by Larry Bond
Another band, this time more balanced instrumentally and composed of older musicians, greeted them when they arrived at what Ferguson’s shadow called a guest house about thirty minutes away. Obscenely lavish by North Korean standards, it reminded Ferguson of a European-style hunting lodge, the sort of place the kaiser would have brought guests to before World War I. The wall at the front was made of large wooden timbers, like a massive log cabin. The sides, however, were smooth stucco. Here and there the shadows of the large stones peeked through thin layers of cement, as if they were fighting their way out from behind the protective covering.
Park was waiting for them inside, standing on a balcony overlooking a large great room just beyond the entrance foyer. There were scores of North Korean officials there as well, along with young waitresses who fanned out with bottles of champagne.
“My friends, I welcome you here on what I hope will be a prosperous and exciting visit,” said Park, raising his glass.
A long round of toasts followed. Park slipped out about midway through, leaving the others to mingle, drink champagne, and ogle the young women.
By the time the group began retiring to their rooms to get ready for dinner, Ferguson had introduced himself to nearly everyone and run out of business cards. Chonjin volunteered to get some made for him.
“That would be great,” Ferguson told him.
The interpreter bowed his head. “Anything for a guest. I will see you at dinner.”
“Can’t wait.”
23
NORTH OF SUNG HO, NORTH KOREA
General Namgung leaned forward and told the driver to stop. Instantly, the man obeyed, pulling to the side of the road.
Namgung ignored the questioning look from his aide, who was sitting next to him in the rear of the Russian-made sedan. He needed a moment to think. The enormity of what he was about to embark upon had settled on him, filling him with a dreadful sensation of foreboding. He knew from experience that he must take a few moments to let the sensation pass. Otherwise, he would not be able to make clear decisions. And the future depended very much on clear decisions.
At the age of fifty-three, Namgung was one of the top commanding generals in North Korea, in charge of the divisions around the capital and several in the northwestern provinces, including those on the Chinese border. Family connections had helped him launch his career, but in the thirty-plus years since he became a lieutenant he had worked extremely hard, out-hustling and outlasting many rivals. He knew the supreme leader, Kim Jong-Il, extremely well and visited him often—or had, until Kim’s recent sickness.
The dictator’s health was a closely guarded state secret—even those of importance, like Namgung, didn’t know exactly how bad off he was. But the general could guess that the supreme leader had perhaps six months to live.
After that, chaos supreme.
Unless Namgung acted.
There were many benefits to Namgung’s plans, for him personally as well as for the poverty-wracked People’s Republic, but avoiding chaos was Namgung’s primary objective. Chaos was an intense, immobilizing enemy, far worse than an opponent armed merely with guns and bombs. Chaos was to be defeated at all costs. It was a general’s duty, a Korean’s duty, to ward it off.
The general exhaled slowly. His moment of anxiety had passed.
“Mr. Park is waiting,” the general said, leaning forward to his driver. “Proceed.”
24
THE JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Corrine glanced to her left as she walked up the steps and was surprised to see CIA director Thomas Parnelles right beside her.
“Mr. Parnelles, how are you?” she said.
“Corrine, well hello.” Parnelles gave her a broad smile and gently prodded his wife. “Dianne, this is Corrine Alston, the president’s counsel. Ms. Alston is probably the most powerful woman in Washington.”
“Your husband is quite a charmer,” Corrine told Diane.
“A scoundrel, you mean,” said Dianne Parnelles, laughing.
“Are you here on a date?” Parnelles asked.
“Actually, with my secretary, Teri Gatins,” confessed Corrine. “She got tickets from her son. I’m supposed to meet her in the lobby.”
“Enjoy the show,” said Parnelles, starting away.
“Tom, I wonder if I could ask you something.”
“Classified?” He smiled, as if it were a joke.
“No. Not exactly.”
“Well, surely then,” said Parnelles. He told his wife he would meet her inside.
“I have a . . . theoretical question concerning a government employee. It just came up,” said Corrine. “I wonder if I could bounce a situation off you.”
“Theoretically.”
“If someone were . . . If they had a life-threatening disease, would you think . . . If you were their supervisor, how would you handle it?” Corrine danced around the wording, trying to come up with a way to say what she knew about Ferguson without actually identifying him.
“Life-threatening disease? I’d be sympathetic to the person, certainly. I’d make sure that they were getting the sort of care that they needed, that sort of thing.”
“Would you think it would affect their job performance?”
“I don’t see how it couldn’t. Assuming they’d be able to work in the first place.”
“Assume that they could.”
“I guess it would be a difficult situation. I think you would have to keep them on, though. By law, if nothing else,” said Parnelles. “Don’t you?”
“The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t apply to the executive branch,” said Corrine.
“I see. Well, in our agency, the decision would be rather easy if the person were on the operations side: A disease like that would eliminate them from active duty.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, of course. The officer’s judgment is the heart of the matter. You see, someone might be reckless if they knew or suspected they’d die anyway. That’s not what we want.”
