The Expediter (30 page)

The night was anything but silent, even here at a remote section of the DMZ well east of the hustle and bustle of Kaesong and Panmunjon. Huk Kim, dressed in black camos, had lain in the tall grass one hundred meters out from the barren no-man’s-zone that marked the north-south border since just after nightfall, watching for the change of guard at midnight, and the patrol routine on both sides of the tall razor-wire-topped fence.

Even this far out the squawk of the communications radios in the guard towers, the hardy growl of the Humvees on this side and the Gaziks on the other, and the occasional voice could have guided a blind man. The harsh lights atop the towers lit the one-hundred-meter barren strip of land between the fences that stretched from coast to coast across the peninsula.

It was less than one hundred kilometers as the crow flies from downtown Seoul to the town of Chorwon on the DMZ, and it had taken Kim less than two hours to get here, but it seemed as if she had stepped into another time and place, another world so barren and yet
so filled with danger all she wanted to do was turn around right now and go home.

Soon would be waiting for her at the apartment, demanding to know where she’d gone and why. “What could you have been thinking, you little fool,” he would ask, a puzzled smile on his face. “The tunnel was for getting out, not in. We were going to use it if we got into trouble that night.”

But they
were
in trouble, and the only way she knew to reach him was through this tunnel, one of more than a hundred that crossed under the DMZ, and one of only a sparse handful that were supposedly unknown by the North, and all but forgotten and abandoned by the South because the risk of cave-ins and flooding was considered to be too great.

“Try to put a hundred men with their equipment through there, or worse yet a couple of mechanized vehicles and the roof will come down, no doubt about it,” Soon had told her two days before they’d flown to Pyongyang via Beijing. “But just two people, moving carefully, making no sounds, could get through okay if they had to. But only if they had to,” he’d warned.

An armored personnel carrier rumbled up the dirt road from the direction of the American–South Korean compound and stopped at the observation post. Two soldiers got out and climbed to the top of the tower, while four others entered the fortified bunker on a small rise just before the no-man’s-zone.

Moments later two men climbed down from the tower and the four who had been replaced came out of the bunker. All of them got into the APC, which headed to the next observation post three hundred meters to the east.

It would take the new team several minutes to get settled down for the midnight to 0400 shift, during which time they would be focused outward, toward the North and not checking their rear, which was SOP in case North Korean infiltrators made it through the DMZ.

Keeping low, Kim grabbed her nylon kit bag and backed slowly to a narrow cut in the hill that during heavy rains and the spring snow melt
was a raging stream that flowed down to a wider creek with high mud banks. At the bottom she was hidden from view by anyone watching from one of the observation towers on the DMZ, and from the main road that led back to Chorwon a few kilometers to the southwest.

Shouldering the bag, she hurried along the creek to a stunted tree growing almost straight out of the bank that here was about three meters above the surface of the slowly flowing water.

She scrambled down to the creek, and making absolutely certain that she was alone, shoved the tree up and to the right, taking half the riverbank with it, and revealing a pitch-black hole large enough to accommodate a jeep. Soldiers and vehicles could gain access by coming up the shallow creek, except during the floods.

Kim did not consider herself overly claustrophobic, but she didn’t like the dark, and she especially didn’t like the sounds of running water coming out of the hole.

She took a red flashlight out of a pocket, and shined it through the opening. A sloping gravel-lined ramp led straight back into the hill at a fairly steep angle, but she couldn’t make out a thing beyond a few meters.

A dog barked somewhere in the distance, and girding herself, Kim stepped into the tunnel, pulling the tree that had been fitted with some sort of a swivel base back into place. Suddenly the only noises were those of the running water and of her ragged breath. There was a very strong possibility that she would die down here before she made it under the DMZ and the two kilometers to the exit.

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and started down the slope. There was even more than a strong possibility that Soon would be executed for his part in the assassination. This was a risk she had to take if she had any chance of saving him.

Ten meters in she came to the slowly moving water that looked like swirling black oil in the red beam of her flashlight. Evidently the creek had found a fault line and had eroded the bank to partially flood the tunnel. But there was no way of knowing how deep the water was, or even if the passage was clear all the way to the other side.

She shined the light on the rock ceiling two and a half meters overhead. She wasn’t an engineer but it looked sound to her, although some water was dripping down in places. Every couple of meters it was shored up by heavy wooden beams that also looked solid.

Soon said the tunnel had been abandoned and all but forgotten by both sides because it was far too dangerous.

“Soon,” she said softly, and simply speaking his name out loud gave her strength. “Please help me.”

She stepped into the water and slowly headed farther down the tunnel. The gravel underfoot was slippery and twice she nearly fell, but after fifteen or twenty meters the flow never got any deeper than her waist, and shortly after that the level began to recede until it was only up to her ankles.

The tunnel had been built wide enough to accommodate a jeep and a column of soldiers, that along with the other tunnels crossing under the DMZ could in the time of war allow a sizeable number of men to the other side. But it was a two-way street, and had been from the start. In time of war the North could just as easily invade the South. And either side could set up explosives that would bring tons of rocks crashing down on the heads of the invading forces.

