Red Phoenix

by Larry Bond

  At least his face didn’t show any immediate signs of falling apart on him. But not even Mandy would call it handsome. Instead, a long, thin nose, large green eyes, and mobile, arching eyebrows gave him a faintly professorial look — the quizzical, distracted air of someone always looking for more than the obvious.

  He reached the White House, flashed his security badge to the Marine guard and Secret Serviceman on duty at the side door, and went in.

  As the national security adviser, Putnam had an office just down the hall from the Oval Office itself — a fact that he was always careful to mention at cocktail parties. And Fowler noticed that he’d managed to get an even larger nameplate, GEORGE PUTNAM — NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER, plastered all over his door.

  Putnam’s secretary looked up as he walked in. She smiled sympathetically. “Long night?”

  He nodded, rubbing his chin and realizing he’d forgotten to shave again.

  She looked apologetic. “His Excellency has asked that you take a seat for a few minutes. He’s on a very important call with one of his old Hill cronies.”

  Fowler looked at his watch: 9:15 A.M. on the dot. That bastard Putnam. He seemed to think that you showed people how important and busy you were by keeping them waiting outside your office door.

  Fowler thought that George Putnam, erstwhile national security adviser and full-time asshole, was a good example of the truism that when the pendulum swung, it usually swung too far.

  Several of Putnam’s predecessors had been highly professional career soldiers who’d somehow managed to get both themselves and the president they served in hot water. There’d been an outcry in the press and on Capitol Hill, and a whole slew of foreign policy pundits had come forward arguing that the next president should find someone who could work more easily within the constraints imposed by Congress and by domestic politics.

  Well, that was advice the new president had taken — and Fowler thought he’d probably live to regret it. Putnam had been some kind of a staff bigwig on the Hill before the election, and then he’d wormed his way into a transition team slot with the incoming administration. After that, he’d managed to surprise everyone outside the Hill establishment by parlaying his temporary position into a nomination for the national security adviser’s job.

  Fowler had to admit that Putnam knew how to operate. That didn’t make him any less of a jerk, but it did make him the jerk responsible for keeping the President up-to-date on national security issues.

  Putnam kept him on ice for nearly fifteen minutes this time. And when Fowler walked in, he didn’t even look up from the notes he was scribbling. Instead he waved vaguely toward a chair. “I’ll be right with you, Blake. No rest for the righteous, eh?”

  Fowler sat, trying manfully to conceal his disdain for his nominal superior. Putnam was still a young man, barely into his forties, but he looked older somehow. Not older and wiser. Just older. The national security adviser’s fleshy, freckled face and petulant, thin-lipped mouth made him look like an aging schoolboy, like the bully who’d never been beaten up.

  After a moment Putnam laid his pen down carefully, flexed his fingers, and sat back looking smug. He brushed a wisp of graying, reddish-brown, curly hair back into place. “Always pays to keep your ear to the ground, Blake. Got some really hot stuff from the Hill this morning.”

  Fowler knew that Putnam’s “really hot stuff” was probably the latest dirt on some senator’s love life, so he kept quiet.

  Putnam looked a little exasperated that his subordinate hadn’t begged him to share the latest gossip. “Ah, well. Can’t expect you ‘professionals’ to care much about the way things really get done in this town, now can I?”

  Putnam shook his head. “Someday, Blake, you’ll realize that this town doesn’t move on facts — it moves on perceptions. On rumors. On whispers.”

  He leaned forward across his desk. “And the granddaddy rumor mill of them all is right over there.” He pointed off in the rough direction of the Hill. “That’s where the action’s at.

  “Without the Congress, the President’s agenda is dead in the water. So we’ve got to keep on our toes. We’ve got to know who’s up and who’s down — who the Speaker or majority leader like and who they don’t. And we have to keep them happy. This administration has to have a sort of symbiotic relationship with the Congress. You know, ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’ Do you see what I mean?”

