by Steve Berry
MALONE HAD WATCHED AS KIM AND HIS DAUGHTER ENTERED the cathedral. The church was large, but not overly so, fitting for such a compact place as Solaris. On the way up from the train station he’d spotted several streets leading off this main route, none of them marked by names. He assumed the entire town was a labyrinth of lanes leading to more hidden piazzas, like the one before the church. He could not follow Kim inside through the main doors, so he’d detoured down one of the side paths into an alley between two shops that led to the town walls. Darkness here was nearly absolute, and though his eyes were adjusted to the night, he had to walk carefully. He decided to risk some illumination and found his iPhone. Its LCD display provided enough light for him to safely locate the end of the alley where the town walls rose only a few feet away. He turned left and followed the stone down another alley behind the buildings that fronted the street. As he hoped, the path led to the rear of the church and a small wooden annex.
Two doors opened inside.
Both were locked.
A window was protected by an iron grille.
Thankfully, the locks on both doors were modern brass and keyed, common to a zillion other doors. In his wallet he always carried two picks. He found them and worked the tumblers. Only a few seconds were needed to hear their release. The picks made him think of Cassiopeia, who never went anywhere without hers, either.
He opened the door a few inches, its bottom scraping on something hard, and slipped inside a small room, beamed with oak, that led to what were certainly vestment and other storage rooms. A short hallway ended at a curtain that he assumed opened to the nave.
A ladder to his left, attached to the exterior wall, caught his attention.
He decided that might be the best vantage point.
So he pocketed his gun and climbed.
ISABELLA WAS STARTLED AS THE CAR DOOR WAS OPENED. SHE’D grown accustomed to the quiet. She was led from the vehicle, back out into the chilly night. One of the policemen cut the bands binding her wrists and she rubbed away the soreness and stretched her arms. The envoy from the embassy emerged from the train station along with Luke Daniels.
They both approached.
“Howell’s dead,” Luke said.
She hated to hear that. She told them what happened with the Korean and where Malone had headed.
“Why the police change in attitude?” she asked the envoy.
“Mr. Malone asked me to take care of a matter. Once done, I returned and discovered what occurred. I telephoned the embassy and the next thing I knew presidents were involved. These local police are not happy, but they do follow orders.”
She was listening, but also staring up toward the mist-shrouded church. “We need to head up there.”
“I agree,” Luke said.
And they hustled off.
SIXTY-SIX
HANA ABSORBED THE SCENE OF LOFTY SPLENDOR AND WONDERED if fate had again intervened. How ironic that they would find a church. The interior was dim and musty, the towering stone walls natural and powerful. Ornate carvings, statues, and gilded elements brought contrast to an otherwise muted scene.
She stood hollow, cold, and ready. To her right, in one of the apses, small candles were arranged in a bronze rack, their flames flickering in the darkness. She stepped their way, still holding both the clipped documents and her gun. Her father lingered near the center aisle, catching his breath from their sprint up the steep street. He was overweight and out of shape, and with all his grandiose plans she’d often wondered why he cared so little about his health.
“Leaving this town could prove a problem,” he said to her in Korean.
“Especially since you killed Howell.”
He glared her way. “I didn’t kill him. My half brother did.”
“Is that how you justify it in your mind?”
He seemed perplexed by her rebuttal.
“What is this about?” he asked.
“Speak English.”
A command. The first she’d ever issued his way.
“You do not care for your own language?”
“I do not care for your country.”
He seemed intrigued by the statement. “All right,” he said in English. “What is this about?”
“How did my mother end up in the camp?”
She’d never asked that question of him before. Talking about her past was the last thing she wanted to do, and never had he expressed any interest on his own. It was as if she’d just appeared to him as a nine-year-old and what had happened before was insignificant.
“Why do you ask this?”
She knew his tricks. Answering a question with another question was his way of diverting a conversation.
“How did my mother end up in the camp?”
“Why is that important now?”
“How did my mother end up in the camp?”
He needed to know that she wasn’t going to budge.
“I sent her there.”
His words shocked her. She hadn’t expected the truth. So she asked the obvious, “Why?”
“We do not have the time to discuss this now.”
She leveled her gun at him. “I think we do.”
“And if I refuse? Would you shoot me?”
“I would.”
He stared hard into her eyes, and for the first time she allowed him to see through them. The camp had taught her about desperation. Little was lost to those who had nothing to lose. Like here. And she wanted him to know that.
“Your mother and I carried on a love affair. She wanted it to be more permanent. I could not allow that. She insisted, so I sent her away.”
“To that place.”
“I considered it more humane than killing her.”
“And did you know she was pregnant?”
He shook his head. “I learned of you years later, just before I came to the camp to find you.”
“You told me then that your father sent her there.”
“I lied. I thought it best. You were so young.”
She lowered the gun. “I hated her for me being there. I blamed her for everything bad that happened to me. She told me once that her sin was falling in love. I’ve come to realize that I was wrong in hating her. Instead it is you I should despise.”
