by Michael Crow
“Jaebeol?” I say.
“Korea’s got about thirty of them, their version of the Dow Jones Industrials. Only they’re not public corporations. They’re huge conglomerates, family-controlled, thick as thieves with the government. Modeled somewhat on Japanese zaibatsu, like Honda, Sony. You know some of the Korean ones: Samsung, Daewoo, Hyundai.”
“Jesus.”
“Kim’s is one of the smallest. Think Apple compared with Microsoft. Family control and government alliances, though, have an exponential effect. The Kim wealth is hard to imagine. But that’s not important. You know North Korea’s a rogue state, paranoid, sealed off. Kim’s forward-looking, as I said. He had business feelers out to Pyongyang before the 2000 meeting between the ROK president and the North’s maximum leader, Kim Jong Il. After that, he got more active, started trading with the North through its two back doors, China and Russia. He’s very welcome in Pyongyang now.
“The cool part is this: he loves us. He has a house in Big Sur, comes over maybe once a month, and talks for hours about everything he’s seen, heard, and been doing in the North. About two months ago, he told us about a possible deal, buying something from our Russian generals, selling it to North Koreans. Asked if we wanted to go along for the ride. Absolutely! We want the North to have what the Russians are offering, so we want to protect the deal.”
“I think it would be useful to point out that money does not move Kim in this,” Westley says, his tone calm, knowing, almost paternal. “The man’s an idealist. He keeps asking why the thirty-eighth parallel exists anywhere except on maps? Why is there a DMZ there? Koreans are one people, south and north, he says. As the Germans are one people, west and east. The Germans tore down the Wall, turned off the death strip separating them. Why shouldn’t Koreans do the same?”
“He’s being a bit naïve, of course, for such a smart man,” Nadya says. “He doesn’t seem to understand how change bubbled up from below in Germany, until the DDR leaders couldn’t keep the lid on. Nothing bubbling at all in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
“I don’t think he’s even entertained the notion that the famine in the DPRK may be artificial, deliberately created as a means of control by Chairman Kim, who’s taken a leaf direct from Stalin’s book,” Allison says.
“None of this,” Westley says, “lessens our Mister Kim’s value. He has access to the North. Access we otherwise would not have.”
I’m looking hard at the videos. I’m seeing a man still in his thirties, very corporate, very at ease and seemingly jovial. I’m also seeing his eyes change suddenly while his smile stays the same, and people in his entourage snap to when he utters a few words. Like young staff captains hearing the voice of God in the person of the Joint Chiefs head: with eagerness, obvious deference, and terror. I also see he’s got a personal security team around him, not in-your-face but obvious to anyone who knows what to look for, in every situation. From the ways they move, they appear to know their trade.
“So why not insert an intelligence agent into his entourage? He’s got his own protection team,” I say.
“Going forward, we might,” Allison says. “On this particular outing, the intel will be obvious in the deal. But Mister Kim’s a little nervous about the Russians. He doesn’t quite trust them. Also, he’s a bit worried someone might get to someone on his own team. So he asked for security assistance.”
“And I’m it? That’s crazy.”
Westley laughs. But this time he’s the only one.
“No,” Allison says. “We’ll have people on the ground in each place Kim goes. Including a former colleague of yours. He’s already out there. You can have a big reunion.”
“That is so reassuring.” I wonder who she’s talking about, knowing by now she wouldn’t tell me if I asked.
“It should be,” Allison says. “One foreigner—with one task—is all we can put into Kim’s entourage without arousing suspicion. What did you expect? A bunch of Secret Service types with badges on their lapels and little ear mikes hovering around him? Come on, Terry.”
“And it’s only a business exchange, not an espionage mission,” Rob says. Another country heard from.
“My task, in full?”
“Stick close to Kim, protect the package. As you’ve been told.” It’s Westley now, in command tone. “Any little thing goes wrong, you will be well covered. You will be picked up by friendlies within minutes after you’ve got clear and signaled.”
I look at Allison. She’s looking at Westley.
