EPILOGUE
Kim and his uncle arrived in Yokosuka and were provided housing and food allowances on the navy base. That evening, the DIA contacted them to let them know that they had arranged for a car to take them to the airport in Tokyo for their flight to Busan the next morning. Their flight arrived in Busan at about noon and they were provided housing at the Lotte Hotel. After checking in, Kim and his uncle took a taxi to visit his mother in the hospital.
As he entered her room, Kim’s mother smiled and said, “I’m so glad you’re okay, Kim. Both your sister and I were very worried.”
“Where is Hana?”
“She’s staying in base housing and is getting fat from eating such good food.”
“I can’t imagine Hana ever getting fat, mother. Where are you going after they release you tomorrow?”
“I plan to stay with Hana in Busan for a while. She says it’s really pretty, and the officer who visited me said we can stay in base housing until we find a place of our own. How long will you be here, Kim?”
“I’ll be traveling to the United States tomorrow. I’m meeting with some government officials to discuss the situation in North Korea. What are your plans, Mother?”
“I want to get a job as a secretary, and Hana is making plans for college. She wants to be a doctor.”
“That’s great. I’ll contact you when I get settled. Maybe you can visit me and my fiancée, Cai. I’m sure you’ll both love her.”
Kim then hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. He could see she was starting to cry.
“Don’t cry, Mother. We’re free. I’ll see you again soon.”
Kim and his uncle went back to their hotel room and found two new suitcases and some new clothes, compliments of the US government. Everything fit perfectly.
“I wonder how they got the sizes right. I never gave them my measurements.”
His uncle laughed. “You’re wondering how a country that builds luxury submarines can get our measurements right? I think they’re capable of a lot more than that.”
“I can tell you’re really enjoying yourself, Uncle. Let’s go out and celebrate.”
“Okay, but we need to be back early. We have a long flight tomorrow. I hear Hawaii is paradise.”
“We’re only going to be there for one day, and then we fly to Washington.”
“Yes, I know. We fly for nine hours, but get to Honolulu only fifty minutes later than we left, on the same day. That’s a long day for an old man like me.”
They arrived at the airport in Busan at eight. The flight was full, and Kim couldn’t sleep. He was exhausted by the time they arrived in Honolulu. As Kim exited the plane and entered the Honolulu airport, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Cai was standing in front of him. She had tears in her eyes as she ran to him and jumped into his arms so hard she almost knocked him over. Cai kissed him all over as Kim’s uncle watched with amusement.
“I guess you know this girl, Kim. If not, the people in Hawaii are even friendlier than I was told.”
“This is my fiancée, Cai. Cai, this is my uncle, the admiral.”
Cai hugged him and said, “I’m very glad to meet you, Admiral.”
“Please call me Kwan,” he said. “I’m fairly certain that I’m no longer an admiral.”
“We have a suite at the Hilton on Waikiki Beach, and so does your uncle. James flew in last night from Japan. Rick and his girlfriend flew in yesterday afternoon, as did James’s fiancée.”
“That’s great. I’m really tired, Cai. It’s been a long week.”
“I understand. I missed you so much, but I’ll leave you alone until you regain your strength.”
“I’ll be okay by tonight. I recover quickly.”
Cai smiled. “Yes, I remember.”
After Kim and Lee got their luggage, Cai led them to a red Camaro convertible.
“I rented it with my new credit card, provided by Solomon Enterprises. I also have a New York driver’s license. Mr. Solomon’s company is keeping all his promises.” On the drive to the hotel, Cai told Kim that George and his son had been killed by a crime syndicate.
After getting to their suite, Kim took a long warm shower. When he came out of the bathroom, there were Hawaiian shirts and shorts on the bed.
“I went shopping, Kim. I hope you like them.”
“I do, they look very colorful. Wake me up around two. I’d like to get some sun after being cooped up in a submarine for a week.”
Cai joined him in the bed. About two hours later they were both awakened by pounding on the door.
“Open up, this is the FBI. I hear you have a woman in there.”
Cai ran to the door. “Hello Rick. Where’s Allison?”
“Downstairs at the bar with James and JoAnn. We’ll see you at the Rainbow Lanai in about fifteen minutes, okay?”
When Kim and Cai arrived, James, JoAnn, Rick, and Allison were enjoying tropical drinks.
“What would you guys like?”
“Mai Tai, Blue Hawaiian, or Lava Flow, it’s on me,” James said.
“He means that,” Rick said. “As of two days ago, he’s one of the richest men in the world.”
“No, Rick. I don’t want to discuss that. Three men I worked with and cared about died. I take no joy in that.”
“I’m sorry, James. But I’ve already spilled the beans. You’re going to have to share the news with your friends.”
“Okay, you tell them.”
Kim and Cai looked confused.
“What happened, Rick?” Kim asked.
“George Solomon left most of his fortune and corporate ownership to Philip Wu’s widow and James. The rest went to charities, his fiancée, Astrid, and Nadya Murin, whom the board appointed as the new board chairman and CEO of George Solomon Enterprises.”
