Fires of War (7 page)

The cigarette trick would work.

What if it didn’t?

She needed a new gimmick.

“You must be thinking of a statue,” said Neto Evora, leaning forward from the seat behind her. Evora headed the ground sampling team; he and his crew had spent the day in the recycling area shoveling random half-kilogram piles of dirt into boxes.

“Why a statue?” said Thera.

“Because your eyes seem to see beauty,” explained the Portuguese scientist.

“Thank you.”

“Maybe you’ll have dinner with us.”

“Sure.”

“We’re going into Daejeon and get real food,” Evora added. “We deserve a little reward for all our hard work.”

“I didn’t work very hard.”

“But you deserve a reward anyway,” said Evora, his eyes twinkling.

~ * ~

he reward Evora had in mind was himself. A half-dozen members of the inspection team went to a
noraebang
or Korean karaoke joint, a bar with small soundproof rooms and karaoke machines where groups could sing, party, and dance.

Thera was one of two women with the group, and she found herself the focus of most of the attention. Evora kept pouring her drinks and urging her to sing. Six foot two, he had curly black hair and eyes that seemed to tunnel into hers when he spoke. He had a handsome face and wonderful shoulders, and moved reasonably well on the dance floor. Not as good as Ferguson had but almost.

Thera found herself debating whether she should take him to bed. She decided not to, but later, back in her room listening to her roommate’s snores, she fantasized about the Portuguese scientist, wondering what his arms would have felt like around her, imagining his finger brushing her breast.

Sex was an accepted part of spycraft if you were a guy. Someone like Ferg probably had sex all the time when working undercover.

Not that she knew that for a fact.

Things were somewhat more ambiguous for women. Someone like Slott would certainly not approve . . . Then again he wouldn’t ask, as long as you provided the results.

Evora wasn’t interesting enough to keep her attention, and Thera started visualizing herself retrieving the tags from the site. She began seeing guards everywhere, watching her.

Her mind began to race, unable to stop the permutations of fear multiplying in her brain.

They’d seen her, filmed her already, were waiting to spring it on her tomorrow.

Norkelus knew she was lying about the cigarettes.

She’d be caught in North Korea. She’d be tortured and locked away forever.

Thera tossed and turned in her bed, the sheets and covers wrapped around her, squeezing sweat from her pores. And then the phone was ringing with their wakeup call, and it was time to get up.

~ * ~

10

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

With the president and some of his key advisors away, the West Wing of the White House where Corrine had her office was relatively quiet. This meant fewer interruptions for Corrine, and by four o’clock she was actually caught up on her work or at least as caught up as she ever was. She called over to The Cube to check on the First Team’s Korean operation.

“This is Lauren,” said Lauren DiCapri, the on-duty mission coordinator. “Who’s this?”

The phone system in The Cube would have already identified Corrine, but she told her anyway. “So what’s going on?”

“Nothing. We’re good.”

There was a strong note of resentment in Lauren’s voice; she belonged to the camp that resented Corrine as an outsider and impediment to their jobs.

It was a big camp, and included Ferguson and CIA Deputy Director of Operations Daniel Slott. The arrangement itself was part of the problem. The lines of authority were somewhat hazy and had been so even before Corrine’s arrival. The CIA people who worked with Special Demands answered to Slott for administrative purposes and had to work with him on mission details. The Special Operations people assigned to the First Team— like Rankin and Guns—had two masters, the military and Special Demands, while the Special Forces detachment and its assorted support units had their own colonel, Charles Van Buren.

Until Corrine’s appointment as the president’s
conscience
—McCarthy’s term for her job as his designated representative—Special Demands had basically been run by Ferguson, who, after getting a directive from Slott, worked things out on his own.

Or so it appeared. Corrine had had a devilish time figuring out exactly how the chain of command really did run, and her efforts to insert more oversight, while they had had some impact, probably hadn’t changed things all that much. Ferguson and his people still had incredible leeway once given a mission.

She didn’t want to second-guess them, much less hamstring them, but she did want them to stay within the bounds set by the president. Finding the right balance was incredibly difficult, especially when the people she was supposed to supervise resented her.

“Thera’s still in South Korea?” Corrine asked.

“Yes,” said Lauren tersely

“Well, let me know if anything comes up.”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m not the enemy,” snapped Corrine. But it was too late; Lauren had already hung up.

