Fires of War - [First Team 03]

by Larry Bond

  “Good morning,” he told her, rising and bowing his head stiffly

  “Dr. Ch’o.” She bowed her head as well. “Are you feeling well?”

  “I am feeling . . . prepared.”

  “Prepared?”

  Ch’o didn’t explain. He had decided that he must do his duty, and his duty as a Korean was to protect the people who would be poisoned by the improperly handled waste. He trusted the girl, and so he must believe that the Americans, whatever else was true about them, would give the information to the IAEA and the UN.

  His own fate was immaterial. He was just an ant. He would move forward calmly, doing his duty.

  “They have breakfast for us in the officers’ galley,” Thera told him. “Would you like to come?”

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “You have to eat,” said Thera. “You look very pale. It’s more comfortable than your cabin.”

  “I’ll have some tea.”

  Ch’o had been aboard several ships during his career, but this was his first time aboard a fighting vessel of any type. The ship seemed several times more crowded than civilian boats. A brusque energy emanated from the young people; there were women as well as men in uniform, which surprised him. Ch’o recognized the energy as a kind of shared purposefulness, a common motivation that reminded him of his own youth and of Korea as it should be: everyone moving in the same direction.

  Why the government had deviated from such a path, he did not know. It saddened him, and when he arrived finally at the wardroom he felt as if a cloud of doom had fallen around him.

  “You can tell the seaman what you want,” Thera said to Ch’o. “He’ll get it.”

  “Tea?”

  “Tea, yes sir,” said the waiter, whose pronounced southern accent was difficult for the scientist to understand. “The cook made some mighty fine biscuits this morning. Y’all might try some of them.”

  “Biscuits are a kind of bread,” explained Thera.

  Ch’o shook his head. He only wanted tea.

  “I’ll try some,” said Thera. “And coffee.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Best coffee in the fleet, I promise.”

  Neither Thera nor Ch’o spoke until the man returned. Ch’o found the tea very weak, but this did not surprise him; only Koreans made very good tea.

  “Some of the people who helped you escape want to talk to you,” said Thera. “You may have information that could help save lives.”

  “I do,” said Ch’o. “I have much information.”

  “Will you speak to them?”

  “Yes.”

  “They should be here shortly.”

  ~ * ~

  C

  h’o spent two hours simply talking about his background, telling the CIA debriefer and the others where he had gone to school, what he had studied, the ministries he had served. Thera and Rankin listened, and occasionally the translator explained particular words and phrases, but for the most part, only Jiménez and Ch’o spoke.

  Both grew slightly impatient as the conversation continued. Ch’o wanted to talk about the toxic wastes; Jiménez wanted to find out just how valuable the scientist really might be. Neither man, though, felt he could change the course of the interview, and so they plodded on, concentrating on Ch’o’s schooling and research interests until a chief petty officer came in and said it was almost time for lunch.

  “Let’s all freshen up and get something to eat,” suggested Thera. “And then find a more comfortable place to talk.”

  “What is ‘freshen up’?” asked Ch’o.

  “Take a break,” she told him.

  “Yes, very good.”

  “We could all have lunch together,” suggested Jiménez.

  “I think the doctor needs a break,” said Thera. “Let’s get some air and move around a bit.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” said Rankin.

  Jiménez didn’t agree, but arguing in front of the subject was an even worse idea, so he got up without saying anything else.

  A half hour later, the psychologist and translator met Ch’o at his cabin, and they went for a walk on the flight deck. Thera, Rankin, and Jiménez met in Rankin’s cabin to discuss what to do next.

  “Definitely an important scientist,” said Jiménez. “But how important? We’re going to have to bring in experts to talk to him, people who can understand the technical stuff and know the history of the bomb program. I don’t have the background to question him; he lost me on his dissertation.”

  “Yeah,” said Rankin.

  “How long are we staying on this ship? I’d like to get someplace more comfortable, flexible.”

  Rankin shrugged. Corrigan had told him they were “on hold” until the bosses figured it out.

  “Where does he go after this?” Thera asked.

  “Back to the States,” said Jiménez. “First to a military base where we can keep him secure, then maybe set him up in an apartment when he’s feeling comfortable. Your people should be working on the logistics right now.”

  Jiménez took a gulp of his coffee. “Next thing we do this afternoon, we find out if he has family in North Korea. Who they are, where, etc.”

