Threat Level Black (16 page)

Kuong asked himself the question over and over: Why had his second pistol misfired when he tried to kill the pilot in Japan?

Kuong thought of the moment again and again as he traveled in the hold of the cargo plane to his next stop in the Philippines. It haunted him, as all his faults haunted him, mocking him again and again even as he vowed to correct it.

Had he lost his nerve? He remembered pulling the trigger twice, then looking at the gun, then firing again.

He remembered it but he couldn’t trust the memory. Why would his pistol misfire?

If the American had not thought to make him get rid of his first gun, he would not have needed his backup weapon. That was cleverness on his enemy’s part. And yet, Kuong had foreseen that possibility, and prepared for it.

Had Fate played a hand? Was it mere bad luck—or something beyond? He could think of no other pistol failing him, at least not a gun that he had cleaned and loaded himself. He had used the weapon a short time before to dispatch the traitor, Dr. Park. Surely it could not have broken or even fouled in the meantime.

Fate, then. Luck: the other man’s. There was nothing to be done about that. Or rather, there was nothing that could have been done at that moment. The man himself would have to be dealt with. To leave a witness—even one who was in the dark about what had taken place—was very dangerous.

Kuong knew the man’s name: Colonel William Howe. He could not be difficult to find, especially in Japan or South Korea. And there were friends in America who could find him as well.

The Muslims could not be trusted with it. They were allies of convenience, and he could not even be sure if they would strike at the proper moment as planned in New York. Their strike would be welcome, but their real use was the money they had paid for the gas. He would not have dealt with them otherwise, and had risked much by simply allowing them to suggest a date and time.

Kuong could take his time. Clearly, Howe did not suspect who he was, and it was unlikely that he had seen the shed or realized what was kept there. The hangar with the two craft would have been obliterated by now in any event, and from past experience Kuong knew that the Americans were too arrogant to decipher the many hints they had of the threat.

He would be patient, as he had been with the traitor. He had been stunned two months before when his aides had brought the e-mail to his attention. The precautions against stealing information from the factory were many, and Kuong had to admit he thought it impossible at first; he did not know Dr. Park personally but it seemed inconceivable that anyone who worked at the factory would betray his country and the Dear Leader in such a way. Obviously the man had been tempted by sex and money, the great vices of the Americans.

Kuong’s first impulse had been to kill the scientist with his own hands. But then his more contemplative nature took over: He realized he might be able to use the scientist to mislead the Americans. He might allow the scientist to pass more information to them that would make them think the weapon wouldn’t work.

And then, with the government collapsing and his avenues of escape closing down, he had an even better idea—more brilliant, more delicious. He had sent Dr. Park to Moscow to add to his legitimacy, intending to have the kidnapping foiled exactly as it had been. Dr. Park—actually, the general himself, with the help of one of his security aides and another scientist—would then send new documents claiming he was angry and had no hope of defecting any longer. But the deteriorating situation in North Korea, and the Americans’ own lust for a traitor, had convinced him to take a chance on using them to get out. Ironically the Americans could accomplish what he could not; he was too well known and disliked by his own country’s army as well as the South Koreans to slip by them. Only the arrogant Americans would assume they were too clever to be fooled.

Kuong had a packet of documents with him: the false ones prepared about the E-bomb, and a story that he was Dr. Park’s coworker prepared in case his identity had been challenged at the airstrip. But they weren’t necessary.

The
o-koan
had predicted they wouldn’t be. The bones had told him that morning luck would come to him…if he could be patient.

It had taken considerable time to punish the scientist for his treachery, but Kuong’s patience had been richly rewarded, not merely with the moment of triumph he felt when he personally killed the pathetic little man, but with this escape. Kuong had used his enemies’ own cleverness against them for a rich triumph. Now he must be patient once more. He would have his revenge against the Americans for destroying his country. And he would remove Howe, the only man who remained alive who might be able to give him away.

It would not be long to wait.

