Fires of War (17 page)

~ * ~

2

CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

A long sleepless night followed by a morning and afternoon filled with meetings had only increased Daniel Slott’s anxiety over the South Korean plutonium. He did his best to control it, but it was a losing battle. By midday he was wound so tight that when his daughter called him from college to say hello he nearly hung up on her.

Corrine Alston had called from New Hampshire to tell him what the president had said. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. Slott resented Corrine, but he thought it was probably better that she had told the president what was going on rather than Parnelles. This way, he figured, Parnelles looked as bad as he did.

It was more cover-your-ass thinking, and he hated it. He absolutely hated it.

When his four p.m. budget meeting finally dragged to a close, Slott headed toward his office, intending to call his daughter and apologize for being so abrupt.

“Daniel, there you are,” said Parnelles, intercepting him just before he got there. “Come and let’s have a quick chat.”

Slott followed silently as the CIA director led him down the hall to his office. Unlike many of the more recent DCIs, Parnelles was a CIA insider, a man who’d worked in the field as a case officer and held a host of other Bureau jobs before being appointed to head the CIA. There had been a gap of roughly ten years—he’d left the Agency and worked as, among other things, a bank vice president before being appointed—but otherwise he’d spent his entire adult life with the CIA, a throwback really to the handful of old hands who’d learned the business from the ground up.

“Where are we with Korea?” asked Parnelles when Slott sat down.

“Still trying to get more information.”

“What’s Seoul’s opinion?”

“I haven’t consulted them.”

Parnelles raised his left eyebrow slightly.

“I wanted to make sure we knew what we were dealing with,” explained Slott. “That it wasn’t a false alarm.”

“Is it?”

“The scientists say no. The first batch of tags were brought very close to a source, though it’s impossible to say where. The second set, which Ferguson recovered, had only one exposure. We’ve narrowed down the possible location, but we need more work.”

“And you don’t think Seoul can help?”

“I guess I’m wondering why they didn’t know about it in the first place,” said Slott. “Just as you are.”

“Do you think they purposely withheld information?”

“I’ve thought about that. I have thought about that.”

He had, for hours and hours.

“But I don’t,” Slott added. “I just can’t see Ken Bo doing that. I can see . ..”

The word
incompetence
seemed too harsh, so he said nothing.

“We may to have involve them,” said Parnelles, “if we’re going to find out anything. This has to have been a far-reaching operation, and I don’t know that we’ll gain anything from delaying at this point.”

“If the information comes out, it will jeopardize the disarmament treaty,” said Slott. “And if Seoul gets aggressive about pursuing it, sooner or later the ROK government will realize what we’re doing. Once that happens, I doubt we can keep the information under wraps.”

“That’s not really an intelligence concern, is it?”

“I guess it’s not,” said Slott, “but I wouldn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize the disarmament treaty.”

“How would you?”

By having the information leak out, thought Slott. It was obvious. Any bad publicity now—and certainly a reaction by North Korea—would send the Senate running for cover.

“I’m having a little trouble reading you,” said Slott. “I know you’re against the treaty, but—”

“That has nothing to do with it,” said Parnelles. “I’m not interested in politics. I’m interested in information. And our security.”

“If Seoul pokes its nose around, and something comes out, it would have a very negative effect.”

“Why should something come out?”

Slott couldn’t decide whether Parnelles was being disingenuous.

“You don’t trust your people in Korea?” Parnelles asked.

“I do trust them.”

“Then tell them to be discreet, but let’s find out what’s going on.”

“We’re going to have to find out why they missed this,” said Slott.

“Yes, but that’s of secondary importance right now,” said Parnelles. “Find out what it is they missed, first.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Slott, guessing Parnelles had probably already decided to clean house there. “I’ll get on it.”

~ * ~

3

NORTH OF DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA

Park Jin Tae ran his fingers over the fabric of the twelfth-century armor, admiring the fine craftsmanship of his ancestors. Park had made several billion dollars in his sixty-seven years; he had built more than a dozen companies from scratch and taken over so many others he’d lost track. He was among the most important businessmen in South Korea and, though he operated entirely behind the scenes, an important player in its politics as well. But nothing brought the South Korean businessman more pleasure than his collection of antiquities, and this suit of armor was the pinnacle.

The brigandine or fabric-covered armor had belonged to a high-ranking Korean official. The man’s wealth was evident from the rich cloth of the exterior. The metal plates beneath the armor were roughly nine and a half centimeters thick, strong enough to withstand a great blow. Yet the suit was constructed to allow the warrior great freedom of movement, for a Korean warrior expected to use his feet as well as his hands as weapons if need be.