  “Why?” said Rankin. “We’re not going to be able to protect them if he does.”

  Jiménez grinned. “He doesn’t know that.”

  “He’s not stupid,” said Thera.

  “I didn’t say he was. It’s leverage.”

  “You can’t lie to him like that.”

  Jiménez rolled his eyes.

  “You have to ask him about the pollution,” said Thera. “He’s worried about people dying.”

  “We’ll get to that,” said Jiménez.

  “When?”

  “This is a long process. I have to build up a rapport. You know? I’ve done this before.”

  “I’m just telling you what he’s concerned about.”

  “Don’t tell me my job, all right?” said Jiménez. “Just because you shook your bootie at him doesn’t mean you’re his friend, right?”

  Without thinking, Thera delivered a perfect roundhouse to Jiménez’s jaw. It caught him completely by surprise; he flew into the nearby bulkhead and tumbled to the deck.

  Rankin sprung over and grabbed her, dragging her outside. Thera, slightly stunned by the intensity of her own anger, didn’t resist.

  “All right, settle down,” Rankin told her. “Settle down.”

  “I don’t have to take that.”

  “Yeah.” Rankin didn’t like Jiménez either. “But easy. All right?”

  Jiménez, blood dripping from the side of his mouth, came to the door of the cabin.

  “What the fuck was that for?”

  “For being an asshole,” Thera told him.

  “Well you turned him. That’s all I meant.”

  “I didn’t turn him. I didn’t do anything. He came to me. He picked me at random.”

  “You were out of line,” Rankin told Jiménez.

  “Look, either you let me do my job, or get somebody else.”

  “You can do your job. Just don’t be a jerk about it.” Rankin looked at Thera, who looked like she was about to unload another haymaker. “Let’s get some air up top.”

  Regret mixed with anger as Thera walked down the corridor. They took a turn and found themselves on the hangar deck. Mechanics were looking over a Harrier Jumpjet a few yards away.

  “I’m sorry I hit him,” said Thera.

  “He deserved to be hit.”

  Thera felt her arms shaking. She was still wound up from the mission, too wound up.

  “Let’s go up and have a cigarette,” suggested Rankin. “If I can remember how the hell to get up there.”

  “It’s back through here,” she told him, leading the way.

  How had she become so attached to Ch’o, worried about him? She shouldn’t be. He was just. . . Well, he was just a defector with information that might be useful.

  When you were on a mission, you had to remember things were black and
white, good and evil. She was on the good guys’ side. He was on the evil side. Even if he was useful, at the end of the day, he was still on the wrong team.

  Except she didn’t feel that way. She could see the other North Koreans like that, the ones who would have arrested her or shot her or whatever. The guard who’d smoked with her, the officious jerk in South Korea—they were all on the other team; she didn’t feel any sympathy for them. But the scientist was different.

  Why? Because he’d been nice to her?

  Because he was concerned about innocent people being harmed.

  “Look, maybe we should let Jiménez do his thing by himself,” said Rankin as they reached the fresh air. “We were just sitting there anyway. Like bumps on a log. We listen to what the shrink says, and if he thinks Ch’o’s cool, then we let Jiménez take it.”

  “You’re right,” said Thera abruptly. “I’d like to get the hell out of here anyway.”

  ~ * ~

  20

  DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA

  “So, who do you think would use a bug like that?” Ferguson asked the professor.

  Wan scowled and turned it over.

  “Very new. Two years old, design,” said the spy buff. “Not government, though.”

  “Not American or not Korean?”

  “Neither. Wait.”

  Wan went to the side of his office and hit his computer mouse. His machine woke up, the screen flashing with a screensaver showing an old substitution code wheel. In less than a minute, he brought up a website that featured the bug in question.

  “Government would want to spend ten times as much,” laughed Wan, pointing at the price: five dollars.

  “Would the bug be ten times as good?”

  Wan smiled.

  ~ * ~

  F

  erguson packed up his sat phone and electronic gear and left them in a small locker in a Seoul self-storage facility. From now until he returned, he would be only Ivan Manski.

  Not having his bug detector when he got back to his hotel wasn’t a real problem; it was easier to assume he was being bugged and act accordingly. But he was curious, and so he set about looking through the hotel room. It was a game in a way, seeing if he could figure things out the old-fashioned way, like a real spy would have done it.

  Like his dad would have done it.

  The bug that he’d removed from the TV set hadn’t been replaced. But there was a new one in the clock radio.