Howe settled his hands on the ends of the chair’s arms, intending to pull himself upright, but somehow he felt too exhausted even to move. He had now told the story of his trip in and out of Korea four times, most recently during a conference call with Dr. Blitz and the defense secretary. He was tired and his head hurt.

But he also realized he was lucky. He could have been killed.

Why hadn’t he?

The CIA agents who had debriefed him had several theories. One was that his passenger felt grateful for his rescue. It was possible, too, that the approach of the small American team and the Japanese security people had scared the men on the ground, or at least encouraged them to move quickly.

Or maybe he was just lucky.

“Colonel, the ambassador wanted to talk with you,” said a young woman.

Howe had been introduced to her earlier but couldn’t remember her name or position now, beyond the fact that she was a member of the embassy staff. Howe pushed out of the chair and her followed down the hallway, his feet sinking deep into the carpet as he walked.

The ambassador was a holdover from the last administration, a political appointee who had turned out to be an extremely popular figure in Asia as well as Japan. A touch of gray at the temples gave his severe face a dignified air; his Montana accent had a slow, dignified beat. He came out from behind his desk as Howe was shown into his study. He clasped Howe’s hand firmly, then gestured for him to sit in one of the armchairs at the side of the room.

“Colonel Howe, thank you for seeing me. I know you’ve been through a great deal.”

“Sure,” said Howe.

“North Korea is falling apart at the seams. More to the point, it
has
fallen apart.”

“Yes, sir,” said Howe.

“Do you have any idea who your passenger was?”

“No,” said Howe.

The ambassador nodded. He was in shirtsleeves, but his tie was tight at his collar.

“I have a theory,” said the ambassador. He took a long pause between each sentence, as if waiting for the words to line up in his mouth. “I believe it was a high-ranking North Korean. That’s not much of a guess. I think it was one of Kim Jong Il’s sons, or some other close relative.”

“Why would he need me to help him escape?”

“Because, with only a few exceptions, he’s hated worse than his father. The units that began the mutiny offered a reward for his capture. And he can’t be located.”

“What about the E-bomb?”

“I think it was merely a ruse to get us interested,” said the ambassador. “If they had that sort of weapon, they would have used it—or
tried
to use it, rather, against Seoul.”

Howe agreed, but when he started to nod, his head pounded.

“The Japanese police are searching throughout the country for your passenger.” The ambassador rose, indicating the interview was over. “The situation is very delicate.”

Howe got up slowly. It sounded to him as if the ambassador was hinting that he shouldn’t talk about what had happened, but if so, such hints were unnecessary. Even if Howe hadn’t been naturally inclined to keep his mouth shut, the incident didn’t make him look particularly good.

“You know, I saw some aircraft in that hangar near the end of the strip where I turned around,” said Howe.

“MiGs?”

“No, they were pretty small. UAVs, I think. Or maybe ultralights.”

“You think that is significant?”

“I don’t know, really.”

“We’ll arrange for a flight back to the States,” said the ambassador, gently touching Howe’s arm.

“Actually, I have my own plane to look after,” said Howe. “What I need is a ride back to the airport. The S-37 is an NADT asset.”

“Yes, of course,” said the ambassador. “You’ve done a very good job, Colonel,” he added. “A very good job.”

Howe nodded, though he didn’t agree.

It was only in the car on the way back to the airport that Howe realized what he’d said—or rather, what he’d thought.

His
asset. He wanted the NADT job. Not for the money or the power, but because it was where he belonged. He had the ability to do it, and the will to do it right.

And it was his duty to do it. Or at least to try.

Blitz could hear the buzz of the press corps in the East Room of the White House down the hall. The President stood next to Blitz, going over the most recent bulletins and handing each page back as he did. The press conference was already running about three minutes late, but that made it early by President D’Amici’s standards.

The President’s press adviser had suggested something less formal, perhaps remarks off-the-cuff as he boarded
Marine One,
the helicopter that flew him around the country. But the President sensed this was a historical moment, and he wanted to use the White House setting to emphasize not only its importance but the fact that America was in control of the situation.

And it was. Almost.

