by Unknown
He swung round to Mary, eyes glaring, halfway between humour and fury. 'Just like you did in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and all those other post-Cold-War fuck-ups. Then what will happen? Colombia or Kazakhstan will blow up. And the Toyotas, the backpackers - the whole lot of you will be shipped off there and you'll leave us with the mess of what? Do you know what?'
He retrieved his coffee from the table, sat down and crossed his legs, his silence switching the question from rhetorical to real. Both Newman and Brock stayed quiet, hoping he would give the answer.
'What, Peter? Tell me what we will be left with.'
'We won't abandon you, Cho,' said Brock.
'You fucking would if there wasn't a North Korea any more,' he laughed. 'What are you going to do, move the ceasefire line up to the Chinese border?'
Brock shrugged. 'Tell us. Tell us what would happen.'
'Reunification,' he said in barely a whisper. 'Fucking reunification.' The flare of his eyes faded and his expression, overcome by daunting reality, lost its fire. 'Look what happened to West Germany when it absorbed the East. Calculate it for us and it makes it ten times worse. Ten times the cost.'
For a moment he seemed to retreat into that ultimate nightmare. Brock nudged him on. 'So what's it to be, Cho? What's the way through?'
'Keep it local. Jamie Song and I will handle Park Ho. We can strangle him.'
'And in his last throes of life, he launches a few missiles?' suggested Newman.
'I'll nuke him.'
Cho let those words settle in the room. He fixed Brock and then Newman with an unflinching expression of certainty. No wonder he didn't want his advisers with him. South Korea's dozen or so nuclear reactors would give it ample uranium or plutonium. Its scientists had the knowledge. The parts could be procured from here and there. For Newman, it was like hearing the mechanical clicks of a round being put in the chamber of a revolver. She had known the likelihood of South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and a few others having nuclear weapons. The declaration of it in a meeting like this had elevated it to another level.
'You'll nuke him?' said Newman sceptically, not reacting to Cho's declaration and keeping to Cho's Hollywood-style language. 'If he doesn't mind being nuked by us, why should he mind being nuked by you?'
'That's what you don't see,' said Cho. 'You know why Park Ho's such a shit? Because his mother was killed by a GI in front of his eyes when he was a kid. So you've got a mind there no one can deal with. If his country is pulverized by you guys, he'll fight you back and feel good about it. He'll be avenging his mother's death. He'll be proving that juche is not a piece of crap, that it can take on a superpower. But if he fights me, what the fuck does he get? Nothing. No point getting nuked by little old Cho. If he's going to get nuked it has to be by Uncle Sam, and if Uncle Sam's not going to do that, Park loses. That's how he's thinking. He's Korean, I know how he thinks. We're all a bit crazy.'
Cho stopped pacing, tapped his head and his face broke out into a huge smile. 'There you go,' he said, sitting down and patting Brock's knee. 'That's my rant. Nothing to read between the lines.'
In the shower, Mary Newman laughed as she recalled Cho's language. The steam and warmth soaked into her tight shoulder muscles, letting her think more clearly about the meeting. Newman turned the shower water to the highest pressure, then switched the temperature to cold, letting her body absorb the shock right down the spine. She let it stay there until the goose pimples had subsided. Just as suddenly, she turned the water off, reached for a towel, covered herself and stepped out on to the warm underfloor heating of her bathroom suite.
Darkness had fallen, and through the window she saw the wavering lanterns of farmers making their way home through the rice paddies. Somewhere high above was the high-pitched roar of fighter jets from the base taking off into the night. But it took her a few minutes to work out the other strange sound, which sent a tremble through the building, until she remembered the base commander telling her tonight was artillery practice, the pounding of the big guns which would be moved up to the front line of invading North Korean troops.
Newman draped a robe around herself, loosened the wet towel, hung it on a rail and walked along the short corridor to the living room. She mixed herself a gin and tonic and checked her watch. Peter Brock would be at least another half an hour, and if she greeted him in her bathrobe, what the hell!
Cho had refreshed her and frightened her. As he was ushering them out of the room, having dropped his nuclear bombshell, he had unashamedly homed in on Newman's personal life. 'You getting married again, Mary?' he had said, grinning at Brock.
'Too busy stopping nuclear proliferation,' answered Newman smartly, taking up his offer to step out of the door in front of him.
'You should be married,' Cho retorted loudly so that all in the vast adjoining room, advisers and tea staff included, could hear. He tapped his chest. 'Follow my example. I have one wife and two mistresses. If Cho does anything stupid, he has three women to tell him he's talking shit and is going to fuck things up. Everyone needs that, Mary, even someone as brainy as you. Everyone needs to be told they're talking shit.'
Before Mary could answer, Cho had beckoned over his intelligence chief. 'I've told Mr Brock he can have as many agents as we can spare,' he instructed. 'You two work it out between you. Remember two things. We have big problems at home with infiltration, and that the United States is our number-one ally and no argument.'