“Package. Right. Kim. But what are we talking about in terms of merchandise, since I assume you want me to get it out with him? Small, light? Bulky, heavy?” I ask.
“Easily portable. Kim can slip it into his coat pocket. Once we obtain it from the Russians,” Westley answers. His next words are not those of a mere contributor, as Allison termed him. “Oh. If you do have to move, and anyone appears even vaguely to be in your way—theirs or ours—just kill them, okay?”
“Well,” Allison says when the video stops, the lights go up, and Westley’s disappeared. “Let’s have a drink. Shot of Barbancourt Rhum, souvenir from my last trip to Haiti?”
Rob and Nadya say yes. “Make mine a Cuba Libre, hold the rum,” I say. Allison produces her bottle from a nook near the video/audio system, pours three shots of rum. She takes a can of Coke from the mini-fridge I never knew lurked there behind the cabinet doors, hands it to me.
“Tell me something,” I say, when everyone’s had a sip. “You guys work with Westley before?”
“You have,” Rob replies, taking a swig of rum, swirling what’s left around his glass.
“Brilliant,” Nadya says. “Rob, you’re amazing.”
“Yeah, he’s super,” I say. “But he didn’t answer the question.”
“Ah, no. I mean we have, but not this way,” Allison says. “The three of us have teamed on lots of things. Westley delivered a contractor for some of them. Here, to the house. Then he went away. One or another of three guys from the Langley operations unit was always the officer in charge.”
“So this is the first time Westley’s actively engaging in an op?”
“With us,” Nadya says.
“Couldn’t possibly be his first, though,” Allison says. “He’s way too senior. We assume he’s run plenty. Just not in our area.”
“Assume?” I say. They don’t know as much about where Westley’s been on the ground and in the shit as I do, and I don’t know even half. Serious lapse here. “You check with any of those three Langley officers on this?”
“Who do you imagine told us Westley would be in on this one?” Rob says. “Jesus.”
“And did they say why?” I ask.
“Terry, Westley didn’t just bring you to us,” Allison says, seemingly a little anxious to chill the static that’s developing between Rob and me. “He brought the Russians. And the package.”
“What?”
“Kim is Westley’s find,” Allison says.
Rob and Nadya look at her as if they’re thinking maybe Allison’s gone too far, given up something she shouldn’t have. Then Nadya must decide it’s okay.
“One might,” she says, “call Mister Kim Westley’s man, actually.”
“Hey,” Rob says.
“No reason Terry can’t know this, Rob,” Allison says, a bit more sharply than I’ve heard her speak before. God, I’m getting slow. This is deliberate, building a little creative tension between me and Rob. Supposed to push me closer to Allison. “He’s Westley’s too, for God’s sake. Terry’s going to be so close to Kim they’ll almost be touching. And that’s what Westley wants, right?”
Rob just looks at her. “A contractor,” he says. The tone’s nasty.
A tone of voice, wrong time, wrong place. Once that would’ve been sufficient provocation for me to radically rearrange some guy’s facial features, but I’d reckoned I was past that now. So I’m juked when the old demon starts rising fast. My muscles tense, my stance shifts. If that
prick Rob says one more word, he’s meat.
“So the relationships should be clear, before people start tripping each other,” Allison goes on. “We all slide smoothly, as a team. No friction, no bumps or stumbles. Understood?”
The demon vanishes, just like that. Rob’s a cipher again. I’m busy thinking Allison had better get clear on her role relative to Westley’s.
Rob drains his glass. “Got a refill left in your souvenir?”
“Sure,” Allison says, drawing Rob back to the cabinet.
Nadya snuggles into the sofa next to me, not close enough to mean anything, starts talking lowly in Russian.
“Rob’s such a shit sometimes,” she tells me. “Here’s something useful. Kim has no Russian. One of his executives has some, does all the translating, but rather poorly. So. Best not to let on you’re fluent unless one of two things happen: the executive is making dangerous mistakes, or our beloved Generals Bolgakov and Tchitcherine start playing games he’s not getting. Da?”
