Fires of War

by Larry Bond

  Until Corrine’s appointment as the president’s conscience—McCarthy’s term for her job as his designated representative—Special Demands had basically been run by Ferguson, who, after getting a directive from Slott, worked things out on his own.

  Or so it appeared. Corrine had had a devilish time figuring out exactly how the chain of command really did run, and her efforts to insert more oversight, while they had had some impact, probably hadn’t changed things all that much. Ferguson and his people still had incredible leeway once given a mission.

  She didn’t want to second-guess them, much less hamstring them, but she did want them to stay within the bounds set by the president. Finding the right balance was incredibly difficult, especially when the people she was supposed to supervise resented her.

  “Thera’s still in South Korea?” Corrine asked.

  “Yes,” said Lauren tersely.

  “Well, let me know if anything comes up.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’m not the enemy,” snapped Corrine. But it was too late; Lauren had already hung up.

  11

  SOUTH CHUNGCHONG PROVINCE, SOUTH KOREA

  Thera got up and went into the shower, not wanting to have to wait for her roommate. She let the hot water pummel her face, then backed off the heat until the water sent shivers through her body, shaking away the fear and paranoia she’d stewed in all night. She saw the tags in her hand, saw herself slipping them under the mattress, moving on. It was going to be easy, easiest thing she’d ever done, a piece of cake.

  She’d have to take her roommate to dinner, make sure she was out of the way.

  Bring her to karaoke with Evora.

  Ugh, if she could stand it. Thera’s head was OK, but her stomach felt as if it had been pushed up into her chest. Too much kimchi.

  Done with her shower, Thera dressed and headed downstairs to the coffee shop, where the team gathered for breakfast before assembling in one of the hotel conference rooms and starting out. As she stuck her cup under the spout of the coffee urn, Dr. Norkelus tapped her on the shoulder.

  “A word, please.”

  Thera finished filling her cup, then took a teaspoon and a small amount of sugar, stirring meticulously before placing the cup on a saucer. Norkelus stared at her the whole time, his expression similar to the look a vice principal might give when calling a student out of study hall for cutting up. Finally he tilted his long nose downward, then swung around and walked toward the exit.

  Thera followed, sure she was going to be scolded, though she wasn’t exactly sure why. Had someone seen her smoking with the guard? Or was last night the problem? Norkelus had a puritanical streak. He walked with a gait so stiff it reminded her of some of the Greek Orthodox priests who’d taught her religion when she was young, righteous, sanctimonious old bastards who once made a girl spit out her bubblegum and stick it on her head for chewing in class.

  Norkelus went into an empty conference room. Thera nearly bumped into him just inside the door.

  “Tony is sick. I’ll need you to compile the logs and e-mail them to New York and the Hague,” he told her.

  “Tony’s sick?” Thera managed, caught off guard.

  “The UN secretary general wants the briefings. Here are my notes.”

  He handed her a small flash-memory card, used by the team’s voice recorders.

  “OK, sure,” said Thera. “I’ll get to work on it as soon as I get back.”

  “It has to go out by noon, our time.”

  “Noon?”

  Norkelus tilted his head slightly. He didn’t comprehend her question, or rather why she was asking it. The secretaries weren’t needed on the inspections for anything more than running errands; here was real work that needed to be done.

  And besides, she was a secretary; he was the boss.

  “It has to be out of here by noon, or they have to get it by noon their time?” asked Thera.

  “Our time.”

  “In New York, it’ll be, say ten at night.”

  “You have an objection?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “When you’re done, you can help make sure everything is ready for the trip North. We should be back by three.”

  “I can go out to the site to help break down the equipment.”

  “Unnecessary,” said Norkelus. “Thank you, though.”

  Thera tried to think of an excuse, any excuse, to get out to the site, but nothing would come.

  “Is there a problem?” asked Norkelus in his coldest you-better-not voice.

  “It’s only that it may not be enough time,” said Thera. “To have the report done by noon.”