“The decision would be that cut and dried?”
“We wouldn’t kick them out the door, of course. We’d find something suitable.” Parnelles drew out the last word, pronouncing it with special relish.
“Suitable?”
“There are things we could find, whether in the analytic areas or administrative. Perhaps you can do that as well. Lesser jobs,” he added. “Are we speaking of someone I know?”
Corrine hesitated. If she told Parnelles about Ferguson’s cancer—and clearly she should—she would be in effect asking to have him removed from the First Team. That would be a much harder blow to him than the cancer, surely.
But wasn’t that her responsibility?
Parnelles must know. He knew Ferguson far better than she did.
That didn’t guarantee that he knew, though. Sonjae had learned only by accident.
“It’s just a hypothetical,” said Corrine. “That’s all.”
“Let me know if it blossoms into a full-blown theorem,” said Parnelles, tapping her forearm as he walked away.
The performance at the Kennedy Center seemed to go on and on and on, so Gordon Tewilliger was not surprised when he looked at his watch and saw that it was well after midnight. He considered skipping the reception but reminded himself that there would be plenty of potential contributors there, men and women who in the future might remember his handshake and agree to write a check in a time of need.
What a difference a decade makes, he thought to himself as he headed for the party. When he was younger, he’d have wanted to go simply to mingle with the pretty women. Divorced now longer than he’d been married, Tewilliger considered himself past that stage of life where sex had any importance.
Though occasionally he could have his head turned, as the woman in the short red dress who greeted him near the door proved.
“Oh, Senator, how good of you to come,” she said.
Tewilliger struggled to remember if
he’d met her before. He thought she might be with the National Endowment for the Arts, but had the sense to realize the connection his mind was making might be less than subliminal.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Tewilliger told her, “but I can only say hello.”
“Oh, look, there’s Congressman Anderson,” said the woman, taking off in the direction of the California representative. Tewilliger went in the other direction; Anderson was a member of the other party.
The senator spotted Thomas Parnelles, the CIA director, and his wife chatting with some military people. But before he could make it over to the old coot and ask how the Agency was shaping up, Parnelles and his wife had disappeared. Tewilliger sampled some of the hors d’ouerves as a consolation prize, then joined the fawning crowd around the actors he’d just seen perform. That was a mistake—he liked people who were fawning only when he was the one being fawned over. But he couldn’t escape before the theater’s PR director arrived, and he had to endure introductions to all of the “artists,” as she called them.
They turned out to be much more polite than he’d thought, thanking him enthusiastically for his support of the arts. Tewilliger graciously accepted, even though his support had amounted to a single vote in favor of the endowment’s budget in committee, a horse trade that meant nothing, as the matter was defeated.
Tewilliger moved on to the heart of the party, a knot of corporate types and their wives standing near the table with the champagne. Some of the people from GM and Ford were there; with practiced efficiency the senator managed to greet them all. After ten minutes of circulating among the heavy spenders, Tewilliger concluded that his flag had flown long enough and headed toward the door.
He’d nearly reached it when someone tugged his arm. He was surprised to find Harry Mangjeol, his Korean-American constituent, who’d arranged for him to use a private company jet to get up to New Hampshire a few days before.
“Harry,” said Tewilliger, instantly back in hail-fellow-well-met mode. “What are you doing in Washington?”
“Important business with GM,” said Mangjeol, glancing toward the executives. “Wine and dine tonight.”
“Do you need introductions?” A favor would be just the thing.
“No, no. We had dinner together. Lewis suggested I come to the theater.”
“Did you like the show?”
Mangjeol nodded his head so enthusiastically Tewilliger thought of asking him to explain it to him.
“If I had known you were coming, Senator, I would have looked for you earlier,” said Mangjeol.
“Yes. It is a late night, though,” said the senator, plotting his exit.
“I have spoken to a great many of my friends in Korea these past days. They say, watch out for our brothers to the North. Something is brewing.
“Really? Who says that?”
“Many people.”
“Many?”
“Prominent business people.”
“I see.” Tewilliger heard these sorts of rumors from constituents all the time. The worst were the ones from people who were sure they had stumbled onto a plot that would make 9/11 look like a Sunday school picnic. He was always tempted to put them onto a novelist he knew but didn’t particularly like.
“I have associates close to Pak Lee, O Kok, Park Jin Tae,” continued Mangjeol. “They all are worried.”
“Very nice,” said Tewilliger. The names meant nothing to him, though he could tell Mangjeol wanted him to be impressed. “I’ll have to keep this in mind. Thank you. Pass along anything else you hear.”
“I will,” said Mangjeol. He’d had the impression that the senator was blowing him off, but Tewilliger’s forthright tone brushed the thought from his mind.
“I’m afraid I have to leave now. Early session in the morning.”
“Good seeing you, Senator. Very good seeing you.”
