to liaison with Rankin. “If you follow me, you can meet your party on deck. You’ll want to watch those knee knockers.”

Knee knockers. What the hell were they?

Rankin followed the woman out to the flight deck, lifting his feet carefully over the metal thresholds — knee knockers — that came up from the deck to make the doors watertight.

A cold wind punched him in the face as he stepped outside. He turned to the side and was almost knocked down as a pair of marines passed quickly inside. The ensign grabbed hold of him and, smiling, pointed him in the direction of the helicopter as it landed.

The chopper was a bright blue Sikorsky, civilian, leased especially for the purpose of bringing the interrogators to the ship. The pilot was a CIA contract employee who had retired from the navy and was used to shipboard landings; he’d put down marine MH-53s on this very same deck. The helo swooped in, hovered for half a second then settled gently on its wheels.

The rear door opened, and two men in light jackets hopped out, holding their heads down as they ran out from under the still-rotating blades.

The helicopter lifted off before they reached Rankin.

“You Colonel Rankin?” said the first man.

Rankin, who was wearing civilian clothes, snorted, but decided not to correct him. “Yeah, I’m Rankin.”

“You got a prisoner?”

“He’s not a prisoner; he’s a defector.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant. I’m Gabe Jiménez. This is John Rhee. He’s a Korean language specialist.”

“OK.”

“Can we get goin’? I’m freezin’ my nuts off here,” said Jiménez.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Rankin said, turning to the ensign to show them the way.

The touch seemed to come from the other side of the world. It pulled Tak Ch’o from a deep sleep, almost as if he had been ripped from the womb. He woke startled, unsure where he was.

“Sir, there are some people who would like to see you,” said the young man standing over him. “I brought some tea. I can get you some breakfast.”

Ch’o stared at the sailor.

What had happened to the IAEA people? Why was he on a military ship?

“I have some fresh clothes, sir,” said the man. He pointed to a set of Western-style khaki pants and shirt on the desk. “If they’re not your size we’ll get you some. Some slippers and socks as well.”

Ch’o nodded slowly.

“Are you all right, sir?” asked the sailor. “Sir?”

“Yes.” Ch’o’s voice sounded thin and weak, even to him.

“I’ll just be outside when you’re ready.”

The sailor, who knew nothing about the Korean scientist except that he was to be treated with the greatest respect, smiled and went out to wait for him in the narrow hall outside the cabin.

Ch’o put his hands on the clothes. As he did, a heavy sense of doom gripped him.

What had he expected? He thought the girl would be there, the other scientists he had met. Not soldiers.

He’d seen the world; he knew America wasn’t in charge of everything. They didn’t run the IAEA or the UN.

But here they were.

What should he do? All his life, Ch’o had heard that the Americans were evil incarnate, the enemy not just of his country but of the entire world. And now they had him.

They’d been kind last night. But of course they would be — it was a trick.

The enormity of what he had done paralyzed Ch’o. He’d always been a logical man, but now his emotions overwhelmed him. He thought of his ancestors’ graves, never to be tended again.

Their spirits will turn their backs on me, he thought. I’ve shamed them and cut myself off from my family.

He sat back on the bed, unable to move. After a few minutes, the sailor outside cleared his throat.

“Sir?”

Ch’o stared at the wall in front of him. Perhaps if he stared long enough, he would slip into a hole where nothing he did mattered any more.

Rankin found Ch’o sitting motionless on his cot, exactly as the sailor had described.

“Sir? Mr. Ch’o? It’s Stephen Rankin. I’m the guy that picked you up last night.”

Ch’o didn’t respond. He barely heard the words.

“These are some friends of mine. They can help you,” said Rankin, gesturing over his shoulder. “All right?”

It was like talking to a wall.

John Rhee, the Korean language specialist, took a try, telling the man that he was among friends and would feel better after he had something to eat. His valuable information would not be wasted, added Rhee; he would be rewarded by the U.S. government.

Ch’o winced.

“We’re friends,” said Rhee. “We can help you.”

Ch’o shook his head. That was the most Rhee got out of him.

“Did you have a doctor look at him?” asked Rhee outside the cabin.

“Last night,” Rankin told him. “He was tired and cold, but he said he’d be fine.”

“You better have him take another look. Guy’s catatonic.”

“Yeah,” said Rankin.

“We can break down his resistance,” said Jiménez. “Soften him up and—”

“You aren’t breaking anything down,” Rankin snapped. “This guy is a defector, not a prisoner. Something’s wrong with him. He’s sick or he’s in shock or something.”

“Relax, Colonel. All I mean is, we’ll get him to talk to us. I’ve dealt with this before.”

“Leave him alone until I tell you different,” said Rankin, going to find the doctor.

4

“The defector’s name is Tak Ch’o,” Corrigan told Corrine and Slott over the scrambled conference line. “Scientist in the nuclear weapons program for at least twenty-five years. Expert on handling by-products and, when he was younger, was probably involved in extracting weapons-grade plutonium.”

“What do you mean, ‘probably’?” asked Corrine.

“There are some significant gaps in our knowledge of the North Korean weapons program,” said Slott. “Someone like Ch’o, who wasn’t in that first top tier a few decades ago, we’re just not going to have a lot of information about what he did then. Not readily.”

“We’re still digging in,” added Corrigan. “This is just a preliminary report on him from Thomas Ciello, our analyst guy.”

“What’s Ch’o done lately?” Slott asked.

“He seems to have been doing a lot of things with waste and byproducts. His name pops up in a couple of places where there’s concern about radiation leaks,” said Corrigan. “We have intercepts going back to the 1990s.”

“Do they have anything to do with a bomb project?” asked Corrine. She reached for the yogurt container at the far end of her desk, her belated lunch.

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Corrigan.

“We’ll know more when we debrief him,” said Slott. “Even if he’s no longer involved in the weapons program, what he knows of what happened in it would be invaluable. And of course he can tell us what’s going on at the P’yŏnpan Province site.”

“Is this going to affect Thera?” Corrine asked.

“As a precaution, we should remove her from the program,” said Slott. “But this was worth it,” he added. “Ch’o is potentially an important prize. We’ll recruit someone else to check the tags now that they’re planted.”

“The North Koreans haven’t reacted yet,” added Corrigan. “The NSA is monitoring it. Ch’o hasn’t said anything yet. He seems a bit overwhelmed by the ordeal.”

“How so?” asked Corrine.

Slott explained that it was not unusual for defectors to have second thoughts or even suddenly freeze once they escaped; as many as twenty-five percent suffered post-traumatic stress.

“We have a psychologist en route,” said Slott. “We’ll let him unwind on the ship awhile, then fly him to the States. It may be a few days.”

“Is our Seoul office involved?”

“No,” said Corrigan. “I’m keeping the First Team operation departmentalized.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Corrine wasn’t sure what to say about Ferguson and his suspicions. She’d have to at some point, but at the moment she wasn’t sure exactly what to say. She changed the subject. “Do we have any more information on the South Korean plutonium?”

“Nothing new,” said Corrigan.

“OK, then,” she took a quick spoonful of yogurt. Her computer’s automated scheduler beeped at her; she was due at a meeting in five minutes. “Anything else?”

“No,” said Slott, signing off.

Slott ignored the blinking yellow light indicating he had another call as he hung up from the conference call. Corrine Alston’s remark about his decision not to tell Seoul had seemed offhand at the time, but now as he thought about it, he wondered at her tone.

Would she have suggested that Seoul be kept out?

Never mind that he had already made the decision, or that he had his own doubts about Ken Bo. To have Corrine telling him what to do in an area that did not involve Special Demands — that was just too far. Too, too far.

Bo’s BS theory was beside the point.

Or a separate point, anyway.

Was she telling him what to do? Or was he just being overly prickly?

The latter. But…

But…

Should he tell her what Bo was up to?

It wasn’t her business, was it? Not yet, anyway. Bo had only said that to him.

He’d make it clear what was going on when it was relevant. When he was sure. Or rather, when there was more information about the plutonium.

In the meantime…

He reached for the blinking button.

5

Ferguson and Sonjae stepped out of the elevator into a brightly colored hallway on the thirty-seventh floor of the high-rise apartment building. Sonjae paused for a moment, gathering himself.

“Nah, just jump right in,” said Ferguson, leaning in front of him and knocking on the door.

A middle-aged woman pulled open the door, a perplexed look on her face.

“Excuse us for bothering you this early, ma’am,” said Sonjae in Korean. “We were looking for Professor Kang Hwan.”

“Hwan?”

“A friend of ours,” said Ferguson in English.

“There’s no Kang Hwan here,” said the woman. “We live here.”

“What is it?” asked a man in a business suit, coming around the corner behind the woman. “What is going on?”

While Sonjae struggled to explain that he was looking for Hwan, Ferguson strolled across the hall to the next door. He knocked twice, then stood waiting with a big smile on his face.

A twenty-something woman answered.

“I was trying to find a friend of mine, Dr. Kang Hwan,” said Ferguson in English.

“Hwan?”

“Yes. Do you know him? I’m from the States.”

Her face began to cloud.

“Problem with my English?” asked Ferguson.

“He… He’s dead.”

Ferguson feigned surprise. The woman, whose English was fairly good, said he had passed away a few months before.

“How did he die? When?” said Ferguson.

The woman shook her head.

“He was young.”

The woman started to close her door. “How did he die?” said Ferguson, putting his hand out to keep the door from closing.

By now, Sonjae had extracted himself from the couple who’d taken Hwan’s apartment and come over.

“Is there anything you can tell us about our friend?” he asked in Korean.

The young woman shook her head and pushed against the door. Ferguson let it close.

“Suicide is a great embarrassment in Korea,” said Sonjae.

“It’s not big in the U.S., either,” said Ferguson, going to the next door.

There was no answer; after four or five knocks, they moved to the last one on the floor.

Four knocks later, Ferguson and Sonjae were just about to give up when the door creaked open. A lady about the age of Sonjae’s aunt peeked through the crack and asked what they wanted.

“Hello,” said Sonjae. “We were looking for information about our friend, Kang Hwan, who used to live here.”

The old woman frowned at him, starting to close the door.

“It’s an important matter,” said Sonjae. “This man is from the United States. He wants to make sure that Dr. Kang Hwan’s memory is honored properly. Because of the circumstance of his death.”

“What about it?” said the old woman.

“It was… The circumstances were not the best.”

“Suspicious,” said the woman.

“Yes,” said Sonjae. “Could we talk about it?”

“I was going out.”

“It won’t take long,” said Sonjae.

“We’ll buy her some breakfast,” said Ferguson, who was following maybe a tenth of the conversation.

Sonjae translated the offer.

“Just come in,” said the woman instead.

Kang Hwan had kept to himself mostly, working late and rising early. His neighbor had spoken to him on average once a week, but most of these conversations were about simple things.

“He had great respect for his parents,” said the woman. They were both dead, but he brought them up in conversation often.

“Was he sick?”

The woman shrugged. His suicide had baffled her as well.

“Who claimed the body?” asked Sonjae.

“People from work.” She shook her head. “Terrible.”

One thing that seemed odd about it,” Sonjae told Ferguson as they descended in the elevator. “He really loved his parents.”

“That’s odd?”

“He was an only child, right?”

“Right.”

“Who will honor their memory if he dies? No one to make offerings—”

“You’re assuming he’s religious.”

“Maybe. But your ancestors…” Sonjae explained how there would be a shrine in the home where offerings were made to make sure the deceased passed to heaven.

“If he killed himself, there would be no one to perform those duties,” said Sonjae.

“Yeah, but he’s a scientist. He probably doesn’t believe in that,” said Ferguson.

“I don’t know. It’s a very powerful pull.”

“Not against depression.”

“You’re assuming he’s depressed. His neighbor was surprised. He was relatively young, in good health. He had no reason to commit suicide.”

“Maybe.” Ferguson could think of plenty of reasons. And as far as being in good health, someone who spoke to him once a week wouldn’t know.

Someone who spoke to him many times a week might not know either.

“The only circumstance I can think of that would make it all right,” said Sonjae, “would be if he wanted to avoid bringing shame to his ancestors, but there was no note.”

“She said that?”

“Yes.”

“That seems odd.”

“Who would he leave it to?” said Sonjae.

“People at work.”

“Maybe he wasn’t that close to them. Besides, what’s he going to say?”

“Good-bye?”

The doors opened. Ferguson thought about who he would say goodbye to.

Maybe Sonjae was right. What would be the point?

“Breakfast?” Ferguson asked as they walked toward the car.

“Coffee, and lots of it.”

“Let’s see what we can find.”

Fortified by several cups of strong coffee, Ferguson and Sonjae drove to the train station and took a train to Seoul and then the airport. Once the ticket was squared away, they found a phone booth near the entrance to the departure gates.

“She’s a secretary,” said Ferguson, handing Sonjae the number of the woman whose card he had stolen.

“She’ll know I’m not a native Korean speaker.”

“Yeah, be straight with her. Tell her you’re an American colleague trying to figure out what happened to him. Then we can go from there.”

That wasn’t exactly being straight with her, Sonjae thought as he began punching the numbers written on the small card.

“Annyeonghaseyo,” he said to the operator at Science Industries when she picked up the line. “Good morning. Can I have Bae Eun please?”

The line buzzed and clicked as he was put through. Sonjae’s brain was still have trouble translating the words.

“Who is this?” demanded an angry male voice.

Taken off guard, Sonjae gave the name he’d made up and repeated that he was looking for Bae Eun.

“Why are you calling Miss Bae?” said the man, not mollified in the least.

Sonjae wanted to say it was a personal matter, but the words wouldn’t come. He stuttered, then started to apologize, hoping the words would somehow work themselves into his mouth. “Sagwa deuryyeoyo… I really apologize… I—”

“Where are you calling from?” demanded the man.

Sonjae hung up the phone.

“What’s up?” asked Ferguson.

Sonjae explained what had happened.

Ferguson glanced at the card where he had written the phone number. “Try changing the last two digits. See if we can get another extension and have them transfer us.”

Sonjae got a message that he had dialed a nonworking number. Then he tried an old Bureau trick, dialing in and asking for Mr. Kim, essentially asking for Mr. Smith.

“One minute,” said the operator.

Sonjae found himself talking to a jocular young man who laughed when he heard that there had been a mistake and that Sonjae really wanted Miss Bae Eun.

“Everyone wants Eun,” said the man. “She’s very pretty.”

“I think so, too,” said Sonjae.

“Are you her boyfriend?”

“A relative,” he said quickly. “But how do I get her?”

“Wait, I’ll connect you.”

“What is the extension in case I lose you?”

The man laughed as if this were the funniest joke he’d heard all week. “I won’t lose you. But it is… Let me see… secretary section two, four-four-seven-eight. Wait. I will forward the call.”

A second later, Sonjae found himself talking to the same gruff man he’d been speaking to earlier.

“You had better turn yourself in and cooperate,” he told Sonjae.

Sonjae glanced up at Ferguson. “Same guy,” he said, holding his hand over the phone. “Wants me to turn myself in.”

