Sea of Fire

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was time for Bob Herbert's wake-up call.

After Paul Hood hung up with Shigeo Fujima, he brought up the dossier on Colonel Hwan. While he read the file, Hood had his assistant Bugs Benet put in a call to the cockpit of the TR-1. Hood was patched through to his groggy intelligence chief. As Bob Herbert answered, it occurred to Hood that in all the years they had been working together he had never had to wake Herbert. It seemed like the man was always on the job or socializing. The first-time experience was disturbing. Clearly, the Mississippi native was not at his most alert or Pride-of-the-Deep-South charming when yanked from a dead sleep.

"Sorry to get you up," Hood said after Herbert had grumbled something into the headset.

"The world better be ending," Herbert said. Those were his first coherent words.

"It isn't, though it might be roughed up pretty bad if we don't do something," Hood informed him.

"Now that I think of it, I don't give a damn about the world," Herbert said. "Just us. The U.S."

The intelligence chief sounded as if his mouth were full of sand. Hood waited a moment.

"Are you sure you're with me?" Hood asked.

"I'm here," Herbert said. "But damn, I wish I had coffee."

"Sorry about that," Hood said.

"It's okay. What's on the table?"

"A North Korean colonel named Kim Hwan," Hood said. "Have you ever heard of him?"

"Colonel Kim Hwan," Herbert muttered. "Yeah. I came across his name in the files I brought. He's a surveillance guy, I think."

"Right," Hood said.

"Is he with us or against us?" Herbert asked.

"He may have used a Chinese satellite to have a look at what we're doing in the Celebes Sea," Hood said.

"How do you know that?" Herbert asked.

"I asked Shigeo Fujima," Hood said.

"The prick finally took your call?" Herbert asked.

"He had no choice," Hood replied. "I had the operator cut in on his daughter's cell phone."

"Nice," Herbert said. "Well, Fujima would know who is running what in that part of the world." The intelligence chief was sounding much more alert now. "So Colonel Hwan is against us. Why?"

"That's what we need to find out," Hood said. "Coffey's team found an empty concrete block at the bottom of the Celebes Sea. The block was supposed to have nuclear waste inside."

"North Korea gets whatever nuclear material they need from China," Herbert said. "Why would they be interested in unprocessed waste material?"

"That's the go-for-broke question," Hood said.

"South Korea doesn't need to go buccaneering for it either," Herbert said. "We supply them. So Hwan wouldn't have been watching to see what the enemy does either."

"Makes sense."

"That suggests a third party," Herbert said.

"Which is where we run into problems," Hood said. "I've got Colonel Hwan's dossier on the computer. It's pretty thin stuff. He's a career man, no family, completely off the Western radar."

"Does he attend seminars, go to retreats, travel in a private capacity?" Herbert asked.

"We don't have that information," Hood said. "As I said, he's not even a blip to our intelligence allies."

"That worries me."

"Why?" Hood asked. "It could be he isn't a heavyweight."

"It could," Herbert agreed. "More often than not, though, those are the real professionals, the ones who manage to stay hidden and anonymous. Let me think for a second."

While Hood waited for Herbert, he scanned the dossier. They did not even have a picture of the man. That seemed to support Herbert's interpretation. A low-watt intelligence officer would not mind being photographed. Hood came from the worlds of politics and finance. Voters were wooed according to complex demographics. Banking and investments were done with precision. Crisis management was different. It unnerved him to consider how often the only barricade between security and disaster was seat-of-the-pants thinking by men like Bob Herbert. In the same breath he thanked God that he had men like Bob Herbert around him.

"Okay," Herbert said. "Did Hwan go to school?"

"You mean college?"

"Yes," Herbert said.

Hood scanned the dossier. "He did. Hwan studied in Moscow and then in London. Why?"

"Nearly seventy-five percent of the people who are recruited for intelligence service jobs studied abroad," Herbert told him. "Other cultures and colloquial languages are familiar to them. If Colonel Hwan studied in London, he probably speaks English."

"How does that help us?" Hood asked.

"We can talk to him," Herbert informed Hood. "What time is it in North Korea?"

"Just after ten P.M.," Hood said.

"Spies collect information during the day and disseminate it at night," Herbert said. "Hwan probably gets up early to read intelligence reports that came in during the night."

"Why does that matter?" Hood asked.

"He'll probably be at home now, sleeping," Herbert said. "Can you get me that number?"

"I'm sure Matt can dig it from a computer system somewhere," Hood said. "Why?"

"Because sometimes a classic, low-tech approach is the best one," Herbert replied.

"I'm not following you," Hood admitted.

"How did I behave when you called me just now?" Herbert asked.

"You were cranky. Disoriented," Hood said.

"Exactly," Herbert said. "It's the old POW gambit. You drag a guy from his cell or cot during the middle of the night. His guard is down. His head is fuzzy. You don't even have to beat him. You hammer him with questions. A man who is scared and tired will respond to force. His mouth will engage before his brain can prevent it."

"So you call Colonel Hwan and wake him up," Hood said. "He's not a prisoner of war. He's probably not going to be very scared in his own home. What makes you think he'll tell you anything?"

"Because I'm a professional, too," Herbert replied.