The Korean Woman

by John Altman

The woman had chosen the battlefield that best suited her. She had relied on her enemy’s overconfidence. Dalia had seen it coming—and done nothing to prevent it. And suddenly, their vaunted technological dominance meant nothing.

  “Take her,” she said hoarsely.

  DeArmond nodded.

  “Bravo,” he said into the phone, “apprehend.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Newark, NJ

  A siren whooped behind her, then engaged fully for a moment, howling up, descending in a liquid glissando.

  A strange coolness enveloped her. Somehow, she had not truly believed that this moment would come. But here it was.

  She flicked on her turn signal and eased the Volvo onto the shoulder. Tires rolled to a stop, crunching gravel. An airplane passed almost directly overhead, making a terrific whoosh. To her right, beyond cyclone fencing, copper-colored runways spread like an alien landscape. To her left, traffic sped past. Just ahead, the highway split: north 1-9 to 78 and all terminals.

  In her rearview mirror, a red light spun on a dashboard—another windowless, anonymous van.

  The Volvo’s engine idled. Her hands rested in plain sight on the steering wheel. Nothing to see here, Officers. Just an ordinary housewife. A case of mistaken identity.

  She could do this.

  The van doors opened.

  A few moments passed. Then two men left the vehicle. They wore the same unmemorable white shirts and blue jeans as the “sprinkler inspectors.” She didn’t see guns, but they were no doubt concealed within easy reach.

  The two men were fanning out. One approached on the driver’s side, one on the passenger’s. She might throw the Volvo into reverse, slew backward, spin the wheel, and run down one or both of them.

  Her right hand moved onto the gearshift. She could almost feel the dull thud of vibration that would travel through the chassis, up her arm, when she made contact.

  She hesitated. This was not the kind of thing you could take back.

  And like that, the chance was gone. One man came up beside her window, his carriage easy; not quite smiling, but open-faced, friendly, nonthreatening. She returned her right hand to the steering wheel.

  The one outside the passenger window wasn’t bothering to smile. He was using a high-powered flashlight to look inside the Volvo. Before the light blinded her, she glimpsed medium-length chestnut hair tossing in the wind from passing traffic.

  The friendly one on her left gestured for her to bring the window down. After a second, she complied.

  “Evening,” he said. “Mind stepping out of the vehicle?”

  He could see both her hands, but she could see only one of his.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked.

  “Step out of the vehicle, please.”

  “Can I see some ID?”

  “After you step out.”

  To her right, beyond the fencing, running lights moved. Thunder began to build as turbines roared up to speed.

  She had two choices. She could slam down the gas. They would try to shoot out her tires. Or she could put them further off their guard by leaving the car.

  She opened her door. “Was I speeding?”

  “Step out of the car, ma’am.”

  With courage that felt like clothes she had just stepped into, she left the car.

  She saw that indeed he held a gun, a compact SIG Sauer P229, in his right hand, slightly behind his hip.

  Her body moved of its own accord. She feinted left, then used her own right hand to seize the weapon and twist it back, trapping his finger in the trigger guard. He grabbed her right elbow reflexively. She stepped away, jerking down hard on the weapon, dislocating his index finger, and then twisted savagely.

  The other one was looking at her openmouthed. From the awkward fit of his white shirt, he must be wearing a vest underneath. That made it easier. She aimed the automatic straight-armed across the roof, shaking free the severed index finger. She found center body mass and fired. The trigger had a long, heavy pull. The recoil drove back the slide, feeding the next round and cocking the pistol automatically.

  The man tumbled back. She snapped another shot—shorter, lighter pull—into the leg of the man writhing in agony at her feet. He jolted and cried out.

  Back behind the wheel of the Volvo. Brake lights flared as drivers slowed, trying to process what they had just seen.

  She felt very calm.

  She slammed the door, found drive, and punched it, leaning down, minimizing the size of the target she would present in case of return fire. At the same time, she aimed the gun at the passenger-side window, ready to shoot if the chestnut-haired one got up again.

