“So, Anna is doing well?”
“It sure seems that way. What a miracle. Must be that good blood she received,” he smiled at Katelyn.
“I think having a good surgeon helped,” she smiled back at him.
Katelyn’s complexion was paler than usual from donating the two units of blood, but it highlighted her black hair, pulled back in a tight bun, and her red lipstick. If she felt drained from being low on blood, she did not let on to it.
* * *
Suk sat in his room in the small hotel in Belize City. He felt quite alone. As much as he hated Hwang and Cho, at least they were company and fellow countrymen. For one of the first times in his life, he longed to be back in North Korea with the professor. It took all the strength he could muster not to call Professor Kwon and ask for advice.
He was a fugitive. He thought that once he had gotten rid of his two companions, he would be free. But now he was a prisoner, or might as well have been. He needed to get a fake passport and a new identity, but he was too exhausted to make the effort. He stretched out on the bed and pulled the blanket over his head.
* * *
Maggie wiped Anna’s forehead with a cool washcloth. She had finally convinced Anna’s parents to take a break, get some fresh air, and walk around the compound.
Maggie gazed at Anna. “I’m so thankful to God for your life, my dear child.”
Anna frowned as she struggled to shift in the bed. “You get the license plate of that truck?” she said hoarsely, her throat still sore from the tube. When she tried to laugh, it made her cough.
Maggie put a pillow on Anna’s abdomen. “Here, hold on to this if you need to cough. It will help support your belly. Dr. Hart wants you to breathe deeply and cough. It’s good for your lungs.”
“Where is he?”
“I’ll tell you the whole story when you get your strength up.”
Anna’s brows wrinkled with concern.
“He’s fine, Anna. He’ll be back in a few days.”
“I want to thank him for saving my life.” Her voice was groggy from the pain medication. She touched the tube running out of her nose.
Maggie gently pulled her hand away from the nasal-gastric tube. “Dr. Hart told me that you will need to have that down in your stomach for a few days until your bowels wake up from the trauma.”
Anna nodded. “My throat is so dry.”
“I know it is, my dear, but try to sleep. You need your rest.”
Anna’s eyelids shut, then fluttered open, and she smiled. “Maggie. It’s all true. I was there!” Then her eyes closed and she fell asleep.
* * *
The funeral home was modest, but the undertaker was kind; he actually knew Miguel. The bodies were embalmed and lay in homemade pine caskets.
The undertaker asked if they would identify the bodies for legal reasons. He told them he did not have much to work with on Miguel. Nick fought back nausea as he looked at the young man; his soul was filled with an overwhelming sadness for Miguel whose life had been extinguished too soon. Anna would take it hard.
After she looked at Mr. Kim, Katelyn nodded to the undertaker. “I know I won’t be home in time for his funeral. Do you mind if I sing over Mr. Kim? He was a good man and an excellent partner.”
“I think that would be nice for both of them,” the undertaker said.
Katelyn began whispering a prayer in Korean. Then she sang a haunting Korean song. Nick had never heard anything so lovely in all his life. It was as if the angels were singing harmony. At the end of the song, she laid her hand over Mr. Kim’s heart and then Miguel’s.
Nick wiped tears from his eyes. “Katelyn, that was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s a lullaby my grandmother taught me. It was something her mother sang to her and her mother, sang to her. It’s about resting in God’s great love with His arms wrapped around you when nothing can hurt you.”
Even the undertaker was moved and wiped tears from his eyes. He made the sign of the cross over them all.
In broken English he said, “God bless you for that. It brought life into this place of death. It brought life to this old man.” He gave them both hugs.
Nick was equally moved when Katelyn offered to cover the cost of the arrangements for both Mr. Kim and Miguel. When Nick protested, she waved him away. “Please, Dr. Hart, Miguel gave his life for us. It is the least I can do.”
They told the man they would be back in the morning to accompany Mr. Kim’s casket to the airport. The undertaker promised he would ask Miguel’s family about plans for his burial.