  A bit of an insult, really; the radio was probably the most obvious place to look, after the television and phone.

  And the lamp, where Ferguson found another.

  A third had been placed at the bottom of the small stuffed chair and two more in the bathroom, including one wired into the light fixture ($13.99 on the professor’s website).

  Ferguson gathered them all together, put them on the tile floor, then stomped them under his heel with a loud yell.

  Laughing, he went downstairs to the bar, where, still in character, he ordered a vodka before going out for dinner.

  There were two new bugs in the room when he came back.

  “Points for persistence,” he said in Russian before flushing them down the toilet.

  ~ * ~

  21

  ABOARD THE USS PELELIU, IN THE YELLOW SEA

  “Maybe we stop now,” said Tak Ch’o. He’d been talking for so long that his jaw hurt. “We stop.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine,” said Jiménez. “As good a place as any.” Jiménez glanced at the translator. “Start back in tomorrow morning?”

  “I want to know,” said Ch’o, “is the girl OK?”

  “Yeah, I told you, she’s fine,” said Jiménez.

  Reflexively, Ch’o started to nod, accepting what Jiménez said. He had heard such excuses many times in his days in North Korea, and always, he had nodded.

  Because he was afraid. Fear was the central fact of his life.

  No more. That was why he froze when he woke up here. The fear had been removed, and he was incapable of everything, even breathing, without it. But somehow, when he’d seen that the girl might be in danger, he had been reborn.

  That was who he wanted to be, who he was now: a man who could help others by acting, not by being afraid and paralyzed.

  “The girl,” said Ch’o firmly. “I will see her now.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. I want to talk to her alone. And tomorrow, tomorrow we will speak of more important things.”

  “Well, now, listen, Doc, we have plenty of things to talk about,” said Jiménez.

  “We will talk about what I want to talk about tomorrow,” insisted Ch’o.

  “All right,” said Jiménez, still clearly reluctant. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

  “Let the girl come to the cabin.”

  “She’s got to decide that for herself, but I’ll tell her.”

  ~ * ~

  T

  hera spent the afternoon hanging around her cabin, reading a mystery the last occupant had left behind. Attempting to keep contact with the ship’s crew and marines to a minimum—and still in a dark mood because of her confrontation with Jiménez—she had a sailor bring her dinner. She flipped on the closed-circuit entertainment channel while she ate and began watching a sentimental tear-jerker about a kid looking for his father in the Alaskan wilderness. She guessed the ending five minutes into the picture—the boy’s real father had disguised himself as the guide for the journey—but still felt her eyes welling up at the very end when the guide, fatally wounded on the trek, revealed himself after saving the boy’s life.

  Movie over, Thera fiddled halfheartedly with a computer game that was connected to the television set. Finally she flipped on the TV and began watching the Alaskan wilderness movie a second time.

  Father and son were just about to be attacked by a Kodiak bear when Rankin knocked at the side of her door.

  “Come on in,” she said.

  Rankin did so. Jiménez followed.

  “Busy?” asked Rankin.

  “Bored.”

  Thera flipped off the TV She glared at Jiménez, daring him to apologize. He didn’t.

  “I was wondering,” said Jiménez, “if maybe you’d come see Dr. Ch’o.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s worried something happened to you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. The shrink says he’s fine, a little, you know, culture shock. And maybe he’s protective of you or something along those lines.”

  “Maybe he likes people who aren’t jerks.”

  “Look, you’re the one who hit me,” said Jiménez. “My jaw still hurts.”

  “You’re lucky I hit you there,” said Thera. “Would it kill you to say you’re sorry?”

  “Would it kill you?” answered Jiménez.

  “If I did anything to apologize for, I would.”

  They glared at each other, neither willing to give up any ground.

  “Why don’t you go talk to the scientist?” Rankin told her. “Just show him you’re OK.”

  “I have no problem with that,” said Thera, getting up.

  “Hey,” said Jiménez, following her out of the stateroom.

  “Yeah?”

  “Look, I’m not a total jerk, all right?”

  “You have a way to go to prove that.”

  “I jumped to the wrong conclusion. You’re pretty, and that’s the way it works with a lot of guys I deal with. I just jumped to the wrong conclusion. OK?”

  “I’ll let you know what happens,” she said, turning toward Ch’o’s cabin. Never before had being called pretty sounded like such an insult.

  ~ * ~