Target Omega

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The best palliative, Chernin found, was to keep repeating to himself the phrase “Just a few days more.” He repeated it both in his mind and out loud. He repeated it when one of the Iranians would give him a hateful look for drinking vodka. He repeated it when the North Korean technicians asked the same infernal question for the hundredth time. He repeated it most often when his boss, Stetchkin, called.

There remained little substantive work for him to do. He had come in under budget and ahead of schedule. For that, Stetchkin had rewarded him with a series of threats and rebukes, reciting all of Chernin’s deficiencies. But Stetchkin had also made good on the bonuses, deposited timely in Chernin’s account and in the correct amounts. And a premium, of all things, was added to the last bonus.

The bonuses and premium would permit Chernin a comfortable retirement. He would be able to fulfill his plan to buy a small place in the warmest village he could find on the Black Sea. He would read, boat, and make leisurely excursions to scenic destinations throughout southern Europe. He would, in short, stop living like a character from a Chekhov play.

The anticipation of these pursuits should have lifted the spirits of a man in Chernin’s position. Instead, he became more depressed as his time on the project drew to a close.

Chernin was a pragmatist, a realist. And a pessimist. He lacked a capacity for self-delusion. As such, he understood clearly that the cause of his depression was the project’s imminent success. He had presided over an enterprise that would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocents. The fact that he was being generously rewarded for his brilliant management of the project depressed him further still. The project was an abomination. Profiting from it was evil.

During the early stages of the endeavor, its potential consequences were too remote in time to give Chernin much pause. Then, as work proceeded, the scale of the damage the project would cause continued to make the effects too enormous to grasp.

But now the project was complete. And although Chernin had no capacity for self-delusion, he had a healthy capacity for avoidance. He tried to ignore the purposes of what he’d been working on for the last three years. But he could avoid them no longer.

Chernin wasn’t a man given to frequent introspection. He rarely gave much thought to whether he was a good man, a bad man, or something in between. He was more concerned with survival than self-evaluation.

Lately, however, he’d asked himself what kind of man gives his best efforts to an endeavor that would cause horrific suffering. For a while he had compared himself to those who had worked on the Manhattan Project. Those scientists had created a terrible instrument that had extinguished tens of thousands of lives indiscriminately and instantly.

But his inability to engage in self-delusion ensured that the comparison was short-lived. Those men had created a terrible weapon for the purpose of bringing a war to an end, to ultimately save the estimated millions of lives that would have perished with an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Chernin’s work had no such noble purpose, regardless of the deranged rationalizations of the mullahs in Tehran or the sterile explanations of the schemers in the Kremlin.

At another point, he thought a better comparison might be to the crew of the Enola Gay. After all, like them, he was simply carrying out the orders of his superiors with no real knowledge of the ramifications of such orders. But again, the crew members of the Enola Gay were on a mission to end a war, not start one. Chernin quickly resigned himself to the fact that the most apt comparison was to the engineers of the Final Solution, those efficient ciphers who asserted at Nuremberg that they were merely following orders. And that really depressed him.

He resorted to vodka more frequently. It helped temporarily, but afterward he would often be even more despondent. At such times he would occasionally stroll along the catwalks outside his office, silently cursing the circumstances that had placed him here with these insufferable wretches.

In the last few months he had found a rather unlikely companion with whom to commiserate. Although Chernin had mentioned a few irrelevancies about the project to Mansur, it was the North Korean technician, Dong Sung Park, in whom he most frequently confided.

Most of the North Koreans were a source of aggravation for Chernin. They seemed perpetually intent on demonstrating their competence in missile technology. They weren’t shy about giving unsolicited advice and recommending changes in protocols. Even by Russian standards, they were abrupt and undiplomatic.

Park was different. He was quiet and unassuming. Despite the fact that he was in his early thirties and had no apparent connection to the leaders of the North Korean regime, he was the head of his nation’s missile contingent, supervising men much older and with more seniority. In the rigid North Korean hierarchy, that fact alone spoke volumes.

What set Park apart from the rest of the North Koreans, however, was his attitude toward the project. Like Chernin, Park had serious misgivings about the endeavor, its purpose, and the involvement of the Iranians. Because Park was painfully cautious, even for someone who had spent his entire life under a mercurial totalitarian regime, it took several months of daily interaction with the man for Chernin to begin to recognize that Park might not necessarily agree with the party line.

In the last few months, Park had begun opening up to Chernin and the two had come to place a good deal of trust in each other. Each loved his respective country, if not his leaders, deeply. Each had an immediate superior who was a vainglorious tyrant. Each despaired that the project was a monument to miscalculation at best and to lunacy at worst.

