“Where are the others?”
“They took the preacher away this morning: Mr. Stevens. See that?” She pointed to a slanted wooden platform built into a corner of the room. It had an iron bar at the higher end, metal rings at each corner of the lower end, and a watering can and a stack of towels sitting on top of it. “They waterboarded him first. He was unconscious when they carried him off. I don’t know if he’ll come back. He’s from Scotland, and he came as part of a group, too. He left a Bible behind in his hotel room when he tried to leave the country. They arrested him at the airport. And then there is Lee.” Irene nodded toward what looked to Bianca like an empty corner. “He’s in the hole. He—” Even as Bianca realized that what Irene was nodding at was the iron grate set into the stone floor and that Lee, whoever he was, must be imprisoned beneath it, there was a sound outside the door.
“Oh no! They’re back—they’ve come for you. I’m truly sorry. Don’t tell them we talked. Be brave. I’m sure they won’t kill you.”
Bianca’s heart started to pound as the door, groaning, was pulled outward. Bestowing a quick, commiserating pat on Bianca’s arm, Irene slithered away toward the wall, where she curled up in a tight little ball, facing it.
Two soldiers came in. Stern-faced and compactly built, they were neat in their uniforms of brown belted tunics, pressed trousers and black-billed hats. She registered their weapons—a holstered revolver, a sheathed knife and a baton—as one grabbed her arm, his fingers digging in hard, while the other pulled a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the chain securing her shackles to the ring.
“Nyeon,” the one with the keys said to Irene, whose cringing body was apparently in his way. Bianca’s Korean was rusty, but she came up with the translation, bitch, at just about the time the soldier kicked Irene in the back with his boot. Hard. Irene jerked and cried out, while Bianca, in full-on frightened Lynette mode, was hauled to her feet and dragged from the room.
It opened into a corridor that had heavily armed and smartly uniformed guards stationed along it on both sides. From the absence of windows, the dank smell, and the fact that the set of metal steps she was being taken to led only upward, she concluded that she was in a basement. The guards stood at attention with their backs to the walls, staring straight in front of them as she was frog-marched between them. They were perhaps an arm’s length apart, and there were—she counted—ten on each side, so twenty in all, plus the two propelling her along. That seemed like an excessive amount of security for the four beaten-down prisoners plus herself in what, given the fact that there were no other doors opening off of the corridor, appeared to be the only holding room. Maybe the security was there for another reason?
There was another reason, she discovered as she reached the top of the stairs. After one of the guards announced their presence with a quick knock, she was taken through a door into a large room that, after the gloom below, seemed almost painfully bright. Blinking at the harsh daylight pouring in through a wall that was mostly windows, she found herself looking at a middle-aged man in a uniform featuring golden epaulets and a chest almost entirely covered with glinting, police-badge-sized commendations.
Talk about your full medal jacket.
His presence was the reason for the excess security, she was sure.
Without releasing their grip on her arms, her escorts stopped and saluted.
The officer ignored them. He stood in front of the wall of windows and the impression she got was that he had been looking out when they entered and had just turned.
“I am General Yang,” he said to her in heavily accented English. “You are?”
“L-Lynette Holbrook,” she squeaked, and he nodded as if that confirmed what he already knew. Frowning, he looked her up and down.
Her heart still pounded, and she didn’t try to calm it because it served her purpose. She hoped he could sense Lynette’s fear. With her shoulders slumped and her head hanging in terrified Lynette style, she nevertheless managed a surreptitious glance around. It was a one-story building, a long, low office bungalow with the basement below. The walls were white, the floor was some kind of gray composite. A coat tree in one corner held a long brown overcoat and an oversize officer’s hat, which she assumed belonged to Yang. Banks of computer equipment took up almost all of the long wall on the right side of the room. An arrangement of a couch and two chairs was grouped beneath an oversize, glass-fronted photo of the Supreme Leader on the left wall. A second, closed door, also on that wall, led she knew not where.
To the guards in his own language, Yang uttered a harsh “Bring her here.”
She was taken to him. With a jerk of his head he dismissed her escorts, who retreated to stand at attention with two more guards stationed in the back of the room.
Bianca was left alone to make herself as small and cowed looking as possible in front of what was obviously, in his world, an immensely powerful man.
“You are just in time,” he said. His tone was pleasant enough as he turned to gesture out the window. It was tinted, so that although they could see out no one could see in. “Look.”
She looked. And in that look she saw many things. Closest to the building, a black limousine. She thought it must be the general’s car, and from the fresh tire tracks in the light dusting of snow that covered the pavement in front of the building concluded that it—and he—had arrived not long before. She saw scraggly, denuded trees and a ten-foot-tall barbed wire fence and snowy hills rising in the distance. Just beyond the parking area—the bungalow and the parking area were on a slight rise, so she was looking down on the scene—she saw a flat field with dark bare dirt showing through a sparse sprinkling of snow. Hundreds of prisoners in brown coats huddled in a semicircle around the edges of the field. Dozens of armed guards surrounded them.