  But both men stayed down. And nobody inside the passing cars found the courage to stop and engage her.

  The engine revved as she gained speed. Her lips skinned back from her teeth. She bore right: all terminals.

  Langley, VA

  Dalia closed her eyes. Behind the lids, she was fifteen years old, lying on a grassy bank, trailing her fingers in cool water, without a care in the world.

  She had been on her feet for too long. She opened her eyes and looked for the nearest chair. McConnell took her elbow helpfully.

  On the wide view, the red crosshairs were traveling southwest at a good clip. They navigated a tangled double cloverleaf and then, nearing the edge of the window, accessed the wide loop circling the airport terminals.

  In a target-acquisition window, two men on a gravel shoulder struggled to get their feet under them. DeArmond was on his phone again. Sam was typing, always typing. A police bandwidth opened. “Ten fifty-two,” a woman was saying. “Eleven ninety-nine, ten fifty-three.” A crackling response: “Dispatch, this is six-oh-six, I’m ten sixty-one …”

  The red crosshairs reached the edge of the screen—and blipped off.

  Dalia had to sit. She gestured sharply, and McConnell helped her back to the table and eased her down.

  Newark, NJ

  Short-term parking. She paused at the gate to take a ticket, then took the first space, between a Kia Sorento and a Mini Cooper.

  A horn honked, echoing. Headlights splashed behind her. Her hand moved for the gun in the passenger seat, but the car glided on. Nothing to do with her.

  Colors seemed too bright, sounds too loud. Her cheeks were damp. She wiped tears away and turned her attention to the Kate Spade bag. She pulled out a wig. As she straightened it in the rearview mirror, her face remained blank. Only the big dark eyes showed any feeling. Inside those eyes, thunderclouds stormed.

  Latex and makeup thickened her jaw and lips. Contact lenses turned her eyes hazel. She gave her reflection one last check. She looked okay, considering.

  Her coat was reversible. She reversed it. She unfolded a canvas gym bag and quickly repacked. She transferred equipment from the leather bag. She slid the magazine out of the SIG so it couldn’t go off unexpectedly, racked the slide to clear the chambered round and reinserted that in the magazine, then zipped gun and magazine into the canvas bag.

  She put her cell phone in one coat pocket, the battery in another, and tucked the two empty bags beneath the passenger seat. She left the car, chirping the alarm on with the key fob. Thinking only of the next minute. Then the one after that.

  An opaque globe mounted in a corner concealed a camera. Approaching the globe, she didn’t look at it, but she didn’t look away. She did not rush, but she did not dawdle.

  She crossed two lanes of traffic. The terminal concourse bustled with activity: skycaps tagging bags, children crying, smokers smoking, cops patrolling in full paramilitary riot gear. She walked past them all and entered the terminal. She passed more Port Authority cops, police dogs on chain leashes, parents trying to corral irritable children, and clerks wearing tired smiles like armor. Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, Cinnabon, Travelex ATM. Loudspeakers announced arrivals and departu
res, paged personnel, sometimes spat out meaningless bursts of static. None of it seemed real.

  She rode an escalator down, then angled toward Ground Transportation.

  Langley, VA

  “Got her,” said Sam.

  She was leaving the Volvo, walking fearlessly toward the camera. Sam froze the CCTV image. Dalia’s eyes flicked to the time code: eight minutes ago.

  The hair was shorter, the face blunter. The computer scanned the new face, locking in the new nodal pattern. New windows opened: a web of closed-circuit cameras around the airport. They picked her up threading through a crowd on the concourse of Terminal C.

  On the feed, the woman vanished from the concourse. For a floating moment, they had her exactly nowhere. Then another camera picked her up inside the terminal. Wearing a fixed expression, she breezed past canines. She rode an escalator to Ground Transportation. They watched as she considered choices: AirTrain, taxi, shuttle bus, Avis, Hertz, Budget, National, Alamo, Enterprise.