“Why?” prompted Ferguson.

Sonjae put the phone back to his ear. “Turn myself in, why?”

“Where are you?” said the man, softening his tone ever so slightly.

“I’m in Daejeon,” Sonjae lied. “What sort of trouble is she in?”

“You’re lying to me!” The man exploded. Obviously he had a caller-ID device or some other way of seeing the phone number Sonjae was calling from.

Caught in a stupid lie. He should have said Seoul from the start.

“What trouble is Eun in?” said Sonjae. “I am her… a cousin.”

“Where are you?”

Sonjae hung up.

“Call the first guy back and tell him that you missed your cousin,” said Ferguson. “See if you can get the extension of someone who knows her.”

“Not Kang Hwan?”

“If you ask for the scientist, they’ll automatically be suspicious. It’s more natural to be looking for her.”

Sonjae nodded. This sort of thing used to be second nature to him. Was it the jet lag, his language difficulties, or was he just getting old?

“It’s me again,” he told Mr. Kim a few minutes later. He claimed that there had been no answer at Bae Eun’s extension. This was a real problem, Sonjae said, because his cousin was supposed to pick him up at the airport; he was just in from America.

“America. Oh, you live in L.A.?”

“No.”

“New York?”

“Yes, New York,” said Sonjae.

Kim gave him some instructions on how to deal with taxi drivers and how to get a train to Daejeon, then put him through to a woman whose office was next to Bae Eun’s so Sonjae could leave a message.

“I’m looking for Bae Eun,” said Sonjae, his Korean growing smoother as his cover story became more polished. “I’m her cousin from America and—”

The woman who’d answered the phone burst into tears.

Sonjae asked her what was wrong. The woman told him she couldn’t talk.

“But my cousin—”

“They’re watching,” said the woman, and then she hung up.

Ferguson had already guessed what had happened: The security people had realized that her card had been used to gain access to the building. The card readers hadn’t seemed that sophisticated, but it wouldn’t take all that much to simply record reads.

He didn’t explain to Sonjae. Instead, he had him make one more call to Science Industries.

“Ask for Mr. Park’s office. See what happens. If you get a secretary, ask when he’s usually there. Then let’s get out of here. They probably have someone on their way here right now.”

6

Corrine’s secretary, Teri Gatins, segregated her phone messages into three main piles: important, really important, and obscenely important. Messages in those categories were placed on the top of her computer monitor, an old-style CRT.

Messages in two other categories were placed on the ledge between the monitor and the keyboard: personal, and no idea.

Josh Franklin fell into the latter category, primarily because he wouldn’t tell Teri what he was calling about, a fact the secretary noted on the pink slip with several exclamation marks.

Remembering their conversation about Korea, Corrine pushed the message to the head of the line and called Franklin back.

“This is Josh.”

“This is Corrine Alston, Mr. Franklin. What can I do for you?”

“For starters, call me Josh,” he said. “Mr. Franklin’s my dad. I was wondering…”

He paused. Corrine stopped sorting through the messages, waiting for Franklin to continue.

“Maybe we could have dinner,” he said finally.

“Dinner?”

“Just, uh… I wanted to hear your thoughts on Korea. The treaty — legally enforcing it, which I thought might be a problem. Just informal thoughts.”

“I really don’t have any thoughts,” said Corrine

“Oh,” he said.

He sounded so dejected Corrine felt sorry for him. Then she remembered him sitting near her in the president’s limo: handsome, earnest, a nice smell.

And nearly fifteen years her senior.

But that wasn’t a big difference by Washington standards. Not in the right context.

“I’m not doing anything for dinner tonight,” she told him. “If that’s really what you’re asking.”

“Yeah. That’d be great.” He sounded like a teenager, surprised and happy.

“Let’s pick a place to meet.”

Franklin suggested a Tex-Mex place not far from the Pentagon. He was waiting when Corrine got there, sipping a Beefeater martini. Corrine ordered a glass of the house chardonnay.

“You’re really going to want a beer with dinner,” said Franklin. His tie was still knotted at the collar of his gray suit. “Goes better with the food.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Corrine.

“This place isn’t too informal for you, is it?”

“No, it’s fine,” said Corrine. She glanced around at the soft-hued walls and granite tabletops.

“In D.C., I never know whether someone might be a foodie or not,” said Franklin. “Where I grew up, food was just food; this would pass for fancy.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Idaho,” said Franklin.

“And you like Tex-Mex?”

“I love the spices.”

They traded innocuous small talk for a few more minutes, both sipping from their drinks. Franklin’s nervousness, not far from the surface, added to his charm. It made him seem more real.

He told Corrine that he’d come from a small town in Idaho, was an only child, still had a house there he never went to. His parents owned a ranch. Small by local standards, it sounded immense to Corrine.

Along the way he mentioned that he’d been divorced, no kids. Didn’t work out.

He quickly moved on to other topics.

When he spoke about hunting and hiking his voice hit a different pitch; he was more relaxed, not shy and anxious anymore. Corrine liked that.

Their dinners came. Corrine had ordered a fish dish in a lime sauce; it was a little overcooked.

“See I told you not to order that,” Franklin said as she inspected it.

“Did you?” She was annoyed by his tone, but hid it.

“This steak is great. Want a taste?”

“No, thanks.”

“So, Korea,” said Franklin.

“I really don’t have much of an opinion on Korea.”

“Well, it’s a very important place these days. As Senator Tewilliger was saying, it’ll be the fulcrum of Asia for the next decade.”

“Isn’t that an overstatement?”

Corrine nibbled at her fish as Franklin held forth on why it wasn’t. The tone he’d used when suggesting she’d ordered the wrong entree was back. He was earnest, but he was strident as well.

Not for me, she thought to herself, with the sort of sharp finality a judge’s gavel might signal dismissing a case.

“Do you think the treaty will pass?” he asked finally.

“I really couldn’t say. I don’t watch Congress really.”

“Not even on this?”

“Well, if the president asks me to do something, then I do.”

“I got the impression the other day that you were really involved.”

“Not really.”

“You disagree with me, but you don’t want to say that,” said Franklin. “About the treaty… You think it’s a good idea.”

“I don’t have a position on the treaty one way or another.”

“Hmmph,” said Franklin, not believing her. “I guess I just don’t trust North Korea.”

“I don’t know that I do, either.”

“Hmmph,” he said again.

The waiter arrived to ask if they wanted anything for dessert.

“Try the flan,” suggested Franklin.

“I think I’ll have some of the cheesecake.”

“Flan’s better.”

“Just cheesecake, thanks,” said Corrine, handing the menu back to the waiter.

7

“You appear in good health, Mr. Ch’o,” said the doctor. “Your blood pressure is a little high.”

Ch’o wanted to tell him that he was in perfect health, but his tongue wouldn’t move.

The doctor packed up his stethoscope and blood-pressure cup.

“I can give you a pill for anxiety,” said the doctor. “It might make you feel more at ease. I think you’re just — It was probably quite an ordeal coming here. You’re still not over it.”

Ch’o couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He simply couldn’t talk. He remained motionless on the bed.

“Do you want the pill? It’s very safe.”

With the greatest effort, Ch’o shook his head.

“No?” said the doctor.

No, thought Ch’o, shaking his head again. No devil poison. You’ll have to kill me yourself.

The doctor found Rankin and the CIA people standing like bookends, arms folded and backs against the bulkhead a short distance from the cabin.

“It looks a lot like post-traumatic stress, something along those lines,” said the doctor. “What happened to him?”

“I’m not sure,” said Rankin. “He wanted to be rescued from North Korea.”

“This happens,” said Jiménez. “Let me try talking to him.”

“No,” said Rankin, putting out his hand to bar the way.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I don’t want to spook him worse than he’s spooked now.”

“He can’t get much worse.”

“Pushing him around’s not going to help us.”

“I’m only going to ask him some questions. Relax.”

“We have to go slow. I’ve seen people like this. It doesn’t do any good to push them.”

“You’ve been in combat, Colonel?” said Jiménez.

“Yeah, I’ve been in combat,” Rankin told him. “And I’m not a colonel.”

Jiménez scowled but said nothing.

“I agree with you,” the doctor told Rankin. “I’d go very, very easy on him. I offered him a pill for anxiety, but he shook his head.”

“Give it to me and I’ll give it to him,” said Jiménez.

“Absolutely not,” said the doctor.

“We can go easy on him,” said Rankin. “There’s no rush.”

“How do you know there’s no rush?” said Jiménez. “If we don’t talk to him, we don’t know anything.”

8

Corrine was just turning her car out of the parking lot when her cell phone rang.

“Sergeant Rankin wants to talk to you on a secure line,” Corrigan told her. “He says it’s pretty urgent. I can hook up a sat phone call.”

Corrine had the phone in her pocketbook. She’d have to find a spot to pull over, a place where she could think.

“Can it wait a few minutes?” she asked.

“Not a problem.”

“Can you call me in fifteen minutes at my office?”

“Perfect.”

Exactly fifteen minutes later, out of breath, Corrine rushed into her office at the White House. Corrigan had set up the connection to the Peleliu and put her through as soon as she called.

“Sergeant Rankin?”

“Ma’am, sorry to bother you.”

“It’s not a bother, Stephen. What can I do?”

“Ch’o — the scientist we picked up — he’s bugged out. Spooked. Like from shock, either from what he’s seen or what he’s gone through or just being here. I don’t think the CIA debriefer really understands the situation,” said Rankin.

“I heard that there’s a psychologist on his way,” said Corrine.

“Yeah. The shrink. But I had another idea,” said Rankin. “It might be faster. Because, you know, we don’t know if there’s a time limit or something.”

“What’s that?”

“If we could get someone he already trusts.”

“Who?”

“Thera.”

“Did you talk to Slott about it?”

“Am I supposed to? Ferguson usually—”

“I’ll take care of it,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

9

Ferguson sat in the lounge area across from the phone Sonjae had used for a half hour, hoping someone might show up looking for them. But either he had missed them while he was getting Sonjae to the gate and aboard the plane, or they hadn’t sent anyone.

Assuming it was the latter, the people Sonjae had called at Science Industries probably weren’t connected with the government. The South Korean security forces were nothing if not efficient; they would have had the phone staked out by now.

Ferguson got up from his chair and stretched his arms, looking around nonchalantly, checking for a tail. No one seemed to be watching him, but he took a wide turn around the terminal anyway, moving back and forth, thoroughly checking his back.

Outside, he took a taxi to the city. As they were nearing downtown, he asked the driver in halting Korean if he could be dropped off at a park.

The driver obliged by leaving him at Tapgol Park, a tourist landmark. Ferguson got out and wandered near a tour guide, who was explaining the significance of the bronze relief on the outer wall.

“The historical protest movement known as March 1 began on these streets,” said the guide, immediately catching Ferguson’s attention. “The Korean people protested the Japanese occupation. Though Korean protest was nonviolent, the Japanese reaction was not. By early spring 1919, seven thousand five hundred Koreans were killed. At least fifty thousand were arrested. A great tragedy for my country.”

Enlightened as to the significance of the name of Park’s political party, Ferguson edged away from the tourists. He found a spot where he couldn’t be overheard, took out his sat phone and called Corrine. By now it was after lunchtime here and close to midnight back in D.C.

She picked up her office phone on the first ring.

“Hey, Wicked Stepmother. Can you talk?”

“I’m in my office.”

“That’s a yes?”

“Yes.”

“You sure you’re a government employee? It’s gotta be going on midnight, right?”

“Ferguson, what’s going on?”

“I need you to meet a flight at Dulles tomorrow around five p.m. You’ll see someone you know who’ll have something for you.”

“Someone I know?”

“Vaguely. Make sure you get to the airport on time.”

“What’s he bringing back?”

“You’ll see when he gets there.”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Ferg, why don’t you trust Slott?”

“Who says I don’t?”

“Ferg—”

He killed the transmission.

10

After Korea, Japan was a vacation. Thera felt as if an immense block of concrete had been chiseled off her shoulders. She stayed next to Julie Sven-son during the orientation tour of the waste treatment plant, joking about which of the dour-faced executives would ask them out at the reception planned that evening. They decided the most likely was a fish-faced man in his late forties who spoke of “mechanical containment systems” in the tones of a Baptist preacher.

Neto Evora, the Portuguese scientist who’d been flirting with her on and off since South Korea, jokingly berated her for avoiding him as the morning tour ended.

“We will have a proper party after the reception tonight,” he told her. “We will celebrate our escape from the dour dominion known as the People’s Democratic Republic.”

He sounded so portentous that both women laughed. Evora told them that a number of nightclubs had already been scouted out; festivities would continue “till dawn or collapse.”

“Collapse comes first,” Julie said.

“With luck,” said the scientist.

“He’s cute,” said Julie after he had left them. “Handsome. And he likes you.”

“You think?”

Julie rolled her eyes. “If you play it right, he would be in the palm of your hand.”

“Not my type.”

“Does that matter?”

“Definitely.”

They were on their way to lunch when Dr. Norkelus called Thera’s name so sharply a shudder ran through her body. The grim look on his face seemed to foretell a serious scolding, and she braced herself for a tirade about misspellings in one of her reports, or perhaps a more serious warning about making fun of their hosts.

“Thera, please,” he said, abruptly turning and walking from the caravan of trucks.

Norkelus reminded her of her parochial school principal, a Greek Orthodox priest who had run the elementary with an iron fist. Even now, two decades later, she remembered trembling as she walked down the hall to tell him her teacher had banished her from class for “being a Miss Chatty-Chat-Chat.”

She couldn’t remember the punishment. Probably sitting in his office the rest of the day. It seemed so trivial now, and yet so deadly then.

Paralyzing. Like the fear she’d felt in Korea as the mission got underway.

Fear was what your mind made of it; it wasn’t necessarily proportional to the danger you were in.

“I’m very sorry. I’m very, very sorry,” said Norkelus, turning around a few feet from the nearby building.

“Sorry?”

“Your mother… There’s been a terrible accident just outside of Athens. She doesn’t have long to live. The Red Cross has arranged an aircraft. One of the drivers will take you to the jet.”

11

“Annyeonghaseyo,” said Ferguson, bowing forward slightly at the waist. “Good afternoon. I am Ivan Manski, from the Russian State Federal Industries. I have an appointment to meet with the managing director.”

It was a long run of Korean, and even though Ferguson had practiced it for nearly a half hour, his pronunciation was so spotty that the man at the reception desk blinked at him, unable to comprehend.

Ferguson reached into his pocket and took out a card. “Ivan Manski. Russian is my native language, but I can speak English. Perhaps is better than my Korean, no?”

The man took the business card and examined it. No matter how much attention he gave it, however, it was unlikely to mean much to him; the characters were all Cyrillic Russian.

“My office managed the appointment with your director, Mr. Ajaeng,” said Ferguson.

The receptionist turned to his computer and keyed through several screens.

“Perhaps a mistake,” the man told Ferguson in English. “Dr. Ajaeng does not have you scheduled.”