In the center was a man tied to a pole. He was gagged, but not blindfolded. His hair was reddish-brown, his skin was pale, he was of average height but very thin. He looked to be about fifty years old. He wore a torn and filthy white shirt with tan trousers. His feet were bare.
In front of him stood a squad of guards in a straight line.
A light snow fell. The sky hung low and gray.
“That is Mr. Howard Stevens from Scotland,” Yang said. “To all the questions he was asked, he told only lies.”
In the field, the line of guards snapped rifles to their shoulders.
Bianca’s heart stood still as she realized what was happening. Helpless to do anything else, she watched in sickened silence.
A fusillade of gunfire rang out.
Stevens jerked, then went limp, sagging against the ropes that held him to the pole.
His shirt bloomed red.
Yang took her arm, turned her away from the window.
“Now we will talk,” he said.
27
Bianca went cold, inside and out. The man gripping her arm was a ruthless murderer of not just that poor man, but probably thousands upon thousands of people. She had no doubt at all about his ultimate plans for her.
As Lynette, she visibly trembled with fright.
As Bianca, she now deliberately slowed her pounding heart and calmed her thundering pulse.
Focus. The stakes of this game were her life.
Yang walked her toward the computer bank, the centerpiece of which was a large upright monitor on a desk-like counter. The monitor was flanked by an open laptop to which it was connected and a series of small black canisters, which, she realized, were the computers themselves and to which the monitor was also connected. A line of smaller monitors was mounted above. Bianca saw that the ChapStick was plugged into a USB port on one of the canisters, and secretly cheered. The upper monitors all displayed a gray screen with a red star in the center. The laptop appeared to be running some sort of security check, which made her do the mental equivalent of holding her breath: Please, God, let whoever had configured that flash drive have done it right. The consequences if the ruse should be discovered would be beyond dire.
The large monitor, which was state-of-the-art, had documents and maps displayed on the screen in various windows.
“You will tell me how you came to possess this flash drive,” he said.
She haltingly recited Lynette’s story.
“So you stole the information from your country to give to mine because you thought to prevent a nuclear war?” The look he gave her was inscrutable.
“Yes.”
“You lie!” He shouted it while banging his fist on the desk.
She jumped, and, when he grabbed her, shrank away from him. Without warning, he slapped her so hard in the face that her head snapped to one side. The blow was stinging, stunning. It caused tears to spring to Lynette’s eyes, made her knees wobble and then, as he used his strength to force her to the floor, give way.
The blow awoke in Bianca an icy rage. The physical pain in her cheek was sharp and burning. The mental pain of enduring such abuse, of weeping and cowering in the face of it, was far worse. It killed her that she had to swallow it, refrain from retaliating, keep her anger hidden.
As Lynette, she was on her knees in front of him, lips trembling, tears slipping down her cheeks, shaking so much that the chain linking the shackles on her wrists jangled. His hand slid beneath her chin, jerking her face up so that she was forced to look at him. It was all she could do to keep any trace of Bianca from showing in her eyes. But for the sake of the operation, and for her own sake as well, because, after all, the name of the game was to get out of there alive, she made the smart choice and went full-on Lynette.
Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant: Sun Tzu.
“Please—please don’t hurt me.”
Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. “If you think to fool me, you will suffer. Now you will tell me the truth. Why did you steal this information?”
Lynette’s eyes were wide with fear as they met his. “I did want to prevent a nuclear war. I did. I did.” His free hand lifted threateningly. She burst into more terrified speech. “And I hated my boss and I couldn’t afford to quit my job. I wanted enough money so that I never had to work again. And—and this was the only way I could think of to get it.”
“Ah.” His hand lowered. “And how did you decide to offer it to Park Il-hyeok?”
“I found his name in the documents. I ch-checked him out online and saw what I thought was a way to approach him. And Paris is easy to get to.”
The laptop beeped. Yang released her chin, straightened and looked around. With a stab of fear, Bianca looked, too: it was obvious that the security check had done its thing.
“Ah,” he said. “Good.”
From that, and the green bar that ran the length of the screen before disappearing, Bianca concluded that the security check had found nothing awry.
While she breathed a silent sigh of relief, he looked away from her to nod at the soldiers in the back of the room. Bianca tensed as one of them started forward, but as it turned out, his goal was the second door in the room. Opening it, he went out, leaving it ajar. She saw a small entryway with a door that led out to the parking lot, which she could see through the tinted window in the top of the door. Then from somewhere on the other side of the entryway Park—Park!—limped into view. Clad in a stained blue dress shirt and rumpled gray trousers, his hair disordered, his face ashen, he jerked away from the soldier who’d been sent to get him, crossing the entryway and walking into the room on his own. He seemed to be having difficulty with his left leg. Bianca wondered if it had been injured in the explosion or in some other way since.
The soldier following him in shut the door and retreated to stand at attention with his fellows at the far end of the room.
Park stopped dead upon seeing General Yang. “You—here?”
“As you see.”
