Fires of War

by Larry Bond

  “The aircraft is the most advanced available,” General Namgung told Park. “It can elude anything the South Koreans have. Or the Japanese, for that matter.”

  “What about the Americans?” asked Li.

  “The Americans, too,” said Namgung. He turned to his aide, Captain Ganji, who nodded quickly. “It does this partly by flying very low. And, of course, our spies have provided the radar profiles. We know just where the aircraft must go to avoid detection.”

  Park studied the general. He was a good man, a warrior of solid intention and dependability. Like many North Koreans, he had many relatives in the South, and believed as Park believed, that the country must be reunited.

  But he had a warrior’s hubris, a tendency to be overly optimistic. The MiG aircraft was formidable, but it was not invincible. They could not assume that it would triumph.

  Park rose from his seat and walked to the french doors at the back of the cottage room. He studied his reflection in the glass, surprised to see that he looked much older than he felt. Then he pushed the glass door open, breathing the crisp air as he gazed at the waterfall to the left of the patio.

  There was just enough moonlight to dapple the surface of the water with rippling white light. The sight was auspicious.

  Before the division, this land had belonged to Park’s grandparents. Among their businesses was a pottery factory, one of the finest on the continent, with more than a hundred skilled craftsmen. The main lodge up the hill had been built with its profits as a retreat for the family. The cabin where he and Namgung were meeting had been used as servants’ quarters.

  Much had changed in seventy years. The servants’ quarters would be considered a palace by all but the most high-ranking North Korean party member. Even Namgung admired it.

  Partition was difficult for most Korean families, and compared to many, the Park family had managed very well. They had held on to a great deal of their wealth, partly because so much of it had been concentrated in the South. Park hated the Communist principles that the Russians had imposed on the first Korean leader, Kim Il Sung; they were nothing short of theft, even though Kim at times mixed in true Korean ideas to make them seem more logical.

  The dictator’s attitude toward the people was, in many ways, more understandable. Park did not condone the police state, but it was natural that a strong leader would have to take a strong hand. History made this evident and not merely in Korea.

  The dictator was irrelevant. As General Namgung himself had said a few minutes before, the government would soon collapse. The time was ripe to bring the Koreas together.

  Park closed the door and turned back to his guests.

  “I have studied the MiG,” said Park. “You’re surprised, General. You shouldn’t be. My companies were involved in projects to build other aircraft. It is a very admirable aircraft, but it will be vulnerable. All aircraft are.”

  “On the ground, certainly,” said the general. He was not one to retreat. “Once in the air it can avoid radars by flying low. By the time it is perceived as a threat, it will have reached its launch point. The enemy has no defenses in that sector.”

  Park looked at Li.

  “We have a plan to make sure that it is not attacked,” said Li. “It involves a certain amount of risk, but no more than if it were to proceed as you propose.”

  27

  NORTH OF SUNG HO, NORTH KOREA

  It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for Ferguson to hit the ground.

  When he finally did, time seemed to make up for the deficit. He flew backward so quickly he knocked his head with a fierce, welt-raising rap.

  Ferguson lay on his back a moment, collecting his wits. Surprisingly, the gutter was still in one piece and attached to the building.

  No way it would hold him on the way back. But that was a problem for later.

  Scrambling to his feet, Ferguson trotted toward the nearby barn. A group of bored soldiers stood talking in the front, near where the buses had been parked. Ferguson circled around and found a window at the back. All he could see inside were a few Jeeplike trucks, parked up toward the doors; about three-fourths of the large interior looked empty.

  A road ran on the other side of the barn. Curious, Ferguson paralleled it for about fifty yards downhill and then around a curve. Another pair of bored soldiers stood in the middle of the path at the end of the bend.

  Ferguson doglegged past them, picking up the road as it made another S down the hill. A squat building sat at the edge of a clearing, overlooking a rushing stream and a waterfall so loud Ferguson could hear it over his breathing. Two large sedans were parked in front of the building. A pair of men in large greatcoats stood near the cars. Ferguson couldn’t tell in the dim light if they were soldiers—they didn’t have rifles—but they stood as still as statues near the second car, as if they expected someone to arrive and inspect them at any moment.

  He slipped farther into the woods, approaching the back of the building by walking along the creek. A large terrace opened out from a pair of glass doors; he could see a fire in a massive fireplace at one side of the room.

  Ferguson crawled up along the side of the terrace, hugging the wall.

  There was no cover, but the only light came from inside and most of the patio was in shadow. The inside light and glass would make it difficult to see outside.

  Two men in uniform were sitting in chairs facing roughly in his direction. One, he thought, was General Namgung, though he couldn’t get a good enough glimpse to be sure.

  Ferguson saw the silver back of a head in the chair closest to the doors; he guessed this was Park. Between the glass and the nearby waterfall, he couldn’t hear a word.

  Li appeared behind the men in uniform, looking straight at him. Ferguson stepped back and flattened himself against the wall.

  A moment later, the door opened.

  Li stepped out, less than eight feet away.

  Ferguson froze, trying to think of an excuse to be here that wouldn’t sound ridiculous.

