Fires of War (13 page)

Thera snapped open the suitcase. Four cartons of cigarettes sat at the side of the bag.

The man looked up at her expectantly. Thera, guessing he wanted one of the cartons, nodded. The customs official took one, slit open the end, and poured the boxes of cigarettes onto the table. He chose one pack and opened it, again emptying its contents. Then he selected a cigarette.

I should light it for him, Thera thought to herself, but before she could, he had pushed the cigarette back into the box and began to repack the carton.

He put the boxes back and went through the rest of the things. Thera reached into the pocket of her jacket and took out an unopened pack of cigarettes.

“You could have one,” she said, holding it out to the man. “Sir?”

The custom official’s face turned beet red. He shook his head quickly, then, without even looking in her pocketbook, shoved her suitcase to the side and waved the next person toward him.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Thera.

“Go now,” said the man, without looking in her direction.

~ * ~

20

DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA

After talking to Slott, Ferguson spent a few hours lining up new backup hotel rooms and renting cars under a new set of pseudonyms, erasing any connection with the man the Seoul CIA officers had called on. If he’d been operating somewhere else—Cairo, for example—he might not have gone quite so far; it seemed unlikely that they had been followed. But he didn’t know Korea, and the last thing he wanted was to be blindsided here because he wasn’t careful enough.

Running a bit late, he found Guns in the National Science Museum, puzzling out a historical display of Korean weaponry. The captions were almost entirely in Korean, but the marine had a connoisseur’s appreciation of the tools of the trade.

“Better than rifles, huh?” said Ferguson as Guns bent over an ancient sword.

“Not better exactly, but I wouldn’t mind putting it to the test.”

“Maybe later. You have lunch?”

“Like two hours ago at the hotel.”

“Come on and have some again.”

They found a small, inexpensive restaurant about a mile away, took off their shoes, and sat at a low table. A laminated menu hung on the wall next to them. All of the words were in Korean, punctuated by idealized pictures of the dishes that both men had learned from experience had little to do with what they’d actually end up being served. A gas burner sat in the middle of the table; they ordered steak and grilled the raw strips themselves when the dish was brought over.

Ferguson, who hadn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours, wolfed the food down as soon as the meat reached medium rare. He also devoured most of the kimchi and rice. Guns, still adjusting to the spicy food, looked on with a mixture of wonder and shock as the meal disappeared into his companion’s mouth.

“So what’s the next move?” he asked when Ferguson came up for air. “We go in and look for the material?”

Ferguson shook his head.

“OK,” said the marine.

That was one thing about Guns, Ferg thought: He always went with the program. No muss, no fuss.

“So what do we do?”

“Talk to a man about a truck,” Ferguson told him, counting out his money to pay the bill.

~ * ~

his is all you got?” said Corrigan after Ferguson uploaded the photos to him.

“What, the driver isn’t smiling?”

“Jeez, Ferg, these are blurry as hell. I can’t even read the logo on the grill.”

“Get some truck expert to look at it. Once you get the make narrowed down, we can talk to the police, get a list of licenses.”

“Even if we
could
talk to the police, which we can’t,” said Corrigan, “you know how many trucks there are in Korea?”

“Corrigan, stop whining and see what you can find out.”

~ * ~

hile they were waiting for Corrigan to come up with something, Ferguson and Guns drove back to the highway near the waste plant and found a spot to plant two video units, hoping they might spot the truck if it came back. The units were outfitted with miniature hard drives; time-lapse photography let them record for thirty-six hours before transmitting their images to The Cube and starting all over.

Ferguson guessed it would be a long shot that the truck would return. He also had no idea if it was important or not. But he couldn’t stand just hanging around with nothing to do.

They were on their way back to Daejeon when Corrigan called Ferguson on the sat phone, greeting him with a question about what truck model was the most popular in Korea.

“Ford?” guessed Ferguson.

“Hyundai,” said Corrigan. “This isn’t that. You know what number two is?”

“Daewoo.”

“Exactly. This isn’t one of those either. It’s pretty rare,
Namhan Hoesa Teureoka,
South Korean National Truck Company.”

“Very creative. Who owns the truck?”

“I don’t know. They were only made for about two years. This was about a decade back. See, there was this rich guy named Park tried to set up a company to compete with the Japanese and—”

“Whose truck is it, Jack?”

“I told you, Ferg. I don’t know.”

“Have you ran the registrations?”

