Red Phoenix

CHAPTER 1 Ignition

The anchorman looked earnestly into the cameras, seemingly wide-awake despite the early morning hour.

“In North Korea’s first official reaction to the US/South Korean discovery of a tunnel filled with military hardware, radio Pyongyang today dismissed the find as, quote, an absurd forgery, a despicable and desperate lie fomented by the militarist clique occupying Seoul, end quote.”

The anchorman, his unruly shock of brown hair, Italian-made suit, and the gleaming, high-tech anchor desk in Atlanta all vanished, replaced by stock-footage shots of the barbed-wire tangle and barren hills marking the DMZ.

“And at this morning’s meeting at Panmunjom, the North flatly rejected the UN Armistice Commission’s demand for both an explanation and reparations for the South Korean soldiers killed or wounded in the border clash. UN negotiators said they were prepared to press their claims against the North for as long as necessary.”

The camera cut away to footage from Seoul showing streets around the National University filled with chanting students, impassive riot police, lobbed gasoline bombs, and tear gas volleys.

“In other news from Korea, radical students opened a new protest season against the government by hurling rocks and firebombs at police. They were met with tear gas and water cannon. More than ten demonstrators and police were injured in the two-hour clash. Student leaders vowed to continue their pressure on the government until South Korea’s National Assembly met their demand for a new presidential election and meaningful moves toward peaceful reunification with the North.”

The images of street violence dissolved back to a close-up of the anchorman in Atlanta.

“Meanwhile, here at home, police in California announced they were close to cracking the mysterious string of murders attributed to the so-called Bayside Butcher…”

One hundred and fifty kilometers north of the DMZ, the capital of the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea lay sweltering under a merciless afternoon sun. Like all artificial creations, Pyongyang’s every aspect reflected its builders’ innermost beliefs and priorities.

The city was an amalgamation of endless rows of drab, look-alike apartment towers, broad but empty boulevards, idealized, larger-than-life statuary, and massive, colonnaded government buildings. Propaganda banners flew from every gray, slab-sided building, exhorting passersby to “Strive Harder for the Fatherland,” reminding them that “Work Is the Sacred Duty and Honor of Citizens,” and calling them to “Self-reliance Through Collective Action.” Loudspeakers at every major intersection repeated an unending, mind-numbing litany of praise for the North’s Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung, and his son, Kim Jong-Il, the Dear Leader. In its dismal entirety, Pyongyang sat between its twin rivers as a reinforced concrete monument to the insignificance of the individual and the overwhelming power of the State.

Those few men and women outside braving the heat were sober and serious in dress and in demeanor. Only the required pin or button bearing Kim Il-Sung’s portrait added any touch of bright color to their garb. Despite the glaring sun, they moved briskly from place to place, careful never to show undue curiosity and never to seem idle. The Democratic People’s Republic was a workers’ state and its people were expected to work. There were reeducation and labor camps aplenty for those who could not or would not learn that.

The nerve center of this sterile, humorless city sat at the end of a wide, empty avenue — a towering edifice of gray stone and grayer concrete, more a fortress than an office building. Squads of fully armed security troops stood at rigid attention to either side of the main entrance. They seemed antlike below sixty-meter-high banners bearing the likenesses of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il.

Inside, the thousands of clerks, petty Party functionaries, and uniformed security officers who inhabited the complex moved quietly about their daily routines. Telephones were answered, documents were typed, reports were filed — all in an unearthly hush. There were good reasons for that. Open displays of emotion were regarded as unproductive and suspect, and supposed friends could easily become bitter rivals, always on the prowl for an indiscretion, a traitorous whisper, or the slightest sign of disloyalty to the State and its Great Leader. Silence was often the key to survival in the echoing, labyrinthine corridors of the headquarters of the Korean Workers Party.

Only one man of all those thousands could speak freely and without fear.

