by Larry Bond
He gave them a wide berth, circling out about a hundred yards before crossing the road and then going over to the path. His feet had swollen so much that the clogs were now tight. This was an advantage, really; it meant he could trot without worrying about losing them.
The parka flew behind him. He felt like a kid on Halloween, pretending to be a super hero.
“Trick or treat, Kim Jong-Il,” he whispered to the moon over his shoulder as he ran north. “Trick or fuckin’ treat.”
It seemed to take the entire night to get to the mouth of the river. Ferguson jogged as much as he could, bouncing along to keep warm, never stopping. The highway was deserted, but he was too fearful to walk along it for very long. Instead he kept within ten or twenty yards, using paths and fields and occasionally hard-packed roads that led to the sea. Twice he had to backtrack to skirt small villages that lay near the water, then walk along the shoulder of the highway until he was safely past.
Eventually Ferguson found that the land on both sides of the road was too marshy to walk on, and he had no choice but to walk along the main road. He kept looking over his shoulder, prepared to jump into the nearby ditch or a clump of reeds if a vehicle appeared.
After what seemed like hours—the moon had arced high across the sky—Ferguson gave in to fatigue and stopped for a rest. He decided he had gone much farther than a few miles; the Korean who had told him the river was nearby had been lying to throw him off.
Maybe he could steal a boat from the next village he came to, take it north across the mouth of the river, find the cache from the water.
Or go south. It was farther, but he wouldn’t have to wait to be rescued. He wouldn’t have to depend on anyone but himself.
The waters were patrolled, but smugglers made it past all the time; surely he could.
Ferguson got up and started walking again. He began humming “Finnegan’s Wake” to himself, then whispering the lines from Chaucer, whipping up his strength. There was no wind to speak of, and while the prison pants he wore were thin, the parka was relatively warm, even as a cape.
I’m so cold I don’t even know I’m cold anymore, he realized. Then he pushed the thought away.
It was just a matter of time before he found a boat. Maybe the river really was close. He’d steal a boat and paddle across the muddy mouth of the sea, skirting the shallow mud flats.
Make land, keep going, keep going, always keep going.
Keep going.
Keep . . .
The horizon brightened as Ferguson pushed on. He walked and ran along the road, moving as quickly as he could. His side ached, and his legs stiffened. He didn’t want to stop, fearing that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to get back up. But finally he had no choice. He felt his balance slipping. He steadied himself, then took a few steps off the road, slipped down the embankment and let his legs slowly collapse beneath him. He slid onto the ground.
Lying in the damp coldness, he thought how ironic it would be to die here, but then realized that irony and death didn’t really go together; irony was something for the living. Death was just death, and this was as good a place to die as any.
He thought of Chaucer, then of his father, wishing he could have seen the old man one more time before he’d died, have a drink maybe, a lot of drinks, talk to him in ways they hadn’t talked since he was small, about things they’d never had the strength to mention.
Have that chance in heaven. Maybe. If it worked that way. If he got there.
In the distance, a seabird called. His body suddenly felt warmer.
The bird called again.
Dawn, thought Ferguson.
He pushed upright. In the gray twilight, a flock of shadows crossed overhead, descending to his right. As they passed just out of sight, he heard the sound of pebbles being thrown into the water.
Rocks maybe.
Or the birds, landing in a sheltered arm of water.
Ferguson stared in the direction the birds had taken for several minutes, before realizing he had come to the river.
33
DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA
Thera spent a restless night at the hotel after talking to Corrigan, then set out just before dawn for Chain, a town southeast of Taegu. She’d been using the rental for a while now; she decided she would change cars in Taegu, just in case someone had developed an interest.
Someone like Park, though he showed no sign of it. Her room hadn’t been bugged, and she wasn’t being followed.
She wished she were. Then at least she would feel as if she were on the right track.
Park had to know something about Ferguson; he simply had to.
As she saw the sign for the highway, Thera had an urge to take the ramp north and head up to Park’s estate. She could see herself grabbing the old bastard and holding a gun to his mouth. She’d make him tell her where Ferguson was, or she’d shoot him.
She’d shoot him anyway.
Gritting her teeth, Thera bypassed the ramp, heading south toward Chain like she was supposed to.
34
DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA
One more thing remained to be done—the way had to be cleared for the jet.
Leaking the information to South Korean intelligence was easy; Mr. Li would accomplish it through his usual intermediaries. To get to the Americans, however, required subtlety.
Park glanced at his watch. It was five a.m.—three p.m. in the States.
He turned on his computer, waiting while it booted up.
He would supply the final touch himself over lunch with the Republic’s president. It was a pleasure he could not deny himself.
The screen flashed. Park sat and began to type.
35
NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE CHONGCHON RIVER, NORTH KOREA
The boat was longer than a three-man canoe but just as narrow. Flat-bottomed, it was propelled by a long polelike paddle worked from the side. Similar vessels had been made according to the local design for two or three hundred years at least. It was a serviceable craft, more than capable of doing what Ferguson needed.
