Brittany Pickerel looked around. "I suggest the best thing we can do for Jerry is get to work and keep things moving as smoothly as they would if he were here."
Miss Song nodded her approval.
"An has been working on this radio copy, Duane," Travis Tolliver said. "Want to come over and take a look?"
An Kye-sun, the former reporter, had picked up quickly on the art of writing radio and TV spots.
Duane glanced around with a look of veiled displeasure. "Bring it into my office," he told Travis and walked away.
"I'm going to the restroom, An," Travis said, raising an eyebrow. "Get your stuff and I'll meet you in His Majesty's throne room."
When the Korean rumpled his brow, Brittany grinned. "I think he mean's Duane's office."
An hesitated beside Miss Song's desk until the others had moved on. "What's this I hear about an envelope from Pyongyang?" he asked.
She frowned. "It was for Mr. Hill. I gave it to Jerry. I think he sent it on to Washington. You shouldn't be asking such questions."
He gave her a knowing look. "Yeah, don't talk about the anti-terrorist stuff, huh? Do you believe all that bullshit?"
"You've no cause to talk like that, Mr. An."
"Are you going to tell your Chinese boyfriend on me?" he said. "Rat on one of your own people?"
The look she gave him was cold enough to freeze the blood in his veins. She started to turn back to her typewriter, then reached down to grab her note pad off the desk. He had begun to stare at it where she had written Jerry's instructions to call about flights to Bangkok. Damn the nosy rat, she thought.
When he heard the phone ring in the nearby family room, Burke looked around at the glowing red figures of the timer control unit on the bedside table. Five-ten a.m. He had just contorted himself into a comfortable position after putting a now silent little bundle named Liz back into her crib. It was his turn since Lori had been up earlier with young Cam. A glance at the immovable object beneath the covers beside him showed that his wife, exhausted after a day and night of non-stop mothering, had managed to achieve a state just short of mummification. The ringer had been silenced on the telephone next to the bed, and the sound coming from the room across the way might as well have been at the South Pole as far as she was concerned.
He dragged himself out of bed and slipped his feet into the fuzzy brown scuffs made of kangaroo fur. He padded silently past the matching cribs and across to the family room. As he glanced momentarily at the now-quiet little forms, he realized with a twinge of guilt that he was beginning to question the wisdom of committing to fatherhood at this stage of his life. But he had known when he married Lori that she wanted passionately to become a mother. He would have to accept it as part of the price he had to pay for loving her. Of course, he loved the twins, too. He only hoped he could manage to survive the torment of interrupted sleep until they settled down to a routine of napping through the night.
The thoughts distracted him from consideration of what he might find on the phone at this raw hour of the morning. He was somewhat shocked to hear Nate's voice.
"Sorry to wake you, Burke," he said with a note of apology.
"I was already awake. Just got little Liz back to sleep and in her crib."
"You've got more guts than I have." Nate's voice was filled with admiration. "I love youngsters, but I prefer dealing with the genus grandchild. You can love on them, play with them awhile, then send them home to mother and dad."
"I can sympathize with that. But you're up mighty early today. What's going on?"
"Bad news, I'm afraid."
"Oh, God." Burke sighed, frowning. "What now?" After the death of Captain Yun and Jerry Chan's artery problem, more bad news was about as welcome as a new strain of bacteria in an operating room.
"Duane Elliston called a little while ago. Jerry Chan just spent six hours in surgery. He had five blocked arteries, including the two big ones in front and back of his heart. They were ninety-five and ninety-seven percent blocked."
"Damn!" Burke dragged it out into two syllables. "Is he okay?"
"According to Duane, the doctor says he should be as good as new. Or better. But he'll be in the hospital at least a week, probably out of commission a couple of months."
"Right at the crucial point of this operation."
"Exactly. Duane is the only one there who could take over, but I'm a little hesitant to saddle him with this complex predicament. He doesn't know all the facts and where all the bodies are buried."