With that thought in mind, Kim slowed her pace, resigning herself to not reach the open air possibly until morning. But it was a thing that had to be done for her husband.

“Soon,” she whispered his name aloud.

It was first light of a hazy morning when the supply boat reached Wonsan, threading its way through a series of islands inside the broad bay. This was North Korea’s major seaport and standing out on deck with Pak, McGarvey counted a half-dozen cargo ships in a harbor that could have easily accommodated five times as many.

“Is it usually this busy?” McGarvey asked.

Pak gave him a sharp glance. “No use taking shots at me because I can’t defend what has become of my country.”

“How do your people feel about what’s happening in the South?”

“Most of them don’t know, or believe whatever they’ve heard is propaganda. Anyway it doesn’t pay to openly criticize.”

“Relatives from the South were allowed to visit at one time. They must have brought stories with them.”

“Yeah,” Pak said, a bitter note in his voice. “Why do you think the border was closed?”

McGarvey leaned against the rail as they came up the harbor past the cargo ships to the military docks, where several small patrol craft were berthed. Farther up the inlet several low-slung concrete buildings, steel doors covering the seaside openings, were heavily guarded. McGarvey picked out at least four gun emplacements.

“Submarines?” he asked.

Pak smiled. “We don’t have strategic submarines. Anyway I suggest that you don’t mention what you’ve seen here until you get home.”

“Our satellites have enough pictures.”

Four navy ratings helped with the dock lines, but neither they nor the crewmen who shoved out the boarding ramp said a thing as Pak
and McGarvey got off the boat. Officially no passengers had been aboard, especially not an American.

“One of our Special Operations Brigades is based here, but I’m sure you know all about that too,” Pak said. “They’re tough boys and they don’t take very well to activities in their backyard that they know nothing about. So we’re getting out of here immediately.”

An old Lada sedan trundled through a security gate at the end of the dock and headed their way.

“Our ride?” McGarvey said.

Pak nodded. “My sergeant, Ri Gyong. He’s a fine man, but he’s like a lot of cops, he looks only straight ahead.”

“Will he be a problem?”

“Not unless you pull out your pistol and discharge it. In that case you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him. He’s a good man.”

“He’s bought the party line, but you haven’t. Interesting mix.”

Pak gave McGarvey another sharp look. “He’s a realist. And as far as he and the rest of my staff are concerned you were never here, and the sooner we can take you back to Japan the happier everyone will be.”

“Fair enough, as long as you understand that my whereabouts are known to a few key people.”

Pak shrugged. “Your disappearance inside Chosun would present us with no greater a problem than we’re already facing. But you’re here to help us.”

“I’m here to find out who killed General Ho and why,” McGarvey corrected. “Don’t forget it.”

The car pulled up and Ri got out. He looked McGarvey up and down but didn’t offer to shake hands. “So this is him.” His English was heavily accented but understandable.

“He’s here at great risk to help us,” Pak said.

“How’s your prisoner? Still alive and in one piece?” McGarvey asked.

“I don’t like arrogant American bastards coming here to tell us our business,” Ri shot back angrily.

“I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t like it either. But I’m here because I
was asked to help. And the sooner I find out what I came to find out, I’ll be out of your hair.”

After a moment or two Ri nodded. “We’re treating him better than he deserves.”

“Then let’s get it over with,” McGarvey said. He tossed his bag in the backseat and got in as Ri got behind the wheel and Pak rode shotgun.

They were waved through the open security gate, which closed behind them, and headed through the city of 300,000 that despite the apparent lack of activity on the docks was bustling. Although there wasn’t much traffic on the roads the broad sidewalks were busy as were the many parks they passed. Banners seemed to be hung from every available light post and government building, and no public park was without a statue of Kim Jong Il or his father Kim Il Sung. Unlike cities in the West, there was no litter along the roadways, nor did there seem to be any grafitti, such things were not allowed in North Korea.

On the way out of the city toward the mountains in the distance they passed a collection of buildings and quads that looked like the campus of a university, young people uniformly dressed in gray trousers and white shirts hurrying between classes.

“Do they teach anything about the West?” McGarvey asked.

“Oh, yes, history is a major subject,” Pak said, and he managed a slight smile. “But it would be nothing you would understand.”

“Is that why you went to school in the U.S.?”

“To know our enemies is to understand how to defeat them.”

“Spare me,” McGarvey said.

“How well do your countrymen know us, Mr. McGarvey?” Pak asked. “When I was in California everyone took me for a Japanese. They didn’t know the difference. And that included the professors.”

“Were you treated badly?”

Pak looked away momentarily, and he shook his head. “No. In fact parts of it were good, even though it was always noisy. I never got used to that.” He turned back. “Obviously America is not going to shrivel up and blow away with the wind, as Dear Leader wishes, but if we are pushed he will use our nuclear weapons.”

Ri said something in Korean, but Pak waved him off.

“It’s a war that we could not possibly hope to win. But no one in the region would win. Not China, not South Korea, not Japan. Perhaps not even Formosa.”