“Paws off, Russki,” Allison calls cheerfully across the room. “Poaching’s against house rules, remember?”
“No wicked intentions on my part, I’m sure.” Nadya laughs. “You’ll want to watch this one closely, though. I doubt Terry’s the faithful type.”
Rob snorts, as if disgusted by our lack of seriousness. “I’m out of here,” he says, and leaves.
“Why’s he wrapped so tight?” I say when Allison flops on the sofa next to Nadya, deciding it’s best to pretend I haven’t spotted their game. “Fucking asshole.”
“Can’t you be more colorful, Terry?” Nadya grins.
“It’s territorial,” Allison says. “He wanted to do your job. Rob’s very good at lots of things, but Westley felt he needed someone with more real-world experience. And someone who’s off the books. Just in case. Anyway, Rob feels somewhat slighted. Maybe envious as well.”
“Then he’s an even bigger asshole than I thought,” I say.
“The atmosphere’s getting rather thick in here,” Nadya says. “Fancy a stroll, Terry? Turn or two around the block before bed?”
“Love it,” I say.
“It’ll have to be a threesome, then,” Allison says, rising. “No way I’m letting you two wander off into the night on your own.”
“Bitch,” Nadya says, laughing.
eleven
I’M STALKING SLEEP THAT NIGHT, BUT SLEEP STAYS OUT of range. I lie there, face feeling flushed and forehead hot, as if I’ve got a fever. Yet my hands and feet are cold.
I’m voodooed. Partly it’s the situation. Mainly it’s the way I was so ready to hurt Rob bad over a word. If it had been a street or bar encounter, I’d have done it without hesitation. If he’d flashed a weapon, I’d have capped him and walked away without feeling a thing.
No. I would have felt everything. Which is why, these past few years, I’ve tried to chill out edgy situations, remake them, manipulate whatever players are involved. So there’d be no bang-bang, no bodies but live ones, no brass shell casings gleaming in the dark red wet. So much for resolve, good resolutions. I can handle street punks with words usually, no need for my hands. Yet I didn’t say a thing tonight. Just clicked up to attack mode. Because of a nobody’s fucking tone.
What if the training—when they get you young enough, malleable enough—can never be truly undone? What if they get it in so deep it becomes all of what you are?
There’s more. An acute episode of free-floating anxiety, Annie would explain to me. This is not necessarily bad; keeps you sharp, if there’s some genuine reason for it; if you’re sure something’s out there—unknown but real—you may need to counter. Bad, though, if you cannot identify any threat beyond the phantoms in your head.
I’m sure there’s at least one real thing: the elaborate charade about who’s really running this mission. Why? It cannot be a delusion of Allison’s. Either she’s been ordered for reasons unknown to claim command, or she’s being duped by higher-ups at Langley into believing she has it. Both seem so doubtful, going against everything I know about the Company, about Westley. But there’s clearly a game in play, though I don’t know the goal, or what the rules are. Only that my role seems to be shaking out as some sort of pawn, low-value and expendable.
Chess! It hits me who I can go to. Rhino, the only person I’ve ever met who knew absolutely his opponent’s intentions four or five moves before the attempt. Not just on a chessboard, but in the field, in combat.
Rhino. I was his star pupil, his protégé, when I was a green eighteen-year-old and he was in charge of Special Forces training. He wouldn’t speak to me for two years after I went berserk at twenty-two during Desert Storm and slaughtered two dozen cringing Iraqi soldiers who were begging to surrender after a short firefight. That little move cost me my army career. I’d called Rhino as soon as I got back to the States. He wouldn’t let me say a word. “Discipline, asshole. The difference between a warrior and a psycho-killer,” he’d barked. “I busted my chops teaching you discipline. I was sure you aced the lesson. You let me down bad, maggot. Fuck you very much.” He’d slammed the phone down then.
But he finally got back in touch, and we’d stayed in touch pretty regularly—the only gap being my time in Sarajevo and the Swiss hospital. Five years ago, having done his thirty in Special Forces, he took a job offer from the Defense Intelligence Agency. Rhino was a legend in the special-ops world, and he had friends in every agency that ever mounted clandestine actions, because he was so often called in to consult, even by the CIA.