Ferguson held out his hands, muttered a Russian curse, then told the man that the meeting had been set up more than two months before by the Russian trade ministry.

“Perhaps I should speak with Mr. Park,” added Ferguson. “I think perhaps this would be better. We spoke informal when he was in Japan a few weeks ago. I was to say hello when I came.”

The Korean flinched. “I’m not sure Mr. Park is in.”

Ferguson knew that he was, since he’d seen the Mercedes arrive, but he didn’t argue.

“Should I call embassy? I should call embassy,” said Ferguson.

Confronted with the possibility that he might be insulting an important visitor who knew his multibillionaire boss, the man at the desk assured Ferguson that there was no problem and that someone would take him to see the managing director shortly.

After a brief phone conversation with the director’s secretary — who knew nothing of the Russian either — the receptionist showed Ferguson to a seat nearby and went to fetch him a cup of tea. Within ten minutes, another young man came and escorted him down the hall. Taking the same set of stairs Ferguson had ducked into a few nights before, they went up the stairs to the third floor.

Ferguson knew it was possible the secretary’s office was along here somewhere. If she saw him… Well, then she saw him. He’d play it by ear, depending on her reaction.

Ferguson was led to an office so small that his knees bumped against the front of the desk when he sat. He couldn’t move the chair back any farther because it was already against the wall.

The male secretary began to quiz him about the appointment. Ferguson rolled out his Korean before switching to English, throwing in a little Russian for flavor. The man disappeared with his business card; ten minutes later he ushered Ferguson toward the managing director’s office.

Dr. Ajaeng met him at the door, holding out his hand and greeting him as if he had been expecting him all along. The two men exchanged business cards, reading intently and then nodding deeply, as if the small white cards contained words from Confucius.

Dr. Ajaeng directed Ferguson to sit with him in the sitting area in front of his desk.

Though he was managing director of the company, Ajaeng’s office was barely larger than the secretary’s room. His desk was a simple wooden table whose polished surface gleamed from the overhead fluorescent light. There were a few small woodblock prints on the wall and a bookcase lined with pictures at the side of the room. The chairs were anything but plush.

Ferguson unzipped his small briefcase and took out his brochures, fanning them across the director’s desk as if he were a real salesman on the make.

Printed on thick, glossy paper in bright colors, the catalogs showed a variety of instruments for measuring different processes and machine tolerances. As Dr. Ajaeng leafed through them respectfully, Ferguson took out another sheet, this one on plain paper, showing diagrams of canisters used for containing hazardous waste. The information on both handouts was in Russian and Korean.

“We do many things along these lines,” he told Ajaeng, giving him the handout. “Custom work we can do. The price very cheap.”

Ferguson leaned down to put his case on the floor. As he rose, he slipped two bugs under his chair.

“This is very nice material,” said Ajaeng. “But we produce no waste.”

“Oh,” said Ferguson. Then he proceeded to ignore the statement. “Our shielding for gamma-ray applications is very diverse. We can handle any item, in any situation whatever.”

“Our work has to do with industrial applications of gamma particles, but we do not generate them ourselves,” said Dr. Ajaeng. “We are consultants.”

“Dah, consultant,” said Ferguson. He smiled. “We have products for alpha decay as well. With uranium—”

Ajaeng tensed. “What do you mean?”

“My English not good on tech-nik. Uranium and plutonium containment, processing as necessary.”

Ajaeng stared at him. Ferguson knew that he had hit on something, but what exactly he wasn’t sure.

“We have experts, if necessary, for hire,” he said. “We have access to very big possibilities. Very big.”

“Ah.” The managing director rose. “I have another appointment now.”

“Very sorry. Annyeonghi jumuseyo,” he said.

“Yes, good-bye,” said the director. Relieved to be so easily rid of his visitor, he had a look of a man who’d just had five hundred pounds lifted from his back.

“Perhaps I should say hello to Mr. Park before I leave,” said Ferguson. “I would not insult him.”

The managing director’s expression changed once more.

“We have many mutual friends in Russia,” continued Ferguson. “In the ministry and then of course Dechlov, with whom I believe he had done business.”

The name clearly meant nothing to the managing director, but he nodded anyway.

“Just mention that I’m a friend,” Ferguson added. “Take my card. And Dechlov. You know him?”

“Oh, yes.”

“An interesting man, don’t you think? Dechlov?”

“Dechlov. Very interesting.”

Ferguson knew he’d been successful when he was followed out of the lot. He drove directly to the hotel where he’d rented a room as Manski, went upstairs and pretended to make some phone calls.

The great thing about posing as a Russian was that people naturally assumed the worst about you. So even if you came into a place as a seemingly legitimate businessman — as he did when he approached the managing director of Science Industries — they were utterly unsurprised when the conversation turned to less legitimate business.

Dropping the name of the most notorious Russian black-market arms dealer in Asia of the past decade didn’t hurt either. Ajaeng didn’t know it, but if Park had truly been interested in the weapons March 1 had tried to obtain, he or his people surely would.

Dechlov had been one of the most successful black-market arms dealers in Asia and the Middle East until just two years before, when an operation run by Ferguson rolled him up.

Literally.

The Russian mobsters who thought he had double-crossed them decapitated his body and rolled the torso in an Iranian rug. A few weeks later it turned up in Tehran. It wasn’t entirely clear what had happened to his head; Ferguson’s bet was that it had been served to pigs at a dacha on the Black Sea.

Dechlov’s demise had never been reported or acknowledged by Western or Russian security forces, and he was well known in all the wrong circles throughout Asia and the Middle East.

Sure enough, within two hours of Ferguson’s arrival at the hotel, the front desk phoned to say that a man wanted to meet with him.

The man was dressed in a tan suit and stood iron-spine straight in the middle of the lobby when Ferguson emerged from the elevator. Ferguson greeted him as Ivan Manski; the man bowed very formally and presented a business card. Ferguson took it with both hands, spewing in Russian that he was very pleased to meet Mr. Li. To his surprise, Li responded in very good Russian that the pleasure was his.

Li told him that they had many mutual acquaintances, though he mentioned none of them by name. Ferguson was very happy to hear this, and suggested that they discuss these friendships in the hotel bar nearby.

For the next forty minutes, Li quizzed Ferguson on his bona fides, dropping a variety of names, including several that Ferguson had never heard of and guessed were phony, though he answered diplomatically that the earth was a big place and it was impossible to know everyone worth knowing on it. The men Li mentioned ranged from the Russian defense minister, whom Ferguson had actually met in his cover identity, to a shady Chinese soldier of fortune whom he knew only by reputation, a fact he admitted.

At last satisfied, Li told him that he had come because his employer was interested in meeting him.

“And your employer would be who?” Ferguson asked.

“Park Jin Tae, of course.” ’

“Of course,” said Ferguson, lifting his glass.

12

Thera hopped out of the helicopter and trotted head down toward the assault ship’s island, following the lead of a sailor who’d come to escort her. The man clamped his hand onto her forearm and wouldn’t let go until they were at the side of the ship. Annoyed, she flicked her arm and finally got rid of his hand just as Rankin appeared from the nearby door.

“Hey,” said Rankin.

“Hey, yourself. What’s up?”

“We have a situation with your guy. Come on downstairs.”

Thera followed through a maze of hallways. Rankin, abrupt and taciturn as always, didn’t bother to introduce the two men escorting them.

It seemed funny to Thera that Rankin and Ferguson worked together. They were almost exact opposites: Ferg always talking everyone up, BSing with them, and busting; Rankin typically as talkative as stone. It wasn’t surprising that they didn’t get along, but what amazed Thera was that Ferguson, who could have anyone on the team he wanted, chose someone whom he didn’t like.

Did that mean Ferguson always tried to choose the best, or that he just liked conflict?

Rankin turned the corner and entered a small compartment that would have made a good broom closet on land. The two sailors stayed behind as Thera entered.

“They tell you what the deal was?” Rankin asked.

Thera shook her head. “They didn’t tell me anything except that you needed me here. My mother supposedly died in Greece. I’ve been traveling ever since.”

“We picked the scientist up the night you took off from Korea. He was soaked, cold, but OK. Told me his name, that he was involved in nuke research, like that. Now he won’t talk. His brain’s frozen or something.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Thera’s question took Rankin by surprise. “You know him, right?” he told her. “Maybe he’ll talk to you.”

“He thinks I’m a secretary. He gave me cigarettes.”

“Yeah, OK. Go with it.”

“I’ll try talking to him, but if there’s something wrong with him, I don’t know that I can help.”

Rankin couldn’t understand why Thera didn’t understand what she had to do. It seemed pretty straightforward to him.

“Physically he’s fine,” he repeated. “It’s gotta be some sort of stress thing. Take a shot.”

Ch’o lay on his back, his mind completely blank. He neither thought nor felt anything, floating in a gray swirl beyond emotion or intellect.

Gradually, he became aware of a buzz at the side of the room, a swirling noise that he couldn’t comprehend. He turned his head slowly. A face appeared from a white cloud, a face he knew was familiar, though he couldn’t precisely place it.

The face spoke.

“Dr. Ch’o. Are you OK?”

The voice was foreign and yet familiar. Ch’o struggled but could not recognize it.

“Dr. Ch’o, are you OK?” repeated the voice, a woman’s voice, a gentle, friendly voice.

It spoke English. Did he know English?

“I wanted to thank you for the cigarettes,” said Thera.

She got down on her knees and took hold of the scientist’s hand, as if she were a supplicant.

“I can help you if you need help,” she told him. “These people are good. They’ve sent for a doctor to help you.”

Ch’o pursed his lips. The voice was extremely familiar, yet he couldn’t quite make the connection. He closed his eyes.

Thera stayed on her knees for nearly ten minutes. Ch’o seemed to be sleeping, though she couldn’t be sure. Finally she decided it would be best to let him rest.

“I’ll be back,” she said, rising.

Rankin met her outside.

“Well?”

Thera shrugged. “Got any cigarettes?”

“Cigarettes?”

“Yeah.”

“You smoke?”

“It was part of the cover. He gave me a pack. Maybe it’ll make a connection.”

“Let’s see if we can find some.”

13

The sedan — a Mercedes, though not the same one that Park used — arrived at the hotel for Ferguson at precisely eight-thirty. The driver spoke no Russian and didn’t appear to know English. After making sure that “Mr. Manski” was in the vehicle, he took his seat behind the steering wheel and silently began to drive through the city.

Ferguson had pretended to be an arms dealer so often — sometimes Russian, sometimes as a former member of the IRA — that the role was part of his personality, no more foreign than the doting nephew he might become when visiting one of his great aunts. He could do it in his sleep, or at least in bed, and in fact had.

The problem with this, though, was that often his thoughts tended to wander, his mind drifting from the very real dangers of his covert job to other things, some trivial, others not. Looking out the window at the well-lit city, he saw a massive crane in a cramped, tiny alley and wondered how it had been positioned there. He also thought of the cancer count and the fact that his body was gradually turning against him.

How would he go out? Die of thirst in a hospital bed? Plug himself with a Glock or a PK pistol when the end was in sight?

Maybe that had been Kang Hwan’s problem; maybe he’d chosen to hang himself rather than drain away. Working around radioactive materials could cause any number of cancers, including thyroid cancer.

The doctors talked in percentages, possibilities, never in absolutes. Ninety percent chance of survival.

Which was great, unless you were in the ten percent that didn’t make it.

Fifty-fifty chance of one-year survival.

Twenty-two percent possibility of breathing the fresh air of Maine two Christmases from now.

Was it twenty-two or eighteen? Thirteen?

Was the air fresh in Maine anymore?

The car whisked up the driveway of the Daejeon Science & Arts University, where Park was due to attend a gala reception announcing the construction of a new physics laboratory. Work had already begun on the building: Dump trucks and bulldozers and cranes were lined up in the lot. Ferguson looked at them, then saw the sign announcing the project. The main words were in Korean and English: “Home of a new nuclear research reactor.”

Had the reactor been built already, the dots would have connected perfectly.

“Whoa,” said Ferguson, spotting a pair of trucks in the parking lot. They were the same type he’d seen at the waste-processing area and at Science Industries.

Ferguson leaned forward and tapped on the driver’s shoulder.

“That lot,” he said in English. “Can you go there?”

The man gave him an odd look.

“Jeogi,” he told him, pointing. “There.”

The man replied in Korean that the reception was in the main administrative building, dead ahead.

Ferguson waved his hand and settled back, telling him to never mind.

Mr. Li was waiting at the door with two large bodyguard types behind him. Their black suits blended into the night.

“I am very glad you made it,” said Li in Russian as Ferguson climbed the concrete steps.

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“I have to ask—”

“Yes, of course,” said Ferguson. He reached beneath his jacket and pulled out the two Clocks he was carrying — what was a Russian arms dealer without weapons?

Li turned to one of the bodyguards, who took the weapons.

Ferguson saw a gun detector in the foyer. “You want this, too,” he told Li, reaching down and taking the last Glock from the holster near his ankle.

“More?” asked Li, looking at the other leg.

“I dress very light in Korea. A very civilized country.”

“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Li, handing over the gun to one of the guards.

“My pleasure.”

Inside, they took an elevator to the top floor. The reception was already in full swing. Guests, the majority of whom were male and over the age of sixty, milled around a large ballroom, replete with crystal chandeliers and a floor so polished Ferguson could see his reflection.

“Dance a big major here?” Ferguson asked Li as they made their way toward the bar area.

“The room is often used for receptions.”

“I can see why.”

“Mr. Park paid for its construction.”

“Generous man.”

“The most generous in Korea.”

A guest took hold of Li and Ferguson drifted off, nodding politely but not speaking as he strolled across the room. As he reached the table with the food he heard two men talking about Park in what seemed to be negative tones, using phrases that meant “aggressive” and “too fond of the North.” He smiled at them; their conversation immediately ended.

“Ivan Manski,” he said, sticking out his hand.

The men looked at each other, then introduced themselves. A polite exchange of business cards followed.

“So you know Mr. Park?” said Ferguson in English.

The men claimed not to understand. Ferguson switched back to Korean, telling them that he was Russian and that his company sold many important scientific instruments. Both men smiled but said nothing.

“So you are Russian?” said another man by his side. He was a thin rail with glasses, so short Ferguson had to practically bend over to see his face.

“Dah. Yes. Russian.”

“You’re not a spy, are you? KGB?”

Ferguson laughed. “KGB no more.”

“FSB, sorry. I was joking,” said the man. “I teach the history of the Cold War. From the viewpoint of its technology. Professor Wan.”

“Ivan Manski.”

“I have a very good collection of Soviet and American bugging devices,” said Wan.

“Really?”

“Very good. And encryption devices.”

“Oh really?”

“I have a Fialka machine.”

“What’s that?”

The professor explained that the Fialka was a cipher machine based partly on the Germans’ World War II-era Enigma device. It was quite a find if you were interested in how secret messages were sent during the early days of the Cold War.

Ferguson was spared a detailed dissertation on how the machine worked when the room erupted in applause. All eyes turned toward a man dressed in a tuxedo who was walking to the center of the room. He had a microphone in his hand.