CHAPTER 62
* * *
Yertle the Turtle
Sitting in the run-down police station, Nick and Katelyn realized why Miguel disparaged the local force. The two officers spoke very little English. The older sweated profusely, and his uniform was unbuttoned to expose a big beer belly. Both seemed edgy and intimidated, possibly because of Katelyn’s impressive credentials. But Katelyn was patient and kinder than Nick. Through broken English and a little Spanish, Katelyn and Nick managed to understand that the two officers had been to the scene of the shooting and to the house FOCO rented, and they had found nothing.
The fat officer talked with his hands and his mouth about some town and then about Belize. When Nick and Katelyn looked puzzled, he pushed his weight out of the creaking chair and led them to a map on the wall. He pointed to the town on the border with Belize.
“FOCO auto.” He mimicked driving a car with an imaginary steering wheel. Then he pointed to the town of Melchor de Mencos. “Here.”
He waved his arm from left to right. “Belize.” Then he held up his hands and shrugged.
Katelyn understood and bowed. She turned to Nick, “Sounds like they found the FOCO SUV in Melchor de Mencos, and they think the man has gone to Belize.”
He nodded. He missed Anna’s translating skill.
Katelyn and Nick thanked the policemen and turned to walk out of the station.
“Excuse me,” the younger policeman said and reached behind his desk. He brought up two mangled prosthetic legs. Nick could tell the older officer was angry with his subordinate for revealing the treasure so easily.
As Nick gathered the mangled legs, one foot fell to the ground. The younger man picked it up and balanced it on the pile of metal in Nick’s arms.
The fat man straightened up and buttoned his uniform. He held out his hand palm up and said something in Spanish.
“I think your friend wants a tip,” Katelyn told Nick.
Nick faced him squarely and glared. “I’ll give you a tip all right. Get out of the business.”
Katelyn interceded and stepped between them. She shook the man’s hand, thanked him, and grabbed Nick by the arm. “Let’s go, Dr. Hart. No need to make enemies here.”
Nick turned to see the policeman inspect the hundred-dollar bill Katelyn had slipped him. As they left the building, he said more sharply than he intended, “I can’t believe you paid off that jerk.”
“Sometimes, Dr. Hart, it is wisdom to know which battles to fight.” She kept her hand firmly on his arm and led him to their car.
* * *
Katelyn and Nick enjoyed a tranquil lunch by the lake—each relaxed in the company of the other. The day had warmed, the sunshine had melted some of their worries, allowing them to share personal anecdotes of their lives.
After lunch, Katelyn asked Nick to drive. As soon as he put the car in gear, she was on the phone speaking in Korean. Nick tried to drive and decipher the crude map Katelyn convinced the policeman to draw for her.
When she terminated her call, she told Nick she had notified her agency about the man in Belize. “They have contacted your Homeland Security. I doubt that he will be on the run for long. Your Agency is sending officers down to meet with me tomorrow, others will rendezvous with my team in Belize.”
“My agency?” Nick mumbled.
“Pardon?”
Nick didn’t realize he’d spoken
out loud. “Oh, I was thinking how funny that sounded. Your agency. I think we live in different worlds, you and I. The only thing I know about Homeland Security is all the folks in blue uniforms at the airport.”
Katelyn smiled at him.
“I get this feeling I live in a very sheltered world,” Nick frowned. “I’ve never even been to Korea, and here I am with a South Korean spy chasing North Korean bad guys. It’s a little bizarre, don’t you think?”
Katelyn laughed hard. “That’s funny. I’m not a spy.”
“A few weeks ago, I’m sitting pretty in Memphis, minding my own business, making a good living, feeling like Yertle the Turtle, king of the pond, and now…I just don’t know.”
“Yertle the Turtle?” Katelyn raised an eyebrow.
“I guess you didn’t grow up on Dr. Seuss.”
She shook her head.
“Dr. Seuss wrote children’s books. I grew up on them. My mother read them to me all the time,” he said. “Ol’ Yertle thought he was something. You know, king of the pond.”