  “I’m afraid it will have to be.”

  12

  DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA

  Ferguson spread the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal out on the table in the Korean Palace Hotel’s restaurant and opened to the editorial page. The editors had decided to denounce the nonproliferation treaty with North Korea, claiming that it was a “poorly worded document more dangerous than hopeful. The fact that inspections have already begun shows how utterly worthless it is; the North Koreans only agreed because they know it has no teeth.”

  The editorial writer made a few valid points about the limits of the testing protocols, though it was clear from his overall tone that, in his opinion, nuking North Korea was the only viable way to deal with the country.

  Ferg’s sat phone began to ring as he turned the page.

  “Batman speaking,” he said, hitting the talk button.

  “Ferg, something’s up,” said Jack Corrigan, the desk man on duty in The Cube. “Can you talk?”

  “I can always talk, Robin. The question is whether anyone listens.”

  “We got a problem, Ferg. Our friend just sent an e-mail to her grandmother telling her she has to stay inside today and work.”

  “That’s it?”

  “More or less.”

  “Don’t tell me more or less,” snapped Ferguson. “Read me the message, Corrigan.”

  “But—”

  “Read me the message.”

  “You want it in Greek or English?”

  “Now you tell me, Jack, do I speak Greek?”

  “I don’t know what you speak some days,” said Corrigan. “Gram: Hope you’re well. Having a challenging and exciting time in new job. Going to all sorts of places and getting plenty of exercise—I think I’ve lost all the weight your chicken soup put on. Yesterday I got to go out, but today it’s desk work. Even though the sun is shining, I’ll be in all day. Lots of unfinished business. Then there’s a frowny face.”

  “Cute. What else?”

  “That’s it. What do you think—”

  “We’re on it.”

  Ferguson slapped off the phone and got up, leaving the newspaper spread out on the table.

  “Gotta go,” he told the approaching waiter. He unfolded a five-thousand-won note from his pocket and let it flutter to the table. “Tto bwayo.”

  Ferguson had just hailed a taxi when his sat phone rang again. It was Rankin.

  “Something’s up. Thera didn’t get in the trucks with the rest of the team at the hotel,” said Rankin.

  “Yeah, something’s goin’ on,” said Ferguson, stepping onto the curb as a cab veered across traffic to pick him up.

  “You want me to go in?”

  “No, hang back. She’s OK. Where’s Guns?”

  “Sleepin’. He watched her hotel all night.”

  “All right. I’m pickin’ you up. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  The typically thick city traffic made it more like fifty. Rankin, who’d been watching Thera’s hotel from a parking garage across the street, had been standing outside the whole time and felt like a penguin with frostbite. When he grabbed the taxi’s door his finger nearly froze to the metal.

  “Cold, huh?” said Ferguson as he slid in.

  “No, it’s fuckin’ July.”

  “Get warm soon,” said the driver he
lpfully from the front. “This unusual weather.”

  Rankin frowned at him. He hated nosey taxi drivers.

  Ferguson leaned across him and bent over the front seat. “Driver, take us to Hard Rock Café. Yes?”

  “Hard Rock, yes,” said the man. “Good place for party.”

  “That’s what I like.”

  Ferguson tucked a thick wad of won notes in the driver’s hand when they got to the restaurant. Both men walked silently to the right of the entrance, ducked down a set of stairs they had scoped out the day before, and crossed to the back of the building. Five minutes later they were standing at the counter of a rental car agency three blocks away, reserving a Hyundai.

  “You gonna tell me what’s going on?” Rankin said as they walked to the car.

  “I didn’t think you were interested.”

  “Don’t be a prick, Ferg. I didn’t want to ask questions while people were around.”

  “Thera can’t pick up the tags. Her work assignment must’ve changed. You and I are going to go take a closer look at the site and figure out what we’re going to do.”

  “We’re going in? How?”