“Thank you, honored guests,” he said in Korean. “I have the privilege to introduce our dean of science and physics, who wishes to say a few words in tribute to your generosity.”

Polite applause followed. The dean recited a number of statistics about the new science facility that was being constructed, then began praising the Korean educational system, which the year before had turned out more engineers and scientists per capita than any country in the world. The university was proud to be part of this “Korean Revolution,” which was bringing the country to the forefront of scientific achievement.

“When the science reactor is built, Korean science will advance ten thousand years,” said the dean. Impressed by the overstatement, the crowd once more applauded. “Until now we have had to make due with the government-sponsored reactors for our studies. This has been most generous. But the future will be grander.”

Ferguson followed the two men he’d tried to make conversation with as they slipped toward the table with the food. Halfway there, he spotted a familiar face: the female CIA officer who’d rousted him from bed several days before.

She stared directly at him, mouth open.

Li stood to her right. He saw the expression on her face and glanced across at Ferguson.

Ferguson smiled and walked directly to her.

“Эдравствуйте,” said Ferguson. “Hello. And how is the U.S. trade council today?”

The CIA officer’s mouth dropped even wider.

“Can I buy you a drinkski?” Ferguson asked, switching to Russian-accented English.

She shook her head.

“Very good whiskey. But the vodka, eh.”

Another head shake.

“My loss,” he said, turning to continue toward the bar.

Li pounced before he got there. “You know her?”

“I know all pretty women. Personal motto.”

“She told you she is with the American trade council?”

“One never questions beauty.” Ferguson shrugged. He could tell that Li knew she was CIA; it was a good bet that half the room suspected it, assuming they cared. “You have a diverse guest list.”

“Many people come, whether invited or not.”

“I have the same problem when I throw a party,” said Ferguson, ordering a fresh drink from the bartender.

“Drink later,” said Li.

He took Ferguson’s elbow and steered him toward a small conference room at the right. They walked through it, then down the hall to one of the administration offices.

Park was already waiting. A silver-haired man in his early sixties, he had the quiet air of an ancient village elder. Short and squat, with a buzz cut that flattered his face’s rounded features, he looked like a retired wrestler sitting on the long couch.

Mr. Li introduced him, using Korean and then switching to English. Park could not speak Russian.

“A great honor to meet you,” said Ferguson in English. “I’ve heard very much about you.”

The corner of Park’s mouth turned up in a faint smile, but he said nothing. Ferguson remained silent as well, the two men staring at each other for a few seconds, their smiles gradually increasing.

“He is a sagacious one,” Park told one of the men behind the couch in Korean. “Useful in his profession.”

Park rose. “Take a walk with me,” he told Ferguson in English. “Come.”

Ferguson fell in alongside him as Park slipped out of the office and walked down the hall. His aides and Mr. Li trailed along at a respectful distance until Park reached a set of double doors. Then two of the assistants sprang forward and held open the doors.

Ferguson and Park walked through a small vestibule, and then out onto an open terrace. The city spread out before them, a million lights glittering in the night.

“Progress,” said Park in English.

“Yes,” said Ferguson.

“Three decades ago, this was a poor place. Then, men with vision for Korea stepped up. The nation began to move ahead.”

“Looks like it,” said Ferguson.

“What is it you want, Mr. Manski?” said Park, still gazing at the lights.

“To be rich.”

Once more, a smile grew in the corner of Park’s mouth.

“That is a dangerous desire,” said the billionaire.

“Life is dangerous.”

“The Russian embassy claims not to have heard of you.”

“I hope they would say that.” Ferguson scanned the well-lit horizon, wondering how much of what he saw Park owned. “I was told that if I made myself available, there might perhaps be a market for certain items difficult to find elsewhere.”

“Is that so?”

“Dah.”

“And who told you this?”

“Some information, it is in the air.”

“Korea has its own industry. We can make whatever we need.”

“Truly. And Koreans are very discreet. But Russians can be even more discreet, for some matters require discretion as well as expertise. That is what I deal in: discretion.”

Park turned around and went back through the doors. Ferguson started to follow, but found his way barred by two of the men in the black suits. He was just debating whether to push through them when Mr. Li appeared. Though Li said nothing, the two men separated.

“Mr. Park is planning a journey the day after tomorrow,” said Mr. Li in Russian. “Perhaps you would like to join him. He finds it considerably easier to talk to people while he is traveling. He’s very busy otherwise.”

“How long?”

“A few days.”

“I might be able to arrange that.”

“Very good.”

“If he tells me what sort of items he would be interested in, I can be better prepared—”

“That would be for Mr. Park to say, not for me.”

“Very good.” Ferguson, getting cold, rubbed his shoulders. “Where are we going?”

“Don’t you follow the news?”

“No.”

“Mr. Park is leading a group of businessmen to North Korea, to encourage cultural and business exchanges. His friends meet informally with ministers and others, at receptions, hunting, dinner… You might find some business yourself.”

“That territory is already taken,” said Ferguson.

Mr. Li nodded. “There will be diversions. It is a pleasant time in a secluded lodge outside the capital. You will have an opportunity to talk to Mr. Park then. Of course, if you wish not to come…”

“No, no,” said Ferguson. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

14

“Dr. Ch’o, are you awake?”

Thera squatted next to the prone scientist, who didn’t appear to have moved on his cot since she had last seen him. His dinner sat nearby, untouched.

“You were so kind to give me cigarettes. Are you sure you don’t smoke?”

She took the pack out and held it where he could see it. Then, carefully, she unwrapped the top and tapped out a single cigarette. Smoking was forbidden inside the ship, but Thera lit up anyway, thinking it might break the spell. She felt bad for the scientist, worried about him, as if he were an old friend.

“Remember?” she asked as she took the first draw.

The sulfur smell of the match and the whiff of tobacco pushed at Ch’o’s consciousness. A flood of thoughts came to him, ideas that were in numbers as well as sights and emotions: the half-life of isotopes, his father’s slow death from radiation sickness, his mother’s cancer, his own attempt to save others from their fate.

The girl. It was the girl he had passed the message to. She had come — they had captured her, too.

“You,” said Ch’o.

Thera reached to help the scientist as he pushed to get up.

“You,” he said again.

“It’s me, Dr. Ch’o. They told me you were sick.”

Ch’o shook his head.

“Are you in trouble?” he asked her. “You must be in trouble. The Americans… We’ve been captured.”

“It’s OK,” she said, clasping his hand. “The Americans are helping us.”

“The Americans do not control the IAEA.”

“No. They don’t. They’re here to help you. You needed help.”

Thera steered him to the chair. When he sat, she pulled over the other chair and sat in front of him.

“The Americans can help,” said Thera. “They want to know what’s going on. I know you’ve heard many bad things about them, but you have been outside Korea. You know they are not all evil. Not all of them.”

That much was true, Ch’o thought.

“They’re working with the IAEA. They can get your message out. And you don’t have to stay with the Americans; you can go where you want. You were in Europe when you were younger.”

“People are being poisoned,” said Ch’o.

“And you can stop that.”

Someone pounded at the side of the cabin.

Not now, thought Thera, but the young ensign who’d been assigned to liaison with the First Team people came in anyway.

“Ma’am, the psychologist is in-bound… Uh, you can’t smoke in here,” he said. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

Thera shot the private a look of death. She was about to tell him what he could do — a direction that would have been physically impossible — but then remembered that she was supposed to stay in character for Ch’o.

“I’m sorry,” Thera said meekly, stabbing out the cigarette.

A wave of indignation rose up in Ch’o. “Get out,” he told the man at the door. “Out!”

The ensign ducked away. Ch’o pushed his legs over the edge of the bed and put his arm around the young woman.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “We’ll be all right.”

I told him I have my own cabin and would see him in the morning,” Thera told Rankin two hours later.

“He totally snapped out of it?”

“Whatever shock he was in, he’s out of that. But he’s still wary. Very, very wary.” Thera explained that Ch’o seemed to think that he was protecting her in some way. He was confused by the fact that he had been picked up by the U.S. and not the IAEA.

“The North Koreans think we’re pretty close to devils,” Thera told Rankin. “They have museums devoted to our criminal acts, so he doesn’t understand how the U.S. could be helping.”

“You helped him.”

“He thinks I’m Greek, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“He wants to talk,” she told Rankin. “He has information that will save a lot of people. Thousands.”

“A bomb would kill millions.”

“This isn’t about a bomb. He’s concerned about waste. That’s what he wants to talk about — pollution. Radiation poisoning.”

“A dirty bomb?”

“Pollution. He was going to be put into prison and maybe shot because he tried to alert the authorities. It’s North Korea he’s worried about.”

“That’s what we rescued him for?” said Rankin. “We went through all this trouble because he was worried about pollution?’’’’

“Sometimes you can be a real jerk, Stephen,” said Thera, storming away.

15

Jogging was as popular in Korea as it was in the U.S., and an early morning jogger, even a Caucasian one, rarely attracted attention on a college campus. Ferguson waved to the security men at the gate as he came up the university drive; the one paying attention shook his head at him, mouthing words in Korean to the effect of “you’re a crazy nut job.”

Crazy nut jobs could go just about anywhere, and ten minutes later Ferguson entered the parking lot where he’d seen the two trucks the night before. He took a lap around the perimeter, made sure he wasn’t being watched, then stopped to tie his shoe near the first truck.

When he got up, he slipped one of the gamma-ray counter tabs into the back, wedging it into the space near the door. Then he took pictures of the license plates with the small camera he had in his fanny pack; it was easier than trying to remember the numbers.

Ferguson stretched out a cramp, sticking another tab in the second truck. Then he resumed his exercise, taking a lap near the building where the test reactor was being constructed.

Under normal circumstances, such reactors could not produce weapons-grade plutonium, nor could the government research reactor the school was currently using. But that assumed that no one wanted them to.

Large boards of plywood and a chain-link fence ringed the construction area. Curious, Ferguson squeezed beneath the metal chain holding the gate closed. Once inside, he saw that work hadn’t progressed very far at all; at the moment the building consisted of a concrete slab and massive steel pillars, with cladding only on the corner facing the building where the reception had been held the night before. He took some pictures anyway.

Sight-seeing done, Ferguson stopped at a PC bang, a public-access computer cafe not far from the campus. It was early, but already most of the fifty seats were filled. He slid his security dongle into the USB port and pulled up the browser. Then he typed the secretary’s name into a general search engine and was rewarded with six million matches. Nine-tenths of the results, to judge by the first two pages, were of pornographic sites.

Not of her.

“Whoa,” said the teenager sitting next to him, glancing over. “How’d you get past their filter?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Ferguson told him. “I’m looking for a girl’s address, but I don’t do Korean very well. Think you can help me?”

“You American?”

“Russian.”

Ferguson put his hand out. The kid shook it, then wrinkled his nose.

“Yeah, I gotta take a shower. This is the name.”

Ferguson took out the card with the secretary’s name, then got out of the way so the kid could sit down. Barely containing his drool, the teen called up a phone directory and then typed the name into the search box.

“What is her husband’s name?” asked the kid.

“Not married.”

“No phone with this name.”

“Maybe she lives with her parents.”

“Many, many Kims,” he told Ferguson.

“Give it a try.”

The teenager typed the surname into the computer. Sure enough, there were over a hundred pages of results.

“OK for now,” said Ferguson. He reached over and slid the dongle out of the slot.

“Mister?”

“Be my guest,” said Ferguson. When he left the store, the kid was still bent over the computer keyboard, trying to figure out what combination of keys Ferguson had used to conjure porn past the browser filter.

16

Corrine saw James Sonjae as soon as he cleared Customs. He looked tired, even more tired, in fact, than he had when she’d met him in the middle of the night.

“Need a ride?” she asked.

“Oh, thank God. I thought I was never going to get out of there. The line was endless.”

“Did you have trouble?”

“Not really. The line was a bit long, but it moved pretty quickly.”

“My car’s this way.”

It had gotten dark and cold since Corrine had arrived at the airport. Her thin sweater did little against the wind.

“It’s all in the bag,” Sonjae told her as they drove. “Computer disks, a big tape, and dirt.”

Corrine said nothing, deciding it would be best if she acted like she knew what the items were.

“How’s Ferg doing, anyway?” Sonjae asked.

“You would probably know better than me,” she said. “You just saw him.”

“No, I mean, with the cancer.”

What cancer? thought Corrine. But she kept her lawyer’s face on.

“I think he’s doing pretty well,” she said.

“I hope so. He looked a little run down. Probably the jet lag and everything.”

“Probably.”

“Shame,” said Sonjae. “I’ve known Fergie since he was a little kid, off and on. His dad and I go back. Long story.”

Corrine nodded. “So you knew him before the cancer?”

“Oh yeah. I only found out about that because I was visiting his father a few years back, before he died. Ferg’s kind of quiet about that. Always kept things to himself. Probably the way he was raised, I guess.”

Sonjae fell silent. Corrine tried to think of something to say to prompt him to continue. His exit was coming up.

“Hungry?” she asked as she took the turn onto the ramp.

“I could use some food, yeah.”

“Come on. I’ll buy you dinner.”

17

When Ferguson returned to his hotel, he discovered that during his absence the room had been bugged — a very promising sign. He put the bug to good use, pretending to use his sat phone to call a contact in Russian Georgia and telling him that things were going nicely. Then he removed the bug. While it would have better to leave it in place, he wasn’t an expert on them and would need to give it to someone who was to have it identified.

With the room now clean, he called Corrigan to check in and to tell Slott he was going to North Korea.

“Ferg, where the hell have you been?”

“Good morning to you, too, Jack.”

“What are you doing over there?”

“Sight-seeing.”

“Slott is pissed. He wants to talk to you right away. And I mean right away.”

“Here I am. Listen, before you get him on the line, I’m going to be out of touch for a couple of days. I’m going north of the border on a business trip.”

“What?”

“Mr. Park is getting up a junket. I’m going as Manski, the notorious Russian arms dealer.”

“Why are you going to North Korea?”

“Park wants to talk about something, but I get the feeling that he doesn’t think it’s safe in the South. I don’t know exactly what he’s up to.”

“Ferg. You can’t go north.”

“I am Russian citizen. I go anywhere.”

Corrigan slapped him on Hold. Slott, breathing hard and talking a mile a minute, came on a few seconds later.

“What the hell are you doing?” Slott asked. “Are you out of your mind? Have you lost your senses?”

“Following a couple of leads. I don’t think so. And no. In that order.”

“You outed a fellow officer. I can’t believe you did that, Ferg. That’s way over the line.”

“When?”

“You blew someone’s cover last night in Daejeon.”

“Jeez, I almost forgot about that.”

“Ferguson.”

“Look, I didn’t blow her cover. I didn’t say anything about her, except that she worked for the trade commission, which is her cover, right?”

“Why were you even near her?”

“I was undercover, she was staring at me, her jaw scraping the carpet; I had to do something. I left things vague.” Ferguson, annoyed, sat down in the chair and put his feet up on the bed. “It was a reception that Park went to. Park’s the guy who owns Science Industries.”