If Rhino can’t find out what I need to know, the information does not exist. Problem is, how to get him on the case, with no phone, no e-mail, no access to any sort of secure communication? My little balloon of hope starts to deflate fast. Until I recall one of Rhino’s maxims, delivered over and over in a roar to thousands of green kids who came under his tutelage: “The simplest way to your objective is always—always—the best way, you stupid fucks.”
Simplest? The U.S. Postal Service.
I’m out of bed and rummaging through the little desk almost before I finish the thought. Somebody will know I’m moving, but not what I’m doing; I gave my room a total toss after that first morning, and I’m monitored only by motion sensors, no cameras. I find a small set of stationery and one of the pens Allison had me use to write all those postcards to Annie. I’m about to scribble, scribble, scribble as she liked to say, when I freeze. It’s unlikely, but they might count the sheets, not like finding a couple missing.
But I still have one personal thing I’d brought to the spook house that never was confiscated: a little pocket notebook. I take it and the pen and go sit on the toilet. I spend the next half hour laying out my situation for Rhino, and what I urgently want to learn about Westley, Allison, and this op. Then I make an envelope out of two pages from the notebook and a couple of strips of Scotch tape. I insert the letter, seal the envelope, slip it into one of my running shoes.
Still revved, I pick up the Kim dossier Allison had given me, slip into bed, and read it for the third time, looking hard for misinformation, omissions, any subtext that might alert me to things I should be concerned about.
Kim took over the family concern on the death of his father, five years ago. It was a planned succession of the first son, he’d been groomed for it. Bachelor’s in mathematics from Berkeley, a year as an analyst with Bear Stearns in New York, then an M.B.A. at Wharton. Excellent student, hard worker, partied hard, too, but not to excess. No overt displays of excess wealth, either; drove a 300-series BMW, shared a Manhattan apartment with two pals from Berkeley for that year at Bear Stearns, never flaunted his family fortune. Left a normal string of girlfriends in his wake when he went back to Busan.
There he worked one year at each of the various sectors of the conglomerate, always as assistant to the division chief: light manufacturing, heavy manufacturing, export, marketing, finance and currency. Five years, then a transfer to headquarters staff. Not as his father’s number two, either. Started as a
ssistant to the CFO, moved on to assistant to the COO, with the plain title of vice president. Kim’s old man apparently followed the American corporate model, with himself as CEO and chairman of the board. Kim wasn’t appointed to the board until his second year as assistant to the COO—eight years after he started work.
Patient young man, it seems to me. If he chafed at the slow pace, he kept it to himself. Didn’t vent any frustration in his personal life, either. According to the dossier, he lived pretty much as any salaried executive at his level would. Nice apartment in Busan, nice country house down south on the coast. No pleasure palaces, no flashy cars, no wild behavior. Quiet social life, dinners out and small parties in with good friends. One big interest outside business: flying. Began taking lessons as soon as he arrived at Berkeley and continued when he returned home from the U.S., working his way up the qualification ladder from single-engine prop to multi-engine prop to corporate-size jets. Got his pilot’s license for jets. Occasionally takes controls of a corporate plane on business trips, but not known to have taken one out joyriding. Ever.
My profile of Kim shakes out simply:
Heterosexual male, serial monogamist, no kinks at all.
Generally gregarious and easygoing, values friendships, socially adept and active, moderate alcohol consumption, occasional recreational drug use: weed and coke in the States, some opium in Korea, always in the company of close friends.
Even temperament, collegial attitude with employees, fair, strict when they make business missteps but always gives second chances. No tendencies to outbursts of rage, irrational decision-making, emotional volatility.
Americanized to a large degree but retains strong sense of certain traditional Korean values, including a strict structure of relationships based on age, education, and socioeconomic status, and the concept of gibun, which is similar to the Chinese concept of face: i.e., every effort is made to avoid situations or confrontations in which one party or the other may suffer embarrassment by having to back down.