  “See, that’s the problem with explaining things to you, Skip. Every time I do, you ask more questions. Sooner or later I’m going to run out of answers.”

  Generally the best and easiest way to get into a highly secure facility was through the front gate. But Ferguson decided that wasn’t going to work in this case. The South Koreans had upped their security to impress the IAEA inspection team, and any work crew, especially one with an out-of-place Caucasian or two, would draw close scrutiny. Presenting themselves as members of the inspection team wouldn’t work, either; that was too easily checked, and, besides, they didn’t want to do anything to draw any suspicion to the inspectors.

  The next best option was to come in from the extreme northern perimeter, which bordered a nature preserve and was guarded only by razor wire and infrared cameras. It was a long way around: Rankin estimated that simply getting to the perimeter fence from the entrance to the nature reserve would take two hours, and it would take another hour and a half to hike from the perimeter fence into the compound.

  “There’s another problem,” said Ferguson as they scouted the fence line from the park. “The security cameras overlap pretty well. I don’t think we can get over without blinding them.”

  Rankin took Ferguson’s binoculars, peering over the crest of the hill toward the fence. The cameras were well hidden; he only knew where to look because they had prepared a map of the security layout for the mission. An infrared image taken just after sunset had been used to pinpoint the cameras; their housings dissipated heat more quickly than the surrounding rocks and brush.

  “Hit ’em with a fog machine,” said Rankin finally.

  “Too suspicious unless the weather warms up,” said Ferguson. “Besides, that’s a hell of a lot of fog.”

  “Take them a long time to respond to a blackout,” suggested Rankin. “We just cut the power. We’re inside by the time they get up here. We throw a fader on another unit, so we don’t have to go out the same way.”

  A “fader” was a device that interfered with the camera’s ability to scan by disrupting its power circuitry, in effect “fading” the image so that it appeared to be a random malfunction. While difficult to detect, the device had to be placed inside the camera to work.

  Ferguson abruptly slid down the hill and started back in the direction of the car. Rankin scrambled to follow.

  “You figured it out?” said Rankin.

  “You did,” said Ferguson. “You just don’t know it yet.”

  13

  SOUTH CHUNGCHONG PROVINCE, KOREA

  Since tomorrow was a travel day, Norkelus ordered the entire inspection team to have dinner at the hotel and refrain from “partying.” While his decree drew snickers from the senior scientists, junior technical members and staff were shuffled upstairs immediately after dinner to pack “and get a head start on sleep.”

  Evora winked at Thera, signaling that she should sneak out and join him and the others, but she decided it was better to avoid temptation and went upstairs. After packing, she and her roommate flipped through the channels for a while without finding anything interesting in English. Thera started to read; within a half hour, her eyes were drooping. She put down the book and turned off the light, falling asleep within a few minutes.

  Come on, Cinderella, your pumpkin’s waiting.”

  Thera woke with a jerk, only to feel herself pushed back down into the bed. She tried to scream, but a hand was clamped firmly on her mouth.

  “It’s me,” whispered Ferguson, standing over her. “Come on. Before Rankin climbs into bed with your roommate.”

  Rankin was standing on the other side of the bed, holding a small mask over Thera’s roommate’s face. A squeeze bulb was connected to the mask; he’d just finished spraying a mild sedative to make sure she remained sleeping.

  “What’s going on?” Thera whispered.

  “Sshh,” replied Ferguson.

  Thera slipped out of bed, grabbing for her clothes on the nearby chair.

  “You don’t have to get dressed,” Ferguson told her. “We’re not going very far.”

  Suddenly self-conscious, Thera pulled on her jeans over her pajamas and grabbed for her sweater.

  “No feet?” Ferguson pointed at the pajama bottoms, which were covered with miniature ducks.

  “Very funny.”

  “I always figured you for teddy bears.”

  “They didn’t have my size.” Thera sat at the edge of the bed. “We can’t go out in the hall. They may see us.”