“Are you leaving your job at the White House?” Kim asked.
“Absolutely not. I plan to stay as long as the president wants me. Rick is getting a promotion. Why don’t you tell them about it, Special Agent Tanner?”
“I’ve been selected to be the Special Liaison on Cybercrime with the FBI director and the attorney general.”
“I hope one of you has a job for Cai and me after we graduate.”
“Have you decided on a school?” Rick asked.
“No. We plan to tour the United States to find one, courtesy of George Solomon.”
“Where’s your uncle, Kim?” JoAnn asked. “I thought he’d be joining us.”
“He’s meeting with some American intelligence officers at Pearl Harbor to discuss my country’s nuclear capabilities. The US Navy is also going to have him examined by their best doctors at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center when we get back to Washington.”
“That will be a week from now. I worked it out so we all get to spend a week in paradise,” James said.
“That’s great. I can’t believe how my life has changed. Nine months ago I was a North Korean. Now, I’m going to be a US citizen and marry the woman of my dreams.”
“I know what you mean,” James said. “I’m engaged to a gorgeous US Senator, have a great job working for the president, and wonderful friends. It can’t get any better than this. What a country!”
AUTHOR Q&A
Q:Your novel spans the globe and probes deeply into computer tech and military maneuvers. What inspired you to write this novel? Would you say the creative spark came more from wanting to write about politics, or international relations, or computer tech?
A:I’ve had an interest in writing since high school, when I wrote some science fiction short stories that many of my friends and teachers liked. I never took it seriously until much later, after I had graduated engineering school and started working as an electronics and software design engineer for private industry and then the federal government. My interest in politics and international relations was fostered by some of my classes while I was in law school and by my youth in New York City and by my current life in the Washington, DC, area. Both areas are political hotbeds. After g
raduating law school, I took a job with the US Patent Office, and after a year or so, I decided that I was more interested in designing and patenting my own digital electronic and IT systems and software rather than representing designers who were seeking patents for their technology. I started my own company in the DC area providing consulting and design services for electronic systems, information technology, software, and artificial intelligence for the US Navy and other Department of Defense and federal agencies. I saw cybersecurity as an evolving business, and I decided to provide cybersecurity support and services and design cybersecurity systems for industry and the federal government. Over the years we were very successful and won many large contracts for both our cybersecurity services and systems. After retiring at too young an age, I needed something to do, so I started providing individual consulting support to companies and writing articles on cybersecurity. My wife encouraged me to expand that into writing books on cybersecurity. I decided to use my knowledge to write fiction based on my past experiences in cybersecurity and my knowledge of the political and international environment based on time in New York and Washington DC.
Q:You clearly have a fascination with the inner workings of cybersecurity. Where did you learn so much about it? Was it more through experience or research?
A:Actually it was both. I love cybersecurity and AI since they both have a technical and personal element that most technologies don’t have. To implement a successful cyber attack, the hacker must understand both the technology involved and human nature. Many, if not most, successful attacks exploit human error that only a knowledgeable hacker might understand based on their understanding of the technology and how a system architect, software/hardware designer, production engineer, test engineer, support engineer, help desk support, or shipping clerk perform their duties. Many hackers study all the operations that a company performs to design, develop, test, produce, maintain, and ship a software or hardware IT product to find a weakness they can take advantage of. They might even try to get some of the attack team’s personnel into the organization to obtain the necessary information. That’s not necessary if the attacker is an insider who understands the technology and its potential weaknesses. In the book I describe the Information Systems Security Assessment Framework. One of the components of the framework is social engineering, which requires a smooth talker to trick someone in the target organization into providing information that will support a penetration attack (aka “hack”). You’ll also see a reference to a penetration tester, which is an individual who attempts to hack a system to find vulnerabilities that need to be fixed. Hacking is very much a cat and mouse game that is often more psychology than technology. I love the game and the technical and psychological challenges.
Q:What about your descriptions of military actions—for example, the skills of navy SEALs and the capabilities of various submarines. Did you do a lot of research? Did that research involve actually being in a submarine?
A:I spent a lot of years working with the navy, mostly the aviation side. I had the opportunity to fly in a lot of naval aircraft at the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, including the F-14, F/A-18, A-6, S-3B, P-3C, EA-6B, and EC-130. I also got the opportunity to spend time on the USS George Washington during naval tests with the EC-130 aircraft. The George Washington was cramped, which isn’t the case with the latest US Ballistic Missile submarines (SSBNs), which are large and comfortable. The George Washington class submarines were the first class of SSBNs. They were originally designed as attack subs, but were changed prior to production to incorporate a section for the first submarine-based Polaris ballistic missiles. The section that was added became known as Sherwood Forest since it contains a forest of vertical launch tubes. While I was on that boat, I used to walk through that forest regularly and found it spooky to know that in those tubes was enough power to destroy several large countries. There were things I had to research, including the latest US Virginia class submarine; the North Korean Kilo submarine and its torpedos; the Chinese submarine and its torpedoes, and the SEAL Swimmer Delivery Vehicle.
