by Larry Bond
Enlightened as to the significance of the name of Park’s political party, Ferguson edged away from the tourists. He found a spot where he couldn’t be overheard, took out his sat phone and called Corrine. By now it was after lunchtime here and close to midnight back in D.C.
She picked up her office phone on the first ring.
“Hey, Wicked Stepmother. Can you talk?”
“I’m in my office.”
“That’s a yes?”
“Yes.”
“You sure you’re a government employee? It’s gotta be going on midnight, right?”
“Ferguson, what’s going on?”
“I need you to meet a flight at Dulles tomorrow around five p.m. You’ll see someone you know who’ll have something for you.”
“Someone I know?”
“Vaguely. Make sure you get to the airport on time.”
“What’s he bringing back?”
“You’ll see when he gets there.”
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Ferg, why don’t you trust Slott?”
“Who says I don’t?”
“Ferg—”
He killed the transmission.
10
NIIGATA, JAPAN
After Korea, Japan was a vacation. Thera felt as if an immense block of concrete had been chiseled off her shoulders. She stayed next to Julie Sven-son during the orientation tour of the waste treatment plant, joking about which of the dour-faced executives would ask them out at the reception planned that evening. They decided the most likely was a fish-faced man in his late forties who spoke of “mechanical containment systems” in the tones of a Baptist preacher.
Neto Evora, the Portuguese scientist who’d been flirting with her on and off since South Korea, jokingly berated her for avoiding him as the morning tour ended.
“We will have a proper party after the reception tonight,” he told her. “We will celebrate our escape from the dour dominion known as the People’s Democratic Republic.”
He sounded so portentous that both women laughed. Evora told them that a number of nightclubs had already been scouted out; festivities would continue “till dawn or collapse.”
“Collapse comes first,” Julie said.
“With luck,” said the scientist.
“He’s cute,” said Julie after he had left them. “Handsome. And he likes you.”
“You think?”
Julie rolled her eyes. “If you play it right, he would be in the palm of your hand.”
“Not my type.”
“Does that matter?”
“Definitely.”
They were on their way to lunch when Dr. Norkelus called Thera’s name so sharply a shudder ran through her body. The grim look on his face seemed to foretell a serious scolding, and she braced herself for a tirade about misspellings in one of her reports, or perhaps a more serious warning about making fun of their hosts.
“Thera, please,” he said, abruptly turning and walking from the caravan of trucks.
Norkelus reminded her of her parochial school principal, a Greek Orthodox priest who had run the elementary with an iron fist. Even now, two decades later, she remembered trembling as she walked down the hall to tell him her teacher had banished her from class for “being a Miss Chatty-Chat-Chat.”
She couldn’t remember the punishment. Probably sitting in his office the rest of the day. It seemed so trivial now, and yet so deadly then.
Paralyzing. Like the fear she’d felt in Korea as the mission got underway.
Fear was what your mind made of it; it wasn’t necessarily proportional to the danger you were in.
“I’m very sorry. I’m very, very sorry,” said Norkelus, turning around a few feet from the nearby building.
“Sorry?”
“Your mother . . . There’s been a terrible accident just outside of Athens. She doesn’t have long to live. The Red Cross has arranged an aircraft. One of the drivers will take you to the jet.”
11
DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA
“Annyeonghaseyo,” said Ferguson, bowing forward slightly at the waist. “Good afternoon. I am Ivan Manski, from the Russian State Federal Industries. I have an appointment to meet with the managing director.”
It was a long run of Korean, and even though Ferguson had practiced it for nearly a half hour, his pronunciation was so spotty that the man at the reception desk blinked at him, unable to comprehend.
Ferguson reached into his pocket and took out a card. “Ivan Manski. Russian is my native language, but I can speak English. Perhaps is better than my Korean, no?”
The man took the business card and examined it. No matter how much attention he gave it, however, it was unlikely to mean much to him; the characters were all Cyrillic Russian.
“My office managed the appointment with your director, Mr. Ajaeng,” said Ferguson.
The receptionist turned to his computer and keyed through several screens.
“Perhaps a mistake,” the man told Ferguson in English. “Dr. Ajaeng does not have you scheduled.”
Ferguson held out his hands, muttered a Russian curse, then told the man that the meeting had been set up more than two months before by the Russian trade ministry.
“Perhaps I should speak with Mr. Park,” added Ferguson. “I think perhaps this would be better. We spoke informal when he was in Japan a few weeks ago. I was to say hello when I came.”
The Korean flinched. “I’m not sure Mr. Park is in.”
Ferguson knew that he was, since he’d seen the Mercedes arrive, but he didn’t argue.
“Should I call embassy? I should call embassy,” said Ferguson.
Confronted with the possibility that he might be insulting an important visitor who knew his multibillionaire boss, the man at the desk assured Ferguson that there was no problem and that someone would take him to see the managing director shortly.
After a brief phone conversation with the director’s secretary—who knew nothing of the Russian either—the receptionist showed Ferguson to a seat nearby and went to fetch him a cup of tea. Within ten minutes, another young man came and escorted him down the hall. Taking the same set of stairs Ferguson had ducked into a few nights before, they went up the stairs to the third floor.