Katelyn put her hand over her mouth and giggled.
“Yertle wanted to be more, so he stood on the backs of all the other turtles to be higher than the moon.” Nick explained the story. “The bottom turtle burped and caused the whole lot of them to fall. Yertle took a great tumble into the mud. I’m kind of feeling like ol’ Yertle right now.”
Katelyn stomped her foot and laughed out loud. “You are Yertle the Turtle. You are so funny, Dr. Hart.”
Nick had to laugh at her Korean pronunciation of Yertle the Turtle.
“The turtle that drives a blue Porsche Boxster,” she added, hardly able to control herself.
Nick almost braked. “Wait a minute. How in the world do you know that? You really are a spy.”
Katelyn laughed even harder. “My dear Dr. Hart, I know practically everything about you.” Her dark eyes examined him, and she turned serious.
“Well, that’s not fair,” he shot back.
“But I’m really not a spy.”
Nick glanced at her. She was a riddle of mystery and admiration.
She looked straight ahead, the colorful silk scarf around her neck flying in the breeze.
Well, if you are a spy, you are the most beautiful spy I know.
He saw her glance at him and was embarrassed that he may have held his gaze too long. Without thinking he said, “I still have a hard time believing I was knocked out by such a tiny, beautiful woman.”
His comment made her pale cheeks blush. “You’re not going to let me forget that, are you?”
“That you’re beautiful or that you knocked me out?”
She gave him a funny look but said nothing. Nick was not sure if she was offended or complimented, but she intrigued him. There was something about her that he rarely saw in a woman.
Nick pressed his chest, trying to push away the encroaching loneliness, the ubiquitous companion of his singular life. He thought about something Maggie had told him: We are made to love and be loved. Here were two women that caused his heart to leap—one widowed, but her heart belonging to John, and the other single, but married to her job and living a continent away.
Perhaps it was a mutually embarrassed silence that came over them as they drove down the Boulevard Manuel Balizón looking for the turn to Avenida Real. They passed the Shalom Mission Hospital where trash was still scattered from the helicopter rotors.
Katelyn touched his arm gently. “You okay?”
He shut off his emotions and changed the subject. “That nightmare seems like a million light years ago. Like a bad dream,” he nodded toward the hospital.
“Your ability to save Anna was quite something,” she smiled at him. “And by the way, Maggie introduced me to Isabella this morning. I remember the picture you showed us. What a transformation.” She squeezed his forearm. “God has given you quite a gift, Dr. Hart.”
“Thank you. But, Ms. Kim,” he continued, exaggerating her surname, “would you please stop being so formal? Nick will do.”
CHAPTER 63
* * *
Plea
Professor Kwon was not surprised to see Pak approaching. Kwon needed a respite, but was rarely allowed quiet time on his own. He enjoyed Moranbong Park in the shadow of Kim Il-sung Stadium and hadn’t visited for over a year. But with the Noah Initiative coming to completion, there was nothing more for him to do in the lab. His assistants were busy assembling the vials for distribution to their destinations around the world. It had seemed like a good time to take a break.
The clean air of Pyongyang made for a brilliant blue sky, and the sun warmed the morning enough for Kwon to remove his overcoat as he sat on a bench overlooking the Taedong River.
The flock of pigeons gathered around Kwon scattered as Pak stopped in front of him.
“A beautiful day, Professor.”
“Indeed.”
“And it has become even more beautiful.” Pak reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the note from Guatemala.
Kwon read the note without emotion and handed it back to Pak who folded it and put it back in his pocket.
“You don’t seem overjoyed with the news?”
“I’m sorry, Song-ju. I am. But I was confident that the aerosolization would go well.”
“You have done a good job, Professor.”
Kwon didn’t look at him.
Pak was concerned. “Is there something I could do for you, my friend?”
Kwon suspected Pak knew what he was thinking.
“I…I would hope,” Kwon looked at Pak’s dark, emotionless eyes. “I would like to see my wife and son before my life is over.”