The North Korean army had collapsed. While on paper it was one of the most ferocious fighting forces in the world, the reality had proven considerably different. As American and Korean troops came across the border following the missile launches and artillery strikes, most of the soldiers had fled. Roughly a dozen strongholds remained in North Korean hands, as did the capital and the area close to the Chinese border. But not even the most optimistic Pentagon scenario envisioned such a swift collapse. The remaining units were dangerous, surely, but negotiations were already under way with most of them for a peaceful surrender. The real problem now was to plan for the peace.

The President handed Blitz the last page, then checked his hair in a mirror held by one of his aides.

“Last thoughts?” the President asked Blitz.

“Only that we can’t trust the Chinese.”

“Agreed. But they seem to have been taken by surprise.”

“That’s why we can’t trust them.”

The Chinese had moved two fresh divisions to the border area, saying that they were to help with refugees. There were refugees; nonetheless, the troops and China in general had to be watched very carefully. The President planned on mentioning their involvement as peace brokers in the speech, praising their cooperation and mentioning his three phone calls with the country’s leaders.

“What was the latest with Colonel Howe and the E-bomb plot?” asked the President as one of his aides appeared in the hall, gesturing that all was ready.

“Still trying to figure out who we helped escape,” said Blitz. “The ambassador thinks it was one of Kim Jong Il’s sons.”

“A very good guess.”

“I think it’s Paektu,” said Blitz, meaning the number two man in the security police agency, Hwang Paektu Jang. “He’s the sort who would think this up.”

“Hopefully we’ll find him soon.”

Blitz didn’t answer. With that well-thought-out a plot, he felt it unlikely.

The national security advisor listened to the President’s opening remarks from the hallway. He had to give D’Amici credit: The President managed to communicate his personal vision in a speech meant for the masses. Blitz knew that D’Amici’s model for the presidency was Eisenhower, but in his ability to speak he was closer to Reagan, though D’Amici lacked the folksy, casual touch Reagan could muster without any apparent effort.

Historically, however, D’Amici’s vision seemed more like a blend of Teddy Roosevelt with some Woodrow Wilson thrown in, assuming one could remove some of the naiveté from Wilson’s vision of world peace.

That was probably a bum rap on Wilson, Blitz thought; Wilson’s private papers showed he was hardly naive, and while he’d been snookered in Europe, it would have been difficult if not impossible to get the French to do the right thing after the bloodbath of World War I anyway.

And to be honest, it only became apparent what the right thing was long after that indecisive war.

There were no real parallels, Blitz thought as the President summed up and started taking questions. They were in completely new territory.

Someone grabbed Blitz’s shoulder. He turned around and found the press secretary, who seemed nearly out of breath.

“The AP is reporting that P’yongyang has been declared an open city,” he told Blitz. “The war is over.”

“Now comes the hard part,” said Blitz, walking out to tell the President personally.

“Atropine mixed with oximes. Classic antidote for sarin gas,” said Macklin.

“But no trace of sarin in the basement on anything,” said Kowalski.

“Maybe they were neat,” said Fisher.

“Or maybe they never brought it there,” said Macklin.

“No, they must have,” said Fisher. “The landlady smelled something.”

“Sarin would have made her pretty sick,” said Kowalski. He got up from the table and began pacing at the back of the room.

“She smelled the bleach, most likely,” said Fisher. “He used it to clean up any traces of the chemicals.”

“That’s going pretty far,” said Kowalski. “Not to mention that there might have been a reaction.”

“But there wasn’t,” said Fisher.

“We’ve looked at his phone records,” said Macklin. “He only made a few calls.”

Fisher leaned his head back on the chair. Sarin gas—of which there was as yet no real evidence—represented a serious left turn in the investigation. But left turns were often useful. If you kept turning right, you would end up in the same place you started.

“The landlady’s phone—did you check that?” he asked.

“The landlady?”

“Maybe he cut into her line,” said Fisher. “There’s probably some sort of connection to the Internet, something along those lines.”

“Subpoenaing the landlady’s records isn’t going to make us look very good,” said Macklin.

“She’ll give them voluntarily,” said Fisher. “Just tell her we’re looking for a billing error and rave about her sauce.”