Ferguson knew it was possible the secretary’s office was along here somewhere. If she saw him . . . Well, then she saw him. He’d play it by ear, depending on her reaction.
Ferguson was led to an office so small that his knees bumped against the front of the desk when he sat. He couldn’t move the chair back any farther because it was already against the wall.
The male secretary began to quiz him about the appointment. Ferguson rolled out his Korean before switching to English, throwing in a little Russian for flavor. The man disappeared with his business card; ten minutes later he ushered Ferguson toward the managing director’s office.
Dr. Ajaeng met him at the door, holding out his hand and greeting him as if he had been expecting him all along. The two men exchanged business cards, reading intently and then nodding deeply, as if the small white cards contained words from Confucius.
Dr. Ajaeng directed Ferguson to sit with him in the sitting area in front of his desk.
Though he was managing director of the company, Ajaeng’s office was barely larger than the secretary’s room. His desk was a simple wooden table whose polished surface gleamed from the overhead fluorescent light. There were a few small woodblock prints on the wall and a bookcase lined with pictures at the side of the room. The chairs were anything but plush.
Ferguson unzipped his small briefcase and took out his brochures, fanning them across the director’s desk as if he were a real salesman on the make.
Printed on thick, glossy paper in bright colors, the catalogs showed a variety of instruments for measuring different processes and machine tolerances. As Dr. Ajaeng leafed through them respectfully, Ferguson took out another sheet, this one on plai
n paper, showing diagrams of canisters used for containing hazardous waste. The information on both handouts was in Russian and Korean.
“We do many things along these lines,” he told Ajaeng, giving him the handout. “Custom work we can do. The price very cheap.”
Ferguson leaned down to put his case on the floor. As he rose, he slipped two bugs under his chair.
“This is very nice material,” said Ajaeng. “But we produce no waste.”
“Oh,” said Ferguson. Then he proceeded to ignore the statement. “Our shielding for gamma-ray applications is very diverse. We can handle any item, in any situation whatever.”
“Our work has to do with industrial applications of gamma particles, but we do not generate them ourselves,” said Dr. Ajaeng. “We are consultants.”
“Dah, consultant,” said Ferguson. He smiled. “We have products for alpha decay as well. With uranium—”
Ajaeng tensed. “What do you mean?”
“My English not good on tech-nik. Uranium and plutonium containment, processing as necessary.”
Ajaeng stared at him. Ferguson knew that he had hit on something, but what exactly he wasn’t sure.
“We have experts, if necessary, for hire,” he said. “We have access to very big possibilities. Very big.”
“Ah.” The managing director rose. “I have another appointment now.”
“Very sorry. Annyeonghi jumuseyo,” he said.
“Yes, good-bye,” said the director. Relieved to be so easily rid of his visitor, he had a look of a man who’d just had five hundred pounds lifted from his back.
“Perhaps I should say hello to Mr. Park before I leave,” said Ferguson. “I would not insult him.”
The managing director’s expression changed once more.
“We have many mutual friends in Russia,” continued Ferguson. “In the ministry and then of course Dechlov, with whom I believe he had done business.”
The name clearly meant nothing to the managing director, but he nodded anyway.
“Just mention that I’m a friend,” Ferguson added. “Take my card. And Dechlov. You know him?”
“Oh, yes.”
“An interesting man, don’t you think? Dechlov?”
“Dechlov. Very interesting.”
Ferguson knew he’d been successful when he was followed out of the lot. He drove directly to the hotel where he’d rented a room as Man-ski, went upstairs and pretended to make some phone calls.
The great thing about posing as a Russian was that people naturally assumed the worst about you. So even if you came into a place as a seemingly legitimate businessman—as he did when he approached the managing director of Science Industries—they were utterly unsurprised when the conversation turned to less legitimate business.
Dropping the name of the most notorious Russian black-market arms dealer in Asia of the past decade didn’t hurt either. Ajaeng didn’t know it, but if Park had truly been interested in the weapons March 1 had tried to obtain, he or his people surely would.
Dechlov had been one of the most successful black-market arms dealers in Asia and the Middle East until just two years before, when an operation run by Ferguson rolled him up.
Literally.
The Russian mobsters who thought he had double-crossed them decapitated his body and rolled the torso in an Iranian rug. A few weeks later it turned up in Tehran. It wasn’t entirely clear what had happened to his head; Ferguson’s bet was that it had been served to pigs at a dacha on the Black Sea.
Dechlov’s demise had never been reported or acknowledged by Western or Russian security forces, and he was well known in all the wrong circles throughout Asia and the Middle East.
Sure enough, within two hours of Ferguson’s arrival at the hotel, the front desk phoned to say that a man wanted to meet with him.
The man was dressed in a tan suit and stood iron-spine straight in the middle of the lobby when Ferguson emerged from the elevator. Ferguson greeted him as Ivan Manski; the man bowed very formally and presented a business card. Ferguson took it with both hands, spewing in Russian that he was very pleased to meet Mr. Li. To his surprise, Li responded in very good Russian that the pleasure was his.
