by Gene Riehl
Before he could answer, she stood up. Now he could see the rest of her, the thong bikini bottom, the unmistakable area she’d shaved in order to wear it. His tongue seemed to thicken in his mouth. The bulge in his trunks grew even harder.
This time Bethany held her icy glass against the tiny gold ring in her pierced navel. “God, that’s good!” she said, her voice husky. “That’s really good!” She turned to him and held out the glass. “Get over here,” she ordered. “You’ve got to feel this.”
All Monk could do was shake his head. How in the hell had he gotten himself into this? How was he going to … Before he could complete the question, Bethany was gliding right up next to him. In the next instant he felt her body against his.
“Stand up!” she cried. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
She grabbed at the waist of his trunks to pull him to his feet, but she missed. Instead of his waist, she struck lower, then drew back, her eyes wide.
“My goodness, Puller,” she said. “I had no idea you were armed.” She paused. “And that you’re packing a magnum!”
She laughed softly, then stopped to stare directly into his eyes before hoisting herself directly onto his lap.
Monk shrank back, but only for an instant before his arms rose and circled her neck. Oh shit, he had time to think, before his mouth was on hers. And hers on his.
He felt her glass tumble from her hand down the side of his torso, into the water. He let his own glass go an instant later. Bethany’s tongue was in his mouth now, and his hand was groping for her thong. He tried to tell himself to stop, but not very forcefully, as she …
“Mr. Monk?”
Lost in his memory of that night—of William’s reaction when he’d stepped out of the kitchen and caught the two of them in the hot tub—Monk was slow to acknowledge the voice in his headphones. He felt someone tugging at his right foot, and heard the voice again, sharper this time.
“Mr. Monk! We’re finished!”
The table on which he lay began to slide out of the tube. Monk shook the fog from his head, blinking as he came out of the darkness into the bright fluorescent lights. A moment later the technician removed the restraints. Monk lifted his head and shoulders, rested for a moment on his elbows, then swung his legs over and stood. He took a step toward the door, but the stocky young man reached out and held his arm.
“Hold on a second,” he said. “You were in there a long time. Give your head a little time to get back to normal.”
“I’m fine,” Monk said. “Just point me toward the doctor’s office. Or wherever it is he’ll give me the results.”
The technician shook his head. “Not today. The films won’t be ready until tomorrow afternoon. Your doctor should have told you that.”
“Tomorrow?” Dr. Gordon hadn’t said a damned thing about that … had he? “Isn’t there some way to—”
The technician took Monk’s arm again and started him toward the door.
“Not if we want to be absolutely sure of the results,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve heard the old line: You can have it fast, or you can have it right.” He opened the door at the rear of the room. “Dr. Gordon will call you. You probably won’t even have to come back to his office.”
Monk nodded, then went through the door. He walked down a short corridor, through an archway, and out into the reception room. The receptionist, a thin, middle-aged woman, smiled as he passed, but said nothing. Trained, Monk guessed, to be careful with the people who came from the machines, people with problems that didn’t lend themselves easily to chitchat.
Out in the Saab, Monk sat behind the wheel for a few minutes, staring through the windshield. Tomorrow afternoon. Thirty-six hours before he’d know. Despite a temperature in the high eighties—much hotter inside the parked car—he felt a distinct chill. He tried to recognize the cognitive errors, to apply rationality to the problem, but the other part of his brain—the much more primitive limbic part—would not be stopped.
His final years with Pastor Monk, the long years before his father finally died, had been a struggle, and not just for Monk himself. Even though they’d never talked about it, he knew the retired preacher had been terrified, and Monk realized he was now beginning to understand why. Even a bastard could be scared shitless, and not just about dying. Dementia and the decline into full-on Alzheimer’s wasn’t simply a matter of dying. Just the thought made Monk queasy. There were no atheists in foxholes, and he didn’t imagine there were many in brain-scanning machines either. Dear God, he felt like saying. Please don’t turn me into my father. Please don’t let me turn into that.
He reached out and slid the key into the ignition, but didn’t have a chance to start the Saab before he was interrupted by the sound of knuckles banging against the passenger window. He turned to see William Smith’s face glaring in at him.
TEN
Monk stared back. William here? After what had just happened back in the hot tub? Monk felt a jab of uncertainty, suddenly unsure that what he was seeing was real, and it was almost a relief to hear the sound of William’s voice as he knocked again.
“Damn it, Monk, open the door!”
Monk hit the power switch to unlock the door and William Smith opened it and slid into the seat.
“What are you doing here?” Monk asked. “How did you know I was—” He didn’t bother finishing the question. If they wanted to, there wasn’t much the NSA couldn’t find out. About anybody.
“The director wants to see you,” William said. “My director, I mean.”
“Fort Meade wants to see me?”
“Trust me, it’s not my idea.”
Monk stared at him. “They sent you to get me?”
“I told them I was the wrong guy.”
“Who else is coming from the bureau?”
William ignored the question. He pointed out the window toward his dark blue Chevy Caprice, parked a few cars away. The same car he’d been using the other morning. “You can follow me.”
“To Fort Meade? We’re going out to Maryland?”