“I’m sure,” said Tewilliger, making his escape.
25
NORTH OF SUNG HO, NORTH KOREA
Ferguson’s room in the lodge was bugged and not very creatively: A relatively large microphone was wired right into the light socket and “hidden” in the shade. Professor Wan would have been appalled.
Changing for dinner, Ferguson serenaded the North Korean secret service with a medley of Russian drinking songs. He carried the overine-briated Russian act into dinner. To have acted sober would have been out of place; nearly all of his fellow travelers were legitimately snockered.
Hostesses led each man to a seat at one of two long tables in the cramped dining room. Ferguson’s shadow, Chonjin—hopelessly sober—was on his left. Mr. Ha, the Korean who had told Ferguson about Park’s airplane investment, was on his right.
Park sat at the head table with General Namgung, a North Korean general so important that he was introduced by name only.
“General Namgung is in charge of the guards here?” Ferguson asked his minder in Russian.
“General Namgung is one of the most important people in Korea,” responded Chonjin.
“Do you know him?”
The question surprised Chonjin. “Of course not. He’s too . . . He’s too important. Much of the army, the air force—they answer to him. He would not know me.”
“Maybe he can act on a contract for me,” suggested Ferguson.
Chonjin shook his head. “You have a lot to learn about doing business in Korea.”
“Teach me.”
“The first step, have good time, mingle. On the next visit, then you bring up the subject.”
“I don’t talk business until the next visit?”
“You mention it on the next visit. Not talk. Talk—negotiate, a sale—that happens in the future.”
“How far in the future?”
“Hard to say. Some day, perhaps.”
Park stayed at the head table for only a few minutes before disappearing. Namgung stayed through the meal and led several toasts. Then he went off with some of the other North Korean officials.
The other guests were led back to the great hall for a reception that consisted of several rounds of drinks followed by several more rounds of drinks, topped off by many more drinks. The businessmen poured glass after glass for their companions, drinking and passing them on.
The Korean style of drinking, with companions essentially supervising one another into a stupor, made it hard to stay sober, and Ferguson finally retreated to a chair and pretended to nod off. When Chonjin woke him and suggested that he go to bed, he protested, but within a few minutes he had nodded off again, this time on a fellow guest. When a North Korean official sat down next to him, Ferguson flopped in his direction, his chin landing on the man’s shoulder.
“Mr. Manski?”
“Oh, yeah.” Ferguson roused himself. “Bedtime, I think.”
“Yes.”
Chonjin helped him up to his room. Ferguson’s energy grew with each step.
“Open the window,” he proclaimed as he entered the room. “Air, we need good cold air! All windows!” He flopped face down on the bed, mumbling a Russian drinking song.
Chonjin and the attendant opened the windows, threw a blanket on him, and retreated.
Ferguson had no intention of spending the rest of the night sleeping, let alone singing. He’d staged his little act so he could go exploring, but to do that he needed to come up with a proper finale.
Ferguson started another drinking song, this one an obscure lament about the darkness of crows’ feathers. As he sang, he studied the lamp where the bug was, considering how to best muffle it. Raising his voice ever higher and further off-key, he stumbled around, went to the bathroom, fell, got up, and finally knocked over the lamp.
The shade flew to the middle of the floor. Cursing, Ferguson stumbled around some more, left arm flailing while his right separated the bug from the shade. He left it on the floor near his bed and continued to sing, repeating the song over and over again, hoping to lull anyone unlucky enough to be listening into an autistic state.
Climb
ing into bed, Ferguson’s lyrics gave way to snores. These slowly decreased in volume, until after a few minutes he began breathing normally. He wadded the blanket on top of the bug, grabbed his shoes, and tiptoed to the window.
Ferguson was on the third floor, facing the back of the compound. The window formed a small dormer similar to those in the Cape Cods he knew from Maine. Getting out as quietly as possible and climbing up onto the roof was more an exercise in nostalgia than a physical challenge.
The problem was to get down without being seen or breaking a leg. The front side of the lodge would have been easy to climb because of the logs, but the two guards at the front of the building meant this was out of the question. Besides being too smooth to offer any obvious handgrips, the opposite side featured the great room’s large window as well as windows looking out from the kitchen and staff room. Likewise, the southern side, where Ferguson’s room was, had far too many windows with light shining through them.
The north side had no windows above the first floor, but the only thing to climb on as he went down was the gutter at the corner. Ferguson had had bad experiences with gutters in the past, but it seemed his only option.
He worked his way down the peak and tested the metal by putting his right leg on it. The gutter groaned but didn’t collapse.
Ferguson swung around, hung off the top, and then began pushing down the corner, using the downspout the way he would use a rope to climb down a mountain. By the time he reached the top of the second floor, the leader had pulled out several inches. Then, when he was just above the first floor he heard a loud and ominous creak from above.
There was no other option but to let go.
26
NORTH OF SUNG HO, NORTH KOREA