The Expediter (31 page)

“Millions of people would die,” McGarvey said. “It’s the only reason I agreed to come here.”

“What madman would benefit from such a thing?” Pak asked inwardly, but then he focused on McGarvey again. “It’s not Dear Leader.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Pak said. “I’ve bet my life on it.”

“And mine,” McGarvey replied.

The sun had just topped the eastern horizon when Kim got off the narrow blacktopped road, scrambled into the drainage ditch that ran beside it, and flopped down in the tall grass. She was filthy dirty from the nightmarish trip through the tunnel beneath the DMZ, hungry, and now that she was back in the North frightened nearly out of her wits.

For a time back there, when she knew that she could not take another step in the absolute darkness, she’d reached out and touched the sleeve of Soon’s night fighter camos. And they had started their conversation.

“If you must do this, darling, I’ll guide you,” he’d told her. “But you have to know how foolish you are. You made it back to Seoul without being caught, and you even managed to elude Alexandar and Kirk McGarvey, the CIA officer he warned you about. Why take this chance now?”

“It’s the only way I can save you,” she’d replied, not able to see a thing but comforted by his feel and his scent. At one point she’d almost switched on her flashlight so that she could see him, but had decided against it in case they were closer to the tunnel’s end than she figured, and someone outside might catch the flash.

She’d slipped and fallen to her knees in the ice-cold water and slime covering the tunnel floor, and for a moment she’d known she didn’t have the strength to get up and continue. But Soon’s hand was in hers and he’d drawn her to her feet.

“If you’re going to do this foolish thing, you need to be careful,” he’d warned her. “Once we’re outside I won’t be with you.”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she’d cried, her head in a muddle.

“Go back home, then, sweetheart. You can’t do a thing for me in Pyongyang.”

She’d tried to see his face through the pitch-black, but it had been impossible. “But I can do it. I have a plan.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m going to offer them a trade.”

Soon was angry, she’d heard it in his voice. “What, trade you for me? Never.”

“No, not that, darling. I’ll trade both of us for someone else. For the man responsible for the hit.”

“Alexandar?” Soon had demanded. “They’ll never believe you. Besides, we have no proof.”

“Someone else,” she’d said. “And they’ll believe me even without written proof.” And she’d patiently explained to her husband how she’d come up with the idea and the facts she would present to shore up her claim. In the end he was impressed, as she’d known he would be.

“It just might work,” he’d said. “But first you have to get out of this tunnel and away from the DMZ before daylight. At that point this is what you’ll have to do next.”

Lying in the grass beside the road, looking back the way she’d come, Kim felt an overwhelming sense of weariness. Yet she was grateful
that Soon had been there for her, because she was certain that she would never have made it this far without him.

Nor would she have thought to do what he had told her, but then he’d always been smarter than her, with more experience and a practical head on his shoulders. It was one of the many reasons she loved him.

From here the DMZ’s fences and towers were lost in the hills in the distance, at least five kilometers away. Nothing moved in either direction on the highway, nor did she see any farmers in the small rocky fields that had been hacked out of the scrub brush and forests. But the morning was pleasantly warm, especially after the long night in the cave.

She took the K-bar knife out of her pack, peeled away a grass plug one meter wide in the side of the ditch then dug a hole that deep. She dropped the knife into the hole along with her Walther PPK and spare magazine. She took off her boots, dropped them into the hole, and then peeled off her sodden camos and used them to clean herself as best as she could. She dressed in slate-gray cotton pants, a tunic blouse, white socks, and flip-flops. Everything else she’d brought across, except for her South Korean ID, a credit card, and some money, went into the hole along with the nylon bag. She shoveled the dirt over the top of the things, tossing the rest of it that wouldn’t fit into the tall grass, and finally replaced the plug.

She wiped her hands with tufts of grass then stepped up onto the highway to make sure she’d done it the way Soon had suggested. If a North Korean army patrol caught her armed and dressed in the dark camos they would probably shoot first and ask questions later. Dressed the way she was now she might make it far enough away from the border to be picked up by the cops to whom she’d tell her story.

No one riding in a car or on a bicycle, or even passing this spot on foot would notice that anything had been disturbed here.

With a last glance over her shoulder to make sure nothing was coming from the direction of the DMZ, Kim headed north toward the
town of Ich’on twenty-five kilometers away. As tough as the tunnel had been, it was the easy part. But now that she had come this far she couldn’t turn around.

“Soon.” Her husband’s name formed on her lips.

The divided highway to Pyongyang was in good repair, neatly trimmed hedges along the median, but no road signs and very little traffic— mostly military vehicles or farm trucks and only the occasional car, plus a few bicycles. It was well before noon by the time they reached the city center and dropped Ri off at the Security Agency’s headquarters.

“Is this where you’re keeping Huk Soon?” McGarvey asked Pak.

“Yes. And you will be allowed to interview him as soon as he’s made ready.”

“I want to talk to him now.”

“You will within the hour,” Pak said, taking the wheel and heading away. “He’s one of the assassins, we know that for a fact, because he confessed to us, which makes him enemy number one. We took certain measures when we questioned him, not unlike those your people use at Guantanamo Bay, and for just about the same reasons. Ri will get him cleaned up for you and give him something to clear his mind.”