He seemed wholly indifferent, unaffected by her rebuke. “Then I should have left you there where you would by now surely be either dead or used up by the guards.”
“You are beyond evil.”
“Really? And what were you when you asked that I have that teacher tortured, then killed?”
“That was justice for his wrongs.”
“Is that how you rationalize it? You kill and it’s justice. I kill and it is barbaric. Have you ever considered that I might be entitled to justice, too?”
Actually, she had, but she’d decided that his justice probably came when his father disowned him. Never had he shared with her the truth of what happened. That fanciful tale she’d read back on the cruise ship was surely lies. Once, on the Internet, she’d found news articles that described what happened. Sure, they were from a Western perspective, but she trusted that information far more than anything from him. All of the commentators agreed that her father was inept, reckless, and irresponsible. To a degree they were right. But she also knew that he liked people to underestimate him.
And she would not make that mistake.
MALONE LISTENED FROM HIS PERCH, TEN FEET ABOVE WHERE KIM and Hana Sung stood. A waist-high wooden wall formed a railing that encircled the building, the balcony there for more worshipers, its wooden pews all empty. Below, the nave seemed immersed in timelessness, full of motionless shadows. The warm air carried the stale pall of all the anonymous people who thronged here each day and breathed it over and over. He hadn’t expected a confrontation, but there was obvious tension between Kim and his daughter. He’d risked a look down and watched as Sung lowered her weapon.
He gripped his own gun, ready to react.
KIM WAS PERPLEXED. HE’D NEVER S
EEN HANA IN SUCH A MOOD. IN her eyes and on her face was nothing but anger. Emotion had always been foreign to her, and he’d grown accustomed to that solemnity. Which was why he hadn’t lied about the camp and her mother. He truly did not realize that it mattered. But apparently it did.
“Give me the documents,” he said to her.
She stood three meters away, near the prayer candles that continued to flicker in the apse, their light dancing across the wall frescoes. She tossed the clipped bundle to the floor, where it thudded at his feet. The disrespect was both obvious and offensive. He bent down and lifted the stack. For an instant he understood his father’s anger at his own lack of respect. Never before had any of his children shown him such rudeness. All they did was avoid him. Hana, to her credit, was here. But why?
“You hate me that much?” he asked.
“I hate what you are.”
“I am your father?”
“You are a Kim.”
“Then you must also hate yourself.”
“I do.”
She was clearly troubled, but he’d meant what he said a few minutes ago. There was no time for this. He needed her to think clearly and help him escape from this town.
“Hana, we can discuss this once we are away from here. I came into this church simply as a way to flee the street and think. I need your assistance in getting us out of here.”
“You care nothing about the camps,” she said. “They will continue under you.”
No sense denying the obvious. “Enemies have to be punished. I could kill them—”
“No, you can’t. Murder has consequences.”
She was more astute than he’d imagined. “That is true, but it is also necessary, at times. The camps offer a simpler, more controlled way to deal with problems.”
“You are no different than your father and grandfather.”
No, he probably wasn’t. Kims were meant to rule and rule they would. But he would be different, just not in ways she seemed to want.
“You allowed Howell to die without a thought,” she said. “The same was true for Larks, the woman on the boat, and the man in the hotel. Their lives meant nothing to you.”
“All of which was necessary to achieve our goal.”
She shook her head. “Not my goal. Yours.”
Then a thought occurred to him. Her obstinacy. The anger. He stared at the stack of papers in his hand. He still held his gun, but was able to shuffle through the pages. “Where is the original?”
Nowhere had he seen the crumpled sheet, darker in color, thinner, more fragile than the others.
Hana stayed silent.
“Where is it?” he demanded, his voice rising.
MALONE KEPT LISTENING, A SAYING FROM SUN TZU’S ART OF WAR spinning through his mind. When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, stay out of the way. Sound advice, particularly here where containment meant everything. When he and Stephanie had talked, laying out the plan, setting the stage, one thing had been stressed. Nothing about this could leave Solaris. It had to end here. So they’d purposefully pointed the Chinese, luring them down a concocted path, hoping anyone and everyone would follow.
And they had.
Time to intervene, but first he, too, wanted to know the answer to Kim’s question.
Where was the crumpled sheet of paper?
ISABELLA, WITH LUKE, FOLLOWED THE STREET UP THROUGH A HONEYCOMB of dark houses. All of the clamor remained behind them as the embassy envoy had assured them that no police would come their way.
The fog had thickened, limiting visibility to maybe fifty feet. Beyond that everything blurred away into a wall of vapor. They’d proceeded with caution, keeping watch on the buildings and the many side streets, seeing and hearing nothing. Now they’d found the lit cathedral and an irregular-shaped piazza that fronted it. All remained shrouded by an unnatural quiet.
“Where the hell is he?” Luke whispered.
KIM HAD WAITED LONG ENOUGH FOR AN ANSWER TO HIS QUESTION, so he aimed the gun at his daughter. “Where is the crumpled sheet? I will not ask again. You were right when you said I am a Kim. You obviously know what that means—after all you are one, too. If I have to shoot you, I will.”
