by Larry Bond
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to monopolize the conversation,” said Franklin, suddenly cutting himself off midsentence. He turned to Corrine. “Ms. Alston, what do you think about the Koreans? Can we trust them?”
“I don’t really have much of an opinion on trust,” she said. “And in any event, my opinion would be the same as my client’s.”
McCarthy started to laugh.
“What brings you to New Hampshire, Ms. Alston?” asked Congressman Caren.
“I have a few things to go over with the president,” she said, “and since he couldn’t come to me, I came to him.”
Caren nodded. He suppressed a smile, as if he were afraid his oval egg of a face would crack.
“I haven’t been to your state in a long time,” added Corrine. “It’s beautiful in the fall.”
“You should have seen the trees a few weeks ago. It is pretty, though. But chilly, very chilly.”
He could have been describing the temperature in the limo for the ten minutes it took to reach the hospital where the president was scheduled to meet with staff and patients before meeting with a doctor who had won a humanitarian prize for helping wounded children in Iraq. McCarthy picked up the phone just as the limo arrived; the others, sensing not only that the president wanted to be alone but that they would have a chance at giving exclusive interviews to the media, got out quickly.
“Just a second, Corrine,” said McCarthy. He asked the person on the other end to connect him to Senator Freely, then looked at her. “Assistant Secretary Franklin is here to accept an award from his alma mater this evening. I thought it would be useful to have him nearby; hold your enemies closely, as the philosopher once said.”
“Josh Franklin is an enemy?”
“Only of late and only with respect to Korea,” said McCarthy. “A slight difference of opinion. We can tolerate that. Sometimes I even disagree with you.”
Senator Freely picked up on the other end. McCarthy asked him how he was, how his family was, how his grandchildren were, how his constituents were.
“Now by and by, Lawrence, are you coming back to Washington for the treaty vote? It will help us get a great many other things done, both in that region and elsewhere. . . . Well I do appreciate that, I do. Yes, I share your concerns. They are serious concerns. Nonetheless . . .”
Corrine watched the president listen to the senator. Like all the great politicians, McCarthy had a remarkable ability to make the person he was speaking to believe that he or she was the only person in the world he wanted to be with at that moment.
“Senator Tewilliger and I have been discussing your very point this morning,” the president told Freely. “Your very point. We both have concerns, but we feel they can be dealt with. Yes, Senator Tewilliger, though I can’t pretend to say I know which way he’ll vote. . . . Yes, he is a very accomplished senator in that regard.”
McCarthy bantered for a few more minutes, then hung up the phone.
“Still on the fence. They’re probing for weakness,” McCarthy told her. “Freely was in favor of the treaty six months ago.”
Corrine nodded.
“I would like to see what treaty they could obtain, that would not cost us any blood or gold, but they don’t see the big picture,” added McCarthy. “Now, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“We’ve found nuclear material in South Korea. The same isotopes that we were looking for up North. Plutonium weapons-grade material.”
The president stared at her for a few seconds, genuinely surprised.
“Do they have a bomb?” he asked finally.
“I don’t know, Jonathon. It’s a possibility. We’re trying to track it all down.”
McCarthy folded his arms and stared straight ahead. “Not the best timing, dear.”
Corrine couldn’t argue with that.
“Has the IAEA inspection team found it?” added the president.
“No. It was at the waste site, near or in an area where low-level waste is ordinarily stored. They didn’t take samples from that area, and we don’t believe that what they did take will detect it. But of course we won’t know that until they get back and run their tests in a week and a half,” said Corrine.
“Right before the Senate vote.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you think North Korea would do if they found out that their brothers on the other side of the border had their own nuclear weapon?”
“The State Department would be in a better position to answer that.”
“Oh, I don’t think we need the State Department to know that the hound dog will bark when the fox slithers into the barnyard. Do you, counselor?”
Corrine shook her head.
McCarthy frowned, then reached for the door to the limo.
“What do you want me to do, Mr. President?”
“I want you to find out what’s going on, dear. If South Korea has a weapon, I want you to find it. I want you to be very quiet about it, but I want you to proceed very quickly. Very, very quickly,” said McCarthy, getting out of the car.
~ * ~
~ * ~
1
P’YŎNGAN-PUKO (NORTH P’YŎNPAN) PROVINCE,
NORTH KOREA
After taking them on a brief bus tour of the capital—the giant statue of the Great Leader was a special highlight—the North Koreans escorted the inspection team some ninety miles northward, installing them in a school dormitory about three miles from the waste plant.