“What the hell is Science Industries?” said Slott.

“Science Industries has a guy on its staff who’s an expert in extracting bomb material. Or was an expert — he killed himself a couple of months back. It was a suicide. Suspicious.”

“And what else?”

“You know Park Jin Tae?” Ferguson asked.

“Park Jin Tae? I know of him.”

“What do you know?”

“Billionaire. Extreme nationalist.” Slott calmed down as he spoke. “He was connected with March 1, a political movement. They may have been thinking about rioting. It was hard to know where the South Korean’s charges ended and the truth began. In any event, he bought his way out of trouble.”

“Well, he owns Science Industries. He wants to talk to a notorious Russian arms dealer up in the People’s Democratic Hell Hole tomorrow.”

“What arms dealer?”

“Me.”

“You?”

“I figured it was the easiest way to talk to him.”

Slott exhaled so loudly Ferguson had to move the phone away from his ear.

“Sometimes you go too far, Ferg.”

“I don’t think so, Dan.”

“North Korea’s pretty risky.”

“Park goes there a couple of times a year. Something’s gotta be up, right? Arms dealer comes to him, says I can get you whatever you want? And Park says, hey, take a trip to the outlaw paradise of the world.”

“All right. I’ll tell Seoul. We’ll set up—”

“I wish you wouldn’t tell them.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t trust them. I barely trust you.”

Actually, he wasn’t sure that he did trust Slott, but saying that wouldn’t be particularly helpful.

Slott didn’t answer.

“You still there, Dan?”

“Just because you’re Parnelles’s fair-haired boy, don’t think you can get away with everything,” said Slott.

Ferguson laughed. “My hair’s black, Dan.”

“Bo’s thinking about bringing formal charges against you for outing his agent.”

“That’ll be fun.”

He’d hedge his bets. Have Corrine take the dirt to the DOE, the disks to the NSA. He’d tell her where he was going, and why.

Not that that would save his sorry butt if Slott really was out to screw him. But at least he wouldn’t get away with it.

“You still there, Bob?”

The truth was, though, Ferguson wanted to trust Slott. Bo seemed like a boob, but Slott had a good track record, a history. And he’d helped Ferguson do his job, which was pretty much the best thing you could say about any manager.

Not trusting him meant not trusting the Agency — and, ultimately, not trusting his country.

Was that how they got his dad? Was it your sense of loyalty to your nation that screwed you in the end?

“I’m still here,” Ferguson told him.

“I won’t tell Seoul. But take care of yourself. You don’t have any backup.”

“Always,” said Ferguson, hanging up.

18

Corrine was in her car when the secure satellite phone rang.

“Corrine here.”

“Wicked Stepmother, we really have to stop meeting this way.”

“Ferg.”

“Did you get the bag?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Everything in that bag comes from a place called Science Industries in Daejeon.”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“That’s the ten-million-dollar question. I don’t trust Seoul, so I didn’t want them getting their paws on it.”

“Do you trust Slott?”

“Yeah.”

Corrine heard a note of hesitation in his voice.

“I think I do,” Ferguson added, “but that’s not good enough. He’s going to hate me, he may even fire me, but I want you to have them all independently tested. Take the computer things to Robert Ferro at the NSA. You know him?”

“Deputy director.”

“Yeah. You can drop my name if you have to to get it done quick.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” As the president’s counsel, Corrine had more than enough political muscle of her own.

“Dirt goes to DOE. Tell them to test for plutonium.”

“I’ll do it first thing in the morning.”

“Do it tonight,” Ferguson told her. “It may take days to get the results. Tell Slott what’s going on once you have a good idea what’s on the computer disks or the tape, or once it’s gone far enough that you’re reasonably sure no one’s going to lie to you.”

“Why don’t you trust Slott?”

“I told you, I think I do. But he was in Korea for a long time. And these guys over here work for him. See, if there is plutonium there, the fact that they didn’t find it and we did is pretty embarrassing. So they have an incentive to keep it quiet.”

“You’re talking about treason, Bob.”

“Maybe just incompetence,” said Ferguson.

“How mad is Slott going to be that you went behind his back?”

“Real mad,” said Ferguson. “Real, real mad. But maybe I’ll get lucky, and he’ll never talk to me again. Look, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have to get going.”

Corrine wanted to ask about Ferguson’s cancer, but it was too late; he hung up before she could find the words to bring it up.

19

The ship’s captain gave them the officer’s wardroom for the initial “debriefing.” A civilian psychologist who’d worked for both the CIA and the Defense Department was scheduled to arrive on the ship in a few hours, but Rankin saw no reason to wait, and the CIA interrogator was chomping at the bit. The interrogator suggested that Thera meet Ch’o and bring him to the wardroom for breakfast; once they were settled, the others could join and take it from there. Thera agreed, intending to leave as soon as the others came in, but from the moment she saw Ch’o dressed in the borrowed khakis and waiting for her she knew she wouldn’t leave unless he asked.

“Good morning,” he told her, rising and bowing his head stiffly

“Dr. Ch’o.” She bowed her head as well. “Are you feeling well?”

“I am feeling… prepared.”

“Prepared?”

Ch’o didn’t explain. He had decided that he must do his duty, and his duty as a Korean was to protect the people who would be poisoned by the improperly handled waste. He trusted the girl, and so he must believe that the Americans, whatever else was true about them, would give the information to the IAEA and the UN.

His own fate was immaterial. He was just an ant. He would move forward calmly, doing his duty.

“They have breakfast for us in the officers’ galley,” Thera told him. “Would you like to come?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“You have to eat,” said Thera. “You look very pale. It’s more comfortable than your cabin.”

“I’ll have some tea.”

Ch’o had been aboard several ships during his career, but this was his first time aboard a fighting vessel of any type. The ship seemed several times more crowded than civilian boats. A brusque energy emanated from the young people; there were women as well as men in uniform, which surprised him. Ch’o recognized the energy as a kind of shared purposefulness, a common motivation that reminded him of his own youth and of Korea as it should be: everyone moving in the same direction.

Why the government had deviated from such a path, he did not know. It saddened him, and when he arrived finally at the wardroom he felt as if a cloud of doom had fallen around him.

“You can tell the seaman what you want,” Thera said to Ch’o. “He’ll get it.”

“Tea?”

“Tea, yes sir,” said the waiter, whose pronounced southern accent was difficult for the scientist to understand. “The cook made some mighty fine biscuits this morning. Y’all might try some of them.”

“Biscuits are a kind of bread,” explained Thera.

Ch’o shook his head. He only wanted tea.

“I’ll try some,” said Thera. “And coffee.”

“Yes, ma’am. Best coffee in the fleet, I promise.”

Neither Thera nor Ch’o spoke until the man returned. Ch’o found the tea very weak, but this did not surprise him; only Koreans made very good tea.

“Some of the people who helped you escape want to talk to you,” said Thera. “You may have information that could help save lives.”

“I do,” said Ch’o. “I have much information.”

“Will you speak to them?”

“Yes.”

“They should be here shortly.”

Ch’o spent two hours simply talking about his background, telling the CIA debriefer and the others where he had gone to school, what he had studied, the ministries he had served. Thera and Rankin listened, and occasionally the translator explained particular words and phrases, but for the most part, only Jiménez and Ch’o spoke.

Both grew slightly impatient as the conversation continued. Ch’o wanted to talk about the toxic wastes; Jiménez wanted to find out just how valuable the scientist really might be. Neither man, though, felt he could change the course of the interview, and so they plodded on, concentrating on Ch’o’s schooling and research interests until a chief petty officer came in and said it was almost time for lunch.

“Let’s all freshen up and get something to eat,” suggested Thera. “And then find a more comfortable place to talk.”

“What is ‘freshen up’?” asked Ch’o.

“Take a break,” she told him.

“Yes, very good.”

“We could all have lunch together,” suggested Jiménez.

“I think the doctor needs a break,” said Thera. “Let’s get some air and move around a bit.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” said Rankin.

Jiménez didn’t agree, but arguing in front of the subject was an even worse idea, so he got up without saying anything else.

A half hour later, the psychologist and translator met Ch’o at his cabin, and they went for a walk on the flight deck. Thera, Rankin, and Jiménez met in Rankin’s cabin to discuss what to do next.

“Definitely an important scientist,” said Jiménez. “But how important? We’re going to have to bring in experts to talk to him, people who can understand the technical stuff and know the history of the bomb program. I don’t have the background to question him; he lost me on his dissertation.”

“Yeah,” said Rankin.

“How long are we staying on this ship? I’d like to get someplace more comfortable, flexible.”

Rankin shrugged. Corrigan had told him they were “on hold” until the bosses figured it out.

“Where does he go after this?” Thera asked.

“Back to the States,” said Jiménez. “First to a military base where we can keep him secure, then maybe set him up in an apartment when he’s feeling comfortable. Your people should be working on the logistics right now.”

Jiménez took a gulp of his coffee. “Next thing we do this afternoon, we find out if he has family in North Korea. Who they are, where, etc.”

“Why?” said Rankin. “We’re not going to be able to protect them if he does.”

Jiménez grinned. “He doesn’t know that.”

“He’s not stupid,” said Thera.

“I didn’t say he was. It’s leverage.”

“You can’t lie to him like that.”

Jiménez rolled his eyes.

“You have to ask him about the pollution,” said Thera. “He’s worried about people dying.”

“We’ll get to that,” said Jiménez.

“When?”

“This is a long process. I have to build up a rapport. You know? I’ve done this before.”

“I’m just telling you what he’s concerned about.”

“Don’t tell me my job, all right?” said Jiménez. “Just because you shook your bootie at him doesn’t mean you’re his friend, right?”

Without thinking, Thera delivered a perfect roundhouse to Jiménez’s jaw. It caught him completely by surprise; he flew into the nearby bulkhead and tumbled to the deck.

Rankin sprung over and grabbed her, dragging her outside. Thera, slightly stunned by the intensity of her own anger, didn’t resist.

“All right, settle down,” Rankin told her. “Settle down.”

“I don’t have to take that.”

“Yeah.” Rankin didn’t like Jiménez either. “But easy. All right?”

Jiménez, blood dripping from the side of his mouth, came to the door of the cabin.

“What the fuck was that for?”

“For being an asshole,” Thera told him.

“Well you turned him. That’s all I meant.”

“I didn’t turn him. I didn’t do anything. He came to me. He picked me at random.”

“You were out of line,” Rankin told Jiménez.

“Look, either you let me do my job, or get somebody else.”

“You can do your job. Just don’t be a jerk about it.” Rankin looked at Thera, who looked like she was about to unload another haymaker. “Let’s get some air up top.”

Regret mixed with anger as Thera walked down the corridor. They took a turn and found themselves on the hangar deck. Mechanics were looking over a Harrier Jumpjet a few yards away.

“I’m sorry I hit him,” said Thera.

“He deserved to be hit.”

Thera felt her arms shaking. She was still wound up from the mission, too wound up.

“Let’s go up and have a cigarette,” suggested Rankin. “If I can remember how the hell to get up there.”

“It’s back through here,” she told him, leading the way.

How had she become so attached to Ch’o, worried about him? She shouldn’t be. He was just… Well, he was just a defector with information that might be useful.

When you were on a mission, you had to remember things were black and white, good and evil. She was on the good guys’ side. He was on the evil side. Even if he was useful, at the end of the day, he was still on the wrong team.

Except she didn’t feel that way. She could see the other North Koreans like that, the ones who would have arrested her or shot her or whatever. The guard who’d smoked with her, the officious jerk in South Korea — they were all on the other team; she didn’t feel any sympathy for them. But the scientist was different.

Why? Because he’d been nice to her?

Because he was concerned about innocent people being harmed.

“Look, maybe we should let Jiménez do his thing by himself,” said Rankin as they reached the fresh air. “We were just sitting there anyway. Like bumps on a log. We listen to what the shrink says, and if he thinks Ch’o’s cool, then we let Jiménez take it.”

“You’re right,” said Thera abruptly. “I’d like to get the hell out of here anyway.”

20

“So, who do you think would use a bug like that?” Ferguson asked the professor.

Wan scowled and turned it over.

“Very new. Two years old, design,” said the spy buff. “Not government, though.”

“Not American or not Korean?”

“Neither. Wait.”

Wan went to the side of his office and hit his computer mouse. His machine woke up, the screen flashing with a screensaver showing an old substitution code wheel. In less than a minute, he brought up a website that featured the bug in question.

“Government would want to spend ten times as much,” laughed Wan, pointing at the price: five dollars.

“Would the bug be ten times as good?”

Wan smiled.

Ferguson packed up his sat phone and electronic gear and left them in a small locker in a Seoul self-storage facility. From now until he returned, he would be only Ivan Manski.

Not having his bug detector when he got back to his hotel wasn’t a real problem; it was easier to assume he was being bugged and act accordingly. But he was curious, and so he set about looking through the hotel room. It was a game in a way, seeing if he could figure things out the old-fashioned way, like a real spy would have done it.

Like his dad would have done it.

The bug that he’d removed from the TV set hadn’t been replaced. But there was a new one in the clock radio.

A bit of an insult, really; the radio was probably the most obvious place to look, after the television and phone.

And the lamp, where Ferguson found another.

A third had been placed at the bottom of the small stuffed chair and two more in the bathroom, including one wired into the light fixture ($13.99 on the professor’s website).

Ferguson gathered them all together, put them on the tile floor, then stomped them under his heel with a loud yell.

Laughing, he went downstairs to the bar, where, still in character, he ordered a vodka before going out for dinner.

There were two new bugs in the room when he came back.

“Points for persistence,” he said in Russian before flushing them down the toilet.

21

“Maybe we stop now,” said Tak Ch’o. He’d been talking for so long that his jaw hurt. “We stop.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” said Jiménez. “As good a place as any.” Jiménez glanced at the translator. “Start back in tomorrow morning?”

“I want to know,” said Ch’o, “is the girl OK?”

“Yeah, I told you, she’s fine,” said Jiménez.

Reflexively, Ch’o started to nod, accepting what Jiménez said. He had heard such excuses many times in his days in North Korea, and always, he had nodded.

Because he was afraid. Fear was the central fact of his life.

No more. That was why he froze when he woke up here. The fear had been removed, and he was incapable of everything, even breathing, without it. But somehow, when he’d seen that the girl might be in danger, he had been reborn.

That was who he wanted to be, who he was now: a man who could help others by acting, not by being afraid and paralyzed.

“The girl,” said Ch’o firmly. “I will see her now.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. I want to talk to her alone. And tomorrow, tomorrow we will speak of more important things.”

“Well, now, listen, Doc, we have plenty of things to talk about,” said Jiménez.

“We will talk about what I want to talk about tomorrow,” insisted Ch’o.

“All right,” said Jiménez, still clearly reluctant. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

“Let the girl come to the cabin.”

“She’s got to decide that for herself, but I’ll tell her.”