It was an argument that McGarvey couldn’t counter. He’d been to Quantanamo and had even helped with the interrogations of several al-Quaeda combatants. “We don’t have much time,” he said.

“I know,” Pak said. “I’m taking you to your hotel and afterward I’ll bring you to see the assassin.”

Pyongyang, a city of nearly three million people, was like just about every major capital city in the world with broad avenues, granite government buildings, parks, statues, and monuments. But it was too clean, no litter, no graffiti, no trash anywhere, and there were no traffic jams, nor were the sidewalks jammed, the entire place seemed weirdly quiet.

“I may not be staying overnight,” McGarvey said. “It depends on what Soon tells me.”

“You don’t have a choice. The earliest you could leave is tomorrow. There’s simply no other way out.”

The Pyongyang Koryo Hotel was a twin tower modern edifice in the heart of downtown where the international nuclear inspectors had stayed, and where foreign businessmen were put up. A revolving restaurant was on top of each tower, and by North Korea’s Spartan standards this place was the ultimate in luxury.

The usually busy parking lot out front was nearly empty, as was the orange bronze and glass soaring lobby. None of the bellmen or front desk staff were smiling, and when Pak walked directly to the bank of elevators with his foreign guest everyone suddenly got very busy.

“Normally you would have been assigned two escorts,” Pak said on the way up. “But all you’ll get is me.”

“I’m not surprised the hotel is practically empty. Pyongyang is not a safe place to be right now.”

“No.”

“What about Mrs. Pak? Did you send her into the country?”

Pak gave McGarvey a bleak look. “There is no Mrs. Pak—neither my mother nor my wife. I might have a couple of cousins in the South, but no one else. I’m surprised you didn’t do your homework.”

“I didn’t think that part was important,” McGarvey said. “Have you ever thought about going south?”

Pak glanced up at the ceiling and then at McGarvey. The elevator was bugged. “No,” the North Korean intelligence officer said. “My time in California cured me of any dreams like that. I enjoy stability, orderliness.”

“I’m sure you do,” McGarvey said.

His room on the fourteenth floor was pleasant enough with a queen-sized bed and a small television set atop a dresser. One chair sat behind a desk, which held a telephone that only connected with the front desk through which any outside calls had to be placed. Internet service was banned to all but a few high government officials, so there was no computer connection. Tall windows looked out across the city toward the Taedong River.

McGarvey tossed his bag on the bed, and started to check the table lamps for bugs, but Pak stopped him.

“That’s not necessary in this room for the moment. Ri had it cleaned this morning.”

“A good man to have at your side.”

“Yes, he is,” Pak agreed.

McGarvey took his pistol out of his bag, checked the magazine and the action, and holstered it beneath his jacket at the small of his back.

“Nice pistol,” Pak said. “But when did you switch from a Walther PPK to a Wilson?”

McGarvey had to smile. “A while back. Evidently you’ve done your homework.”

“Some.”

McGarvey took out his sat phone and when he had a signal speed dialed Rencke’s number in Washington. The Special Projects Director answered on the first ring.

“You’re in.”

“Yeah,” McGarvey said. “What’s the situation on the ground?”

“It’s getting bad, kemo sabe. Everybody’s screaming bloody murder for us to do something. And everyone on the hill is blaming the White House, but Haynes is dragging his feet for some reason. It’s almost as if he wants China to take out Pyongyang. Preemptively. And that’s just nuts, ya know.”

“What’s Adkins doing?”

“He says he’s collating,” Rencke said, and McGarvey could hear the strain in his friend’s voice. “Spends most of the day and night in the Watch. But listen, Mac, something else is going on. I don’t know what it is, but one of my secondary search engines is going ballistic on me.”

“What are you coming up with?”

“You know that polonium 210 op you worked on in Mexico? Well, the Bureau’s still searching for the shit because we know damned well that thirty or forty kilos of it got across our border, but nobody’s having any luck.”

“What’s that got to do with this situation?” McGarvey demanded.

“I don’t know, Mac. Honest injun, I don’t. But one of my programs says there may be a connection. And it’s the deepest lavender I’ve ever seen.”

McGarvey had been facing Pak, but he turned away and walked to the window, his thoughts racing over the facts of an incident he’d handled just a few months ago involving a Chinese intelligence general carrying out a rogue operation from his embassy in Mexico City. The general had been desperate for money to maintain a lavish lifestyle he’d become accustomed to, and he’d worked a deal, possibly with Iranian intelligence, to smuggle polonium 210 into Mexico and then get it across the border into the U.S.

Some traces of radiation had been discovered in a motel in El Paso and a truck stop outside of Tucson, but the trail had gone cold. In any event after Mexico City the problem had been turned over to Homeland Security and the FBI, and McGarvey had gone home.

The underlying problem that had not been solved was the source of the money, though almost certainly it had come from the Middle East, probably Iran and possibly even Saudi Arabia.

“Is it the money trail?” McGarvey asked.

“That’s what I’m thinking, but so far everything I’m coming up with points toward Prague. But I’m still working the problem.”

“Let me know as soon as you can,” McGarvey said. “I’m getting the same feeling that all along we’ve been missing something.”