The accommodations were not exactly deluxe; even the senior scientists found themselves sharing rooms barely big enough for the bunk beds that dominated them. Their hosts did not intend this as a slight; the quarters were the best available in the area. The military leaders who had met them—General Namgung, the commander of the armed forces in the capital area, and General Woo-suk, an official with the strategic weapons division—hosted a lavish dinner that lasted well past midnight, as toast after toast was offered to the visitors and their mission.
The next morning, the inspection team was presented with an elaborate breakfast featuring a variety of foods from around the world. Besides fried eggs and Korean-style pancakes filled with fruits, vegetables, and even meat, there were Western-style dishes, including bacon, potatoes Dauphine, and cheese Danishes. For a country where perpetual famine was a fact of life, the spread was obscenely impressive.
The provincial governor and some of his deputies sat at the head table with Dr. Norkelus. Thera, sitting across the room with her roommate, Lada Rahn, watched for a while as he tried to make conversation with the help of the translator. It clearly wasn’t getting far, but it was better than she was doing with Lada, who spoke English fluently with noticeable haughtiness; the syllables practically had ice dripping off them.
Thera’s adventure with the cigarettes in South Korea had given her a new status as the team’s bad girl, eliciting the interest of not only Evora but also many of the other male inspectors. This was charming in a junior-high-school kind of way: About midway through breakfast Evora came over to check on her coffee, asking if she needed a refill. She had no sooner given him the cup than another man, this one arguably the world expert in uranium isotopes, sprung up and galloped across the room, pointed at her plate of half-eaten toast, and asked if she would care for a fresh piece. She turned him down as politely as she could; as he left the table he shot Evora a glance several times more radioactive than anything they were likely to find today.
The attention continued as the team loaded up for the trip out to the site. Thera turned down several offers of rides and got into her usual truck with Julie Svenson, about midway in the pack.
“You’re awful popular today,” said Julie.
“They’re all looking for free smokes,” said Thera, buckling her seat belt.
~ * ~
T
hera’s light mood held all the way up the twisting, rutted road to the waste plant. Then at the gate panic grabbed her by the throat. Foreboding welled inside her. She
couldn’t shake the thoughts of what would happen if she were captured, as if the idea of being tortured was fluid choking her lungs.
She knew, absolutely knew, she would fail.
Four or five men with submachine guns watched the bus and trucks pull to a halt in the center of the compound.
They were going to shoot her.
Thera forced herself to her feet. She started to slip as she came down the steps. A man extended his arm outside the bus. She reached forward and grabbed it, holding tight, supporting herself, afraid that were she to let go she would melt into the ground.
“OK?” said the man. His English surprised her.
“I guess.”
“Nervous because you are in North Korea?”
“No. Just need a cigarette.” She looked up at him and smiled.
He smiled back. In his late forties or early fifties, he was about her height though considerably heavier. His temples had turned silver, and he had a perfect smile, his teeth radiant in his mouth.
“Cigarettes are bad for your health,” he told her.
“Everyone needs some bad habits.”
He smiled and wagged his finger at her, as if he were a kind uncle.
His finger brushed away enough of her fear to let her walk again. The paranoia retreated to her chest, hiding in some secret chamber of her heart as she joined the others for the introductory tour.
The layout of the plant was almost meter for meter the same as that of the site in South Chungchong Province, South Korea. There were fewer video cameras and slightly more soldiers outside the gate, along with a pair of very old tanks near the fence, but the buildings themselves were in precisely the same locations. The vegetation was browner, but the buildings were just as bright.
The North Korean officials were more long winded than their counterparts in the South, perhaps because they felt it necessary to insert the praises of the Great Leader into every other sentence. Thera found herself struggling to stay awake as the tour of the administration station proceeded in slow motion.
The man who had helped her from the bus stepped forward to speak. She’d thought he was simply one of the army of assistants, but he turned out to be a scientist responsible for “supervising precautions against pollution of the workers,” as the translator put it, reading from a prepared vitae. “Ch’o Tak has studied in Russia and France and is one of the world’s top experts in waste handling. A very important scientist for the People, who takes his duty most seriously.”