Thera spent the afternoon hanging around her cabin, reading a mystery the last occupant had left behind. Attempting to keep contact with the ship’s crew and marines to a minimum — and still in a dark mood because of her confrontation with Jiménez — she had a sailor bring her dinner. She flipped on the closed-circuit entertainment channel while she ate and began watching a sentimental tear-jerker about a kid looking for his father in the Alaskan wilderness. She guessed the ending five minutes into the picture — the boy’s real father had disguised himself as the guide for the journey — but still felt her eyes welling up at the very end when the guide, fatally wounded on the trek, revealed himself after saving the boy’s life.

Movie over, Thera fiddled halfheartedly with a computer game that was connected to the television set. Finally she flipped on the TV and began watching the Alaskan wilderness movie a second time.

Father and son were just about to be attacked by a Kodiak bear when Rankin knocked at the side of her door.

“Come on in,” she said.

Rankin did so. Jiménez followed.

“Busy?” asked Rankin.

“Bored.”

Thera flipped off the TV She glared at Jiménez, daring him to apologize. He didn’t.

“I was wondering,” said Jiménez, “if maybe you’d come see Dr. Ch’o.”

“Why?”

“He’s worried something happened to you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. The shrink says he’s fine, a little, you know, culture shock. And maybe he’s protective of you or something along those lines.”

“Maybe he likes people who aren’t jerks.”

“Look, you’re the one who hit me,” said Jiménez. “My jaw still hurts.”

“You’re lucky I hit you there,” said Thera. “Would it kill you to say you’re sorry?”

“Would it kill you?” answered Jiménez.

“If I did anything to apologize for, I would.”

They glared at each other, neither willing to give up any ground.

“Why don’t you go talk to the scientist?” Rankin told her. “Just show him you’re OK.”

“I have no problem with that,” said Thera, getting up.

“Hey,” said Jiménez, following her out of the stateroom.

“Yeah?”

“Look, I’m not a total jerk, all right?”

“You have a way to go to prove that.”

“I jumped to the wrong conclusion. You’re pretty, and that’s the way it works with a lot of guys I deal with. I just jumped to the wrong conclusion. OK?”

“I’ll let you know what happens,” she said, turning toward Ch’o’s cabin. Never before had being called pretty sounded like such an insult.

I brought this to many people’s attention. Personally, I took it to General Namgung. Personally. I had worked with him on many special projects, most recently four or five months ago, engineering special shielding for air transport of waste. He understood the hazards, but would he act? He did not act. This is a great shame to our country. Many people will die.”

Ch’o stopped and looked up at Thera.

“You understand what I am saying?” he asked.

“Of course. But you should tell Jiménez this.”

“I will. But you… you understand, don’t you?”

Thera nodded.

“Maybe you could write this down,” suggested Ch’o. “To keep a record.”

“I can get Jiménez.”

The scientist shook his head. “I’d rather talk to you now.”

“All right. Let me get a pad and a recorder. Is that OK?”

“That would be very good.”

Four years of college, and I’m back to being a secretary, she thought, leaving the cabin.

22

Mr. Li had described the trip to North Korea as if it were a junket, but he hadn’t done it justice.

Ferguson went down to the lobby a few minutes before noon, just in time to see a white passenger van pull up to the curb. A young woman dressed in a short, skin-tight yellow skirt hopped from the back and strode toward him, asking in English if he was the Russian businessman Ivan Manski.

“At your service,” said Ferguson.

“Your bag, I take.”

“Is fine,” said Ferguson, laying on his heaviest Russian accent. “We go now?”

“We go, yes.” She led him to the minibus, then stowed his bag in the back.

“Mr. Manski, we are pleased to have you,” she said in a way that suggested any number of double entendres. “We can get you something, yes?”

“I’m fine.”

“Vodka?”

“A little vodka maybe,” said Ferguson.

She slipped back to a refrigerator chest at the rear of the van and took out a bottle of Zyr, an expensive vodka made in Russia, though the company was actually owned by an American.

“Straight,” Ferguson told her. “Just ice.”

“Ice? You are not a purist?”

“It’s still early,” said Ferguson, taking the glass and admiring the scenery.

A few minutes later they entered a residential area of single-family homes and pulled into a private driveway. A short man in a gray suit was waiting. He left his bag for the young woman and climbed into the van. Ferguson introduced himself as Manski, giving him a card and examining the newcomer’s. The man was an electronics salesman interested in opening his own factory up north in one of the special zones set aside for foreign endeavors near the capital. When the door closed and the van was underway, he told the woman that it was too early to drink, but since the other guest had already started, he would have a Scotch to keep him company.

The ritual was repeated four more times as the van made the rounds picking up its passengers. Everyone had a drink. And caviar. And a number of other treats Ferguson couldn’t identify by sight or taste.

When all of the passengers had been picked up, the driver got on the highway toward Seoul. About five miles south of the capital, they were met by a pair of police cars. Lights flashing, the police escorted them to Gimpo, the airport to the west of Seoul generally used by domestic flights. There a private 727, already half-filled with other guests of Park, waited to take them north.

Ferguson circulated as much as he could among the other passengers. All were male, and all had relatively important positions in their respective companies, though none were as wealthy as Park.

Nor did any seem likely buyers for the goods an arms dealer specialized in. Ferguson chatted up the virtues of his supposed company’s instruments just long enough to bore each listener, establishing his credentials before changing the subject to the trip or to the problems of doing business in the North or to Park himself.

The billionaire wasn’t traveling with the rest of the party. He had already boarded a two-engined jet aircraft similar to a 737. Built by the Korea Commercial Aircraft Development Company as a demonstrator a few years before, the plane had the latest technology, from super-efficient engines to a glass cockpit. It rivaled anything made in America or Europe, but because the company had no track record — and because it was primarily a Korean effort — other Asian countries did not place any orders, and the firm switched its efforts to spare parts.

Park, of course, had been the major investor.

“The Americans were the ones most interested in the aircraft,” explained Ha Song, who sat next to Ferguson on the 727. Mr. Ha worked for an investment group with interests in cable television but had represented some aeronautics firms around the time of the project. “This was genuinely a surprise, since usually they look down on us as little brothers.”

“A very Americanski attitude,” said Ferg.

“Your government would have done very well to have formed a partnership.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Ferguson. “But I don’t represent the government.”

“Many good engineers in Russia.”

“The best,” said Ferguson. “Except for Korea.”

Mr. Ha’s face shaded slightly. Without prompting, he began telling him the story of his ancestors, ethnic Chinese who had been in Korea for several hundred years.

“Before the Japanese came to our country, my family had many, many shops,” said Ha.

“Did they take them away?”

“Not at first, but, during the bad time, what we know as World War II, that was very trouble-matic.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Many Korean peoples, same story,” said Ha. “Japanese very evil.”

“Good in business.”

Ha made a face. “Their money not worth it. Very evil.”

“It’s too bad,” said Ferguson.

“Russia have war with Japan, too: 1904.” Ha was referring to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, which was fought partly over Korea as well as Manchuria.

“Dah,” said Ferguson. “And we get butts kicked.”

Ha took a moment to translate the slang, then they both started to laugh.

A line of North Korean officials met them inside the terminal at P’yŏngyang. Ferguson bumped along with the others, nodding and smiling, nodding again. There was no passport check. If the bags were inspected, it was done by whoever had retrieved them; they were collected and sent on to their destination without being reunited with their owners.

As Ferguson was about three-fourths of the way through the receiving line, a short man approached him and asked in Russian if he was Mr. Manski.

“Dah,” said Ferguson. “I am Manski.”

“I am Mr. Chonjin,” said the man. “I will interpret for you.”

Chonjin’s accent was so unusual that it took Ferguson a few seconds to untangle what he said.

“Your accent… Where do you come from?” Ferguson asked.

Chonjin said that, while he was Korean, he had spent much of his life in Vladivostok, a city on the coast of the Sea of Japan where he had been a member of the North Korean Trade Group. Ferguson assumed this meant that he had been a spy there, for surely he was a spy now, assigned to stay close to one of the more dubious members of Mr. Park’s party.

He had the face of a pug — a pushed-in nose, large drooping eyes, a sad-sack mouth — but he was amiable enough, smiling and laughing as they worked their way through the rest of the officials gathered in the hall.

“All hope to do business very soon,” said Chonjin as they reached the end. “We are the new China. Better.”

“Of course,” said Ferguson.

“You would like to open a factory here?”

“I keep an open mind.”

The visitors were herded upstairs for a brief welcoming speech by an official Chonjin said was the local mayor. When the talk was over—”Better Than China” seemed to be the theme of the day — they were treated to a reception table at the far end of the large room. A half hour later, the entourage was escorted outside to waiting buses. A school band, heavy on the tubas but otherwise remarkably tuneful, serenaded them as they walked the few feet to the vehicles.

Another band, this time more balanced instrumentally and composed of older musicians, greeted them when they arrived at what Ferguson’s shadow called a guest house about thirty minutes away. Obscenely lavish by North Korean standards, it reminded Ferguson of a European-style hunting lodge, the sort of place the kaiser would have brought guests to before World War I. The wall at the front was made of large wooden timbers, like a massive log cabin. The sides, however, were smooth stucco. Here and there the shadows of the large stones peeked through thin layers of cement, as if they were fighting their way out from behind the protective covering.

Park was waiting for them inside, standing on a balcony overlooking a large great room just beyond the entrance foyer. There were scores of North Korean officials there as well, along with young waitresses who fanned out with bottles of champagne.

“My friends, I welcome you here on what I hope will be a prosperous and exciting visit,” said Park, raising his glass.

A long round of toasts followed. Park slipped out about midway through, leaving the others to mingle, drink champagne, and ogle the young women.

By the time the group began retiring to their rooms to get ready for dinner, Ferguson had introduced himself to nearly everyone and run out of business cards. Chonjin volunteered to get some made for him.

“That would be great,” Ferguson told him.

The interpreter bowed his head. “Anything for a guest. I will see you at dinner.”

“Can’t wait.”

23

General Namgung leaned forward and told the driver to stop. Instantly, the man obeyed, pulling to the side of the road.

Namgung ignored the questioning look from his aide, who was sitting next to him in the rear of the Russian-made sedan. He needed a moment to think. The enormity of what he was about to embark upon had settled on him, filling him with a dreadful sensation of foreboding. He knew from experience that he must take a few moments to let the sensation pass. Otherwise, he would not be able to make clear decisions. And the future depended very much on clear decisions.

At the age of fifty-three, Namgung was one of the top commanding generals in North Korea, in charge of the divisions around the capital and several in the northwestern provinces, including those on the Chinese border. Family connections had helped him launch his career, but in the thirty-plus years since he became a lieutenant he had worked extremely hard, out-hustling and outlasting many rivals. He knew the supreme leader, Kim Jong-Il, extremely well and visited him often — or had, until Kim’s recent sickness.

The dictator’s health was a closely guarded state secret — even those of importance, like Namgung, didn’t know exactly how bad off he was. But the general could guess that the supreme leader had perhaps six months to live.

After that, chaos supreme.

Unless Namgung acted.

There were many benefits to Namgung’s plans, for him personally as well as for the poverty-wracked People’s Republic, but avoiding chaos was Namgung’s primary objective. Chaos was an intense, immobilizing enemy, far worse than an opponent armed merely with guns and bombs. Chaos was to be defeated at all costs. It was a general’s duty, a Korean’s duty, to ward it off.

The general exhaled slowly. His moment of anxiety had passed.

“Mr. Park is waiting,” the general said, leaning forward to his driver. “Proceed.”

24

Corrine glanced to her left as she walked up the steps and was surprised to see CIA director Thomas Parnelles right beside her.

“Mr. Parnelles, how are you?” she said.

“Corrine, well hello.” Parnelles gave her a broad smile and gently prodded his wife. “Dianne, this is Corrine Alston, the president’s counsel. Ms. Alston is probably the most powerful woman in Washington.”

“Your husband is quite a charmer,” Corrine told Diane.

“A scoundrel, you mean,” said Dianne Parnelles, laughing.

“Are you here on a date?” Parnelles asked.

“Actually, with my secretary, Teri Gatins,” confessed Corrine. “She got tickets from her son. I’m supposed to meet her in the lobby.”

“Enjoy the show,” said Parnelles, starting away.

“Tom, I wonder if I could ask you something.”

“Classified?” He smiled, as if it were a joke.

“No. Not exactly.”

“Well, surely then,” said Parnelles. He told his wife he would meet her inside.

“I have a… theoretical question concerning a government employee. It just came up,” said Corrine. “I wonder if I could bounce a situation off you.”

“Theoretically.”

“If someone were… If they had a life-threatening disease, would you think… If you were their supervisor, how would you handle it?” Corrine danced around the wording, trying to come up with a way to say what she knew about Ferguson without actually identifying him.

“Life-threatening disease? I’d be sympathetic to the person, certainly. I’d make sure that they were getting the sort of care that they needed, that sort of thing.”

“Would you think it would affect their job performance?”

“I don’t see how it couldn’t. Assuming they’d be able to work in the first place.”

“Assume that they could.”

“I guess it would be a difficult situation. I think you would have to keep them on, though. By law, if nothing else,” said Parnelles. “Don’t you?”

“The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t apply to the executive branch,” said Corrine.

“I see. Well, in our agency, the decision would be rather easy if the person were on the operations side: A disease like that would eliminate them from active duty.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, of course. The officer’s judgment is the heart of the matter. You see, someone might be reckless if they knew or suspected they’d die anyway. That’s not what we want.”

“The decision would be that cut and dried?”

“We wouldn’t kick them out the door, of course. We’d find something suitable.” Parnelles drew out the last word, pronouncing it with special relish.

“Suitable?”

“There are things we could find, whether in the analytic areas or administrative. Perhaps you can do that as well. Lesser jobs,” he added. “Are we speaking of someone I know?”

Corrine hesitated. If she told Parnelles about Ferguson’s cancer — and clearly she should — she would be in effect asking to have him removed from the First Team. That would be a much harder blow to him than the cancer, surely.

But wasn’t that her responsibility?

Parnelles must know. He knew Ferguson far better than she did.

That didn’t guarantee that he knew, though. Sonjae had learned only by accident.

“It’s just a hypothetical,” said Corrine. “That’s all.”

“Let me know if it blossoms into a full-blown theorem,” said Parnelles, tapping her forearm as he walked away.

The performance at the Kennedy Center seemed to go on and on and on, so Gordon Tewilliger was not surprised when he looked at his watch and saw that it was well after midnight. He considered skipping the reception but reminded himself that there would be plenty of potential contributors there, men and women who in the future might remember his handshake and agree to write a check in a time of need.

What a difference a decade makes, he thought to himself as he headed for the party. When he was younger, he’d have wanted to go simply to mingle with the pretty women. Divorced now longer than he’d been married, Tewilliger considered himself past that stage of life where sex had any importance.

Though occasionally he could have his head turned, as the woman in the short red dress who greeted him near the door proved.

“Oh, Senator, how good of you to come,” she said.