  In other windows, live feeds ran. A private ambulance carrying DeArmond’s wounded operatives was just leaving the shoulder near the tollbooths. The second windowless van was turning into short-term parking, where the abandoned Volvo waited.

  Dalia looked back to the woman, eight minutes ago.

  Song chose Hertz, which had no line, and then disappeared from the field of view. Sam was already typing. A new angle opened. She stood by the desk, wearing a small, polite smile.

  Apparently, the clerk was offering her choices. Song nodded. She made a selection, passing over a driver’s license and credit card. Sam froze and zoomed. The image was blurry and upside down. He flipped and enhanced. The photo on the license matched the new blunt face. The name was Min-Soo Park, the address in Glenwillow, Ohio.

  Yet another window. A digital receipt appeared: Hertz RR T 15256500, followed by 1-800 numbers for roadside service and customer care. Sam had hacked into the Hertz network in the time it took most people to log on to their email. He scrolled down. Rental location was EWR. Rental time was 11:29 p.m.

  Dalia found the cane and levered herself up again. She moved close to the monitor, scanning quickly. Rates, service charge, mileage, fuel tank, taxes …

  Make and model: 2015 Chevrolet Trax LT.

  DeArmond was dialing. “We’ve got her, goddamn it.”

  Newark, NJ

  Song Sun Young climbed into a blue van with white wings painted beneath slanted letters. newark supershuttle. need a lift?

  She found an empty row halfway back on the left. The driver was already closing the door. They pulled out onto the loop, heading toward airport exit—rental car returns.

  Past Terminal C with its strange up-curving roof, as if the building were winged and straining to take flight. Past a road marked loading and unloading only. Past the Hertz lot. She squinted, trying to make out the scene she imagined must be going down. Feds wearing blue jeans and bland white shirts, clustered around a 2015 Chevy Trax, talking on phones and radios, trying to figure out where she had gone. In a room somewhere not far away, they would be poring over surveillance feeds, CCTV, and satellites and drones and spoofed phones. But she had been out of any camera sight lines when she hooked into the ladies’ room. She was 99 percent certain. Ninety-eight.

  She found no strange activity in the parking lot. Maybe they were on the other side of the building.

  Her shuttle was getting on a feeder road, moving faster. She leaned back into her seat.

  They would figure out her bait and switch. And sooner rather than later—their surveillance cameras were legion.

  Assume she made Port Authority. What next?

  Every paranoid thought had been on target. She had indeed been under surveillance at home. In her car. Picking up her kids from school. Everywhere. They had seen her meeting with Walsh. They had seen everything.

  She could not go anywhere she had ever been before.

  She had the NYMEX pass-card data in her bag. Pyongyang might welcome her. They might fete her as a hero. They might lavish her and Man Soo with gifts procured through Office 39, which bought luxury goods from overseas to keep well-connected families supplied.

  Or they might not. They might declare her an enemy of the state for leaving a job half-finished. They might throw her into a labor camp. They might tie her to a pole and shoot her.

  Even if they praised her, welcomed her with open arms—what did Office 39 have to offer? In Pyongyang, luxury meant electricity and warm blankets and fresh fruit. Maybe a DVD player. Nothing compared to the lifestyle she had been living.

  The highway lights streaming past all blurred together.

  One minute at a time. She would stay near New York City. It seemed reasonable to assume that her rendezvous with the contact would be nearby. Pyongyang would want the data delivered with all possible dispatch.

  One minute at a time.

  She looked out the window, and the minute passed. Then another, and then one more.

  Langley, VA

  Two dozen windows crowded the monitor. The largest displayed the most recent image of the woman, at the Hertz desk: short hair, blunt face, hazel eyes, pale coat, canvas gym bag. Other windows showed baggage-claim carousels, taxi lines, AirTrain platforms. The computer scanned faces, counted nodal points, compared with earlier images, found fewer than twenty matches, and scanned again. And again.

  Another window showed Stingray seeking the woman’s phone. If the battery was returned while the baseband chip was in range, IMSI Catcher would find it.