Macklin frowned.

“The problem is, we’re not getting any closer to the E-bomb,” said Kowalski. “This is just a diversion.”

“Maybe there
is
no E-bomb,” said Macklin. “That’s the latest thinking from the CIA.”

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” said Kowalski. “They’re covering their butts because they blew it so badly on Korea. They didn’t realize the country was going to collapse the way it did.”

“What do you think, Andy?” asked Macklin. “Connected to the E-bomb case, or a red herring?”

“Definitely not a red herring,” said Fisher.

“So, what is it?”

“Damned if I know.”

“We got to break this,” said Macklin.

“I agree,” said Kowalski.

“I guess it’s time for desperate measures,” said Fisher.

“What are they?” asked Macklin as he got up out of his chair.

“Time to get a full night’s sleep,” said Fisher.

As a general rule, sleep didn’t particularly agree with Fisher, nor had it ever led directly to any particular insight, much less helped solve a case. But during the eight hours he stayed away, the others followed up a number of possible leads, including Mrs. DeGarmo’s phone bills.

There were calls to an Internet provider, and Macklin was now following up with a subpoena to see if they could come up with data on the account. The intelligence wizards had their fingers dancing on the computer keyboards, trying to pull up data from a myriad of sources.

Fisher stuck to the old-fashioned methods. He signed out the soil bag—just the bag, not the dirt—from one of the heated garages that was serving as the task force’s evidence locker. Then he took Metro North to Grand Central and hopped the subway to Queens, walking to the apartment from Grand Street before exploring the neighborhood back around Steinway. It took three tries before he found what he was looking for: a hardware store that sold Agfarma potting soil.

“I’m looking for someone who bought a bag of potting soil probably about two months back,” said Fisher. The store owner listened as he described Faud Daraghmeh, Mrs. DeGarmo’s tenant.

The store owner shrugged, as Fisher knew he would.

“This guy would have bought a whole bunch of Clorox bottles, probably at the same time,” the FBI agent told him.

“Like a dozen?”

“About that,” said Fisher.

“That I remember. He cleaned me out.”

“How did he carry them?”

“Had one of those two-wheel folding carts. You know the kind? Made two trips.”

“You wouldn’t have a name, would you?”

“You don’t have to give a name to buy bleach.”

“Maybe he used a credit card,” suggested Fisher.

The man went to his computer. His inventory program allowed him to search transactions, and he was able to come up with the date of the purchase: February 23. But apparently he had paid cash.

“There’s a couple of other times—twice, actually—when someone bought a lot of bleach,” said the store owner. “One of them is a credit card. Both in February.”

Fisher took the account number and the dates. There was nothing to tie the credit card transaction to Faud, however, which meant getting a subpoena to check that credit card account was highly unlikely. He walked back to the apartment, hoping inspiration would strike him somewhere on the way.

As usual, it didn’t.

Mrs. DeGarmo had gone to stay with her granddaughter on Long Island. Fisher went first to the detail watching the house from a car across the street and asked for the key and a volunteer.

“Volunteer for what?”

“I want to look for a receipt in some bags,” he told them.

The other detective, who obviously hadn’t seen Mrs. DeGarmo’s pantry, got out of the car.

“Jesus,” said the man when he opened the pantry door. “You sure there’s not a body in here?”

“If there is, it’s not our case,” said Fisher. He went upstairs and was still studying Faud’s closets when the detective came up with a collection of receipts. Unfortunately, they didn’t include any of the transactions involving bleach.

But there was one with the same credit card number.

“Thin,” said Macklin when Fisher showed it to him and laid out the logic.

“Come on. I’ve built whole cases out of weaker links. All we need here is a subpoena.”

“I don’t know, Andy. You sure this isn’t the landlady’s credit card?”

Fisher had naturally checked that first but let the potential slight to his common sense pass without comment.

“Your theory is that he used the credit card twice?” said Macklin.

“My theory is he used it more than twice,” said Fisher. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth checking.”