  Someone else came from the house. Ferguson saw his back as the two walked away.

  “A good night for a walk, Captain Ganji,” said Li in Korean.

  “It’s gotten warmer.”

  Ganji handed two large envelopes to Li as they walked in the opposite direction. Ferguson eased toward the corner of the terrace, hoping to get down and hide before they turned around. He was about a yard from it when he saw them shake hands and start back in his direction.

  He pushed back against the side of the building, hidden by a shadow if anything at all. His mind blanked. He had no excuse, nothing.

  He waited to be discovered, holding his breath. But the shadow was darker than he thought, and the two men were so intent on getting out of the cold that they didn’t even glance in his direction.

  Escaping such a close call gave Ferguson an adrenaline rush, but he couldn’t put the energy to much use; the general and his aide left within a few minutes. Park and Li left the room as well but stayed upstairs in the cottage, their presence announced by a series of lights on the second floor. A pair of younger men, guards, came down into the room near the terrace and warmed their hands by the fire.

  Deciding he’d seen all he was going to see, Ferguson made his way back to the guest house. Along the way he stopped at the barn. Sneaking in through the window, he scouted the large room but found nothing more interesting than a stash of heavyweight gear oil in the corner and a burned-out clutch plate that looked to date from the 1950s.

  Climbing the gutter back to his room seemed dubious, so Ferguson slipped around to the front. The guards had disappeared, and the open door beckoned. He went up the steps and walked in, but before he could go up the stairs Ha spotted him and called out his name. He was standing near the great room, talking with a friend.

  Ferguson went over, mentioning how warm the night was.

  “Warm for now, yes,” said Ha, several notches beyond ripped.

  “Drink?” asked his friend, who
wasn’t far behind.

  “Sure,” said Ferguson, thinking he might ask a few questions about Namgung.

  They walked inside, Ferguson helping steady Ha as he made for the bar.

  “Mr. Manski. Having a good time?”

  “Mr. Li,” said Ferguson in English. He swept around, pretending to be drunk. “Drink?”

  “No, thank you,” said Li. “We must rest now for the morning. The hunting starts at eight.”

  “Eight.”

  “Where is your escort?”

  “Escort. Don’t know,” said Ferguson. “A short drink.”

  “No, thank you,” said Li firmly, taking hold of the bottle. The other men had already retreated.

  “I will have a chance to talk to Mr. Park soon?” said Ferguson.

  “Very soon,” agreed Li.

  “He’s an important man.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he know many army officers in the People’s Democratic Republic?”

  Li stiffened. “He knows many people.”

  “General Namgung was very impressive. Important.”

  “Namgung,” said Li, correcting his pronunciation. “Mr. Park does not know him well.”

  “Yes,” said Ferguson. He told Li in Russian that it was important to know many military people, because their discipline rubbed off on you, and they were very good drinkers.

  Li accompanied him to the stairs. As they started up, Ferguson remembered he had left the door to his room locked.

  Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem—a quick twist with his pick and tension spring, and he could easily get in. But he didn’t have his tools with him.

  Improvise.

  “Maybe another drink,” he said to Li.

  “No, no. Come now, Mr. Manski. To bed.”

  One of the young women who’d been serving the guests was coming down the steps. Ferguson saw that her hair was pinned at the back, clipped by a pair of simple bobby pins. He lurched toward her, knocking her down. As she shrieked, he grabbed one of the pins from her hair.

  “Sagwa deuryeoyo,” he said drunkenly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Li shook his head but smiled, then wagged his finger as the girl escaped. “Naughty, naughty,” he told Ferguson.

  “To bed,” said Ferguson, hoping Li would leave him. He didn’t, though, following Ferguson as he walked up the steps.

  Ferguson worked the bobby pin between his fingers as he walked down the hall. As good as he was with locks, it was tough to cover a pick. Under the best circumstances it took a few seconds to get the tools oriented properly. A simple lock could be fairly resistant to an improvised tool. Even Ferguson, who’d used bobby pins as a kid to raid the liquor cabinet, couldn’t guarantee results.

  Li stayed right behind him the whole way to his room. Ferguson stopped, put his hand out on the door, then turned and stuck his face in his companion’s.

  “I thank you for this great opportunity,” he told Li. “Thank you very much. Thank you.”

  “Yes,” said Li, backing away from Ferguson’s spit.

  As he got out his handkerchief, Ferguson ducked down to the lock, working the pin into it. He grabbed at the handle as if drunk, then managed to get the tumbler to turn just enough to force the door.

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  Li had already disappeared down the hall.

  Pushed it a little too far tonight, Ferguson thought to himself after he relocked the door and tiptoed to bed. But better that than not far enough.

  28

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  If he was going to do the right thing, then he was better off doing it without hesitation. The sooner he clued Corrine Alston—and, in effect, the president—into what Ken Bo was doing, the sooner he would end the temptation to do the wrong thing.

  Because really, the temptation was overwhelming.

  Slott picked up his phone and dialed her office.

  “I want to give you a heads-up about something,” he told her when she picked up her phone. “Can you come to my office?”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible. Now would be good.”