Tewilliger struggled to remember if he’d met her before. He thought she might be with the National Endowment for the Arts, but had the sense to realize the connection his mind was making might be less than subliminal.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Tewilliger told her, “but I can only say hello.”

“Oh, look, there’s Congressman Anderson,” said the woman, taking off in the direction of the California representative. Tewilliger went in the other direction; Anderson was a member of the other party.

The senator spotted Thomas Parnelles, the CIA director, and his wife chatting with some military people. But before he could make it over to the old coot and ask how the Agency was shaping up, Parnelles and his wife had disappeared. Tewilliger sampled some of the hors d’ouerves as a consolation prize, then joined the fawning crowd around the actors he’d just seen perform. That was a mistake — he liked people who were fawning only when he was the one being fawned over. But he couldn’t escape before the theater’s PR director arrived, and he had to endure introductions to all of the “artists,” as she called them.

They turned out to be much more polite than he’d thought, thanking him enthusiastically for his support of the arts. Tewilliger graciously accepted, even though his support had amounted to a single vote in favor of the endowment’s budget in committee, a horse trade that meant nothing, as the matter was defeated.

Tewilliger moved on to the heart of the party, a knot of corporate types and their wives standing near the table with the champagne. Some of the people from GM and Ford were there; with practiced efficiency the senator managed to greet them all. After ten minutes of circulating among the heavy spenders, Tewilliger concluded that his flag had flown long enough and headed toward the door.

He’d nearly reached it when someone tugged his arm. He was surprised to find Harry Mangjeol, his Korean-American constituent, who’d arranged for him to use a private company jet to get up to New Hampshire a few days before.

“Harry,” said Tewilliger, instantly back in hail-fellow-well-met mode. “What are you doing in Washington?”

“Important business with GM,” said Mangjeol, glancing toward the executives. “Wine and dine tonight.”

“Do you need introductions?” A favor would be just the thing.

“No, no. We had dinner together. Lewis suggested I come to the theater.”

“Did you like the show?”

Mangjeol nodded his head so enthusiastically Tewilliger thought of asking him to explain it to him.

“If I had known you were coming, Senator, I would have looked for you earlier,” said Mangjeol.

“Yes. It is a late night, though,” said the senator, plotting his exit.

“I have spoken to a great many of my friends in Korea these past days. They say, watch out for our brothers to the North. Something is brewing.

“Really? Who says that?”

“Many people.”

“Many?”

“Prominent business people.”

“I see.” Tewilliger heard these sorts of rumors from constituents all the time. The worst were the ones from people who were sure they had stumbled onto a plot that would make 9/11 look like a Sunday school picnic. He was always tempted to put them onto a novelist he knew but didn’t particularly like.

“I have associates close to Pak Lee, O Kok, Park Jin Tae,” continued Mangjeol. “They all are worried.”

“Very nice,” said Tewilliger. The names meant nothing to him, though he could tell Mangjeol wanted him to be impressed. “I’ll have to keep this in mind. Thank you. Pass along anything else you hear.”

“I will,” said Mangjeol. He’d had the impression that the senator was blowing him off, but Tewilliger’s forthright tone brushed the thought from his mind.

“I’m afraid I have to leave now. Early session in the morning.”

“Good seeing you, Senator. Very good seeing you.”

“I’m sure,” said Tewilliger, making his escape.

25

Ferguson’s room in the lodge was bugged and not very creatively: A relatively large microphone was wired right into the light socket and “hidden” in the shade. Professor Wan would have been appalled.

Changing for dinner, Ferguson serenaded the North Korean secret service with a medley of Russian drinking songs. He carried the overinebriated Russian act into dinner. To have acted sober would have been out of place; nearly all of his fellow travelers were legitimately snockered.

Hostesses led each man to a seat at one of two long tables in the cramped dining room. Ferguson’s shadow, Chonjin — hopelessly sober — was on his left. Mr. Ha, the Korean who had told Ferguson about Park’s airplane investment, was on his right.

Park sat at the head table with General Namgung, a North Korean general so important that he was introduced by name only.

“General Namgung is in charge of the guards here?” Ferguson asked his minder in Russian.

“General Namgung is one of the most important people in Korea,” responded Chonjin.

“Do you know him?”

The question surprised Chonjin. “Of course not. He’s too… He’s too important. Much of the army, the air force — they answer to him. He would not know me.”

“Maybe he can act on a contract for me,” suggested Ferguson.

Chonjin shook his head. “You have a lot to learn about doing business in Korea.”

“Teach me.”

“The first step, have good time, mingle. On the next visit, then you bring up the subject.”

“I don’t talk business until the next visit?”

“You mention it on the next visit. Not talk. Talk — negotiate, a sale — that happens in the future.”

“How far in the future?”

“Hard to say. Some day, perhaps.”

Park stayed at the head table for only a few minutes before disappearing. Namgung stayed through the meal and led several toasts. Then he went off with some of the other North Korean officials.

The other guests were led back to the great hall for a reception that consisted of several rounds of drinks followed by several more rounds of drinks, topped off by many more drinks. The businessmen poured glass after glass for their companions, drinking and passing them on.

The Korean style of drinking, with companions essentially supervising one another into a stupor, made it hard to stay sober, and Ferguson finally retreated to a chair and pretended to nod off. When Chonjin woke him and suggested that he go to bed, he protested, but within a few minutes he had nodded off again, this time on a fellow guest. When a North Korean official sat down next to him, Ferguson flopped in his direction, his chin landing on the man’s shoulder.

“Mr. Manski?”

“Oh, yeah.” Ferguson roused himself. “Bedtime, I think.”

“Yes.”

Chonjin helped him up to his room. Ferguson’s energy grew with each step.

“Open the window,” he proclaimed as he entered the room. “Air, we need good cold air! All windows!” He flopped face down on the bed, mumbling a Russian drinking song.

Chonjin and the attendant opened the windows, threw a blanket on him, and retreated.

Ferguson had no intention of spending the rest of the night sleeping, let alone singing. He’d staged his little act so he could go exploring, but to do that he needed to come up with a proper finale.

Ferguson started another drinking song, this one an obscure lament about the darkness of crows’ feathers. As he sang, he studied the lamp where the bug was, considering how to best muffle it. Raising his voice ever higher and further off-key, he stumbled around, went to the bathroom, fell, got up, and finally knocked over the lamp.

The shade flew to the middle of the floor. Cursing, Ferguson stumbled around some more, left arm flailing while his right separated the bug from the shade. He left it on the floor near his bed and continued to sing, repeating the song over and over again, hoping to lull anyone unlucky enough to be listening into an autistic state.

Climbing into bed, Ferguson’s lyrics gave way to snores. These slowly decreased in volume, until after a few minutes he began breathing normally. He wadded the blanket on top of the bug, grabbed his shoes, and tiptoed to the window.

Ferguson was on the third floor, facing the back of the compound. The window formed a small dormer similar to those in the Cape Cods he knew from Maine. Getting out as quietly as possible and climbing up onto the roof was more an exercise in nostalgia than a physical challenge.

The problem was to get down without being seen or breaking a leg. The front side of the lodge would have been easy to climb because of the logs, but the two guards at the front of the building meant this was out of the question. Besides being too smooth to offer any obvious handgrips, the opposite side featured the great room’s large window as well as windows looking out from the kitchen and staff room. Likewise, the southern side, where Ferguson’s room was, had far too many windows with light shining through them.

The north side had no windows above the first floor, but the only thing to climb on as he went down was the gutter at the corner. Ferguson had had bad experiences with gutters in the past, but it seemed his only option.

He worked his way down the peak and tested the metal by putting his right leg on it. The gutter groaned but didn’t collapse.

Ferguson swung around, hung off the top, and then began pushing down the corner, using the downspout the way he would use a rope to climb down a mountain. By the time he reached the top of the second floor, the leader had pulled out several inches. Then, when he was just above the first floor he heard a loud and ominous creak from above.

There was no other option but to let go.

26

“The aircraft is the most advanced available,” General Namgung told Park. “It can elude anything the South Koreans have. Or the Japanese, for that matter.”

“What about the Americans?” asked Li.

“The Americans, too,” said Namgung. He turned to his aide, Captain Ganji, who nodded quickly. “It does this partly by flying very low. And, of course, our spies have provided the radar profiles. We know just where the aircraft must go to avoid detection.”

Park studied the general. He was a good man, a warrior of solid intention and dependability. Like many North Koreans, he had many relatives in the South, and believed as Park believed, that the country must be reunited.

But he had a warrior’s hubris, a tendency to be overly optimistic. The MiG aircraft was formidable, but it was not invincible. They could not assume that it would triumph.

Park rose from his seat and walked to the french doors at the back of the cottage room. He studied his reflection in the glass, surprised to see that he looked much older than he felt. Then he pushed the glass door open, breathing the crisp air as he gazed at the waterfall to the left of the patio.

There was just enough moonlight to dapple the surface of the water with rippling white light. The sight was auspicious.

Before the division, this land had belonged to Park’s grandparents. Among their businesses was a pottery factory, one of the finest on the continent, with more than a hundred skilled craftsmen. The main lodge up the hill had been built with its profits as a retreat for the family. The cabin where he and Namgung were meeting had been used as servants’ quarters.

Much had changed in seventy years. The servants’ quarters would be considered a palace by all but the most high-ranking North Korean party member. Even Namgung admired it.

Partition was difficult for most Korean families, and compared to many, the Park family had managed very well. They had held on to a great deal of their wealth, partly because so much of it had been concentrated in the South. Park hated the Communist principles that the Russians had imposed on the first Korean leader, Kim Il Sung; they were nothing short of theft, even though Kim at times mixed in true Korean ideas to make them seem more logical.

The dictator’s attitude toward the people was, in many ways, more understandable. Park did not condone the police state, but it was natural that a strong leader would have to take a strong hand. History made this evident and not merely in Korea.

The dictator was irrelevant. As General Namgung himself had said a few minutes before, the government would soon collapse. The time was ripe to bring the Koreas together.

Park closed the door and turned back to his guests.

“I have studied the MiG,” said Park. “You’re surprised, General. You shouldn’t be. My companies were involved in projects to build other aircraft. It is a very admirable aircraft, but it will be vulnerable. All aircraft are.”

“On the ground, certainly,” said the general. He was not one to retreat. “Once in the air it can avoid radars by flying low. By the time it is perceived as a threat, it will have reached its launch point. The enemy has no defenses in that sector.”

Park looked at Li.

“We have a plan to make sure that it is not attacked,” said Li. “It involves a certain amount of risk, but no more than if it were to proceed as you propose.”

27

It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for Ferguson to hit the ground.

When he finally did, time seemed to make up for the deficit. He flew backward so quickly he knocked his head with a fierce, welt-raising rap.

Ferguson lay on his back a moment, collecting his wits. Surprisingly, the gutter was still in one piece and attached to the building.

No way it would hold him on the way back. But that was a problem for later.

Scrambling to his feet, Ferguson trotted toward the nearby barn. A group of bored soldiers stood talking in the front, near where the buses had been parked. Ferguson circled around and found a window at the back. All he could see inside were a few Jeeplike trucks, parked up toward the doors; about three-fourths of the large interior looked empty.

A road ran on the other side of the barn. Curious, Ferguson paralleled it for about fifty yards downhill and then around a curve. Another pair of bored soldiers stood in the middle of the path at the end of the bend.

Ferguson doglegged past them, picking up the road as it made another S down the hill. A squat building sat at the edge of a clearing, overlooking a rushing stream and a waterfall so loud Ferguson could hear it over his breathing. Two large sedans were parked in front of the building. A pair of men in large greatcoats stood near the cars. Ferguson couldn’t tell in the dim light if they were soldiers — they didn’t have rifles — but they stood as still as statues near the second car, as if they expected someone to arrive and inspect them at any moment.

He slipped farther into the woods, approaching the back of the building by walking along the creek. A large terrace opened out from a pair of glass doors; he could see a fire in a massive fireplace at one side of the room.

Ferguson crawled up along the side of the terrace, hugging the wall. There was no cover, but the only light came from inside and most of the patio was in shadow. The inside light and glass would make it difficult to see outside.

Two men in uniform were sitting in chairs facing roughly in his direction. One, he thought, was General Namgung, though he couldn’t get a good enough glimpse to be sure.

Ferguson saw the silver back of a head in the chair closest to the doors; he guessed this was Park. Between the glass and the nearby waterfall, he couldn’t hear a word.

Li appeared behind the men in uniform, looking straight at him. Ferguson stepped back and flattened himself against the wall.

A moment later, the door opened.

Li stepped out, less than eight feet away.

Ferguson froze, trying to think of an excuse to be here that wouldn’t sound ridiculous.

Someone else came from the house. Ferguson saw his back as the two walked away.

“A good night for a walk, Captain Ganji,” said Li in Korean.

“It’s gotten warmer.”

Ganji handed two large envelopes to Li as they walked in the opposite direction. Ferguson eased toward the corner of the terrace, hoping to get down and hide before they turned around. He was about a yard from it when he saw them shake hands and start back in his direction.

He pushed back against the side of the building, hidden by a shadow if anything at all. His mind blanked. He had no excuse, nothing.

He waited to be discovered, holding his breath. But the shadow was darker than he thought, and the two men were so intent on getting out of the cold that they didn’t even glance in his direction.

Escaping such a close call gave Ferguson an adrenaline rush, but he couldn’t put the energy to much use; the general and his aide left within a few minutes. Park and Li left the room as well but stayed upstairs in the cottage, their presence announced by a series of lights on the second floor. A pair of younger men, guards, came down into the room near the terrace and warmed their hands by the fire.

Deciding he’d seen all he was going to see, Ferguson made his way back to the guest house. Along the way he stopped at the barn. Sneaking in through the window, he scouted the large room but found nothing more interesting than a stash of heavyweight gear oil in the corner and a burned-out clutch plate that looked to date from the 1950s.

Climbing the gutter back to his room seemed dubious, so Ferguson slipped around to the front. The guards had disappeared, and the open door beckoned. He went up the steps and walked in, but before he could go up the stairs Ha spotted him and called out his name. He was standing near the great room, talking with a friend.

Ferguson went over, mentioning how warm the night was.

“Warm for now, yes,” said Ha, several notches beyond ripped.

“Drink?” asked his friend, who wasn’t far behind.

“Sure,” said Ferguson, thinking he might ask a few questions about Namgung.

They walked inside, Ferguson helping steady Ha as he made for the bar.

“Mr. Manski. Having a good time?”

“Mr. Li,” said Ferguson in English. He swept around, pretending to be drunk. “Drink?”

“No, thank you,” said Li. “We must rest now for the morning. The hunting starts at eight.”

“Eight.”

“Where is your escort?”

“Escort. Don’t know,” said Ferguson. “A short drink.”

“No, thank you,” said Li firmly, taking hold of the bottle. The other men had already retreated.

“I will have a chance to talk to Mr. Park soon?” said Ferguson.

“Very soon,” agreed Li.

“He’s an important man.”

