by John Altman
She would bathe. Eat. Rest. Brew tea.
And then get down to work. The monograph about Issus now seemed timelier than ever. Song Sun Young had repeatedly trumped superior manpower with exemplary maneuverability. Dalia had, in the end, managed to apply some of Alexander’s genius herself, defining the battlefield of her choosing—one not of mutual nuclear annihilation, but of behind-the-scenes strategizing. The need to remind future policymakers of ancient lessons was imperative.
Before moving to draw a bath, however, she lingered a few moments in the study, considering souvenirs she had seen many times before. A fragment of German 5.9-inch howitzer shell from Ypres. A minié ball from the Muleshoe at Spotsylvania. A bullet casing from an isolated cottage in nearby Hopewell, New Jersey.
For someone who called herself a pacifist, her ex-husband had said, she certainly liked to immerse herself in war.
The better to avoid it. If she had not heeded McConnell’s call, how many more would be dead today? Strike, counterstrike. Thousands, millions. She could all too easily imagine a thermonuclear conflict spreading beyond North Korea and the United States—to India, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, Russia, the Persian Gulf. Hundreds of millions dead. Even billions.
All sparked by a single man.
Using insight provided by Woody Whitlock, the square-jawed head of J3, they had reconstructed Bach’s actions. The terminally ill CIA officer had used a top secret Pentagon supercomputer to seize the reins of America’s nuclear arsenal. He had personally activated Song Sun Young, exploiting her as a pawn to justify using that arsenal. He had justified the justification by accessing another CIA compartment, which had scrutinized key American financial infrastructure that might be vulnerable to manipulation by foreign agents, and coming up with the name William Walsh.
Too much power, Dalia thought, concentrated into too few hands, invited arrogance such as Bach’s. Of course, the root word of arrogance was arrogate, as in to arrogate control.
Yet part of her—although she hated to admit it—couldn’t help but wonder whether perhaps history would show that Bach had been right. He had wanted to accept the short-term pain to reap the long-term benefit. Every child understood the wisdom of tearing off a Band-Aid all at once. By stopping him, Dalia might unwittingly have contributed to a greater disaster down the road. Pyongyang’s nepotistic regime remained in power. Its promises of disarmament rang hollow. This had been the most recent Battle of Korea, but very likely not the last.
Her kibbutznik side retorted: North Korea would not be the only rogue nation to achieve nuclear capability. One’s enemies could not all be stamped into rubble and ash. Brute force was not the solution. They must instead learn to coexist.
She collapsed into her desk chair.
Maspeek. Enough.
But her mind ticked stubbornly ahead.
She could not bury her head in the sand, because her grandchildren woke up every day knowing that people wanted them dead. Wiped off the face of the earth, pushed into the sea. And if they should forget, their enemies were all too happy to remind them. Loudly, shamelessly. With rallies and effigies and troop movements … and ovens and lampshades and mass graves … and Hwasong-15s and miniaturized thermonuclear warheads … and daggers and stones and checkpoint bombings and SCUD missiles and Zyklon-B. Her grandchildren could not board a bus without scanning every face, looking for the one that didn’t meet their eyes in return. Stiffening at every stop as each new potential killer came aboard. Taking every stranger’s measure, maybe edging toward the window, knowing that those in the aisle seats would absorb the brunt of the blast.
But someday soon, those blasts would become atomic. Then window seats would offer scant protection. In Beersheba, half the population would be killed outright by a single nuclear detonation. A double strike on Tel Aviv, home to Dalia’s children and grandchildren, would vaporize a quarter of a million instantly. And that would be only the first wave of dead. She had once worked up a simulation with RAND. She remembered the mood in the office—wisecracking, bluff. The horror had been far too great to consider straight-faced.
But neither could they become too comfortable in their own righteousness. Dalia rejected the doctrine of ein breira, “no alternative”—the viewpoint that Israel, surrounded by antagonists who sought its annihilation, had no choice but to strike first and fatally. Because preemptive doctrines created “situations” like the one haunting them from Gaza and the West Bank. Having second-class citizens created “situations.” Israel’s string of tactical victories had led to a strategic dead end.
And an Israeli response to a nuclear attack would deliver two hundred fusion weapons with yields ranging from twenty kilotons to one megaton. Dense population centers and the reflective effects of basin cities surrounded by mountains rendered Iran’s sixty-nine million people especially susceptible to nuclear holocaust. Earthquake-sensitized populations were apt to rush outdoors after blast damage from a detonation, increasing their exposure to radiation. Half the dead would be children under the age of eighteen.
The twenty-five million citizens of North Korea were also innocents, victims who had already suffered horribly.
Dalia—and Bach, and the Pentagon, and Tel Aviv, and Pyongyang, and Moscow, and Beijing—could not simply dehumanize the enemy, thus justifying the preemptive wiping clean of the slate. The North Koreans were not animals, no matter how brutal their behavior might sometimes seem. In fact, Pyongyang’s shrewd pose of unpredictability had paid handsome profits. Cultivating a volatile image had enabled them to cross one red line after another without provoking a serious international response—and then, when the time came, to seek legitimacy by coming to the world stage from a place of relative power.
