Threat Level Black (2 page)

Dr. Park Syoun Ra-ha took a deep breath and rose from his workstation, trying to appear no more nervous than any other scientist might be when called to the director’s office. The two men who had come to fetch him waited stiffly a short distance away—not out of respect but because the work done at Nyen Factory was top secret, and anyone who looked at the wrong computer screen might be accused of a crime. Inadvertent or not, merely gaining top secret information was punishable by death in North Korea. Disseminating it was a crime beyond all imagining, and giving it to the Americans must surely be ten times worse.

Park felt his fingers trembling as he followed the men into the hallway. The complex’s name meant “kite,” but that was a convenient cover, for the items constructed here were not a child’s toys. The factory buildings nestled against a hillside north of Kujang hosted a weapons development facility that had few rivals in Asia. There were at least three different research areas, and most likely a full dozen; even Dr. Park wasn’t sure how many there were. He was personally responsible for the creation of a weapon that could send a modern city back to the Stone Age in a heartbeat.

Dr. Park did not want to see that weapon used. He also had decided he must leave North Korea. He had combined these two goals and, after considerable debate, taken steps to fulfill them. But now as he walked to the director’s office he worried that he had acted too rashly. He worried that he would forfeit his life in a most painful manner.

Worse, his attempt had been completely ignored by the Americans. He’d sent the e-mail nearly a week before. There had been no response.

Dr. Park could reconcile himself to that. But he had thought that if he were going to be caught, he would have been caught nearly right away. When no one sent for him by the end of the second day after he’d sent the message, he had concluded he was safe.

One of the guards stopped Dr. Park when they reached the director’s outer office. He knocked on the door and went inside. When he did not immediately reappear, Dr. Park wondered whether this was a good or bad sign. If they thought he was a traitor, wouldn’t they deal with him swiftly? But, on the other hand, where was the need to be swift? Letting him sweat out his guilt would be part of his punishment.

While death would naturally be the outcome, the end would not come swiftly. On the contrary, the process of punishment would be long and slow and painful. This went without saying. He had heard stories about cattle prods and special beatings, terrible things done to a man’s privates.

The muscles in Dr. Park’s thighs began to vibrate as he walked into the office. A pain began to grow at the back of his head on the right side, spreading quickly toward his eyes, pressing his skull the way a vise might.

“Dr. Park,” said the director. “Welcome. You know General Kuong Ou?”

Dr. Park felt a shock in his chest that forced the air from his lungs. Kuong was the head of the Military Research Institute, the bureaucracy that ran this plant. He commanded an army division and was related to the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s father and commander in chief. He was one of the most important people in North Korea.

Kuong’s visit here had not been announced, and to find him in the corner of the director’s office—what else could this mean but great, great distress for Dr. Park?

Horrible distress.

As the director began speaking, Dr. Park could think only of torture. The one happy thought that occurred to him was the fact that he had no family: His parents both had died some years before, and he had never found a wife. At least his humiliation and pain would belong only to him.

The director’s words seemed more like stones than sounds, pelting the sides of his face, pummeling him without meaning.

Vacation.

Rest.

Moscow conference.

Reward.

What was he saying?

Kuong was smiling.

Smiling?

“Your unit has done brave work,” said Kuong. “In the current situation, it is most admirable—beyond admirable.”

Was this part of the torture: to tell him that he was being rewarded and then send him to prison?

But why so elaborate a ruse?

No, they were smiling. He was…free.

Free!

“Our Russian comrades are hosting a conference on power generation similar to the ones you’ve attended in China,” added the director. “There’s unlikely to be anything new there, but you will have to make a full report.”

Dr. Park looked at the director and then at the general. He struggled to return their smiles.

“Enjoy yourself,” said the director. He began telling him of the arrangement details: An aide would accompany him as a guide and translator. Though the director did not say so, the aide would actually be a minder from the security service, prepared to report him for any infraction and willing to kill him if necessary. But typically such men were corruptible; it was a question of finding their price.

Dr. Park had never been to Moscow.

There were trains, connections to other cities.

Or perhaps if he simply went to an embassy…

Yes.

Would the Americans take him? There had been no answer to his e-mail.