Other than Mansur, Park was the only person in Iran whose company Chernin didn’t merely tolerate, but actually enjoyed. Although Park had a reserved demeanor, Chernin found that his coworker could become quite animated when talking about matters other than missiles. Chernin learned that Park was an avid boxing fan who seemed to know more about Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, and Manny Pacquiao than most biographers. He was also, of all things, an amateur poet, albeit a rather horrid one. And he was something of a vodka snob, claiming, impossibly, that soju was superior to anything Russian.

Once, over a presumably inferior bottle of Smirnoff, Chernin asked Park about his family. It was the first time Chernin had ever seen Park’s expression anything other than placid. Even though they were alone and, Chernin believed, outside the range of any monitoring devices, Park lowered his voice to a whisper. Chernin realized the whisper wasn’t to avoid being overheard, but rather to suppress rage. The members of Park’s immediate family — his mother, father, and two older sisters — were all dead. Park declined to talk about their deaths other than to say that it had something to do with their having provoked the displeasure of the North Korean regime, an offense that didn’t actually require an overt act. Park had lived with a cousin since the age of fourteen.

Chernin had heard Park’s story many times before in Russia. It preceded the knock on the door. The arbitrary arrests of loved ones. Disappearances without explanation. Angry recriminations. Then resignation, powerlessness.

Like Chernin, Park had no interest in annihilating Israel or anyone else. He took great pride in his work and understood that his life depended, literally, on the successful completion of that work. But Park had gone through some of the same historical comparisons as Chernin and concluded that he, too, bore uncomfortable similarities to the efficient ciphers at Nuremberg.

Chernin was sitting at his empty desk in his drab office, comforting himself with the thought that he would be in Iran only a few more days, when Park entered. His face, for only the second time that Chernin had known him, expressed agitation.

“Good morning, Dmitri,” Park said in unaccented English.

“Good morning, Park. You look displeased. What troubles you?”

Park sat in a metal chair on the opposite side of the desk and scooted closer. He asked in a low voice, “Your friends are not satisfied with my work?”

Park was referring to the two dour Russian engineers and a guidance expert who had arrived unannounced overnight and had begun inspecting the missiles and tracking systems without asking Chernin’s permission. Furious, Chernin confronted them but backed off upon being told that Stetchkin had sent them to make a final inspection, and if Chernin had any questions, he should direct them to the tyrant.

“They’re here only to give us the final seal of approval. It has nothing to do with the quality of your work,” Chernin said.

“I am not so sure. They will not permit me to follow them or watch what they are doing. They are very secretive. I do not like it.”

“You worry excessively. They will send a good report back to Moscow and Pyongyang. You have done a splendid job. We have all done a splendid job. You’ll go home and be justly rewarded.”

Park sat silently for several seconds studying the ugly green walls. He looked up and said, “Then, if I may be presumptuous, let us mark the occasion with two of your cigars.”

Chernin didn’t need to be prodded. He opened the upper left-hand drawer of his desk, pulled out a metal carrying case, and opened it, revealing an array of cigars. He held up two. “Macanudos,” Chernin announced.

Park nodded his approval. The pair left Chernin’s office and turned right, walking along the catwalk suspended more than forty feet above the workplace floor. The giant facility was eerily quiet, save for the sound of a couple of Towmotors and a distant hissing noise. There were only a few technicians in the facility — mostly North Koreans with a smattering of Russians — compared to the hundreds that had populated the facility during the height of operations.

Chernin and Park walked approximately a hundred feet to a freight elevator that ascended two hundred feet to a pillbox-like structure that sat on the southern slope of the mountain housing the project. They held their proximity badges up to a sensor near the sliding metal exit. The doors opened and the pair walked outside into a parking lot and past several more guards, two of whom were sitting in a jeep to the right of the doors. The guards acknowledged Chernin with a curt nod.

Chernin handed Park one of the Macanudos as the men strolled toward the fence-enclosed perimeter of the parking lot, a good fifty yards from the guards’ position. Chernin removed a cigar clipper and lighter from his pocket, snipped the ends of both cigars, and lit Park’s before lighting his own.

Park faced away from the surveillance cameras located at regular intervals atop the fence and looked at the brown mountains in the distance.

“Dmitri, I’m not going home,” Park said bluntly.

Chernin wasn’t surprised. He had sensed in the cavern that a troubled Park wanted to talk and that the cigars were a mere pretext. “What are you going to do?”