One could not crush the enemy.
But neither could one bury one’s head in the sand.
It had to be the middle way: skilled diplomacy and real statesmanship—neither crushing the enemy nor kowtowing to his every demand.
But that path was dark and shadowed and tangled by weeds. Hard to find and even harder to stick to.
Sparrows perched outside commenced a session of name-calling. Cheap, cheap. And the retort: Whoo-mee? Whoo-mee?
There was cause for hope, Dalia told herself. Humanity had reached the twenty-first century without seeing mushroom clouds over Washington, Moscow, Beijing, or Jerusalem. Proof that the species nurtured at least a spark of sanity. The trick would be to fan that spark into a flame. Forsaking nationalism, uniting humanity into a single global community with no borders and, thus, no enemy tribes to fight.
That was her kibbutznik self talking, of course. Her mother, who had survived Auschwitz, would have answered with a snort of derision, Az Got volt gelebt oif der erd, volt men im alleh fenster oisgeshlogen. If God lived on Earth, all his windows would be broken.
Dalia kneaded one eye. So tired …
An incoming SMS message dinged on her phone.
Her daughter. An image was attached.
She opened it and scowled in confusion. A Rorschach test. Swirling black and white lines. She saw snow in those lines. Tangled roots, whinnying horses. A frozen lake, a hasty retreat. Atomic fallout. Radioactive dust and ash incorporated with the products of a pyrocumulus cloud. More than six thousand dead.
Then something clicked, and the Rorschach image resolved into an ultrasound.
Another text appeared:
I wanted to talk to you, but I’ve been trying for days and can’t get through. Meet your new granddaughter. !!!Happy birthday, Savta Dalia!!!
As a slow smile began to spread, the phone rang in her hand.
Not her daughter.
McConnell.
EPILOGUE
Manhattan, NY
The Range Rover pulled over before the green awning. Before grabbing her cane, Dalia took the lay of the land. The sinking sun had acquired a hint of copper. But the city that never slept showed no
indication of slowing down. A doorman was signing for a package, then stealing a sip of coffee before rushing to hold the door for a woman and her miniature poodle. Two deliverymen were balancing a huge box, waiting their turn to enter the lobby. A man cradling a phone against one shoulder adjusted an enamel cuff link as he hailed a cab.
McConnell turned to look at her, one brow raised.
Dalia sighed, then nodded.
She planted her cane on the sidewalk, then followed it with her foot. As she approached the awning, the words she had rehearsed during the drive from Princeton moved restively through her mind.
I come as the bearer of bad news.
She was moving slowly, buying time. Not eager to have this conversation.
“Dalia Artzi,” she told the doorman, “for Mark Abrahams.”
She waited as he buzzed.
But you deserve to know, she would say.
Your wife is dead.
The doorman listened to his phone, nodded, and waved her on. Dalia proceeded through the lobby, past urns of hydrangea and peony and dahlia, Tiffany-shaded wall lamps, hand-carved marble, ornate molding elaborately wrought. How had this luxury struck someone who came of age amid the deprivations and degradations of the Hermit Kingdom?
However much Song had hated America, she had, in the end, loved her children more. That much, at least, Dalia had gotten right.
There’s more, she would tell Mark Abrahams.
It’s a lot to get your mind around. And the details must remain classified. If anyone asks, I never told you this. But you should know: Your wife’s true name was Song Sun Young. She was sent here from North Korea, as an agent to work on their behalf.
The best lies, of course, hewed as closely as possible to truth. But the most creative ones strayed far afield.
The jihadist named Yusuf Bashara discovered your wife’s true identity. We suspect ties between Pyongyang and Tehran. He blackmailed her. Apparently, he wanted her as a collaborator. But she escaped. She came to the FBI, but not before receiving a wound that ultimately proved fatal.
Mark Abrahams would believe it. Because, although the details were false, the emotional essence was true. Song Sun Young had, in the end, redeemed herself.
Your wife was a victim. She was caught in a political crossfire, but she died a true hero.
Dalia reached the elevator. Her heart broke into a trot. Her stomach felt sour. She pressed the call button.
She prevented Bashara from claiming countless innocent lives. In return, she gave her own.
The elevator door opened.
Dalia didn’t move. She was dreading this. The eyes of the children—that was what would get her.
But her life had been devoted to tikkun olam. Repairing the world.
Song Sun Young had earned this.
When it was done, Dalia could go home. Call her daughter at last. And celebrate her new, yet-unborn grandchild.
There was cause for hope, she thought again. There would always be thaws and freezes, tensions and rapprochements. But so long as people like Dalia and Song existed on both sides, hope would never be lost.
The thought brought a faint and fleeting smile.
A last hesitation. Then she set the cane and moved forward.
END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my agent, Richard Curtis, for his many contributions to this book. And to Lieutenant Commander Rob Watts, US Navy. And to Mandi Moolekamp and Noah Green, and Christopher Brennan. Very special thanks to Michael Libertazzo. And to Fred Moolekamp, who was extraordinarily generous with his time and his patience, his ideas, and his knowledge.