Kim Jong-Il, the son of North Korea’s supreme ruler, glowered at the thin, gray-haired army officer standing rigidly at attention before him. Light from a small desktop lamp bounced off Kim’s thick, black-frame glasses and highlighted small droplets of sweat beading the officer’s forehead.

“I hold you personally responsible for this fiasco,” Kim continued, pausing to emphasize each damning word. “Your stupidity led you to stockpile important equipment in the tunnel too soon. Your incompetence allowed the imperialists to find it. And your cowardice allowed them to seize it.”

The man started to gabble something, but Kim cut him off. “Silence!” He wiped a trace of spittle off his lips. “You have failed the State and endangered our historic plan. I will not listen to your excuses.”

He leaned forward over his desk. “You came into this room as a colonel, comrade. You will leave it as a lieutenant. A lieutenant in charge of a penal platoon.”

Kim smiled thinly as the officer’s face crumpled. He had just destroyed a thirty-year career. “You are dismissed. Now get out of my sight.”

He watched silently as his bodyguards led the man out of his office. Truly, no drug could possibly match the exhilaration that swept through him whenever he used his power as the Great Leader’s son and designated heir.

But slowly, very slowly, the exhilaration slipped away, replaced by a growing sense of frustration. The tunnel the Americans had stumbled across was only one of many that were being dug at his orders, but its discovery would make them more alert, more careful. As a result, work on the other tunnels would have to be stopped — at least until the Americans and their South Korean puppets had again been lulled into a false sense of security. Kim Jong-Il could feel his carefully laid plans slipping once more into the distant future, and that was something he was unwilling to contemplate. He had always been impatient.

History was slipping away from him — out of his grasp. Every passing day made the South stronger militarily and economically. Every day increased the growing gap between the two halves of Korea. Every day brought with it the chance that his father might die without securing Kim’s succession to the leadership.

Kim gripped the arms of his chair. He knew only too well that there were many in North Korea’s government who would cast him aside if they could. Some were jealous of his power. Some called themselves “true communists” and claimed they opposed a dynastic succession. Others held grudges for imagined wrongs.

But so long as Kim Il-Sung lived, his son’s enemies were powerless to move against him. More than forty years of absolute rule had enabled the elder Kim to build a nation shaped in his own image and governed by his slightest whim. Kim Jong-Il knew that kind of power could not be inherited, it could only be earned — forged over time his enemies would not give him, or forged in the fires of a war, a common struggle against the hated American enemy.

His own enemies inside the government had already tried to move against him once. Kim felt a small chill as he remembered the bomb planted aboard his father’s personal train. A bomb planted by officers loyal to General Oh Chin-U, the then defense minister and leader of the pro-Chinese faction inside North Korea. The assassination attempt had failed, and the known conspirators were either filling unmarked graves outside Pyongyang or slaving away in special camps. Its aftershocks, however, were still rippling through the Party, the Army, and the Foreign Ministry.

Kim Jong-Il smiled thinly to himself. Not all the effects had been bad. He’d used China’s suspected involvement in the bomb plot to persuade his father to side more closely with the Soviets. That had been an essential move. Only the Soviets had the kind of advanced weapons the People’s Army needed to match the Americans and their Southern puppets. But Kim held no illusions about the motives of his Russian backers — they didn’t believe in charity. They believed in power.

And every high-tech weapons system the Soviet Union gave or sold the North increased its hold over Pyongyang. At some point it would be too late to go back. He and his father would have sold their precious self-reliance for radar-guided missiles, modern battle tanks, and advanced submarines.

Kim Jong-Il shook his head. He knew the risks well. After all, what was life but a succession of risks — some greater and some smaller? Better to view the game as a race. A race between Soviet domination and military strength. A race between his plans for the war that would secure his position and an assassin’s bullet or his father’s failing health.

And now one incompetent officer had threatened all the preparations for that war. The fool. He should have had the man shot. Kim twisted uncomfortably in his chair.

There had to be something he could use to distract the attention of the imperialists. Something that would cause trouble for their lackeys in Seoul. Something that would drive a wedge between them.