William opened the door and got out of the Saab, then looked back at Monk. “Not Fort Meade,” he said. “You already know the way to the office I’ve been using. I’m going to follow you there.” He paused. “I’ve been ordered to make damned sure you make it.”
William stayed close behind as Monk headed east on Reservoir Street, past the Ellington School of the Arts to Wisconsin Avenue, then across town to William’s sad little building on Florida Avenue. They parked out front, went through the front door together and took the tiny elevator up to the third floor, then down a corridor to a door marked POTOMAC ENGINEERING. William used a key on the door and they went through.
The small reception room featured a faux-wood secretary’s desk, a yellow vinyl couch, and two light brown vinyl armchairs. On the walls hung photographs of civil engineering projects—a couple of dams and a section of freeway—along with some framed blueprints. A plastic ficus benjamina stood beyond the desk, and a plastic philodendron leaned pitifully from a fake clay pot next to the couch.
The woman sitting at the desk smiled as they approached. A brass placard identified her as Esther Valenzuela. About forty, Monk judged, with remarkably white teeth and round brown eyes he suspected had been trained to miss nothing. What he knew for sure was that Esther was just as faux a secretary as was the imitation wood in her desk. Her only job was to get rid of anyone who might wander by in search of an actual engineer.
“He’s inside, William,” she said to her boss. “Got here about ten minutes ago.” She stopped smiling. “Be careful. He seems extra tense today.”
William stepped directly toward the door to the left of Esther’s desk, tapped on it before opening the door and moving through. Monk followed. He knew the name Philip Carter, but he didn’t recognize the NSA director standing near the small window behind the desk, and he wasn’t surprised. You’d have to ask half a million Americans to find one who knew the guy’s name, much less what he l
ooked like. The man who ran America’s biggest corporation of spies was virtually invisible himself.
William closed the door behind them. “This is Puller Monk, Mr. Director,” he told Carter, before turning to Monk. “Director Carter,” he said.
Carter extended his hand and Monk shook it. The director was close to seventy, Monk decided, and had to be a fitness fanatic. His prominent cheekbones accentuated the leanness of his tanned face, and his head was almost completely bald. He wore a dark blue suit with a blinding white shirt and crimson tie. Monk could see his cuff links as he held on to the man’s hand for an extra beat. White enamel with tiny red birds in flight. Carter’s blue eyes radiated power, as they flicked up and down Monk’s standard SOG attire, his tan cotton Dockers and wrinkled tennis shirt. It was hard not to feel inferior to the impeccably tailored director, and Monk knew that was exactly the point.
Carter stepped around behind William’s plain wooden desk and sat. William looked at Monk, then took the closest of the two lime-green vinyl armchairs in front of the desk. Monk sat in the other one. He glanced at the desktop. Except for a black telephone it was completely bare. No blotter, no calendar, not a photograph … nothing. On a narrow table to the left of the desk sat three framed photos, one of them featuring an attractive woman, the other two showing a couple of high-school age young men. Monk didn’t know who they were and he would have bet a month’s pay that neither of the other two men did either. The NSA director leaned forward in his chair. His thin lips moved very little as he began to speak.
“Forgive me if I’m blunt, Mr. Monk,” he said, “but I don’t have time to be polite.”
“Blunt works for me, too. I’m just as busy as you are.”
Carter’s eyes indicated he wasn’t used to such a response. He glanced at William, and William was quick to speak up.
“I told you this was a mistake,” he told his boss. “There are fifteen thousand FBI agents. Why should we bother to use someone like—”
Carter glared at him and William closed his mouth and sat back in his chair. The director turned back to Monk.
“Please forgive Mr. Smith. I share some of his misgivings, but the time for arguing about you is over.” He paused. “You’re here because you have a … let’s just call it a dark side. An extraordinary aversion to letting go long after it’s time to quit, and an alternative approach—to use the kindest description—to getting the job done.” Again he paused. “Ordinarily, fatal flaws for an FBI agent, but your results somehow manage to overcome your methods. Either you’re the luckiest man alive, or you …”
Director Carter’s voice died as Monk rose from his chair and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” the director snapped. “You will not leave until I finish.”
Monk turned back, but stayed on his feet. “Look. You people told me to back off the Madonna case, and that’s exactly what I did. You don’t have to haul me in here and—”
“You did not back off, Mr. Monk. You followed Mr. Smith to this office. You were ordered to leave this case alone, but you did exactly the opposite.”
“I wasn’t about to quit, not without a better explanation. The case I’ve been working isn’t simply about the Madonna. There’s a major art-theft ring operating in this country and around the world. My job is to recover the loot and prosecute the thieves.” Monk took a step toward the director. “The Madonna may be connected to the same ring, and I needed to make that clear to William. To make damned sure he understood that I had to be cut in at the finish of whatever you’ve got going.”
“That’s bullshit,” William said. “He talked about a lot more than—”
Again Carter’s chilly blue eyes swung to William. Again William’s mouth closed.
“You mentioned the FISA wire to Mr. Smith,” the director told Monk. “You indicated you weren’t about to leave this case alone. Your history of persistence presents a problem.”
