Fires of War (29 page)

“You Colonel Rankin?” said the first man.

Rankin, who was wearing civilian clothes, snorted, but decided not to correct him. “Yeah, I’m Rankin.”

“You got a prisoner?”

“He’s not a prisoner; he’s a defector.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant. I’m Gabe Jiménez. This is John Rhee. He’s a Korean language specialist.”

“OK.”

“Can we get goin’? I’m freezin’ my nuts off here,” said Jiménez.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Rankin said, turning to the ensign to show them the way.

~ * ~

he touch seemed to come from the other side of the world. It pulled Tak Ch’o from a deep sleep, almost as if he had been ripped from the womb. He woke startled, unsure where he was.

“Sir, there are some people who would like to see you,” said the young man standing over him. “I brought some tea. I can get you some breakfast.”

Ch’o stared at the sailor.

What had happened to the IAEA people? Why was he on a military ship?

“I have some fresh clothes, sir,” said the man. He pointed to a set of Western-style khaki pants and shirt on the desk. “If they’re not your size we’ll get you some. Some slippers and socks as well.”

Ch’o nodded slowly.

“Are you all right, sir?” asked the sailor. “Sir?”

“Yes.” Ch’o’s voice sounded thin and weak, even to him.

“I’ll just be outside when you’re ready.”

The sailor, who knew nothing about the Korean scientist except that he was to be treated with the greatest respect, smiled and went out to wait for him in the narrow hall outside the cabin.

Ch’o put his hands on the clothes. As he did, a heavy sense of doom gripped him.

What had he expected? He thought the girl would be there, the other scientists he had met. Not soldiers.

He’d seen the world; he knew America wasn’t in charge of everything. They didn’t run the IAEA or the UN.

But here they were.

What should he do? All his life, Ch’o had heard that the Americans were evil incarnate, the enemy not just of his country but of the entire world. And now they had him.

They’d been kind last night. But of course they would be—it was a trick.

The enormity of what he had done paralyzed Ch’o. He’d always been a logical man, but now his emotions overwhelmed him. He thought of his ancestors’ graves, never to be tended again.

Their spirits will turn their backs on me, he thought. I’ve shamed them and cut myself off from my family.

He sat back on the bed, unable to move. After a few minutes, the sailor outside cleared his throat.

“Sir?”

Ch’o stared at the wall in front of him. Perhaps if he stared long enough, he would slip into a hole where nothing he did mattered any more.

~ * ~

ankin found Ch’o sitting motionless on his cot, exactly as the sailor had described.

“Sir? Mr. Ch’o? It’s Stephen Rankin. I’m the guy that picked you up last night.”

Ch’o didn’t respond. He barely heard the words.

“These are some friends of mine. They can help you,” said Rankin, gesturing over his shoulder. “All right?”

It was like talking to a wall.

John Rhee, the Korean language specialist, took a try, telling the man that he was among friends and would feel better after he had something to eat. His valuable information would not be wasted, added Rhee; he would be rewarded by the U.S. government.

Ch’o winced.

“We’re friends,” said Rhee. “We can help you.”

Ch’o shook his head. That was the most Rhee got out of him.

“Did you have a doctor look at him?” asked Rhee outside the cabin.

“Last night,” Rankin told him. “He was tired and cold, but he said he’d be fine.”

“You better have him take another look. Guy’s catatonic.”

“Yeah,” said Rankin.

“We can break down his resistance,” said Jiménez. “Soften him up and—”

“You aren’t breaking anything down,” Rankin snapped. “This guy is a defector, not a prisoner. Something’s wrong with him. He’s sick or he’s in shock or something.”

“Relax, Colonel. All I mean is, we’ll get him to talk to us. I’ve dealt with this before.”

“Leave him alone until I tell you different,” said Rankin, going to find the doctor.

~ * ~

4

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

“The defector’s name is Tak Ch’o,” Corrigan told Corrine and Slott over the scrambled conference line. “Scientist in the nuclear weapons program for at least twenty-five years. Expert on handling by-products and, when he was younger, was probably involved in extracting weapons-grade plutonium.”

“What do you mean, ‘probably’?” asked Corrine.

“There are some significant gaps in our knowledge of the North Korean weapons program,” said Slott. “Someone like Ch’o, who wasn’t in that first top tier a few decades ago, we’re just not going to have a lot of information about what he did then. Not readily.”