“I can’t just call up the division of motor vehicles.”

“Why the hell not?”

“For one thing, they’d get suspicious. Slott says we’re not supposed to do anything that will tip anyone off, especially the government.”

“Lie to the Koreans. Tell them it’s a drug thing. Just get me a list.”

Ferguson snapped off the phone.

“Problem?” asked Guns.

“Corrigan still thinks he’s in the army.”

Guns laughed.

They passed a Hyundai sedan whose side had been caved in from an accident.

“Hey, back up,” Ferg told Guns.

“What?”

“I want to grab a picture of that banged-up car. Turn around.”

Guns checked his mirror, then jammed the brakes and made a U-turn.

“What are we doing now?” he asked after Ferguson came back with two digital photos of the car.

“Looking for a police station. We just had an accident.”

~ * ~

erguson reasoned that he was more likely to find a sympathetic policeman in a small town, and so he and Guns got off Route 19, wandering around the local roads. They finally found a likely looking place just outside of Baekbong, where buildings with curved-tile roofs clustered behind a row of two-story stores on the narrow main drag. After brushing up on his Korean with the help of his handheld translator and a phrase book, Ferguson left Guns up the block and went inside.

“I want to report an accident,” he said in Korean, addressing the squat woman behind the desk at the police station. “
Sagoga nasseoyo.”

“Dachin saram isseoyo?”
said the woman.

It took Ferguson a second to untangle the phrase, even though he was prepared for it.

“No, no one’s hurt,” he told her in English, “but my car was damaged.”

“Da-majj-ed

Ferguson pulled out the camera with the picture of the damaged car. “It was a little road near Songnisan National Park, about a mile from the highway.”

By now three other officers had appeared. One spoke excellent English and began acting as translator.

“I need to fill out this insurance paper,” Ferguson told him, waving a form from the rental agency. “I need to find the truck.”

“What was the registration?”

“I’m not sure, but I know the kind of truck:
Namhan Hoesa Teureoka.”

“Namhan Hoesa?”

“Maybe I’m not saying it right. The words mean ‘South Korean National Truck Company.’”

The officer gave him a strange look, wondering how he would know what the words meant if he could not pronounce them properly

“I have never heard of the truck,” said the policeman. “Are you sure it was not a Hyundai?”

“No, I’m positive. That’s why I figured you could help me track it down. Probably it would have damage on it. Couldn’t we search on the computer?” Ferguson stepped around the desk, pointing to the workstation. “For trucks? It’s an odd model—”

Going behind the desk meant passing over the invisible line separating police from civilians and was a major faux pas. The Koreans reacted quickly and fervently, shouting at Ferguson that he must get behind the desk. Ferguson raised his hands and backed away, trying to cajole them into giving him the information, but it didn’t work, and in the end he retreated, probably fortunate that he wasn’t arrested as a public nuisance.

“Didn’t work?” asked Guns when he got back to the car.

“Fell flat on my face.” Ferguson smiled. Then he reached into his pocket for his synthetic thyroid hormones, which he was due to take.

“Pep pills?”

“Oh yeah.” Ferguson dumped two into his palm, then swallowed. They tasted bitter without water.

“Why do you have to take that stuff, Ferg?”

“I never told you, Guns?”

The marine shook his head.

“I don’t have a thyroid,” Ferguson told him.

“Wow. How’d that happen?”

“Birth defect. Let me see if Corrigan has anything new.”

~ * ~

orrigan—or rather the analysts working for him back at The Cube—had managed to come up with a list of the South Korean National Truck Company vehicles registered in South Chungchong Province. As rare as the trucks supposedly were, there were nearly three hundred.

“We’re working on the rest of the country, but this is a start,” said Corrigan.

“I thought you said this was a rare truck?”

“It is. You know how many trucks there are in Korea?”

“We have to narrow it down.”

“There’s about fifty that look like they might have something to do with hospitals or different companies, that sort of thing,” Corrigan added. “They deal with radioactive waste. Why don’t you start with them?”

For once, Corrigan had a good idea. Ferguson hooked the sat phone to the team’s laptop and downloaded the information from an encrypted website. Then they headed to the nearest hospital.

Parked near a small laundry building on the hospital grounds was a trio of trucks. One was a National.

“Wait for me a second,” said Ferguson. He got out of the car and walked over, took a picture of the license plate, and then used a handheld gamma detector to scan for radiation. The needle didn’t move off the baseline.