He would use his very breath, Park thought. The men of ancient times were different, hardier and tougher. Just to wear the suit into battle took great strength.

What would such men say if they looked at Koreans now? They would scoff at their weakness.

Not every Korean was weak—Park knew many brave men, hundreds who would gladly sacrifice themselves for Korea—but the country as a whole had been seduced by Western materialism. It had forgotten its birthright and its past, both ancient and recent.

How else could one explain the fact that the South Korean president had spent yesterday showing the Japanese emperor Korean factories? The
Japanese emperor.
; son and grandson of a criminal, son and grandson of Korea’s most hated and brutal master.

The South Korean government had suggested that some of Park’s companies be included in the tour. He had declined, even though this was a breach of etiquette. Ordinarily, one had to be polite when dealing with visitors, but politeness would only go so far. It would not extend to Japanese criminals.

The enmity between Japan and Korea went back thousands of years, but Park’s familial hatred of the Japanese took its severe shape in 1941. It was the year Park Jin Tae was born. It was also the year his mother was made a “comfort woman,” a slave to the Japanese soldiers, an unwilling prostitute.

She had triumphed in the end, ending her life and that of one of her tormentors in a glorious fury of blood and revenge. But it was a bitter victory for her family, who were persecuted as a result. Her husband and brother were killed and their children sent to an orphanage where they were given Japanese names and taught to hate their country.

Park considered himself lucky. The war ended well before he attended school, and his personal memory of the outrages was, mercifully, dim. But his anger at the humiliation of his mother, the murder of his family, and the rape of his country burned ever stronger with each year he aged.

It burned so fiercely that if he spent too much time thinking about it, he would surely explode.

Park shook himself. There was considerable work to do. Thousands of employees worked for him—he was a man of great wealth and status, a respected man—and he could not afford to indulge himself in distractions. He left the display room and went to start the day.

~ * ~

4

DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA

It took Ferguson and Guns several hours to walk back to Guns’s hotel from Science Industries. Ferguson sat down on the couch; the next thing he knew it was several hours later and Guns was shaking him awake.

“Corrigan needs to talk to you,” Guns told him. “Sorry to wake you up, Ferg.”

“What time is it?”

“Oh eight hundred hours.”

“In real time that’s what, eight in the morning?”

“Something like that. It’s six o’clock at night back home. Eighteen hundred.”

“What, you got two clocks to keep track?”

“Only my head.”

Ferguson rolled out of bed, splashed some water on his face, and went down to the hotel cafe to get some coffee. All he could find was tea. He took two cups back to the room, did a quick scan for bugs to make sure no one had managed to sneak in while they were sleeping, and called The Cube.

“Ferg, how are you?” asked Corrigan.

“Can’t party like I used to,” he told him. “You get that information I told Lauren about? Science Industries?”

“Yeah. There’s an encrypted PDF file waiting for you to download. You can read it at the embassy.”

“Why the embassy?”

“Slott will explain. Hold on.”

“Great.”

Slott came on the line after a short pause.

“Good morning, Ferg.”

“What’s this about the embassy?” said Ferguson.

“We want soil samples from the waste plant, and as much other information as we can come up with. Seoul’s got to be involved.”

“I can get the samples without them.”

“There’s no need to cut Seoul out,” said Slott. “I want you to brief Ken Bo. He’s the station chief.”

“Me?”

“You have someone else in mind?”

Ferguson scratched the side of his head. Tea was fine as far as it went, but it wasn’t a substitute for coffee.

“It’ll take me a while to get up there.”

“Listen, Ferg, this situation is volatile, seriously volatile.”

“Yeah, I know the drill.”

“Ferguson, for once, will you listen to what I say?” snapped Slott.

“I always listen to you, Dan,” said Ferguson, who found Slott’s uncharacteristic anger amusing. “The question is whether I pay any attention to it.”

“If you need backup, ask for it, all right?”

“My middle name is Please,” said Ferguson. He took a swig of the tea and practically spit it out. “Listen, I gotta go. I think somebody’s trying to poison me.”

~ * ~

5

NORTH P’YŎNPAN PROVINCE, NORTH KOREA

The North Koreans set up a midday feast for the inspection team in the reception building, once again importing massive amounts of Korean and Western specialties. Large banquet tables were placed in the center of the building with chairs clustered nearby. The team members and the Koreans escorting them ate with their plates in their laps.

The lunch might have had the air of a picnic or perhaps a wedding, except that it was hard for the guests to ignore the fact that the space they were sitting in had been designed for vehicles carrying nuclear waste. Julie Svenson shook her head the whole time she was eating, gulping her food and then going to the far side of the building.