No, not Duane, Burke thought. Not when we're on the verge of nailing down the elusive character who's responsible for all this. "I'll go," he said. It was a gut reaction, with no thought given to the consequences.
If he read anything into it as a rejection of Duane's fitness for the job, Nate gave no indication. He said, "Thanks. I appreciate your willingness to make the sacrifice. This is a terrible time to ask you to go, but the President suggested I send you."
"The President said that? When did—?"
"I called General Thatcher right after I talked to Duane. Thatcher was giving an early briefing just before the President left for Andrews. He's flying to London for a quick visit. With less than three weeks until that test date, the President wanted to know how close we were to tracking down the final answers. When I told him the situation, he said, 'Why don't you send Burke Hill?' He's got a lot of confidence in you."
For a brief moment after he had hung up the phone, Burke sat in the recliner, his favorite reading spot, and basked in the warm glow that came with knowledge of the President's trust and confidence. And then the enormity of the decision he had just made so flippantly began to sink in. He walked into the kitchen, opened the cabinet at the end of the counter and pulled out a canister of filter packs. Dropping two of them into the plastic basket, he poured water through the grating in the top and switched on the coffee maker. He was attempting to concentrate on the simple act of making coffee, but his thoughts kept getting in the way.
It was a good thing he kept his pistol locked away in a drawer upstairs. When she found out what he had done, Lori would kill him for sure. The twins wouldn't be two weeks old until tomorrow. Christmas was less than two weeks away. And here he had volunteered to pop up and fly off halfway around the world to Korea. Then he would have to make the trip to Chiangmai, and God knows what he might encounter there.
He heard a rustling noise and looked around to see Lori shuffling through the doorway, hugging her bare arms close to her chest. He marveled at the way she had regained her trim figure after months of bulging like a plastic grocery bag full of cabbage heads. She blinked her eyes like two large question marks.
"I thought I heard somebody talking. Have you been on the phone?"
He nodded. "It was Nate."
She waited in silence as the coffee maker stopped its gurgling. "That's all? Just 'it was Nate?'"
He sighed, took a mug off a hook and poured the coffee. "Want a cup?" he asked.
"I think I'd better," she said.
There was a serving bar that opened between the kitchen and the family room. It had stools on both sides. He placed her coffee on the bar and took one of the stools.
She sat down beside him and pulled the cup toward her. "Okay, Mr. Hill. Out with it. What's the problem?'
"Who said there was a problem?"
"Any time you act this way, there's a problem. What did Nathaniel Highsmith have to say?"
He shrugged and sipped at his coffee. "Duane called. Jerry underwent six hours of heart surgery. Five bypasses."
"My God," she said in a hushed tone. "How is he?"
"He'll be in the hospital at least a week, probably out of the office a couple of months. The doctor says he should be in great shape after he gets over the surgery. He can still run if he wants to. Do everything he did before."
"And Nate is sending you back to take his place?"
He couldn't bring himself to admit that he had volunteered. "He said he realized it was terrible timing
, but the President suggested that I go."
Frowning, she said in a sarcastic voice, "Well, now, wasn't that generous of him?"
"This investigation is at a critical point, Lori. If it isn't resolved by the end of the month, all hell could break loose. We can't take any chances now. Which means we can't leave it up to Duane. Anyway, as Nate pointed out, I'm the only one who knows all the facts, where all the bodies are buried. It looks like I don't have any choice."
She twisted the cup in her hands, as though attempting to coax forth some bottled up genie that might intercede in this madness. "I don't want you to go," she said. "You belong here with Cam and Liz and me, especially now. Tell Nate to send someone else."
He gave her a pained look. "There isn't anyone else, Lori. There isn't time to bring someone else in cold." He hadn't told her exactly what was at stake in this operation. He decided it was time. "You know what Ben Shallit told us in Budapest. What he didn't know was the real urgency of the situation. South Korea has built a bomb. They plan to test it in about three weeks. Unless we can find the man responsible for what's going on and somehow bring him to his senses, the whole Far East could be thrown into turmoil. Needless to say, when a major region like that gets pneumonia, we'll suffer the chills and the fever."