  Fowler could name quite a few presidents who’d been at their best when they opposed congressional idiocy, but it seemed a little too early in the morning for another pointless political debate. Instead he reached into his folder and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Well, George, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave the American political theory to you. I have a tough enough time keeping up with South Korean politics these days.”

  Putnam frowned. “Oh, yes. South Korea. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He tapped a finger on his bare desk blotter. “Now look, Blake, we’ve got some real trouble brewing on the Hill over Korea. And the President needs to know just what the hell is going on over there.”

  Fowler handed him the latest CIA analysis, a stapled selection of National Security Agency signals intercepts, and a telexed report from the general commanding U.S. forces in Korea.

  “Jesus Christ, Blake, I don’t have time to read all this crap! That’s what I’ve got you for. Did you bother to put together a one-pager for my signature — or was that too much trouble for you?”

  Control. Control, Fowler told himself. Don’t let him see that he’s managed to piss you off. He held out the single-page summary he’d written at around four in the morning.

  But Putnam waved it away. “Just give me the gist for now. I’ll read it for details later.”

  Fowler tried hard to keep his voice level. “Essentially, our most recent reports show some improvement in the situation. Seoul and the other major cities are still under a nighttime curfew, but there are signs that the government will lift it sometime in the next three days. There have been some minor incidents outside Seoul — small demonstrations, a few rocks thrown at police, that kind of stuff — but nothing really dangerous. The National University is still crawling with security troops, of course, but there hasn’t been any further trouble. The students still seem to be in shock.

  “And so far the North Koreans haven’t tried anything funny. We’ve gotten the usual propaganda blasts, but we haven’t yet picked up evidence of anything worse in the works.”

  Putnam interrupted. “What about the massacre? Do we have any idea who was responsible? That’s the kind of thing we’re going to get asked by the press.”

  “Well, the government over there is probably going to lay the blame on some junior police officer — undoubtedly one of the ones who got himself killed. But that general of ours who saw the start of the whole thing argues the real culprit is whoever ordered the police to meet that demonstration with real guns in their hands.” Fowler shook his head. ‘And that had to have been someone pretty high up — probably at the cabinet level.”

  Putnam snorted, “Stupid bastards.” For once Fowler was inclined to agree with his boss.

  “Yeah. We’re still not sure just why whoever it was thought it was necessary. But we do know that the government’s been under a lot of pressure from the heads of some of the South Korean industrial conglomerates, the chaebol, to keep things under tighter control this fall. The last round of unrest wound up costing them a lot in labor concessions, and that cut into South Korean’s competitive edge. They didn’t sell enough autos and computer parts last year to cut their international debt as much as they wanted to. But I don’t think a full-fledged massacre is what they had in mind.” Fowler slid the heavily underlined summary on top of the rest of the documents he suspected Putnam would never read.

  Putnam looked across the desk at him. “So what’s the bottom line? Can the President tell the press and the Hill this was just a one-time screwup that won’t happen again? Or can we exp
ect more of this?”

  Fowler shrugged. “There’s really no way to tell. After the 1980 bloodbath in Kwangju, things were quiet for six or seven years. But this happened right on worldwide TV and it happened in Seoul. And Seoul is the heart of South Korea — it’s the capital, the population center, business center, cultural center, you name it. We just don’t have enough information yet to make an accurate prediction.”

  “Now see here, Dr. Fowler. I’ve got to give the Man more than that. He can’t just go out there in front of the cameras and say, ‘Gosh, fellas, there’s really no way to tell if Korea’s gonna come unwrapped faster than you can say Iran.’ ” Putnam’s attempt to imitate the President’s voice fell flat, but the anger in it was real enough.

  “And it’s not just the press,” Putnam continued. “We’ve got to deal with the House and Senate as well. You know about this Barnes sanctions bill that got dropped in the hopper yesterday?”