Pak’s eyes bore into Kwon’s. For a moment, his gaze was stony. Then a smirk spread across his face. “I will see what I can do.”
With that, Pak turned on his heels and walked away.
Kwon watched the arrogant man stroll away, and suddenly he felt a chill shake his body. He pulled his overcoat over his shoulders.
Huddling on the bench, Kwon imagined the flight of his virus. It would be almost anticlimactic. There would be no explosions, no large-scale panic. At least not at first. For a time, there would be no media coverage, no notoriety, and no fame. The offices would silently release the virus mist over the people and that would be that. The virility of the virus would do the rest.
Kwon sighed. He wished he could study the transmission rates and monitor the spread as people went about their normal routines—boarding trains, sitting in board rooms, flying on planes, going to parties and sporting events, and every other possible place the virus would disseminate itself. It would make for a world-renowned epidemiological study. It would be so fascinating if he could do the study. But it was not to be. Probably that was reason he was so melancholy today. That’s what he told himself.
CHAPTER 64
* * *
Ferrets
Katelyn covered her nose and mouth with her scarf.
“Phew. That’s terrible,” she made a face.
As soon as they walked into the living room of FOCO’s rental, they saw the source of the stench, and the minute the ferrets saw Nick and Katelyn, they protested loudly.
“What the heck?” Nick said, pulling his shirt collar over his nose. They stood in front of the wall of cages. “FOCO likes ferrets?”
The animals stood in their cages and screamed at the pair.
“Looks like they’re all out of food,” Nick yelled above the racket. He saw a food container and began filling their food dishes. One by one, they stopped bawling and ate.
“Well, that helps with the noise,” Katelyn said. “I guess there’s nothing we can do about the smell, unless you want to clean the cages, too,” she teased.
He exaggerated a fake laugh at her.
They soon discovered that the police had searched the house top to bottom—they’d dumped every drawer on the floor and overturned every piece of furniture or shoved it out of place.
“So much for a crime scene,” Kate
lyn said. “I imagine that anything of value is in the pockets of the lunatic police.” She was angry.
Nick slid the back door open to let in some fresh air. He saw empty beer cans and cigar stubs on the picnic table on the deck. He stepped onto the deck and looked over the lake. A light breeze rippled its surface.
As he looked back at the picnic table and across the lake, Nick realized that the view from the house was of Flores Island and the hotel where he, Buck, and Anna had stayed. It was unnerving to think that these guys could have been on their radar, and vice versa. He regretted coming to San Benito in the first place. He looked over the edge of the deck and saw a fire pit next to the lake.
“Hey, Katelyn, you might want to check this out.”
He pointed to the fire pit that was full of ash and burnt paper. Finding the stairs, they made their way down to the edge of the lake to get a good look at the fire pit. Katelyn found a stick and poked at the ashes. As carefully as she prodded, the ashes collapsed into powder.
“Looks like anything of importance was burned,” she said. “I’ll have my men go over it all with a fine-tooth comb: fingerprints, DNA, even these ashes. But I was hoping we would find something that would give us a hint at what they were doing here.”
Two ducks flew overhead, calling to their companions on the shore.
“Does any of this make sense to you?” Nick asked.
“They were obviously up to no good, but it’s not the usual MO that we see. No sign of drug manufacturing. No counterfeiting equipment. If they were doing human trafficking, we would have found girls instead of ferrets.”
“Yeah. What are we going to do with all those animals? I kind of feel sorry for them.”
“I’ll have my people see what they can do,” Katelyn said as they went back into the house when she immediately covered her nose to block the smell. “Sure you don’t want to take them home for pets?”
As they walked by the cages, one ferret chirped at them. Nick stopped and looked at the animal. It made an affectionate rub on the cage door, then somersaulted a number of times. Nick laughed. “You still hungry, boy?”
MAYA HOPE, a medical thriller - The Dr. Nicklaus Hart series 1 Page 31