"I still don't like it," she said. "I'm scared. You believe that Korean killer got to Captain Yun. If he doesn't already know you were Yun's contact, he probably will soon."
He tried to reassure her, and himself. "Not necessarily. Anyway, I can take care of myself."
"I'm sure the Captain told his wife the same thing. You said yourself the man is probably the most dangerous assassin in the world today. I have the greatest confidence in you, Burke. In your ability to unravel complex schemes and match wits with the best of them. But let's face it, in a physical encounter, you'd be no match for a man like that."
He couldn't argue that point. But his voice softened as he recalled a poignant moment at the hospital. "The other day, when I first saw the twins through the nursery window, I thought about what kind of world they might have to grow up in. It made me realize that what I was involved in wasn't just a job. It wasn't just a game of matching wits, either, or just a struggle between competing governments. I felt it on a personal level, as a way I could really make a difference to our kids' future. Be part of an effort to create a more peaceful, more rational kind of world that will allow them to reach their potential without fear as a driving force. You see my point, don't you, Lori? If I duck out on this now, I'd be letting them down. A guy has to do what he can."
A large tear trickled down her cheek. She looked across at him with torment in her dark eyes. "I don't want to lose you, Burke. I know, I'm selfish. I'll just have to live with that. But if I were to lose you, I'd be losing a big part of myself. I remember Grandmother Szabo telling me how we had made her much more than what she was before we came. She said what we are is not so much what we make of ourselves, but what our friends and our loved ones cause us to become. When we lose somebody close, a part of us is chipped away. The more important they are, the greater we're diminished. Lose all and you become nothing. She said that's what happened to prisoners under the communists, or to anyone who's a prisoner of his own mind. I like what I've become with you and our family, Burke. I don't want to be changed."
He reached across to take her hands in his. "Jerry can tell me how to find the guy I need to see in Thailand. He should be able to clear up the whole thing. Then it'll just be a matter of confronting the guilty party with all the pressure we can bring to bear." He knew he was oversimplifying, but he mustered all the sincerity he could bring to bear when he said, "'I'll be back for Christmas. That's a promise."
Chapter 58
Nate Highsmith stuck his head in Burke's office around 3:30. "Kingsley Marshall wants to see us out at Langley. Bring your bags along. Somebody from the Agency will get you to the airport. We're to meet our contact in a garage around Dupont Circle in twenty minutes. I'll see you downstairs."
He was booked on an early evening flight and had already gone through a tearful farewell with Lori. He stuffed what he needed in his briefcase, grabbed the two hefty bags that sat beside the door and walked out to Evelyn's desk. His assistant carefully pushed an errant blonde lock back in place and gave him a puzzled look.
"It's a bit early yet, isn't it? You taking a slow boat to Dulles?"
Burke grinned. "Nate and I are due for a little command performance at Langley. If anyone asks, we're checking in with a client before he takes me to the airport."
"Got your Christmas shopping done?"
He frowned. "Are you kidding? I haven't had time to think about it."
"Then take my advice, Mr. Boss Man. Give it some thought and let me know what you want when you call in from Seoul. I'll see what I can do for you."
"Thanks. You're a lifesaver, Evelyn. What would I do without you?"
"That you don't need to think about. Have a safe trip."
He hurried out to the elevator and punched the button for the garage level. He found Nate waiting beside the sleek, blue Lincoln. Burke shoved his bags into the back seat, and they headed out into the afternoon traffic. It was a cold, clear day, and pink-cheeked Washingtonians were rapidly gearing up for the holidays. With Congress already adjourned and nobody looking over their shoulders, the higher-ups and lower-downs of the bureaucracy had begun an unconscious slowdown that would grind the wheels of government to a virtual halt by Christmas Eve.
Nate wheeled into the parking garage and circled down one level to a designated parking slot. Just as Burke was retreiving his bags from the back seat, a long black limousine pulled up behind Nate's car and stopped. The heavy rear door swung open and a familiar face smiled at them.