As it turned out, the credit card had only been used four other times: once more at the hardware store to buy twenty-eight dollars’ worth of mouse poison, once at a nearby florist to buy a forty-eight-dollar bouquet, and twice for cash advances at an ATM.

Much more interestingly, the account had been stopped as the result of an investigation into identity theft by the FBI.

Fisher got a list of other account numbers and transactions and gave it to Macklin, who passed it over to the task force members tracking down the other credit card data. If time allowed, they’d try and run down everyone who had used a phony card.

That looked to be quite some time. There were over a thousand accounts.

“Maybe if we just look at the purchases in New York City,” suggested Fisher.

“That’s still three hundred cards,” said Macklin. “We’ll check them all if we have to, but it’s going to take forever.”

Macklin’s office at the former drug dealers’ home had been one of the bedrooms. It was more than big, probably twice the size of Hunter’s back at FBI headquarters. The only problem was that the drug lords who’d owned the place had, for reasons best guessed at, covered the ceiling with mirrored panels, and Macklin hadn’t gotten around to taking them down. It was difficult to resist the temptation to watch Macklin’s reflection as he spoke; he’d begun to develop a bald spot, and it wrinkled whenever he opened his mouth.

Fisher saw the reflection of his own watch in the mirror. It was after four o’clock.

“I have to get going,” he said.

“Where to?” asked Macklin.

“Buy some flowers.”

Steve’s Florist was located four blocks from Mrs. DeGarmo’s building in a short row of buildings that seemed to be waiting for a demolition crew. The stores themselves, however, seemed busy, and inside the florist shop Fisher found himself at the back of a chaotic line. He drifted toward the back, watching the two clerks as they checked people out and occasionally dashed from the register to the refrigerated area where the flowers were kept. One was a middle-aged woman with bright orange hair and a miniskirt that stopped well above the thigh; the other was a twenty-something male whose white button-down shirt failed to hide a torso’s worth of tattoos. A third man was working in the back, loading up a van for deliveries; he left before Fisher got a look at him.

Fisher got the middle-aged woman.

“So, is Steve around?” Fisher asked.

“Steve?”

“The owner. It’s Steve’s Florist?”

“There is no Steve,” said the woman. “The owner’s name is Rose. She’s only in Monday mornings. I’m the manager.”

Explaining that he was with the FBI, Fisher laid a copy of the receipt and an artist’s sketch of Faud on the counter. The information meant about as much to them as Macklin’s pool on the Final Four meant to Fisher.

“He lived a couple of blocks away,” said Fisher.

“There are a lot of Arab men in the neighborhood,” said the woman, whose name tag read Mira. There was a note of challenge in her voice, as if she expected Fisher to flay his suspect when he caught him.

He wasn’t normally the flaying type, but nonetheless liked to keep his options open.

“I’m not really looking for other Arab men,” Fisher told her. “Just him.”

“Maybe Harry knows him,” said the young man. His name tag said his name was Pietro, though the kid looked Scandinavian, even with his tattoos.

“Who’s Harry?” asked Fisher.

“Works here on Sundays,” said Pietro. He took the receipt and looked at it. “Yup: Look. This was a Sunday.”

“Harry around?” Fisher said.

“It’s not Sunday,” said Mira.

“How old is he?”

“Thirty-five, forty,” said Pietro.

“What’s his last name?”

“Spageas or something like that,” said Pietro. “Something Greek.”

That narrowed it down to three-quarters of the residents of Astoria.

“You have an address or a phone number for him?”

Mira shook her head. Pietro just shrugged. Fisher rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on the paper tacked to the bulletin board behind the counter. But he was standing too far away to see if Harry’s name was listed there.

“So, what would my friend have bought for $48.50?” asked Fisher.

Pietro thought it was probably a small grave bouquet, though the price didn’t quite work out right. Mira had no opinion.

“If you see Faud again,” said Fisher finally, “have him call me.” He slid a business card with a special sat phone number onto the counter, even though he was pretty sure it would be thrown into the garbage after he left.

He was wrong about that. Mira ripped it in half before he made it to the door.