As the helicopter had lifted off from the grounds of the palace, Newman saw shimmering winter scenes of Seoul, smashed to rubble in the war and now recreated as a Confucian American dream city. She flew over the hills and parks of the northern side, across the Han River, the pilot taking the helicopter higher to clear the skyscrapers of the business and commercial districts, glistening with advertisements and lights. If only Seoul could have been replicated amid the Catholicism of Latin America and the tribalism of sub-Saharan Africa, if only Pakistan had taken a lead from South Korea, if only it had downplayed its nuclear weapon as a friendly instrument of diplomacy and not declared it as an Islamic bomb - as if Cho had made a fanfare on television of his Confucian bomb, and not casually mentioned it in a very private conversation to people who mattered; if only . . . Her train of thought had wandered with the throb and clatter of the aircraft which had delivered her to Kunsan where, after delivering her speech, she had insisted on being driven through the red-light district of nearby Silver Town. Through the darkened windows of her Mercedes, she watched Americans, barely out of their teens, draped around Korean prostitutes, drunk and wayward, stumbling from bar to bar. How many secrets would they give away to gentle, seductive prodding? A small network of North Korean agents would probably have maps of every aircraft hangar, mess room, set of traffic lights and bowling alley on the base.*
*****
Newman must have dozed off in the chair, because a buzzer woke her, with the familiar and slightly distorted face of Peter Brock staring into the security camera. She fumbled for the remote, pressed open the door, pulled her bathrobe around her and got up. Brock appeared, looking as worn out as she had felt about an hour earlier. 'Sorry, Mary, have I barged in?' he said, hesitating.
'No, Pete. Come in,' said Newman. 'I was catnapping.' She eyed her own half-drunk gin and tonic, where the ice had melted and the lemon had sunk to the bottom of the glass. 'How was he? I mean, is what we're doing working?'
'It's working,' said Brock confidently, putting his briefcase by the door and looking around admiringly. 'Wow,' he exclaimed. 'You've hit the jackpot, at least for tonight.'
'Great, isn't it?' said Newman. 'A huge bed, the biggest jacuzzi I've seen in my life, the first heated balcony in the world, and no one to share it with.' She picked up her glass, went into the cloakroom by the door and tipped the contents into the basin.
'You want a drink?' she asked, heading for the bar, and plugging in the kettle.
'Sure,' said Brock. 'But just water. I need something to wash away Cho's caffeine.'
&
nbsp; Newman laughed. 'And I need another coffee. Hot and black.' She tore open a sachet and poured coffee powder into a cup. 'Where have they put you?'
'Over in another wing. But nothing like this,' said Brock, unscrewing the cap and drinking straight from the bottle.
'Did you dissuade him from his nuking venture?'
'I hope so,' said Brock. 'He had a point, though. Park would dearly love us to strike from Japan or a carrier. If the strike comes from South Korea it confines the conflict.'
'But then you have a bloody land war across the DMZ.' The kettle clicked itself off. Newman filled her cup and sat down again.
'After you left, though,' said Brock with a grin, 'he was more interested in getting you married than knocking out Park Ho.'
'Oh my God,' said Newman, feeling herself blushing. She put down the coffee and cupped her chin with her hand. 'That man's a menace.'
Briefly, they fell into a companionable silence. Unlike her own, Brock's face was too expressive to hide much of what he was thinking. His talent was analysis more than negotiation where his eyes gave too much away. She sensed that Brock would not have mentioned Cho's marriage line unless he planned to move it on somewhere. 'Do you think Jim will go for a second term?' she said, casually.
'He's just past the mid-terms,' said Brock thoughtfully. 'I guess he's thinking of it. Why? Do you want my job next time round?'
Newman threw her head back and laughed. 'Not at all. I'm thinking of quitting. Getting myself a life.'
Mockingly, Brock raised his eyebrows, and swept his hand around the room. 'You mean all this is not a life?'
She eyed him bashfully. 'You know what I mean.'
'With Jim?'
'I think we've both been thinking about it,' she said, lowering her head so Brock couldn't see her embarrassment. 'Maybe we've been thinking about it too much.'
'Well, I'll be damned,' said Brock, crunching his hands around the water bottle.
'Don't tell me, with all that stuff in the press, that you're playing the innocent.'
Brock put his hands in the air as his face cracked up in a smile. 'I leave Caro to get involved in these things. But if he runs again, what then?'
'If he agrees, I become the First Lady, or whatever.' She uncrossed her legs and sat up. 'I like Jim. I like him a lot. He's one of the most decent men I know. The way he handled Valerie's illness and death has been an example to us all. Maybe it's too soon. I don't know. The thing that worries me is if even now my feelings towards him - even his towards me - affect our judgement. As you know, Chris and I don't exactly see eye to eye.'
'If I had noticed it, Mary, I would have told him,' said Brock firmly. 'And I haven't.'
'So I can keep my job, then?' said Newman with a smile.
Brock whistled through his teeth. 'With South Korea going nuclear and you marrying the US President, this has been one hell of a day for me.' He slapped his knees and stood up. 'I told Cho we didn't need entertaining tonight - just a quiet meal to chew things over together. That OK with you? They're fixing it in a private room downstairs.'
Newman was on her feet as well. 'Sure. I'll slip on a tracksuit or something.'