The wood creaked as he put one leg over the gunwale, pushing off into the soft mud with the other. The boat rocked beneath his weight, its sides giving slightly as he leaned the rest of his body inside and rolled into it. He turned onto his stomach, then knelt upright, half-expecting to feel his leg going through the wood. But the hull held.
The boat shifted back and forth abruptly as Ferguson took up the oar and tried to figure out how to work it. The water was very shallow, making it easier to push than to paddle, and after a few strokes he got a rhythm going.
He’d found the boat near a cluster of houses overlooking an arm of water that was separated from the rest of the bay by a swampy peninsula. To get into the main part of the channel where he could get across, Ferguson had to turn in front of the settlement, rowing directly past the houses.
It was still before dawn, but already smoke rose from several chimneys. There were other boats, bigger, tied to a dock closer to the houses. If someone saw him they would have an easy time coming after him; he was moving at a snail’s pace.
He couldn’t blame them if they came after him. The boat he had stolen undoubtedly represented a good portion of the community’s wealth.
Ferguson thought of the girl he’d stolen the ID from at Science Industries: fired probably, though now he wouldn’t put anything beyond Park.
He’d done things like that a million times. He never thought about the consequences.
He couldn’t. Once he started to, he couldn’t do his job. The girl, the villagers—they had to remain in the background, part of the scenery. If he stopped to think about them, if he focused on the pawns instead of the players, he was done.
Push, he told himself. Push and don’t think. Go. Go!
Go!
No one would think about him as anything but another piece of cannon fodder, ultimately expendable. It was the way it had to be.
The chain that connected his arms clanged aga
inst his chest as Ferguson started the turn. He leaned forward, pushing through the muck that lay barely a foot below the boat’s shallow hull.
A gust of wind hit him in the side as he cleared the marshy finger of land. He turned into the teeth of it, poling so hard against the mud that he nearly lost the paddle.
Go, he told himself. Go.
Ten strokes later, the river deepened, and Ferguson once more struggled to figure out how to paddle properly. He barely made headway at first. He finally tried standing up, and after nearly losing his balance two or three times, started stroking steadily across the gaping mouth of water.
The rays of the sun lit the squat white faces of the houses on the opposite shore as he passed the halfway mark. Ferguson tacked to his left, in the direction of the sea, hoping that by staying far enough away from land he would seem just another villager. In truth he had no idea what a villager would look like; the real keys to his survival were the shadows on the water around him and the indifference of people trained by the dictatorship to keep their eyes focused firmly on the ground.
When he neared the other side, Ferguson saw that the land wasn’t really land at all but muddy swamp and wild vegetation. He continued to paddle westward. Perhaps an hour passed before he saw ground solid enough to walk on. As he approached the embankment, he spotted a vehicle moving just beyond the reeds. He ducked down, waiting until it had passed, then landed and abandoned the boat.
A one-lane dirt-packed road ran through the swamp about twenty yards from where he had beached. Ferguson followed the road for roughly a mile before it curved northward. Twice he ducked off the road when he heard bicycles approaching. The marsh on both sides made for plenty of cover.
Shortly after it turned northward, the road joined a paved highway. Ferguson guessed it was the coastal highway. He was no more than five miles, and probably closer to three, from the emergency cache.
He told himself he had less than half that: one mile, a fifteen-minute stroll, an easy jaunt.
It wasn’t a very effective lie, and as the sun climbed higher he felt bad about it. As a CIA officer he lied all the time but never to himself. He’d required brutal honesty his whole career; he was the one person he could count on for an honest assessment.
Honesty became even more important when the cancer was diagnosed. No one—not the doctors, not the lab people, not anybody—told him the whole truth. They thought they did, maybe they even tried, but they couldn’t really face it. In the end they slanted things to make themselves feel better.
Not that honesty changed the thing that counted. The cells mutating out of control cared not a whit for truth.
What had Chaucer said about the knight?
Forget the knight, forget Chaucer, just walk. Just go. Go!
Think of it as two miles, Ferguson told himself, pushing his stiff legs faster. Two miles. A cakewalk.
Ferguson had no idea how far it really was. He started looking for the signs way too early and then when he was near, almost missed it.
The blotch of white was on a rock about five feet from the road. It looked so random that even when he stood over it he couldn’t be absolutely sure.
Because he wanted it, desperately wanted it, to be the sign.
He stood over the rock, found the direction due west, then counted off ten yards, or what he thought was ten yards.
Another splotch.
I’m here, he thought. Here.
He’d planned to circle and scout the area but that was nothing more than wishful thinking. He began looking for the hidden packs. Before he’d taken more than two steps he tripped over something. He got his hands out to protect himself, but he was too weak and they collapsed. The chain cracked his ribs.
Wincing, he saw the packs lying beneath the nearby brush.
I’m here. I am Goddamn here.
Ferguson crawled to them on all fours. He grabbed at the nearest one, pulling it open. He took out a small Russian PSM pistol, then took out one of the bottles of water. He drank so fast his stomach cramped, and he had to lay down on his back for a good half hour, watching the white puffy clouds passing in the bright blue sky until the pain eased.