He picked up his phone and started calling for files. He would work until he found what he was looking for.

It was well past dawn before he found it.

Kang Hyun-chan sat carefully in the high-backed leather chair, bald head erect and deep black eyes fixed rigidly on an unseen point in space. The long, curiously effeminate fingers of his age-spotted hands rested unmoving on gray, peasant-style cotton trousers. Beneath his fingertips Kang could feel the damning evidence of his seventy years — his stick-thin, withered legs. Legs that had once been strong and wiry enough to carry him up and down Manchuria’s rugged hills during his days as an anti-Japanese guerrilla. He smiled wryly. He’d fought for the Party all his adult life, first as a soldier, then as a spy, and finally, as a master of spies. And none of that mattered. Not now. Not here.

He had been ushered into this immaculately furnished office by an unsmiling bodyguard, ordered to sit down, and left waiting for nearly half an hour. He could hear water running in the small, adjoining washroom.

Kang recognized the game that was being played. He’d played it often enough himself during forty-odd years of service as a member of the Central Committee’s Research Department. The silence, the uncertainty, the long, gnawing wait. All designed to unnerve the subordinate on whom disfavor had fallen, or was about to fall.

His predecessor as director of the Southern Operations Section must have had a similar meeting before he’d been “retired” to special work farm. For a moment Kang felt a surge of anger at the unfairness of it all. His predecessor had blundered badly, and his blunders had embarrassed the State. But he had done nothing wrong. He’d heard the rumors of Kim’s rage over the tunnel catastrophe, but that wasn’t in his area of responsibility. Why this meeting then?

With difficulty he pushed the anger away. It wouldn’t help him in the next few minutes, and it might make things worse. Kang had always been something of a fatalist. The position he’d attained carried great rewards, and with great rewards came commensurate risks. It was the way of things, and no amount of carping or whining would change it.

“My dear Kang, how good it is to see you! And looking so well!” Kim Jong-Il, the plump, cherub-faced son of the Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung, bustled out of the washroom smiling from ear to ear.

Kang was astonished. This pleasant greeting was not at all what he had expected. He stood hastily and bowed to the man known throughout North Korea as the Dear Leader.

Kim moved around his desk and waved Kang down into his chair. “Sit! Sit! My dear Kang, this is no time for formality. This is a working meeting. A meeting of two old friends and comrades who’ve worked hard to preserve our Revolution, eh?”

Kang sat slowly, thinking fast. What did the man want? Aloud he said carefully, “Dear Leader, I am honored by your kind welcome.”

Kim settled himself ponderously in his own chair. He’d inherited his father’s stocky build, but unlike his father, he’d never been forced by trying circumstances to forgo the delicacies that could add pounds.

Kang found the contrast between the North’s wiry, undernourished farmers and this bloated man who would one day rule them interesting. But he was careful to leave the thought there. Irony could be a swift road to oblivion in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — especially for a man in Kang’s position.

“Tell me, Comrade Kang, you’ve been following recent events in the South?”

“Yes, Dear Leader.” What did the man think that he did all day? Read film magazines?

“Excellent. Then tell me, Comrade, how you would analyze these events. Specifically, these massive student protests in Seoul.” Kim folded his hands over his stomach and rocked back in his chair.

Kang couldn’t read anything in the man’s expression. He took refuge in the time-worn language used in official propaganda and shrugged. “It is the old story, Dear Leader. The summer Olympics and orchestrated elections bought the Seoul regime a small measure of peace, but the progressive elements are once again trying to pressure the imperialist-controlled puppet government for significant reforms.”

“And their chances of success?”

Kang shook his head. “Nonexistent. Uncoordinated street protests are of little use against an entrenched fascist occupation.” What was the man driving at?

Kim Jong-Il sat forward in his chair. “Why then are we not doing more to assist these progressives in their cause? Surely you see these demonstrations as an opportunity. As a chance to bring these students into a united front against the American oppressors and their lackeys.”