  Fowler nodded. “I read the summary Legislative Affairs put out last night. Frankly, I can’t think of when I last saw such a piece of dangerous stupidity — ”

  Putnam cut him off. “I don’t give a great big goddamn for your uninformed opinions on legislation, Blake.” He made a visible effort to control himself. “The point is, the bill’s not going to go anywhere, but we have to form an administration position on it. And for once I want a single administration position.”

  Putnam looked over at his desk clock. “So what I want you to do, Dr. Fowler, is put together a top-notch, interagency working group to analyze the potential effects of the Barnes bill. Get all the key players involved — State, Defense, Commerce, CIA, and all the rest. Do it ASAP and make sure that all the documents flow through me, okay? I want a final report on my desk inside of two weeks from now.”

  Fowler mentally wrote off two weeks’ worth of dinners at home with his family, his daughter’s school play, and a lot of domestic tranquility. “You know that either State or Defense will fight like hell to chair this thing. And they’ll want to route through their respective bosses first.”

  Putnam smirked. “I know. So what you do is this. Put me on the group as chairman, and then I’ll just have you fill in for me. Got it?”

  Fowler nodded his understanding. Putnam might be a slimy son of a bitch and he might not know squat about foreign affairs, but he did know how to play the bureaucracy game. The Korean situation involved everything from foreign policy and military strategy to questions of international trade and domestic politics. And all of that made the President’s national security adviser the logical choice to head up an interagency group on South Korea. That gave Putnam power, because only the designated chairman of an interagency group had the right to present the group’s final report to the President.

  “Okay, Blake, I’m sure you’ve got work to do, so I won’t keep you any longer.” Putnam’s eyes flicked over to the clock again. “Besides, I’ve got an important meeting right now.”

  Fowler stood, took his folder off Putnam’s desk, and walked to the door. He opened it, but Putnam’s voice stopped him with his hand still on the knob. “By the way, Blake, try not come in looking like a refugee all the time. I expect my senior staff to set the right tone for this shop, all right?”

  Fowler didn’t say anything. He just fought down the urge to go back and kick his boss in the nuts and went out — brushing past the man waiting in Putnam’s outer office. Behind him, he heard Putnam trying out his best “one of the guys” tone of voice: “Hey, Jer! Good to see you! Come right on in.”

  CHAPTER 4

  In the Shadows

  SEPTEMBER 13 — PYONGYANG-EAST AIRBASE

  The “Internationale” sounded odd to Colonel Sergei Ivanovitch Borodin. Its harsh, blaring refrain rebounded off the concrete-reinforced granite walls of the hangar — echoes chasing one another with nowhere to go. After a while Borodin swore he could have closed his eyes and heard the same series of notes three times over.

  It was distracting, and he didn’t need the distraction. There were too many things he needed to watch carefully, too many things to remember. This mission was as much a diplomatic gesture as it was a military assignment. Of itself that held no great concern for Borodin. He’d served the State in a similar capacity across half the globe. But this place was so — he searched for the right word — so confined, so suffocating. Nothing at all like the vast, open deserts beyond Tripoli or the rolling grasslands around Harare.

  This feeling of walking a tightrope over a deep pit had first come over him as he’d waited to fly out of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport.

  “Be careful, Sergei. Be watchful.” General Petrov, deputy commander in chief for air combat training, had whispered in his ear as they stood together looking out the departure lounge window into the late-night darkness. The old man had chuckled at Borodin’s alarmed expression, but his words had been blunt — a rare thing for the short, stout, white-haired friend of his father.

  “These North Koreans are slant-eyes, yes, Sergei. But they are clever slant-eyes. They’ve played us off against the Chinese for decades, and only now does it seem that we’re pulling them into our nets. “But” — the old man had waggled a finger in his face — ”only just. They could easily slip outside. We can’t afford that, Sergei Ivanovitch. You understand? So you must not offend them. You must not disparage this personality cult nonsense — this godhead — they’ve built up around the old man Kim and his son.”

  Petrov had dropped his voice and laid an arm around Borodin’s shoulders. “So, a word to the wise, eh? Walk softly in North Korea, there are powerful eyes watching. Politburo eyes, Sergei. You don’t want to count trees or dig for gold, you understand? Walk soft.”