Dr. Ch’o kept his eyes fixed on the floor as she spoke, the tips of his ears turning bright red. When she finished, he raised his hand in a half wave.
“I have been blessed with good fortune,” he said, speaking in Korean and then immediately translating his words to English. “Korea’s Great Leader has directed us to answer any questions you have and to lay ourselves bare. I humbly pledge myself to cooperate fully. You may ask whatever you wish, and I shall answer.”
Norkelus glanced toward the rest of the group. When he realized no one was going to ask a question, he put up his hand, rose, and asked whether it had been difficult to install necessary safeguards. It was an extremely obvious attempt to be polite, but Ch’o took the question very seriously, saying that there had been great concern about expenses “and other considerations” among officials at different levels, but the directives of the Great Leader himself had prevailed and focused the actions of all. Money had been found and state-of-the-art precautions installed.
Norkelus thanked him. Ch’o, relieved, gave way to another official.
“What a ham,” whispered Julie as they passed out of the hall.
“He seemed sincere,” said Thera.
“Right. And Kim Jong-Il deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.”
~ * ~
2
CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
A long sleepless night followed by a morning and afternoon filled with meetings had only increased Daniel Slott’s anxiety over the South Korean plutonium. He did his best to control it, but it was a losing battle. By midday he was wound so tight that when his daughter called him from college to say hello he nearly hung up on her.
Corrine Alston had called from New Hampshire to tell him what the president had said. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. Slott resented Corrine, but he thought it was probably better that she had told the president what was going on rather than Parnelles. This way, he figured, Parnelles looked as bad as he did.
It was more cover-your-ass thinking, and he hated it. He absolutely hated it.
When his four p.m. budget meeting finally dragged to a close, Slott headed toward his office, intending to call his daughter and apologize for being so abrupt.
“Daniel, there you are,” said Parnelles, intercepting him just before he got there. “Come and let’s have a quick chat.”
Slott followed silently as the CIA director led him down the hall to his office. Unlike many of the more recent DCIs, Parnelles was a CIA insider, a man who’d worked in the field as a case officer and held a host of other Bureau jobs before being appointed to head the CIA. There had been a gap of roughly ten years—he’d left the Agency and worked as, among other things, a bank vice president before being appointed—but otherwise he’d spent his entire adult life with the CIA, a throwback really to the handful of old hands who’d learned the business from the ground up.
“Where are we with Korea?” asked Parnelles when Slott sat down.
“Still trying to get more information.”
“What’s Seoul’s opinion?”
“I haven’t consulted them.”
Parnelles raised his left eyebrow slightly.
“I wanted to make sure we knew what we were dealing with,” explained Slott. “That it wasn’t a false alarm.”
“Is it?”
“The scientists say no. The first batch of tags were brought very close to a source, though it’s impossible to say where. The second set, which Ferguson recovered, had only one exposure. We’ve narrowed down the possible location, but we need more work.”
“And you don’t think Seoul can help?”
“I guess I’m wondering why they didn’t know about it in the first place,” said Slott. “Just as you are.”
“Do you think they purposely withheld information?”
“I’ve thought about that. I have thought about that.”
He had, for hours and hours.
“But I don’t,” Slott added. “I just can’t see Ken Bo doing that. I can see . ..”
The word incompetence seemed too harsh, so he said nothing.
“We may to have involve them,” said Parnelles, “if we’re going to find out anything. This has to have been a far-reaching operation, and I don’t know that we’ll gain anything from delaying at this point.”
“If the information comes out, it will jeopardize the disarmament treaty,” said Slott. “And if Seoul gets aggressive about pursuing it, sooner or later the ROK government will realize what we’re doing. Once that happens, I doubt we can keep the information under wraps.”
“That’s not really an intelligence concern, is it?”
“I guess it’s not,” said Slott, “but I wouldn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize the disarmament treaty.”
“How would you?”
By having the information leak out, thought Slott. It was obvious. Any bad publicity now—and certainly a reaction by North Korea—would send the Senate running for cover.
“I’m having a little trouble reading you,” said Slott. “I know you’re against the treaty, but—”
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Parnelles. “I’m not interested in politics. I’m interested in information. And our security.”
“If Seoul pokes its nose around, and something comes out, it would have a very negative effect.”
“Why should something come out?”
Slott couldn’t decide whether Parnelles was being disingenuous.
“You don’t trust your people in Korea?�
�� Parnelles asked.