"Just stuff your bags in here, Mr. Hill," the trim, dark-haired young man told him.
Burke shoved his bags toward the front and climbed in after Nate. He recognized their host as one of General Palmer's assistants, a man with the height and the lithe moves of an NFL wide receiver. He had been introduced only as "George," which could have been one of several pseudonyms used by CIA officers.
The limousine with its tinted windows looked no different from the dozens of others that whisked government officials and VIPs around the capital. While George carried on a meaningless conversation with Nate, Burke watched in admiration as the driver, a tall, black man with large, powerful hands, skillfully maneuvered the stretched-out vehicle through the late-afternoon traffic. They sped about the area on several false tracks before heading across the Potomac and onto the parkway toward Langley. Burke caught George taking occasional glances through the rear window. Apparently he had detected no surveillance.
Normally, the CIA Headquarters was completely swallowed up by the forest of green that surrounded it. But with the leaves gone from the trees, Burke could make out the indistict lines of the building as they glided off the parkway. They stopped at the ten-foot-high fence for the guard to check their credentials, then drove back into the compound. Instead of using the main front, or "public," entrance, they entered through a doorway used by those who preferred a more anonymous approach.
George escorted them to the Director's seventh floor suite. When Kingsley Marshall welcomed them into his attractively furnished office, they found his two chief deputies, General Palmer, the DDO, and Jarvis Breedlove, the DDI, seated at a small conference table.
"I believe you all know each other," said the Director of Central Intelligence. "We don't have a lot of time if Burke's going to make his flight, so let's get on with it."
As he took his seat at the table, Burke glanced over at two framed color photographs on the wall. One showed a sleek, brown mink posed alertly beside a mountain stream. The other pictured a black bear standing on his hind legs, reaching high into a tree to claw at the bark, like a hunter blazing a trail. They were just two of thousands of frames he had shot during his five years as a nature photographer in the Smokies.
Breedlove took several pri
nts out of a large envelope and handed them to Burke. "Here are the two people you're interested in. I thought the digitizers did a pretty fantastic job."
Burke spread them out, close-ups of the faces and full-length shots to show the relative size of the two young men. The one identified as Young Tiger Lee was much taller than his friend. He had a handsome face with just a hint of a smile. Ahn Wi-jong appeared in a bit of a quandary, evidently not too sure he wanted to be photographed that day.
"The photography people estimate the picture was made around 1940," Breedlove added.
"That squares with the information in Dr. Lee's book," Burke said. "I agree. These are fantastic. If I can't find Ahn Wi-jong in Thailand, maybe I can locate some oldtimers in Seoul who could identify our Young Tiger."
"Burke plans to fly to Chiangmai the first thing and look for Ahn," Nate Highsmith said.
"Do you know the territory?" Marshall asked.
"No," Burke said. "But Jerry Chan should be in shape to fill me in by the time I get to Seoul. He worked in Chiangmai with DEA a few years back."
"We have a couple of new pieces of information you should be aware of," said the Director, opening a folder in front of him. "First, our overhead imagery has finally confirmed the new missile. They literally took the wraps off of it, giving us a perfect profile." He passed copies of the satellite image to Burke and Nate. "It's too damned close to our cruise missile to be a coincidence. Undoubtedly those Korean-American engineers who migrated back had a big hand in it. Not to mention the computer thievery you uncovered, Burke."
Nate studied the missile closely. "Apparently they're about ready to give it a try."
"That's confirmed," said General Palmer. "The South Koreans put out the word today that they plan to fire a test missile January first. A little New Year's Day pyrotechnics."
Kingsley Marshall nodded. "The impact area will be in the Sea of Japan, about a hundred miles east of Ullung-do. That's a small island some hundred and sixty miles off the Korean coast. They made no mention of a warhead, or a nuclear test, however."
The Poksu Conspiracy (Post Cold War Political Thriller Book 2) Page 38