“You do want to go?” asked the director.

He made it sound as if Dr. Park had an option, which the scientist knew wasn’t the case. In North Korea, even recreation was mandatory.

“You do want to go, don’t you?” added the general when he did not respond immediately.

“Of course,” Dr. Park said, bowing. “Of course. I welcome the opportunity.”

“Good,” said the director. “Very good.”

Dr. Park smiled weakly, then left the office.

William Howe stared at the shadows on the ceiling, turning over on the thin mattress of the Hotel Imperium in Parkland, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. He knew it wasn’t quite five
A
.
M
., but he also knew it made no sense to lie here any longer. If by some miracle he managed to actually fall asleep, he would be woken by the alarm in an hour anyway. Early in his Air Force career, Howe had adopted a rule about sleep: If he couldn’t get at least two hours, he wouldn’t bother.

He got out of bed and went into the bathroom to shower and shave. Now that he thought about it, he’d made up that rule in college, which predated the Air Force. But he’d been in the service so long, everything in his life seemed to originate there.

Howe wasn’t in the service any longer. Three months before, he’d turned down a promotion and a Pentagon posting, arranging instead to resign his commission. His decision had followed a wild sequence of events that had simultaneously made him a hero and left him disillusioned about everything from love to government.

Disillusioned.
One of his commanders had used that word, trying to figure out why Howe—a full bird colonel—wanted to walk away from a career that could have led all the way to the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Disillusioned.
It was an interesting word, but Howe decided it wasn’t exactly right. He wasn’t disillusioned. Being disillusioned implied that he had been naive. William Howe, former fighter pilot, former project liaison officer of one of the most revolutionary war-fighting systems ever, had not been naive.

Trusting, perhaps. Too ready to assume that others held to the standards of honesty and duty and responsibility that he himself held dear. But not naive.

Burned.

That was a better word. He had been
burned.

Howe pulled on the gray suit pants over his white shirt.

So, if he’d been burned, why was he back in D.C.?

Because his mother had been excited by the fact that the national security advisor to the President of the United States had called her son not once but twice. And actually spent several minutes chatting with her.

Chatting
was the word she had used.

The national security advisor to the President of the United States. We chatted for quite a while. A very, very nice man.

She had had the same tone in her voice nearly twenty years before, when he was a high school junior being courted by colleges offering athletic scholarships.

He looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and laughed at himself. At thirty-five, he might be a bit younger than some of the people he brushed shoulders with in Washington, but he wasn’t going to pass for a high school kid anymore—though in some ways he felt like one again.

National Security Advisor Dr. Michael Blitz—and, to hear his mother tell it, the President himself—wanted Howe to take on a very important job. But what job that was hadn’t been made clear. Howe figured it was as some sort of advisor to the President, a glorified pencil sharpener more for window dressing than anything else. He wasn’t going to take it, but the truth was, he was getting bored hanging around his parents’ house in rural Pennsylvania; he could do with the change of scenery. And sooner or later he did really have to decide what the hell it was that he was going to do when he grew up.

Howe laughed again. Then, remembering it was still god-awful early, he clamped his mouth shut, grabbed his suit jacket, and went down to see if he might find a place for breakfast.

HELLO AMANDA

G
OING TO
M
SCW
. C
AN YOU GET ME OUT
? B
EST CHANCE
T
HURS
. P
LEASE
! I
HAVE INFORMATION
.

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EE10”

The knock on the door had a familiar rap to it, the sort of hollow sound Death might make if he had a hangover.

“Fisher. I know you’re in there,” said a voice not unlike Death’s own.

“He’s not here,” said the FBI agent.

“We need to talk.”

“So talk, Kowalski. You’re good at it.”

“Face-to-face.”

“This early in the morning? I don’t know if my stomach can take it.”

Fisher refilled his coffee and lit a fresh cigarette: no sense approaching a Defense Intelligence Agency agent unarmed, even one like Kowalski.

“Why the hell aren’t you working up some plans to take over a minor country, like France or Germany?” he asked as he opened the door.

Kowalski stood in the hallway of Fisher’s small apartment building, flanked by a pair of men Fisher didn’t recognize. Their suits were pressed and their ties didn’t clash: The DIA was recruiting a better class of people these days.