“Yes.”

“Does he know many army officers in the People’s Democratic Republic?”

Li stiffened. “He knows many people.”

“General Namgung was very impressive. Important.”

“Namgung,” said Li, correcting his pronunciation. “Mr. Park does not know him well.”

“Yes,” said Ferguson. He told Li in Russian that it was important to know many military people, because their discipline rubbed off on you, and they were very good drinkers.

Li accompanied him to the stairs. As they started up, Ferguson remembered he had left the door to his room locked.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem- a quick twist with his pick and tension spring, and he could easily get in. But he didn’t have his tools with him.

Improvise.

“Maybe another drink,” he said to Li.

“No, no. Come now, Mr. Manski. To bed.”

One of the young women who’d been serving the guests was coming down the steps. Ferguson saw that her hair was pinned at the back, clipped by a pair of simple bobby pins. He lurched toward her, knocking her down. As she shrieked, he grabbed one of the pins from her hair.

“Sagiva deuryeoyo,” he said drunkenly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Li shook his head but smiled, then wagged his finger as the girl escaped. “Naughty, naughty,” he told Ferguson.

“To bed,” said Ferguson, hoping Li would leave him. He didn’t, though, following Ferguson as he walked up the steps.

Ferguson worked the bobby pin between his fingers as he walked down the hall. As good as he was with locks, it was tough to cover a pick. Under the best circumstances it took a few seconds to get the tools oriented properly. A simple lock could be fairly resistant to an improvised tool. Even Ferguson, who’d used bobby pins as a kid to raid the liquor cabinet, couldn’t guarantee results.

Li stayed right behind him the whole way to his room. Ferguson stopped, put his hand out on the door, then turned and stuck his face in his companion’s.

“I thank you for this great opportunity,” he told Li. “Thank you very much. Thank you.”

“Yes,” said Li, backing away from Ferguson’s spit.

As he got out his handkerchief, Ferguson ducked down to the lock, working the pin into it. He grabbed at the handle as if drunk, then managed to get the tumbler to turn just enough to force the door.

He glanced over his shoulder.

Li had already disappeared down the hall.

Pushed it a little too far tonight, Ferguson thought to himself after he relocked the door and tiptoed to bed. But better that than not far enough.

28

If he was going to do the right thing, then he was better off doing it without hesitation. The sooner he clued Corrine Alston — and, in effect, the president — into what Ken Bo was doing, the sooner he would end the temptation to do the wrong thing.

Because really, the temptation was overwhelming.

Slott picked up his phone and dialed her office.

“I want to give you a heads-up about something,” he told her when she picked up her phone. “Can you come to my office?”

“When?”

“As soon as possible. Now would be good.”

“Is it about Korea?” she asked.

“I’d rather explain in person.”

“I’ll be there in about an hour.”

Corrine told her secretary to rearrange her schedule, then began closing down the documents she’d been reviewing. She was about to pick up her pocketbook when the phone buzzed.

“Mr. Ferro from the NSA,” announced Teri.

Corrine grabbed the line.

“The tape unit you gave me last night is very interesting,” said Ferro. “The system this came from, that it’s part of, uses a Cray XIE as the main computing unit. It’s a very powerful supercomputer. Where exactly did it come from?”

“You can’t tell from the data there?”

“Not without more study. It’s a backup of a large number of data sets, and it’s going to take a while to unravel.”

“I see.”

“There are several simulations that seem to deal with some sort of complicated chemical extraction. It seems to involve plutonium,” added Ferro. “We have to have an expert look at it.”

“I see.”

“Should we proceed?”

“Yes,” said Corrine. “What about the small disks?”

“Some correspondence in Korean regarding the purchase of office supplies. Looks like it’s all from a place called Science Industries. We haven’t translated it all yet.”

“You can move ahead with both.”

“All right.” Ferro paused. “Have you spoken to the CIA about this?”

“I’m on my way there now,” said Corrine.

The South Koreans tried to make their own weapons-grade uranium in the nineteen eighties and nineties,” said Slott. The words practically gushed from his mouth, and it was a relief to get them out. “The program was exposed in 2004. Ken Bo is claiming this is part of it.”

He pushed the paper across his desk to Corrine. There were only three lines on it, a brief secure e-mail that mentioned two code-word CIA projects and “Korean efforts believed related to M.”

“M is a reference to that project. You see, if he contends that this was part of that program, he and his people will be off the hook,” said Slott. “It’s a CYA memo. Cover—”

“I know what CYA stands for,” said Corrine. “Is his claim right?”

Slott shook his head.

“How do you know?”

“I know. For starters, the material was different. This was plutonium. The waste was accounted for. Blessed Peak wasn’t built until three years ago. So they would have had to hide the waste all this time, then move it here. Unlikely.”

“But the site was used as a waste site before they built the new plant.”

“For cesium, nothing else. I know because I ordered it checked, and the man who checked it didn’t make a mistake.”

“Are you sure?”

“It was Ken Bo.”

Corrine leaned back in the seat.

“Does this mean he’s not really looking for the plutonium?”

“No. He’s getting himself in a position to limit damage in the future. He is pursuing it. How hard I don’t know.” Slott rocked back and forth in his seat. “He is working on it. He has a plan to get people into the waste site and take measurements. And one of his officers has been nosing around where Ferguson was, though rather ineptly. And, frankly, it seems to have been accidental, part of standard contact gathering. Though it’s difficult to tell from here.”

Corrine put the paper down on the desk.

“I have to tell you, Dan, face-saving games… They’re not very important to me. I don’t care whether someone was at fault or not. I want to get results. The president, I’m sure, would feel the same way.”

“I realize that,” said Slott. “Though that’s not the way Washington works.”

“Did Bo screw up?”

“We should have known about this.” Slott picked up his pencil, twisting the lead out slowly as he continued. “It’s our job. Something like this is very important — critical. So by definition, we screwed up. And, by definition, when we screw up, it’s my fault.”

“You’re being awful hard on yourself.”

“It comes with the job.”

“I don’t see Director Parnelles taking responsibility. If the buck is going to stop anywhere, it has to stop at his desk, not yours.”

Well, he thought, that’s something at least. Not the reason I told her, but something.

“Thank you for saying that,” he told her.

“I mean it.”

Slott smiled faintly. He’d thought his conscience would feel better when he finished, but it didn’t. Now that he’d told her what he thought Bo was up to, he only felt more depressed about it.

Then again, it really wasn’t her problem, was it? It was his.

On the one hand, he didn’t want her interfering; on the other, he had given her ammunition.

But it was the right thing to do, he decided: cut off the games.

“I’m sorry if I wasted your time,” he told her.

“It wasn’t a waste,” Corrine told him, slipping the paper back. “I didn’t mean to imply it was.”

Slott started to get up, but Corrine didn’t.

“There’s something I have to tell you involving the First Team,” she said. “Bob Ferguson went into a place called Science Industries and gathered some material there. He sent it back. It’s very interesting. There may be information on extracting plutonium. I don’t have all the details yet.”

“Corrigan didn’t mention that when he briefed me this morning.”

“I know.” Corrine had debated how to present the issue all the way to Slott’s office. She decided that the best way, for the good of the team, was to blame herself: protecting the client, an old lawyer’s trick. “I had Ferg use a back channel to get the data here because I wasn’t sure how much to trust Seoul, based on your comments the other day.”

Slott folded his arms and sank back into his chair as she continued. It’s me they don’t trust, he realized, and it wasn’t just Corrine. Ferguson was in the middle of it. And probably Parnelles, whom Ferguson was close to.

Because he’d worked in Seoul, and Ferguson figured he was covering up for the people there.

Damned if you do; dammed if you don’t.

“The NSA has the tape and the disks,” said Corrine. “The Department of Energy has the soil samples and is scheduling the tests now. I’ll refer them to you.”

She got up to leave.

“Yeah,” said Slott, not bothering to get up. “Thanks.”

29

Korean breakfasts were traditionally skimpy, and when the party was roused at seven-thirty the morning following the reception, all that was available was a large metal pot of weak tea. Ferguson downed two cups, and was on his third when his “translator” Chonjin appeared.

Ferguson’s pretend hangover amused Chonjin greatly, and the North Korean quickly suggested a cure: an ill-smelling concoction mixed with goat’s milk from the kitchen.

Ferguson wouldn’t have trusted the remedy even if he’d had a real hangover. But with Chonjin watching, he decided he had to take at least a sip. His stomach revolted; he ran to the nearby washroom as Chonjin nearly doubled over laughing.

Another man came in as Ferguson wiped his face at the sink. He was a North Korean soldier in full uniform.

“Captain Ganji,” said Ferguson. “Annyeonghaseyo.”

The man, a corporal, looked at him and shook his head, explaining in Korean that he was not a captain and certainly not Ganji. Ferguson apologized, then switched to Russian, saying that he admired Ganji, a very shrewd thinker and a good drinker.

The soldier shook his head, and told him in Korean that he didn’t understand.

“English?” tried Ferguson.

That didn’t work either. The man rattled off something far too rapidly for Ferguson to understand.

“Mworago hasyeosseoyo?” said Ferguson. “I’m sorry, I missed what you were saying.”

“He was explaining that the captain is an aide to General Namgung,” said Chonjin, coming inside the room. “He spends all of his time at the capital, at headquarters.”

“Oh, very good,” said Ferguson in Russian. He laughed. “And did I meet the captain last night?”

“He wasn’t here.” Chonjin turned to the other Korean and began quizzing him. “He says you thought he was Captain Ganji,” Chonjin told Ferguson when he was finished.

“Oh. I was actually trying to say good morning.”

“Annyeonghaseyo.”

“Annyeonghaseyo,” repeated Ferguson. “Doesn’t sound like Captain Ganji or General Nagtum to me.”

“Namgung,” said Chonjin curtly. There was no longer any trace of amusement in his voice. “He is a very important man.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ferguson. He turned to the other man, who had a very worried expression on his face. “I am very sorry.”

“Joesonghaeyo,” prompted Chonjin.

“Joesonghaeyo,” said Ferguson.

“You speak English very well for a Russian,” said Chonjin as the other man slipped past them.

“Thank you.”

“You know more Korean than you let on.”

“I keep trying.”

Chonjin told him in Korean that he was the bastard son of a three-legged pig.

Ferguson got the bastard but missed the rest.

“You may be right,” said Ferguson in Russian. “My mother was rather loose.”

“Come,” said Chonjin, switching to English. “Let’s go hunting, if your head has cleared.”

“Dah,” said Ferguson, staying in Russian. “My head feels much better.”

“Wait,” said Chonjin as they got to the door. He reached into his jacket, and for a moment Ferguson thought he was going to pull out a gun. Instead he presented him with a small package. “Your business cards,” he said in English.

“Спасибо,” said Ferguson. “Thank you.”

Pickup trucks with benches mounted on the sides of the beds were lined up at the front of the lodge. When all the guests had boarded, the trucks set off, following the dirt road and passing the house where Park had met with General Namgung. They continued along the stream for about a half mile before coming to the edge of an overgrown field. Two other trucks were there already, waiting. These had shotguns for the men to use.

“What are we hunting?” Ferguson asked his escort in Russian.

“Grouse,” said Chonjin in English.

“I didn’t know there were grouse in Korea,” said Ferguson, sticking to Russian.

Chonjin shrugged, and led him toward the truck with the shotguns. Ferguson examined one. It was a Chinese pump design similar to a Winchester Model 12, with an inlaid pearl pattern in the highly polished stock.

“They loaded?” Ferguson asked.

“They will hand out ammunition when we reach the starting line for the hunt,” said Chonjin.

Ferguson checked the magazine anyway. As he did, he saw Li approaching out of the corner of his eye.

“Mr. Manski,” said Li, nodding to Chonjin. “Perhaps you would like to hunt with Mr. Park.”

“Love to.”

“Come with me then.”

Chonjin took a step to follow but stopped when Li shook his head.

“You have recovered from last night?” said Li, leading him around the trucks and back up the road.

“Yes,” said Ferguson.

“Remarkable.”

“No more remarkable than anyone else.”

“Tell me, Mr. Manski, how did you come to be locked out of your room?”

“I was locked out of my room? ПраВда? I guess I don’t remember much of anything.”

“Where did you get a key?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

Li made a kind of humphing sound, but said nothing else, continuing in the direction of the house. As they rounded the first curve, a military-style jeep drove down the road. Ferguson stepped to the side, making room for it to pass.

The jeep stopped in front of them. Park sat in the front, next to a driver.

Li took Ferguson’s shotgun, then gestured for him to get in the back of the vehicle.

“Mr. Manski, again we talk,” said Park. He used English and stared out the front of the jeep, not looking at Ferguson. Li remained on the road.

“Happy to have the opportunity.”

“Why would you come to me? What could you possibly have that might be of use to me?”

“That’s for you to decide.”

“Yes. I am a businessman, Mr. Manski, not a general or a politician. Not a terrorist.”

“Of course not.”

“But you deal with terrorists.”

“I deal with businessmen,” Ferguson replied. “And I am discreet.”

“Some of your customers are not. You have a reputation.”

“I can get things done when they need to be done. I can make arrangements that a man like yourself… You could certainly do what you want, but others might question it. It might look embarrassing.”

Ferguson expected that Park would stop the conversation soon, handing him back to Li to do the dirty work.

That was really all he needed. He’d spend the rest of the day hunting, drinking. Get back, make his report.

Probably be told to come home. Play it by ear then.

“I have a vision for Korea,” Park said. “We will be reunited. We will resume our historic place in the world.”

Park twisted back to look at him.

“Do you know any Korean history, Mr. Manski?”

“Not much,” said Ferguson. “I know the Japanese raped your country.”

“That doesn’t begin to describe what they did.” Anger flashed in Park’s eyes, but he quickly controlled himself. “The history I refer to goes much deeper. Koreans ruled Asia. A small nation ruled the larger ones.”

The Chinese had actually done most of the ruling in Asia, but Ferguson didn’t think it politic to interrupt.

“Korean intelligence, work ethic, tradition… We are a great people,” continued Park. “Your country, Russia, it is large, too varied, and corrupt. There are many thieves in Russia.”

“I have to agree.”

“America… earnest but a mongrel nation.”

“At best.”

“Mongrels and thieves have no place in Korea.”

“Of course not,” said Ferguson.

Park smiled, then turned back to the front. “Mr. Li will speak with you now.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Park,” said Ferguson, leaning to get out. “Pleasure.”

The jeep jerked into motion before Ferguson was completely out. He had to do a little twist to regain his balance. When he did, he looked up and saw that Li was holding a pistol on him.

“Problem?” said Ferguson.

“There is no place for mongrels or thieves in Korea, Mr. Manski.” An SUV drove up. Li nodded toward the truck as it stopped behind him. “You will get in.”

“I don’t think so.”

“For myself, I don’t care; killing you here would be very easy. But Mr. Park fears that our hosts would not like to offend your government and desire a little time to contemplate the arrangements. So I advise you to get in, before I decide that their feelings are not worthy of consideration.”