“Long way to go,” he told himself as he got back up. “Long, long way to go.”
ACT V
The dead shed their covers
And the gate of Knife Hell opens.
—from “The Seventh Princess,”
traditional Korean song for the dead
1
NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE CHONGCHON RIVER, NORTH KOREA
“Jesus, Ferguson.”
“No, it’s just me, Corrigan. Jesus is holding off until the Second Coming.”
“Ferg, where are you?”
Ferguson’s laugh turned into a cough. “North Korea. Where the hell do you think?”
“Ferg—”
“Puzzle it out, Corrigan. Check the line. The sat phone. I’m at Cache Point Zed.”
Each satellite radio phone included in the cache gear was hard-wired to a specific frequency; these phones also included GPS gear that showed their location at The Cube.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Corrigan. “I meant are you OK?”
“I’m better than OK,” said Ferguson, eying the small tool kit to see what he could use for a lock pick. “But I need a ride.”
“Oh, jeez.”
“Not the response I want to hear, Corrigan. You’re supposed to tell me the bus will be here in a half hour.”
“I have to get a hold of Slott.”
“Well, let’s move.”
“Hang tight, Ferg. We’re with you.”
Yeah, right beside me, thought Ferguson.
He put the radio down and took the smallest screwdriver from the pack, but the blade and shaft were too large to fit in the lock. A small metal clip held two of the MRE packages together. He bent it straight, then broke it in two. But the wire was a little too rounded and not quite springy enough, or maybe he was just so tired that he couldn’t get it to work.
The lock itself was extremely simple, little more than a kid’s toy, which added to Ferguson’s frustration. After trying to work the clip in for a half hour, he gave up and tried something new: chiseling the metal off with the help of a rock and the large screwdriver in the kit.
He’d just broken the link on his left hand when the phone buzzed, indicating an incoming transmission.
“Ferg?”
“Hey, Evil Stepmother. How are ya?”
“Corrigan arranged a conference call. I’m on with Mr. Slott and Parnelles.”
“Guys.”
“You sound terrible,” said Slott.
“Good to talk to you, too, Dan.”
“We’re going to get you out of there, Ferg,” said Slott. “We will.”
“Yeah, Great place to visit but . . . shit.”
Ferguson stopped midsentence. He could hear the sound of a truck, several trucks, coming toward him. “I’ll get back to you.”
“Ferg—”
“I’m OK.”
He snapped the phone off and ran toward a clump of bushes to his right, stumbling over the rocks before reaching the thick cover. The first truck that passed was a military transport, similar to an American deuce-and-a-half. A stream of similar vehicles, some open in the back, some with canvas tops, followed. All were jammed with troops. Ferguson counted thirty-six.
He waited a few minutes after the trucks had passed, then called back.
“Robert, are you OK?” asked Parnelles.
“Yeah, General, I’m fine. Cold, though. And hoarse.” He grabbed the broken chain in his hand and threaded his arms into the jacket, zipping it tight.
“Ferg, North Korea is going crazy,” said Slott. “They’re mobilizing. It looks like a coup, or maybe even an attack on the South.”
“I just counted thirty-six trucks heading south. Troop trucks. Mostly full,” said Ferguson. “So what would you figure that: thirty-six times twenty, thirty? About a thousand guys?”
�
��The point is,” said Slott, “we want to know if you can wait until tonight for a pickup.”
“Actually, Robert, waiting is imperative,” said Parnelles.
“Sure,” said Ferguson. “Not a problem. I’ll work on my tan in the meantime. Maybe go a few rounds of golf later.”
“We have a team off the coast, but it will take a while for them to get into position. The North Korean navy is on patrol all up and down the coastline, and army units are moving up to the border and down to the capital,” said Slott. “Waiting for nightfall will be much safer.”
Ferguson hunched over the packs and the bicycles. There was a pair of simple pants and a long shirt. Once he got the other chain off, he could pull them over the pajamas.
He wasn’t going to fool anyone into thinking he was local, but the pants had to be warmer than the prison clothes.
“Ferg,” said Corrine, “are you really OK?”
“Hell, yeah. All right, here’s what I got.” He told them that Park had probably had him arrested because it looked like he knew something was up.
“Why didn’t he just kill you?” Slott asked.
“Because I’m a nice guy, Dan. He thought I was Russian. They couldn’t decide whether I was working for the Kremlin or the mafyia. The North Koreans didn’t want to piss off one of their major creditors, so they put me on ice.”
Ferguson took a breath. He could feel the mucus in his chest, as if he had bronchitis.
He might actually have bronchitis, now that he thought about it.
“Park met with a Korean general named Namgung. There’s something up between them. Something big enough that Namgung had me taken out of jail because they thought the Russians would be pissed off at him, not Park.”
“General Namgung?” said Slott, pronouncing the name differently. “The head of People’s Army Corp I?”
“Is that around the capital?”
“Yes. It includes Air Force Command One and some security forces as well as a dozen divisions.”