Li told him that they had many mutual acquaintances, though he mentioned none of them by name. Ferguson was very happy to hear this, and suggested that they discuss these friendships in the hotel bar nearby.
For the next forty minutes, Li quizzed Ferguson on his bona fides, dropping a variety of names, including several that Ferguson had never heard of and guessed were phony, though he answered diplomatically that the earth was a big place and it was impossible to know everyone worth knowing on it. The men Li mentioned ranged from the Russian defense minister, whom Ferguson had actually met in his cover identity, to a shady Chinese soldier of fortune whom he knew only by reputation, a fact he admitted.
At last satisfied, Li told him that he had come because his employer was interested in meeting him.
“And your employer would be who?” Ferguson asked.
“Park Jin Tae, of course.”
“Of course,” said Ferguson, lifting his glass.
12
ABOARD THE USS PELELIU, IN THE YELLOW SEA
Thera hopped out of the helicopter and trotted head down toward the assault ship’s island, following the lead of a sailor who’d come to escort her. The man clamped his hand onto her forearm and wouldn’t let go until they were at the side of the ship. Annoyed, she flicked her arm and finally got rid of his hand just as Rankin appeared from the nearby door.
“Hey,” said Rankin.
“Hey, yourself. What’s up?”
“We have a situation with your guy. Come on downstairs.”
Thera followed through a maze of hallways. Rankin, abrupt and taciturn as always, didn’t bother to introduce the two men escorting them.
It seemed funny to Thera that Rankin and Ferguson worked together. They were almost exact opposites: Ferg always talking everyone up, BSing with them, and busting; Rankin typically as talkative as stone. It wasn’t surprising that they didn’t get along, but what amazed Thera was that Ferguson, who could have anyone on the team he wanted, chose someone whom he didn’t like.
Did that mean Ferguson always tried to choose the best, or that he just liked conflict?
Rankin turned the corner and entered a small compartment that would have made a good broom closet on land. The two sailors stayed behind as Thera entered.
“They tell you what the deal was?” Rankin asked.
Thera shook her head. “They didn’t tell me anything except that you needed me here. My mother supposedly died in Greece. I’ve been traveling ever since.”
“We picked the scientist up the night you took off from Korea. He was soaked, cold, but OK. Told me his name, that he was involved in nuke research, like that. Now he won’t talk. His brain’s frozen or something.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Thera’s question took Rankin by surprise. “You know him, right?” he told her. “Maybe he’ll talk to you.”
“He thinks I’m a secretary. He gave me cigarettes.”
“Yeah, OK. Go with it.”
“I’ll try talking to him, but if there’s something wrong with him, I don’t know that I can help.”
Rankin couldn’t understand why Thera didn’t understand what she had to do. It seemed pretty straightforward to him.
“Physically he’s fine,” he repeated. “It’s gotta be some sort of stress thing. Take a shot.”
Ch’o lay on his back, his mind completely blank. He neither thought nor felt anything, floating in a gray swirl beyond emotion or intellect.
Gradually, he became aware of a buzz at the side of the room, a swirling noise that he couldn’t comprehend. He turned his head slowly. A face appeared from a white cloud, a face he knew was familiar, though he couldn’t precisely place it.
The face spoke.
“Dr. Ch’o. Are you OK?”
The voice was foreign a
nd yet familiar. Ch’o struggled but could not recognize it.
“Dr. Ch’o, are you OK?” repeated the voice, a woman’s voice, a gentle, friendly voice.
It spoke English. Did he know English?
“I wanted to thank you for the cigarettes,” said Thera.
She got down on her knees and took hold of the scientist’s hand, as if she were a supplicant.
“I can help you if you need help,” she told him. “These people are good. They’ve sent for a doctor to help you.”
Ch’o pursed his lips. The voice was extremely familiar, yet he couldn’t quite make the connection. He closed his eyes.
Thera stayed on her knees for nearly ten minutes. Ch’o seemed to be sleeping, though she couldn’t be sure. Finally she decided it would be best to let him rest.
“I’ll be back,” she said, rising.
Rankin met her outside.
“Well?”
Thera shrugged. “Got any cigarettes?”
“Cigarettes?”
“Yeah.”
“You smoke?”
“It was part of the cover. He gave me a pack. Maybe it’ll make a connection.”
“Let’s see if we can find some.”
13
DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA
The sedan—a Mercedes, though not the same one that Park used—arrived at the hotel for Ferguson at precisely eight-thirty. The driver spoke no Russian and didn’t appear to know English. After making sure that “Mr. Manski” was in the vehicle, he took his seat behind the steering wheel and silently began to drive through the city.
Ferguson had pretended to be an arms dealer so often—sometimes Russian, sometimes as a former member of the IRA—that the role was part of his personality, no more foreign than the doting nephew he might become when visiting one of his great aunts. He could do it in his sleep, or at least in bed, and in fact had.