“You’re dressed,” said Kowalski.

“Sorry to spoil your thrills,” said Fisher. He took a sip of coffee. “What happened? You took a wrong turn at Gomorrah and got lost?”

“Can we talk inside?”

Fisher stood back and let the three men enter the small studio apartment. When Kowalski was inside he turned to the other two men. “This is what working for the government will get you.”

“If you’re lucky,” said Fisher.

“That coffee or motor oil you’re drinking?” asked Kowalski.

“Both.” Fisher turned to the two men Kowalski had brought with them. “You guys are DIA?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I could tell from your haircuts.”

“Don’t mind Fisher. He comes off like a real jerk, but once you get to know him you’ll see he’s worse than he looks,” said Kowalski. “Have some coffee, boys. Your widows will be well cared for, I promise.”

“Don’t want the full breakfast?” Fisher asked.

“We had breakfast on the way, sir,” said the taller of the two men.

“Kowalski made you pay, right?”

“Uh, yes, sir.”

“Same old Kowalski. You see his tie? Some of those stains are five years old.”

“It’s a design, Fisher. This is an expensive silk tie that my wife gave me for my birthday. I don’t wear clip-ons like you.”

Fisher considered demonstrating the disadvantages of Kowalski’s sartorial preferences but decided the tactical advantage might come in handy if he had to choke him some day.

Kowalski put his head inside the small fridge at the side of the kitchenette. “You got stuff growing in here.”

“Penicillin. Saves on doctor bills.”

“God,” said Kowalski as he adjusted his coffee. “This is almost drinkable.”

“If I’d known you were coming I would’ve gone all the way.”

Fisher walked into the other half of the apartment, pausing over a pair of card tables that served as his combination dresser and entertainment center. He took his watch, wallet, and Bureau credentials off the ancient Philco TV, then examined his gun, a .44 Magnum nearly as old as the black-and-white TV set and arguably only half as deadly.

“So, how much do you know about the E-bomb?” asked Kowalski.

“I don’t know anything,” said Fisher.

“I heard Macklin called you in to consult.”

“He called me in to look at a computer video of New York City blowing up. He thought I’d be nostalgic,” said Fisher.

“Homeland Security is peeing in their pants,” said Kowalski. There was a note of triumph in his voice. “So you coming aboard or what?”

“I’m not doing anything unless they roll back the cigarette tax,” said Fisher. “Why are you here?”

“Because we’re the ones who came up with the intelligence on the E-bomb in the first place. Macklin didn’t tell you I was the guy who figured it out?”

“No. But probably he had trouble putting your name and the word
intelligence
together in the same conversation.”

“We’re putting together a joint task force. Homeland Security. DIA. And you.”

“Me?”

“We can use somebody for comic relief.”

“I’m too old to run away and join the circus.”

“Listen, Andy, this is going to develop into a big one. When we bust this, we’ll be on
60 Minutes.”

Fisher thought he detected a smirk from Kowalski’s taller sidekick. There was hope for the country yet.

“You really do want to join up,” added Kowalski. “I told Macklin it was a great idea. That’s why I’m here.”

Fisher took the cigarette butt down to the nub, then put it out in a glass of water in the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Under ordinary circumstances he would have left it there, but since he had company he thought it best to keep up appearances: He leaned over to the nearby window and tossed the butt down into the alley.

“So? You in or out?” asked Kowalski.

“Boss promised me a nice Internet porn case if I show up for work before noon today.”

“Internet porn? Come on. That’s not your style. You’re a high-tech guy. National security. Lives on the line. Not T & A.”

“Nothing wrong with a little T & A now and again,” observed Fisher.

“Seriously, Andy. Come on. Macklin wants you. I want you. We could use some help determining if this thing is real or not.”

“No, thanks.”

“Could be a career boost. Jump in pay—get you into some upscale digs.”

“This place isn’t upscale?” Fisher spread his hands around his domain. “Listen, I have to get going. Thanks for the wake-up call. But I got a question for you.”

“Yeah?”

“A serious question.”

“Shoot.”

“How come you used the salad dressing instead of milk in your coffee?”