Q:You weave a lot of plotlines through this novel. Did you start out with the end in mind, meaning did you know who was “guilty”? Or did that change as you wrote the story?
A:There were definitely aspects of the plot that evolved as I wrote the book. Rick became a major character that I used to play off of James. In the next books, he takes on a role of his own but still works with James. My “guilty” characters were intended to be George and Dimitri. However, at the end I softened both characters a bit in their final chapter. I have this belief that most people are not villains, although they can seem that way if circumstances force or encourage them into doing something that is terrible. I guess you could say that Anya was the ultimate villain but she wasn’t really a major character until the end. Like a lot of evil people, she used those she knew to get what she wanted based on her desire for wealth and power. Chris, Dimitri, George, and Marat all died because of her, and she finally got what she deserved.
Q:Do you have a favorite character? If so, what do you most appreciate about him or her?
A:James is my favorite character since he is based on my experiences with the navy designing cybersecurity and AI systems. We have a number of similarities, which makes it very easy to write about him. One of our differences is that he didn’t patent his cybersecurity systems, while I did patent mine.
Q:Was there a character that gave you the spark for telling this story?
A:No. The idea of depicting malware as a counter-weapon was based on a technical paper I wrote almost twenty years ago.
Q:Apologies if you don’t want to reveal this, but are any characters in this book based on real people you know?
A:Some of the names I used are from real people. James, JoAnn, President Joseph Meredith, and Michelle are all based on people I know well. James is a slightly taller and younger version of me. JoAnn is based on my wife, whose name is also JoAnn. President Meredith is named for my son, Joseph, and his wife, Meredith. Michelle is my daughter, and she is an excellent chef who will probably own her own restaurant someday. I can also say that the personal characteristics of James, JoAnn, and Michelle are based on the people they’re named for. The characteristics of President Meredith are based on John F. Kennedy, one of my favorite presidents.
Q:Several of the characters end up surprising the reader. Did they also surprise you? Did you have to adjust the actions or backgrounds of them as you wrote?
A:Yes, I modified some of them as I wrote the book. Dimitri was a character who was originally designed to be entirely evil. I decided to moderate that to make him more interesting and complex. George was another character who had many conflicting character traits, but it was easy to understand both his hatred of the Chinese because of his brother’s death and his guilt concerning Chris. He’s not a likable character, but he isn’t evil like Anya. Rick took on a larger role as James’s sidekick and he also added some comic relief.
Q:This novel is timely, given current international relations and the shifting alliances between countries, especially the United States, North Korea, China, and Russia. You treat your characters from these countries with equanimity rather than bias. Did you hold yourself back from injecting personal feelings about these countries?
A:No. I think I described North Korea and China in a way that most sane people would see them. My depiction of Russia in the book was based on various descriptions of the Chechen wars.
Q:Your characters travel the globe. Have you been to all of the places you describe? Even North Korea? If not, how do you create such convincing descriptions of these locales?
A:No. I did lots of research, especially for Harbin, China, and the locales described in North Korea. The scene in Germany was much easier since I know the city very well, having visited it a number of times. The description of the university in Russia that was destroyed by the Chechens was based on information from the internet.
Q:This book covers s
o much ground that it’s not easy to label it simply “cybersecurity” or “political thriller,” because it also has elements of romance, family drama, and of course international espionage. If you had to pick one genre to slot your book into, what would it be?
A:Cybersecurity thriller. The following books in this series will also contain elements of romance, family drama, and international espionage.
Q:Who are your favorite writers? Did a specific writer or book inspire you to write this book?
A:Kathryn Casey, Tom Clancy, Harlan Coben, John Connolly, Clive Cussler, Gillian Flynn, Vince Flynn, James Patterson, Ann Rule. I met Tom Clancy at an event in Maryland many years ago. Both he and his first book, The Hunt for Red October, influenced me greatly.
Q:Did you create your novel by using an outline, or did you sit down and follow wherever your imagination took you—and then come back and revise the first draft?
A:I outlined the chapters to decide where I wanted to go. The book had too many characters and too many moving parts to free-lance the chapters and scenes.
Q:What was your favorite scene to write in this story, and why?
A:There were really two. The battle scene in Chapters 29 and 30 at the end of the book and the shootout in Chapter 28 in which Dimitri gets killed.
Q:What was the most difficult scene to write, and why?
A:The shootout in which Dimitri, Anya, George, Chris, and Marat are killed was very difficult. The timing needed to mesh so that the shootout was easy to track and understand. I also needed to keep Anya’s identity as the villain secret until the end of the chapter. However, the final scenes in the book involving the American, Chinese, and North Korean subs were definitely the most difficult because of the research required on the subs and their weapon systems. The setup for the final battle and the strategy choices and reactions by the characters was also very complex.
Q:Do you have a favorite character in the story? If so, what is it about this character that you most appreciate?
A:Other than James, Rick is my favorite character. He has a great sense of humor, which is also misguided at times. He is the source of most of the comedic scenes in this book and the next ones. Kim and Cai are also favorites due to their ability to handle difficult situations while maintaining a zest for life.
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