Oh, oh. Kang wondered which of his rivals had been filling Kim’s head with such nonsense. Too many carefully placed agents had already been “blown” in futile, wasted efforts to control South Korea’s seasonal student protests. He’d better squelch this dangerous line of thought while he had the chance. “Naturally such a development would be welcome indeed. Unfortunately, most of these students have not reached the proper level of revolutionary consciousness. They want reunification with us, but they’ve been unwilling to accept the discipline needed to make that happen. As a result, several of our best networks were compromised during the last round of demonstrations. The benefits do not yet outweigh the costs, Dear Leader.”

Kim’s smile faded into an impassive, unreadable expression, and Kang thought it best to temporize. “Naturally, we continue to reevaluate each opportunity as it arises.”

Kim’s smile came back. “I am delighted to hear that, comrade. I have always known you to be a man of great sense.” He gestured airily. “But of course I shall accept your advice on this matter as the last word. We’ll leave these Southern students to their own devices.”

Kang dipped his head in gratitude. It was a rare thing to be able to so easily persuade the Dear Leader to abandon a pet proposal — even one so cautiously advanced.

“Tell me, how is the Scorpion Project proceeding?”

For a moment the rapid change of subject took Kang by surprise. He looked at Kim carefully. This must be what he had really been summoned to discuss. The talk of aiding South Korea’s rioting students had been a blind, a way to ease into something much more important to Kang and to the Research Department — the Scorpion Project.

In a way the Scorpion Project was Kang’s special pride and joy. It had occupied him for most of his career, and in fact, it had carried him to the upper echelons of the Research Department.

Scorpion was an agent — a deep-cover agent planted in South Korea in 1950, during the confusion caused by the North Korean invasion. Beria, Stalin’s feared KGB chieftain, had first suggested it to Kim Il-Sung as an insurance policy against military failure. He believed that it should prove comparatively simple to build an airtight “legend” or cover for such an agent amid the ongoing devastation, slaughter, and chaos.

He had been right. The man known by the code name Scorpion had been recruited, carefully trained and indoctrinated, and then sent south through the enemy lines — armed only with the identity of an anticommunist long since dead in a North Korean prison camp. Surviving members of the real man’s family had been rounded up and liquidated to ensure absolute security. No one was left alive to dispute Scorpion’s authenticity.

In the nearly forty years since, the agent Scorpion had risen steadily through the ranks of South Korea’s bureaucracy. And Kang had been his controller since the 1960s.

“Scorpion goes well, Dear Leader. Our man has attained a high position in the fascist internal security force.”

Kim interrupted him. “Excellent, Comrade Kang. Perfect in fact. Then he is ideally placed to carry out the task I have in mind.”

The man known as Scorpion in North Korea stood by his office window. From there he could see faint, whitish-gray wisps of tear gas rising above the city skyline. Another student protest that had turned into a riot. Good. It would make things easier. But not any safer — not for him at least.

He thought over the emergency signal that had arrived from the North. What possessed those fools? Had they lost all ability to reason? He’d spent years worming his way into this position, and now they wanted to risk it all on a single throw of the dice. He turned away from the window.

Should he refuse to carry out the order? The thought tempted him, but he dismissed it. That would be viewed as disloyalty and Pyongyang had a long arm. Better to risk detection by his colleagues in the South Korean security service than to risk death at the hands of his comrades in the North’s Research Department.

Besides, there was a certain charming subtlety to the mission he’d been ordered to carry out. A careful word here. A thoughtful suggestion there. And all of them would be in character. He’d established his credentials as a hardline anticommunist with years of dedicated service and fierce talk. No one would be surprised by investigation that would certainly ensue if he was successful.

He stopped pacing by his desk. So be it. He’d evaded South Korea’s counterespionage probes for four decades. Let them try again and he would outwit them yet again.

The man called Scorpion picked up the phone. “Get me the minister.”

He would light the fuse.