  “Is it about Korea?” she asked.

  “I’d rather explain in person.”

  “I’ll be there in about an hour.”

  Corrine told her secretary to rearrange her schedule, then began closing down the documents she’d been reviewing. She was about to pick up her pocketbook when the phone buzzed.

  “Mr. Ferro from the NSA,” announced Teri.

  Corrine grabbed the line.

  “The tape unit you gave me last night is very interesting,” said Ferro. “The system this came from, that it’s part of, uses a Cray X1E as the main computing unit. It’s a very powerful supercomputer. Where exactly did it come from?”

  “You can’t tell from the data there?”

  “Not without more study. It’s a backup of a large number of data sets, and it’s going to take a while to unravel.”

  “I see.”

  “There are several simulations that seem to deal with some sort of complicated chemical extraction. It seems to involve plutonium,” added Ferro. “We have to have an expert look at it.”

  “I see.”

  “Should we proceed?”

  “Yes,” said Corrine. “What about the small disks?”

  “Some correspondence in Korean regarding the purchase of office supplies. Looks like it’s all from a place called Science Industries. We haven’t translated it all yet.”

  “You can move ahead with both.”

  “All right.” Ferro paused. “Have you spoken to the CIA about this?”

  “I’m on my way there now,” said Corrine.

  The South Koreans tried to make their own weapons-grade uranium in the nineteen eighties and nineties,” said Slott. The words practically gushed from his mouth, and it was a relief to get them out. “The program was exposed in 2004. Ken Bo is claiming this is part of it.”

  He pushed the paper across his desk to Corrine. There were only three lines on it, a brief secure e-mail that mentioned two code-word CIA projects and “Korean efforts believed related to M.”

  “M is a reference to that project. You see, if he contends that this was part of that program, he and his people will be off the hook,” said Slott. “It’s a CYA memo. Cover—”

  “I know what CYA stands for,” said Corrine. “Is his claim right?”

  Slott shook his head.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. For starters, the material was different. This was plutonium. The waste was accounted for. Blessed Peak wasn’t built until three years ago. So they would have had to hide the waste all this time, then move it here. Unlikely.”

  “But the site was used as a waste site before they built the new plant.”

  “For cesium, nothing else. I know because I ordered it checked, and the man who checked it didn’t make a mistake.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It was Ken Bo.”

  Corrine leaned back in the seat.

  “Does this mean he’s not really looking for the plutonium?”

  “No. He’s getting himself in a position to limit damage in the future. He is pursuing it. How hard I don’t know.” Slott rocked back and forth in his seat. “He is working on it. He has a plan to get people into the waste site and take measurements. And one of his officers has been nosing around where Ferguson was, though rather ineptly. And, frankly, it seems to have been accidental, part of standard contact gathering. Though it’s difficult to tell from here.”

  Corrine put the paper down on the desk.

  “I have to tell you, Dan, face-saving games . . . They’re not very important to me. I don’t care whether someone was at fault or not. I want to get results. The president, I’m sure, would feel the same way.”

  “I realize that,” said Slott. “Though that’s not the way Washington works.”

  “Did Bo screw up?”

  “We should have k
nown about this.” Slott picked up his pencil, twisting the lead out slowly as he continued. “It’s our job. Something like this is very important—critical. So by definition, we screwed up. And, by definition, when we screw up, it’s my fault.”

  “You’re being awful hard on yourself.”

  “It comes with the job.”

  “I don’t see Director Parnelles taking responsibility. If the buck is going to stop anywhere, it has to stop at his desk, not yours.”

  Well, he thought, that’s something at least. Not the reason I told her, but something.

  “Thank you for saying that,” he told her.

  “I mean it.”

  Slott smiled faintly. He’d thought his conscience would feel better when he finished, but it didn’t. Now that he’d told her what he thought Bo was up to, he only felt more depressed about it.

  Then again, it really wasn’t her problem, was it? It was his.

  On the one hand, he didn’t want her interfering; on the other, he had given her ammunition.

  But it was the right thing to do, he decided: cut off the games.

  “I’m sorry if I wasted your time,” he told her.

  “It wasn’t a waste,” Corrine told him, slipping the paper back. “I didn’t mean to imply it was.”

  Slott started to get up, but Corrine didn’t.

  “There’s something I have to tell you involving the First Team,” she said. “Bob Ferguson went into a place called Science Industries and gathered some material there. He sent it back. It’s very interesting. There may be information on extracting plutonium. I don’t have all the details yet.”

  “Corrigan didn’t mention that when he briefed me this morning.”

  “I know.” Corrine had debated how to present the issue all the way to Slott’s office. She decided that the best way, for the good of the team, was to blame herself: protecting the client, an old lawyer’s trick. “I had Ferg use a back channel to get the data here because I wasn’t sure how much to trust Seoul, based on your comments the other day.”

  Slott folded his arms and sank back into his chair as she continued. It’s me they don’t trust, he realized, and it wasn’t just Corrine. Ferguson was in the middle of it. And probably Parnelles, whom Ferguson was close to.