  Two other windows showed green code scrolling against black backgrounds. One was the ongoing effort to decrypt the original message from Pyongyang. The other was a direct interface with the RGB server. Anyone connecting to the server would doubtless use a fabricated IP address. But the computer behind the falsified address would have no reason to distrust the server, and so that computer would receive a virus of Sam’s design, switching on any geolocation function and relaying coordinates directly to this room.

  Other windows conveyed video feeds from state trooper dashcams and NYPD bodycams, and highway tollbooths and airport checkpoints, and surveillance CCTV from the Port Authority—all scanned incessantly by facial-recognition software. Another window scrolled voice-to-text transcriptions from New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York police radio scanners. Every department in the tristate area had received a be-on-the-lookout from the FBI. Upon apprehension, the woman would be held for DeArmond.

  Another window ran ARGUS, sweeping endlessly with Persistics.

  The last two windows showed the work Sam was currently engaged in: following cybertrails left by Bill Walsh and Mark and Mi-Hi Abrahams, seeking red flags, any faint whiff of espionage or criminal conduct, improper or unexplained relationships, debts or addictions. He was also hunting for undiscovered traces of Song Sun Young, at Ansang University or in the files of Interpol or RIPR, the secure coalition network used to convey classified information between the Republic of Korea and the United States, under the name Mi-Hi Pyung, or Park Ha-Soo, or Min-Soo Park.

  For the moment, there was nothing more that Bach could do here.

  Fatigue was a black horse thundering up on him. He could either surrender or be trampled.

  He turned away without calling attention to himself. They would find him if necessary.

  In his office, he composed and sent a new report to the DDO. There was a bright side to the woman’s flight. The development would cut through red tape, speed along permission to bring in the heavy guns.

  He dry-swallowed a dose of pholcodine and lay down on the couch. He shut his eyes, listening to his shallow heartbeat against the armrest.

  Soon, he slept. And again remembered.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  On October 14, 2001, he buried an empty casket.

  Mom had died sixteen years earlier. Dad’s closest friends had all been inside the North Tower.
The service was attended only by Benjamin Bach, a priest, a registrar, and two gravediggers.

  That night he went for a walk. Through the main gates of Columbia and then west to Riverside Park. He sat on a bench. A hundred-odd blocks south, fire still smoldered beneath the pile. When the wind turned, the breeze still bore a hint of that toxic, evil smell.

  He was underdressed in a windbreaker and blue jeans. He shivered, hugging his elbows. He watched F-15s sail in tight circles over the Hudson. He watched Apache helicopters hover before the sinking sun. He closed his eyes and saw bandaged hands, melted badges, the remnants of a firefighter’s helmet. An empty jacket glued to a stretcher by tacky blood. People taking pictures. Why did they take pictures? Did they really think they could ever forget?

  He kept his eyes closed. He heard the hollow raking of his own breath in the canisters of the gas mask, his heart pulsing in his ears.

  He opened his eyes and spat out a gob of yellow-gray phlegm.

  One month after the fact, he was still in Do-mode. Feelings were still locked behind that steel door. Airtight, negative pressure.

  He rose from the bench and strolled back to campus. Exams soon.

  Dad was gone, but life went on.

  * * *

  Two years later, walking past a restaurant in Columbus Circle, he saw two women eating lunch behind a plate-glass window, and suddenly boiled with fury.

  Like normal? he wanted to scream. You’re eating lunch like everything is fucking normal?

  He wanted to grab a trash can and shatter the window. He wanted to seize the women, frighten them, shake them, hurt them, rape them. One was laughing so exaggeratedly that he could see gold and silver fillings glinting in her molars. The other was striking a pose of skeptical amusement, her depilated eyebrows delicately raised.

  He closed his eyes. He saw smoky flame eddying above the towers. Blood-soaked children, ruined ambulances, melted badges.

  If this was a breakdown—if the sealed door inside his mind was finally giving way—the timing could not have been worse. In six days, he would fly to McLean, Virginia, to run the final gauntlet before entering on duty as a case officer with the CIA.