  Borodin shivered slightly as he remembered those last words. This might well be the season of glasnost, but the icy forests of Siberia and the man-killing mines of the Kolyma were still there — they’d just been pushed into the shadows a bit.

  His memory moved on, through the long, high-altitude journey eastward across the Soviet Union, then lower above the rugged peaks of the Taeback Mountains, and finally south across the narrow plains toward Pyongyang. Into this cavernous hangar carved out of a mountainside east of the capital.

  The “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-Il, son of North Korea’s absolute ruler, had met the plane personally. No surprises there. Neither Borodin nor his political officer, Major Yepishev, had expected the Great Leader himself, Kim Il-Sung, to make an appearance. According to both the GRU and the KGB, the old man’s health was increasingly fragile, and they’d arrived on a hard, gray day, heavy with cold rain driven by the wind.

  There wasn’t much trace of the rotten weather in here, though, Borodin thought, surveying the high-vaulted hangar that held not only his Ilyushin airliner, an Il-18, but also several other, smaller transports, a reviewing stand, and a uniformed crowd of North Korean dignitaries. The size of the place made a mockery of perspective and dwarfed its human occupants — stretching for several hundred meters from tunnels cut deeper into the rock out to a set of thickly armored main hangar doors. Lighting, ventilation, and fire suppression systems turned the ceiling into a nightmarish tangle of shafts, cabling, and piping.

  The Soviet colonel couldn’t even begin to imagine the amount of labor it had taken to carve all of this out of solid rock. It surpassed even the massive engineering works carried out by his own country’s Civil Defense Force. He cast a sidelong glance at the row of impassive Korean faces on either side of him. What was going on inside those heads?

  The silence alerted him. The band had stopped playing, and now Kim Jong-Il stood ready to speak at the podium.

  Borodin found the man’s appearance unsettling. On the surface the “Dear Leader” seemed soft, pudgy — a stark contrast to the colonel, who’d always prided himself on his trim, flat stomach and narrow, high-cheeked features. But the eyes, the eyes were dangerous — cold and hard behind those thick glasses. They were eyes that suited a man who now controlled his nation’s entire internal security
and military apparatus.

  Kim’s voice was soft, commanding attention by necessity more than by bluster. “Socialist brothers, we welcome your presence here. We hope that your gracious visit will permit a useful exchange of information between our two great peoples …”

  “Exchange.” Now there was an amusing word, Borodin thought. He and his men — some of the Soviet Union’s top pilots and aircraft mechanics — were a training team. Their very presence here chipped away at Kim Il-Sung’s so-called self-reliance doctrine.

  It was all a nice little ballet. His team had to maintain the fiction that they were here to examine North Korean air tactics, and not just to show the Koreans how to fly the shiny new toys they’d been shipped from the Soviet Union. North Korean air tactics, what nonsense. These people thought the MiG-21 was a first-line aircraft.

  At the same time, his briefings at the Defense and Foreign ministries in Moscow had emphasized how much the Soviet Union needed Kim Il-Sung’s friendship and cooperation. The colonel knew that Kim’s dynastic communism was anathema to his superiors, but the North Koreans were at least nominal socialists, and they were opposed to the West. More importantly, the country occupied a crucial geostrategic position — it was the fulcrum between the Soviet Union, China, and Japan.

  The “fulcrum.” The word described the Kremlin’s view of North Korea with precision. The Politburo saw it as the vital agent through which force could be exerted against either the Chinese or the Japanese. Borodin smiled inwardly despite his concerns. Considering his mission here, that was even a clever word play, one worthy of Crokodil, the humor magazine.

  And if his country didn’t help Kim, the Chinese would be only too happy to oblige. That was something his country could not risk.

  Borodin knew that firsthand. He had been stationed in the Far East early in his career. You couldn’t fly out of Vladivostok and remain unaware of the Chinese threat.