~ * ~

11

SOUTH CHUNGCHONG PROVINCE, SOUTH KOREA

Thera got up and went into the shower, not wanting to have to wait for her roommate. She let the hot water pummel her face, then backed off the heat until the water sent shivers through her body, shaking away the fear and paranoia she’d stewed in all night. She saw the tags in her hand, saw herself slipping them under the mattress, moving on. It was going to be easy, easiest thing she’d ever done, a piece of cake.

She’d have to take her roommate to dinner, make sure she was out of the way.

Bring her to karaoke with Evora.

Ugh,
if she could stand it. Thera’s head was OK, but her stomach felt as if it had been pushed up into her chest. Too much kimchi.

Done with her shower, Thera dressed and headed downstairs to the coffee shop, where the team gathered for breakfast before assembling in one of the hotel conference rooms and starting out. As she stuck her cup under the spout of the coffee urn, Dr. Norkelus tapped her on the shoulder.

“A word, please.”

Thera finished filling her cup, then took a teaspoon and a small amount of sugar, stirring meticulously before placing the cup on a saucer. Norkelus stared at her the whole time, his expression similar to the look a vice principal might give when calling a student out of study hall for cutting up. Finally he tilted his long nose downward, then swung around and walked toward the exit.

Thera followed, sure she was going to be scolded, though she wasn’t exactly sure why. Had someone seen her smoking with the guard? Or was last night the problem? Norkelus had a puritanical streak. He walked with a gait so stiff it reminded her of some of the Greek Orthodox priests who’d taught her religion when she was young, righteous, sanctimonious old bastards who once made a girl spit out her bubblegum and stick it on her head for chewing in class.

Norkelus went into an empty conference room. Thera nearly bumped into him just inside the door.

“Tony is sick. I’ll need you to compile the logs and e-mail them to New York and the Hague,” he told her.

“Tony’s sick?” Thera managed, caught off guard.

“The UN secretary general wants the briefings. Here are my notes.”

He handed her a small flash-memory card, used by the team’s voice recorders.

“OK, sure,” said Thera. “I’ll get to work on it as soon as I get back.”

“It has to go out by noon, our time.”

“Noon?”

Norkelus tilted his head slightly. He didn’t comprehend her question, or rather why she was asking it. The secretaries weren’t needed on the inspections for anything more than running errands; here was real work that needed to be done.

And besides, she was a secretary; he was the boss.

“It has to be out of here by noon, or they have to get it by noon their time?” asked Thera.

“Our time.”

“In New York, it’ll be, say ten at night.”

“You have an objection?”

“No, of course not.”

“When you’re done, you can help make sure everything is ready for the trip North. We should be back by three.”

“I can go out to the site to help break down the equipment.”

“Unnecessary,” said Norkelus. “Thank you, though.”

Thera tried to think of an excuse, any excuse, to get out to the site, but nothing would come.

“Is there a problem?” asked Norkelus in his coldest you-better-not voice.

“It’s only that it may not be enough time,” said Thera. “To have the report done by noon.”

“I’m afraid it will have to be.”

~ * ~

12

DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA

Ferguson spread the Asian edition of the
Wall Street Journal
out on the table in the Korean Palace Hotel’s restaurant and opened to the editorial page. The editors had decided to denounce the nonproliferation treaty with North Korea, claiming that it was a “poorly worded document more dangerous than hopeful. The fact that inspections have already begun shows how utterly worthless it is; the North Koreans only agreed because they know it has no teeth.”

The editorial writer made a few valid points about the limits of the testing protocols, though it was clear from his overall tone that, in his opinion, nuking North Korea was the only viable way to deal with the country.

Ferg’s sat phone began to ring as he turned the page.

“Batman speaking,” he said, hitting the talk button.

“Ferg, something’s up,” said Jack Corrigan, the desk man on duty in The Cube. “Can you talk?”

“I can always talk, Robin. The question is whether anyone listens.”

“We got a problem, Ferg. Our friend just sent an e-mail to her grandmother telling her she has to stay inside today and work.”

“That’s it?”

“More or less.”

“Don’t tell me more or less,” snapped Ferguson. “Read me the message, Corrigan.”

“But—”

“Read me the message.”

“You want it in Greek or English?”

“Now you tell me, Jack, do I speak Greek?”

“I don’t know what you speak some days,” said Corrigan. “Gram: Hope you’re well. Having a challenging and exciting time in new job. Going to all sorts of places and getting plenty of exercise—I think I’ve lost all the weight your chicken soup put on. Yesterday I got to go out, but today it’s desk work. Even though the sun is shining, I’ll be in all day. Lots of unfinished business. Then there’s a frowny face.”

“Cute. What else?”

“That’s it. What do you think—”

“We’re on it.”