  “We’re not going in the hall.” Ferguson pointed to a sliding door at the other side of the room. “We’re in the room above. Come on. This won’t take long.”

  A rope dangled at the side of the balcony. Thera leaned over, making sure no one was on the nearby terraces, then hoisted herself up to the next floor. Guns—Jack Young, the other member of the team in Korea—was waiting on the balcony. He helped her over the railing.

  Ferguson came up next, followed by Rankin.

  “Have a seat,” he told her, gesturing at the bed. Ferguson stared for a brief, brief moment at her black curls and green eyes, thinking she really was Cinderella, or the next best thing. Even with a baggy sweater and jeans, she was hard to resist.

  “I need a map of the spots where you put the sensors,” he told her. He reached over the waste basket, where he’d stashed a notebook and pencil earlier.

  “I have twenty minutes. Then I turn back into a mouse,” he added, “Rankin turns into a cockroach. You don’t want to see that.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No way. If you’re caught, the whole mission collapses. Besides, you’re leaving for North Korea first thing in the morning. It may take us a while to get back.”

  “I can do it, Ferg.”

  “Come on, Cinderella, the map. I’m already getting a hankering for cheese.”

  Thera took the pad and began sketching the general outline of the base.

  “They’re taking attendance downstairs,” said Guns, who was watching a feed from the wireless video cam they’d placed in one of the lighting fixtures. It showed Norkelus walking down the hall, knocking on the doors. He was two rooms away from Thera’s.

  “Get Cinderella back to the ball,” Ferguson told the others, pulling off his black cap and sweater. “Bring her back up once the coast is clear.”

  “Never going to make it.”

  “She’ll make it,” Ferguson told him running to the door.

  The tenor’s song, drunken but perfectly on key, exploded from the elevator as the door opened.

  “ ‘And it’s no, nay, never, no nay never no more, will I play the wild rover, no never, no more.’ ”

  Ferguson kicked the volume up a notch as he stepped out into the eighth-floor hallway. The rogue’s lament captured Norkelus’s attention just as he knocked on Thera’s door. Fergu
son stopped walking but not singing, belting out the chorus as he put both hands on his fake glasses and pulled them from his nose, as if trying to get the hallway into focus. Then he started walking again, holding them in front of his face as he approached the bewildered scientist. When he got to within three feet, Ferguson stopped singing and concentrated on angling the glasses to get a proper perspective of the scientist.

  “Who are you looking for?” demanded the scientist.

  “ ’Tain’t but lookin’ for a soul,” said Ferguson, slurring his words into a drunken Irish brogue. “But I am lookin’ for me room. And if you could point it out to me, laddie, I’d be much obliged.”

  “You’re on the wrong floor.”

  “ ’Tis nine,” said Ferguson.

  “Eight.”

  “Nine.”

  “Eight.”

  Ferguson staggered back a step. “This is nine,” he insisted.

  “Please go to your room, or I will call security,” said Norkelus.

  “You’re a man who knows his numbers. I can see that.”

  Thera’s door opened and her face appeared in the crack. She was back in her pajamas. “What’s going on out here?”

  “Nothing,” said Norkelus. “Go back inside.”

  “Is this eight or nine?” said Ferguson, bending so that he was eye level with her.

  “The is the eighth floor,” she said. And then she added something in Greek, which he didn’t understand, though he guessed the drift: Go back to bed, you dumb lout.

  “Eight, not nine. A thousand pardons, miss. And sir.”

  Ferguson bowed, then turned and went back to the elevator. While he waited, he decided the night needed a triumphant air and began singing “Finnegan’s Wake.”

  Rankin, back pressed against the side of the building as he stood on the narrow balcony, listened as Thera told Norkelus that her roommate was “dead out.” The scientist grunted but apparently didn’t believe her; the light flicked on, and Rankin saw the curtains flutter. He grabbed hold of the rope and put his foot on the building, ready to climb if he had to.