“I have no damned idea what you’re talking about.” He took another step closer to the desk. “Let me say it again. You don’t have to threaten me. You don’t have to worry about me intruding. I’m not about to throw away my career like that.”
Carter leaned back in his chair. “I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding, Mr. Monk. I’m not here to threaten you. I’m here to ask for your help.”
Monk stared at him. “My help?”
Carter pointed at the vacant chair. Monk sat.
“What do you know about North Korea’s Division 39 program?” the director asked.
Monk sat up straighten North Korea. Division 39. He felt a tickle in the back of his mind. “Jog my memory.”
“They operate out of a building near the Russian embassy in Pyongyang. The division has two arms, one of them allegedly legal, but both have the same purpose.”
Monk nodded. Now he remembered the piece in the Wall Street Journal. Division 39 was a slush fund, a holding company of businesses set up to funnel money directly to Kim Jong Il. Enough money to fund his intelligence activities around the world.
“I’ve read something,” he said. “But I didn’t get the sense that Division 39 is a secret.”
“The commercial side isn’t. It’s the other end of the house we’re concerned with here.” Carter turned to William, who took over.
“The secret arm of Thirty-nine—the illegal activities directorate—is modeled on the Russian mafiya,” he said. “Illegal arms smuggling, robbery and extortion, currency counterfeiting. But the biggest moneymaker is drug smuggling. Kim Jong Il orders every farming collective in North Korea to plant twenty-five acres in poppies. The annual yield in opium, morphine, and heroin is fifty tons, with a return of close to fifteen billion dollars a year, roughly equal to the country’s reportable GDP.” William paused. “Every cent is used to keep their spies in place around the world, including right here in Washington.”
Monk glanced at Carter before returning to William. “You’re saying Division 39 stole the Madonna, but how can that be? The thief—she used the name Sarah Freed—was an American. From Boston, according to what she told the victim.”
“Not even close. She was born an American, but she hasn’t been one for a long time.”
“An American working for Pyongyang?”
“For the illegal activities directorate of Division 39. She’s one of what the division calls the ipyanghan. A Korean word for adopted children.”
Monk frowned, but William continued before he could say anything.
“But they weren’t adopted, of course. They were kidnapped. As an offshoot of Pyongyang’s program to kidnap Japanese nationals in the 1970s.”
Monk nodded. He’d read the stories.
“In the same decade,” William continued, “Division 39 began to steal American infants as well.”
William looked at his boss, and Carter nodded for him to continue.
“We have a source in Pyongyang who’s identified ten kidnapped American girls who were sent to North Korea for training. Schooled together. Taught perfect English. Kept abreast of everything current in the United States. Raised to think and act as Americans, then conditioned to hate us. Trained to come back here, one or more at a time, to live with us. To carry out missions ranging from robbery to extortion to assassination.”
Monk found himself sitting up straighter. “Sleepers. You found a sleeper.” He paused. “And you’ve got a mole.”
“Took me ten years. Money wouldn’t do it—we offered millions—but two months ago I found a man working inside Thirty-nine who’s convinced Kim Jong Il is destroying the country, so convinced that he’s willing to risk his life to help us. So now we have a mole … I should say we think we have a mole. Until we can corroborate what he tells us, evaluate his reliability, we can’t be sure who he’s really working for. Can’t be sure he’s not a double agent.”
“And your mole knows who stole the Madonna.”
“He knows it was one of the ipyanghan. He knows her Korean name—Sung Kim—but that’s all h
e knows. He works in the illegal activities directorate, but he has no access to the ipyanghan files. He can’t get into them without risking discovery and I don’t want him to do that. Not yet, for sure. Not until we’ve determined his usefulness. Dead, he’s no good at all. If he’s legit, we can use him forever.”
“So you haven’t really identified her, this Sung Kim.”
“We know she’s in the States, but that’s about it. We don’t know her cover name or names, her legend, or where she lives.”
“Or where she is at the moment.”
“She was in Paris immediately after the robbery, we do know that.… We think we know that. And we’ve been told she’s back now.”
“You didn’t follow her in Paris? Follow her from the airport when she got back?”
William shook his head. “Our information comes from the mole. We didn’t see the meeting … didn’t have anyone on the ground.” Again William glanced at his boss, again Carter nodded. “Our man says Sung Kim is here, somewhere in this country, preparing for her next assignment.” He hesitated. “A job we have to …”
William stopped. Monk waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. Seconds passed in silence. Monk turned to Director Carter.
“That’s it?” he said. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“We did get a name from our man,” Carter said. “The name of an American supposedly involved with Sung Kim. But there’s a problem. A bunch of problems.” He paused. “That’s why you’re here.”
Monk grunted. “I assume you’re prepared to be a bit more specific.”
“Not a whole lot, I’m afraid. Not until you agree to come on board.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, on board?”
“We need you to work with us to catch the sleeper. To catch Sung Kim before she can complete her next mission.”
Monk stared at him. “That’s what this is all about? I’m already on board … I’m already working the art thefts. Surely Burt Malone made it clear that whatever you need from the bureau is a done deal.”
“I’m not talking about Burt Malone, or the bureau. I’m talking about you, Mr. Monk. Just you.”