“Why was I brought to this place?” Park’s voice shook. Then he seemed to regain some of his mojo. He stood taller, bristled. Bianca realized then that the men were speaking Korean. Her command of the language seemed to have kicked in, because she understood what they were saying without effort. “My work in Paris—I have much that is happening right now. I—”
“Your work in Paris is over.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
“Ah, but it is. Because of your posting outside the country, you may not yet have been informed: our beloved Supreme Leader has recently honored me by appointing me head of the RGB. You serve under me now.”
The RGB, or Reconnaissance General Bureau, was the much-feared intelligence agency that managed the country’s clandestine operations, Bianca knew.
Park paled. Bianca had no way to be sure, but from his reaction she suspected that whatever previous relationship he’d had with Yang had not been the happiest.
“I congratulate you,” Park said.
Yang inclined his head. “Thank you.”
“I do not understand the way I am being treated. I—I brought in this intelligence coup for our country!” Park gestured at Bianca, the only indication he gave that he’d seen her. “And for this I am repaid with a bomb blast and a kidnapping?”
“We were not responsible for the bomb blast. The RGB has information that the Hanguk were responsible, in an effort to keep this most valuable information from reaching us.” The Hanguk referred to South Korea, Bianca knew. “As for the kidnapping, it was carried out in the interests of our country. I personally wished to assess the seller of this information for myself, before I brought it to the attention of the Supreme Leader and other senior counsellors. But I must say I am surprised you would call being brought here a kidnapping. A loyal servant should consider it a repatriation.”
“A loyal servant! That—that cannot be in question. Our revered leader has no more loyal servant than I.” Park’s eyes darted around the room as he spoke. He clutched his hands together in front of him.
“That may be so. You will tell me of your interactions with this woman.”
In quick, nervous sentences, Park told of their meetings, concluding with, “I had her story investigated. I am convinced that what she told me is true. Everywhere, with all their resources, they are looking for her. The information she brought is of great value to our country. We are fortunate she came to us—to me—with this.”
“Very fortunate,” Yang agreed, but there was something in his tone that sent prickles of foreboding racing over Bianca’s skin. “What was the amount you agreed to pay her?”
For the first time Park looked dismayed. “Twenty million US.”
Yang’s expression said that he already knew this. Bianca instantly thought of Park’s bodyguards. “Yet you requested fifty million. A large discrepancy.”
“I—I bargained with her to reduce the price. I did it for our country. To save money for our country!”
“Yet the entire fifty million was given you. And you made no mention of your plan to bargain to reduce the price.”
“If I succeeded, I was going to give the rest back! I would never have kept it! It was in case she would not agree to the lower price! I could not know that she would.” He wrung his hands as he spoke. “I would have returned the rest as soon as the transaction was concluded! You cannot doubt it!”
“And yet you said nothing of the possibility.” Yang’s voice was almost gentle.
“I saw no need! I would have—”
“Returned it. So you said. But we can never really know, can we?”
“We were interrupted! The bomb—”
Yang made a gesture silencing him. “I am aware that because of that most unexpected occurrence the transaction was not completed. Which brings us to the small matter of your name on a certain list in this material we have acquired. You are indeed unfortunate that because of the bomb you had no time to examine for yourself that which you purchased before it came into my possession.”
“What—what are you talking about? What list?”
“A list of those who pretend to be loyal while taking money from other countries to betray our interests. Of those who
operate as double agents. Of traitors, Park Il-hyeok.”
“What?” Park went white, held up a hand, stumbled back. “No, no—”
Yang pulled his sidearm free, jerked it up.
“I am innocent!” Park screamed.
Bang.
Blood and hair and brain matter exploded out of the back of Park’s head, splattering the picture of the Supreme Leader that hung on the wall behind him. Park crumpled to the floor, blood puddling in a thick red pool around his head. The raw meat smell of it filled the air. A horrified witness, Bianca experienced a surge of adrenaline so strong that it was all she could do to stay meekly kneeling as Lynette. There was no time to feel any guilt because the information she’d brought had caused Park to be killed, no time to get her stone-cold warrior mode on, no time for anything except raw reaction.
Would Yang turn the gun on her next?
Heart pounding, pulse racing, she did a lightning assessment. She could spring up, shackles and all, take Yang out with a blow to the nose or chin, grab his weapon, shoot the four guards—and then, with whatever firepower she could manage to acquire along the way, try to fight her way past the twenty guards remaining in this one building and the no doubt hundreds of guards on duty outside while breaking out of a heavily fortified, supposedly escape-proof prison—and then battle her way across North Korea.
Or she could play out her hand as Lynette.
Even the Terminator had some limitations.
She went with Lynette. Slumping forward, shoulders shaking, she rocked with distress—and, through her Lynette bangs, kept a wary eye on Yang’s gun.
Yang made a peremptory gesture at the guards. “Get this mess cleaned up.”
They hurried to obey. He walked toward her while holstering his gun.
The Fifth Doctrine: The Guardian Series Book 3 Page 25