“Why did you come for me? Why not just leave me in the camp?”
“You were my daughter. I thought you deserved not to live there.”
“But my mother did?”
“Your mother was just one of many women I encountered. They were objects of pleasure, nothing more. My wife, with whom I have my legitimate children, will always be my wife. And what do you care? You hated your mother. You told me that the first day we met. Why is she so important now?”
He kept the gun aimed.
HANA REALIZED THAT SHE’D MADE A HORRIBLE ERROR. THE WOMAN she’d despised her entire life was blameless. Truly, her only sin had been falling in love. Her punishment? A lifetime of banishment to a place of unimaginable horror, where problems were sent to be forgotten—without consequences.
Her mother had no choice.
But her father had possessed many.
This nothing of a man was the cause of all her agony. For an instant she was sad that her mother was gone. A feeling of longing, similar to what she’d felt for Sun Hi, filled her heart. Fourteen years she’d pondered this. But only in the past few minutes had she truly understood the depth of her pain.
And she knew what had to be done.
One hand held her gun. The other she slipped into her pocket and found the original sheet. She’d removed it from the stack while still on the train with Howell, crumpling it into a ball. Howell had liked that, saying nothing, only smiling at her desecration.
He killed your lady, she’d said to Howell. Not me.
And the American had nodded his understanding.
She displayed the ball of paper to her father.
“Are you insane,” he said. “Those fibers are eighty years old. We may never be able to open it back up.”
The wad rested on her open palm.
She turned and, with a flick of the wrist, propelled the ball through the air and onto the burning candles. Her father gasped and rushed to try and stop the inevitable, but the fragile paper quickly disintegrated.
“You bitch,” he screamed.
She heard the word that every female prisoner had been called since birth. She’d come to associate that slur with defeat, but for the first time in her life she actually felt empowered. She’d conceived, planned, and executed her every move, down to the final part, the one that would deny her father all that he sought. She stared with defiance into his angry eyes, knowing exactly what he would do.
And he did not disappoint her.
He aimed his gun and pulled the trigger.
MALONE HAD NOT EXPECTED KIM TO SHOOT HIS DAUGHTER, BUT the man had done so with no hesitation. Hana Sung destroying the code was perfect. Kim was now dead in the water, unlikely to have any copies or facsimiles. Everything had happened on the train, and Kim had not even known its significance until Howell told him. Kim was surely counting on leaving here with everything in his possession, figuring it out later.
But now that plan would never happen.
HANA FELT THE BULLET SLAM INTO HER STOMACH, THEN PASS right through her. The pain was at first unnoticeable, then excruciating, radiating upward and exploding in her brain.
“I gave you life,” her father said. “Gave you freedom. I could have left you there to rot, but I didn’t. And you repay me with this?”
She needed him to finish. It was time for her to die. She should have died long ago with Sun Hi. Instead she survived and spat upon her friend. The shame from that had never left her. For a long time she’d debated what to do. Kill her father? No. Then she would be no better. Instead he must be offered the opportunity to kill her, and his choice would be telling.
Blood gushed from the wound, and she fought to stand.
She would die on her feet with no expressions of pain—strong, determined, and silent—like Sun Hi. Maybe
they’d see each other once her spirit traveled to wherever spirits went. She hoped there was a place. What a shame if there be nothing but blackness.
One final insult swelled inside her.
More of her redemption.
She spat at her father.
But he stood too far away for anything to touch him.
He shot her again.
MALONE ROSE UP AND AIMED HIS GUN DOWNWARD JUST AS KIM fired for the second time. Sung dropped to the stone, blood oozing from her in ever-widening rivulets. He assumed she was dead.
“Drop the gun,” he said.
Kim did not move, keeping his back to him, but the North Korean said, “American. You must be Malone. I saw you in the train station.”
“I told you to drop the gun.”
“Or you’ll shoot me?”
“Something like that.”
“She was a lovely girl,” Kim said. “So much like her mother. A shame she was also a fool.”
“You kill your children easily.”
“The choice was hers, not mine.”
He kept the gun aimed, amused at how Kim thought a little small talk would buy him time to assesses his options.
Unfortunately, there weren’t any.
“I tried to love her,” Kim said. “But I assume you saw what she did. Burning that sheet, which you surely know about.”
“It’s done,” he made clear. “This is over. The only question is, will you walk away in one piece.”
“Of course I will,” Kim said. “Why would I not? You stand above me, in the balcony. I can tell from your voice. And I am down here. I doubt you will shoot me for no reason.”
“Turn around. Nice and slow.”
He’d purposefully not repeated his command to drop the gun. Kim slowly turned, the pistol still firmly gripped at waist level. He saw the sound suppressor at the end of the barrel and now knew why the shots had been so muffled.
“I’m going to leave,” Kim said. “Here are the remaining papers.” He tossed them to the floor. “As you say, this matter is over.”