'You got anywhere I can call Caro?' said Brock, picking up his briefcase from the floor.
'Follow me down the corridor and turn off to the left just before the glass door to my room,' said Newman. 'They've got better stuff there than we've got at State.' She began leading the way. 'There's a number to call if you don't know how it works. But I'm sure you'll be fine.'
Newman went through the frosted-glass doors to her suite and heard the automatic lock click into place. She washed her face in the bathroom and fiddled with her make-up. Half of her wanted to throw on a tracksuit, like she had said. The other half wanted to dress up because of the beautiful tranquillity of the place they were in. She examined her scant options hanging, suitcase-creased, in the wardrobe. Deep down, the adolescent in her wanted her to be attractive to Brock, so he could pass it on to Jim West. That was why she was dithering, because, here in this strange, unfamiliar place, she was making the personal stakes so high. But eventually she ended up with her white tracksuit, a new pair of trainers, but with light mascara and lipstick and the same perfume she had used for the dinner at Camp David.
Through the frosted glass, a light flickered as another artillery shell smashed into the ground miles away and shook the building. A light went off, making the corridor dimmer. She slid open the balcony door and stepped out into the ice-cold evening air. A click behind her made her jump. Above, the gas heater automatically flared up. She felt the warmth immediately, but a chill wind blew up from the rice paddies. She shivered and wrapped her arms round herself. She waited a few seconds in case she could see the flash of the artillery gun. Back inside, she heard another click, like a door opening, and a spit of rain hit her on the face. She stepped back and closed the door as the spit became a downpour, loudly assaulting the windows.
She checked herself in the long wardrobe mirror, rearranging strands of hair thrown out by the sudden change of weather. The glow of the heater on the balcony dimmed and quickly faded, leaving the place in darkness. She looked for the switch to an outside light, couldn't find one and gave up. Just as she was heading out, she had a craving to make a phone call, to a son, daughter, or husband, and say: 'Hi, I'm in this incredible place in the middle of nowhere in South Korea. You wouldn't believe it. You should be here with me--'
Dismissing these difficult thoughts, she unlocked the door with the remote and it slid open. Indeed, one lamp had gone, somewhere. The corridor was lit from the living room.*
*****
'Pete, you finished with Caro?'she asked gently, a few feet away from the door of the office suite. She couldn't hear him speaking. The door was open, but no sound came from the room.
'Pete,' she called out loudly. 'You there?'
There was no answer from the living room, either. A shadow passed a table lamp. Newman moved forward and looked into the office. Her hand went to her mouth. No scream, just an empty dryness thrown up before her brain could even take in what she saw.
Brock's body was slumped forward on the desk, blood streaming from the back of his neck, running down the curls of the telephone cord and dripping on to the floor.
She turned round, saw the shadow again, her hands fumbling for the remote to open the door and get back into her room. She heard a dull thud as a round from a silenced pistol splintered wood in the door frame above her head. The door was open, and Newman ran, hurling herself down, hitting the floor, pressing the remote again to get it closed, and crawling away as two more shots smashed into the room, one exploding into the television set, the second splattering out plaster above the bed.
In the tiny gap before the door closed she saw the killer, thin lips pursed in concentration, wearing a black poncho-style raincoat, exactly matching the darkness outside, water dripping on to the floor.
He fired again.
His shape, darkening the corridor, now appeared blurred coming closer and closer. He fired twice more. But each time the bulletproof glass blocked the shot. Keeping on the floor, she edged herself towards the telephone by the bed. Another round. She glanced up towards the balcony door. That would be bulletproofed as well. Newman's VIP survival training with the secret service told her that if she stayed put, help would be with her within seconds - well, minutes at least. She was the goddamn US Secretary of State. Where were the two secret service guys assigned to her? Where were the Korean bodyguards? Where the hell was everybody? She picked up the phone. The line was dead. She crawled to the wardrobe and found her mobile in the briefcase. He was right up close to the glass, his head against it, peering in. She heard the scraping of metal on glass as he ran the end of the silencer down the pane. He tested the door latch and his hand dropped away.
Newman keyed in her mobile's pin number. It bleeped and she saw the distorted shape of his head jerk up, alerted. The battery was half gone. The signal only showed two bands. She flipped
down her phone book and pressed the White House. She had a code, given to her by the secret service. They had made her put the number in her mobile.
He stepped back from the door. Without rushing, he bent down and picked up another weapon. Newman pressed 'call'. He unscrewed the silencer and switched it to the new weapon. The phone did nothing, except emit a whining tone of disconnection. His movements were confident and deliberate, as if he knew no one was coming and that whatever he did, however long he took, he would be safe.
He aimed the first shot at the pane of glass closest to the latch. A crack appeared. A second followed, then a third, each one of the more powerful rounds weakening the bulletproofing. Newman turned her head left and right, looking where to go. She had no choice. She opened the balcony door with the remote. Above her head came the whoosh of the gas heater lighting up. A squall of rain swept on to her. Below her was soft rain-dampened grass and rice paddies. She would jump and run, if she got through without a sprained ankle. Run and scream. That was her plan - as simple as they come.