Park answered the question with a question. “You do not want to go home either, do you?”

“I want to go home very much. Truthfully, I cannot wait to leave this place,” Chernin said.

“You cannot wait to leave this place,” Park agreed. “And neither can I. But you do not want to go home.”

Chernin didn’t respond. He puffed slowly on his cigar and waited for Park to continue.

“You are not a crazy man. You are a smart man,” Park said.

“The two qualities are not mutually exclusive.”

“You can see what is about to happen here,” Park continued. “What is happening is sheer idiocy. It is incomprehensible. Our governments are vastly underestimating the consequences of this action. They think there will be retaliation only against Iran. They are tragically mistaken.”

“Our governments have not mistaken the lack of resolve in the West, however,” Chernin noted. “America and Europe are dissolute. Weak. Yes, they may not confine their retaliation to Iran, but only Iran will be struck militarily.”

Park nodded. “That may be so. But many will die here and in Israel. The world economy will be in shambles, in chaos. Our countries will not be insulated from the effects.”

“My bosses believe that after the dust has settled, we will be positioned to pick up the pieces and to profit. We have resources — oil, gas, minerals — that the West must have. They must deal with us,” Chernin said.

“The only reason anyone must deal with my country is to buy stability. We produce nothing. We cannot even feed ourselves. The only thing of consequence that we have is our military — our nuclear capability.”

“That is a very big reason.”

“But the people will remain destitute, probably more so when our role in the project is revealed, as it eventually will be.” Park shook his head. “There is nothing for me to return to except misery. I will not go back.”

“What do you plan to do? Your security people are everywhere. You cannot just refuse to go back. And even if you could, where would you go?”

“Anywhere but North Korea. Perhaps I will eventually find my way to the South. But first, I must get out of here.”

“You cannot get out of Iran without considerable assistance. Who do you know who can help you?”

“You can help me, Dmitri.”

Chernin appeared incredulous. “Me? What can I do? My security people watch me as closely as yours watch you. Besides, I have no means to get out of this country.”

“But your friend Mansur,” Park said. “He is a man of some means. As you describe him, he is a resourceful fellow. He might be able to get us out of here and to a safe place.”

“Us? Whatever gives you the idea I am going with you? My country has compensated me very well. I plan to have a very comfortable retirement and forget all of this — as you put it — idiocy.”

“I will not be able to forgive my role in this matter,” Park said. “It is an impossibility. I will have partial responsibility for one of the great atrocities in history. And you will as well, Dmitri. There’s nothing we can do about that now. The project is complete. The Iranians will get their wish; they will destroy Israel. It is not my wish. I have no animosity toward the Jews.” He gave Chernin a sidelong glance. “And neither do you.”

Park’s intensity was somewhat surprising to Chernin. “And what will you do when you escape North Korea? Spend the rest of your life in a monastery atoning for your sins?” the Russian asked derisively.

“Nothing we do for the rest of our lives can atone for this, Dmitri. You know that. You know that very well. We will live with what we have done. That is our punishment. Our lives will be hell. But we need not live in hell.”

“Spoken with all of the flourish of bad poetry.”

“You fool no one with that cynical façade, Dmitri. Especially me. If I can get out of here, I will go to Central or South America. Maybe, after a time, to South Korea. I will disappear. I will, as you say, atone — as much as anyone can atone for something like this.”

The two men stood silently for several moments smoking their cigars and gazing at the barren landscape beyond the security fence. Chernin was momentarily tempted by the thought of disappearing somewhere in South America. He could buy a villa on the ocean, read, and sail. He would drink vodka, eat well, maybe find a woman. Above all, it would be warm; he would be warm. And then, one day, a soulless young assassin from Moscow, or perhaps Saint Petersburg, would put a bullet in the back of his skull while he was sitting in a local cantina. The North Koreans might not find Park. But the Russians would surely find Chernin. It’s what they did. It’s what they’d always done.

He turned to Park, a note of fatalism in his voice. “I will contact Mansur. If he is available, we will meet with him at his home this evening. You can discuss your plans with him. But you must be careful. There are eyes and ears everywhere.”

“Thank you. But what about you, Dmitri? What will you do?”

“You are a young man. You have most of your life still ahead and reason to seek something better. I, on the other hand, have lived most of my allotted time already. I have little to look forward to other than a measure of personal comfort and safety.” Chernin dropped his cigar, barely smoked, to the ground. “So, I will live on the Black Sea and, like a good Russian, contemplate all of my regrets,” he said matter-of-factly. “And then, after considering each one in turn, I will die.”