“We’re still digging in,” added Corrigan. “This is just a preliminary report on him from Thomas Ciello, our analyst guy.”

“What’s Ch’o done lately?” Slott asked.

“He seems to have been doing a lot of things with waste and byproducts. His name pops up in a couple of places where there’s concern about radiation leaks,” said Corrigan. “We have intercepts going back to the 1990s.”

“Do they have anything to do with a bomb project?” asked Corrine. She reached for the yogurt container at the far end of her desk, her belated lunch.

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Corrigan.

“We’ll know more when we debrief him,” said Slott. “Even if he’s no longer involved in the weapons program, what he knows of what happened in it would be invaluable. And of course he can tell us what’s going on at the P’yŏnpan Province site.”

“Is this going to affect Thera?” Corrine asked.

“As a precaution, we should remove her from the program,” said Slott. “But this was worth it,” he added. “Ch’o is potentially an important prize. We’ll recruit someone else to check the tags now that they’re planted.”

“The North Koreans haven’t reacted yet,” added Corrigan. “The NSA is monitoring it. Ch’o hasn’t said anything yet. He seems a bit overwhelmed by the ordeal.”

“How so?” asked Corrine.

Slott explained that it was not unusual for defectors to have second thoughts or even suddenly freeze once they escaped; as many as twenty-five percent suffered post-traumatic stress.

“We have a psychologist en route,” said Slott. “We’ll let him unwind on the ship awhile, then fly him to the States. It may be a few days.”

“Is our Seoul office involved?”

“No,” said Corrigan. “I’m keeping the First Team operation departmentalized.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Corrine wasn’t sure what to say about Ferguson and his suspicions. She’d have to at some point, but at the moment she wasn’t sure exactly what to say. She changed the subject. “Do we have any more information on the South Korean plutonium?”

“Nothing new,” said Corrigan.

“OK, then,” she took a quick spoonful of yogurt. Her computer’s automated scheduler beeped at her; she was due at a meeting in five minutes. “Anything else?”

“No,” said Slott, signing off.

~ * ~

lott ignored the blinking yellow light indicating he had another call as he hung up from the conference call. Corrine Alston’s remark about his decision not to tell Seoul had seemed offhand at the time, but now as he thought about it, he wondered at her tone.

Would she have suggested that Seoul be kept out?

Never mind that he had already made the decision, or that he had his own doubts about Ken Bo. To have Corrine telling him what to do in an area that did not involve Special Demands—that was just too far. Too, too far.

Bo’s BS theory was beside the point.

Or a separate point, anyway.

Was she telling him what to do? Or was he just being overly prickly?

The latter.
But. . .

But…

Should he tell her what Bo was up to?

It wasn’t her business, was it? Not yet, anyway. Bo had only said that to him.

He’d make it clear what was going on when it was relevant. When he was sure. Or rather, when there was more information about the plutonium.

In the meantime . . .

He reached for the blinking button.

~ * ~

5

DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA

Ferguson and Sonjae stepped out of the elevator into a brightly colored hallway on the thirty-seventh floor of the high-rise apartment building. Sonjae paused for a moment, gathering himself.

“Nah, just jump right in,” said Ferguson, leaning in front of him and knocking on the door.

A middle-aged woman pulled open the door, a perplexed look on her face.

“Excuse us for bothering you this early, ma’am,” said Sonjae in Korean. “We were looking for Professor Kang Hwan.”

“Hwan?”

“A friend of ours,” said Ferguson in English.

“There’s no Kang Hwan here,” said the woman. “We live here.”

“What is it?” asked a man in a business suit, coming around the corner behind the woman. “What is going on?”

While Sonjae struggled to explain that he was looking for Hwan, Ferguson strolled across the hall to the next door. He knocked twice, then stood waiting with a big smile on his face.

A twenty-something woman answered.

“I was trying to find a friend of mine, Dr. Kang Hwan,” said Ferguson in English.

“Hwan?”

“Yes. Do you know him? I’m from the States.”

Her face began to cloud.

“Problem with my English?” asked Ferguson.

“He . . . He’s dead.”

Ferguson feigned surprise. The woman, whose English was fairly good, said he had passed away a few months before.

“How did he die? When?” said Ferguson.

The woman shook her head.

“He was young.”

The woman started to close her door. “How did he die?” said Ferguson, putting his hand out to keep the door from closing.

By now, Sonjae had extracted himself from the couple who’d taken Hwan’s apartment and come over.