The Expediter (13 page)

McGarvey’s key card authorized his entry, and he knew the four-digit code for the door lock. The desk in the outer office was piled with files, maps, and satellite images, as were the couch, two easy chairs, and coffee table. It looked as if it had not been cleaned since Rencke had moved in.

Rencke was seated at a bank of computer monitors in the shape of a U, his fingers flying over one of the keyboards. Three eighty-two-inch flat-panel monitors on which were displayed the real time outputs of various spy satellites around the world were lined up above the computers. McGarvey recognized the images on one of them as downtown Pyongyang.

“Where will it be first,” Rencke asked without turning around. “Seoul, Pyongyang, or Tokyo?”

“Before I try to find Turov and whoever hired him, I’m going to need more answers,” McGarvey said. “Huk Soon is still in Pyongyang, but his wife Kim made it out.”

“Seoul it is,” Rencke said. He looked over his shoulder. “Ten minutes ago the Chinese brought their missile and air forces up to a stage one alert. DEFCON four.”

“Any response from Pyongyang?”

“Not yet. But I think we’re running out of time. And if the shit does go down, you’re going to be in a seriously unhealthy place.”

“How soon can you get me over there?”

“Are you packed?”

“Bag’s in the rental car out front.”

“An Aurora is rolling out at Andrews. I’ll drive you over there now, and take care of your car first thing in the morning. By the time you’re airborne I’ll have an NIS guide-interpreter standing by. They want this thing to go away as much as everybody does, so they’re going to cooperate.”

“What did you tell them?” McGarvey asked.

Rencke grinned. “You’re looking for an old friend, but they want more,” he said. He finished with his keyboard and got up. “Whatever I get I’ll download to your sat phone, so you better keep it with you at all times, kemo sabe.”

On the way out of the office, McGarvey remembered one last thing. “Send someone down to Casey Key to keep an eye on Katy. If Colonel Pak could get to me that easily, he certainly could get to her.”

“The babysitters are already in place,” Rencke said. “Nobody who doesn’t belong will get within five klicks of her even when she goes out shopping.”

“Thanks.”

“How’d they take it upstairs?”

“Not good.”

“Gee, what a surprise, and I’ll bet Howard was leading the charge.”

McGarvey had to smile despite the situation. “Do you suppose he doesn’t like me?”

Seoul

After descending to refuel over the Pacific, the SR-91 Aurora had climbed back up to its cruising altitude of 130,000 feet where the stars were visible and the curvature of the earth was apparent. Three and a half hours after taking off from Andrews, the pilot, Air Force Major John White, radioed back to McGarvey that they were starting their descent and were less than thirty minutes from touchdown at Oasan Air Force Base outside Seoul.

McGarvey had managed to get a little sleep, though the flight suit and bladder bag were uncomfortable. “Any reason I can’t use my sat phone?”

“Now you can,” White replied. “Just don’t mention where you are, sir.”

The aircraft’s exotic shape and fuselage covering made it even more stealthy than the F-117A, and Aurora pilots were ordered to stay as high up as possible for as long as possible, and spend the minimum of time taking off and landing, limiting the visual sightings.

Rencke answered on the first ring even though it was midnight in Washington. He’d been waiting for the call. “You should be just about there,” he said

“Half hour,” McGarvey said. “Who’d you set me up with on the ground?”

“Captain Ok-Lee Lin. She’s NIS which started out to be a problem
because they refused to deal with you unless you were coming in on Company business.”

“If word gets back to Adkins through official channels, I’ll be all but dead in the water.”

“You’re there on a black project involving the North Korean thing, I had to give them that much,” Rencke said. “But I told them there might be a leak here at a very high level, so any communication with us has to be through you. No mention of your being in the country will be made to anyone, including our embassy.”

“I’ll bet they loved that,” McGarvey said.

The South Korean National Intelligence Service had been distrustful of the CIA since two years ago, after one of its agents operating in the North had been burned. It had been strongly rumored that some of the intel that the NIS had shared with the CIA had somehow leaked.

“It was the only way I could get them to cooperate,” Rencke said. “When this is all over we can kiss and make up. In the meantime I figured this was top priority.”

Something was missing. “Has anyone from upstairs been down to see you yet?”

“Not a word,” Rencke said. “Kinda odd, don’t you think? Howard especially would have to figure that you and I had talked.”

“Has anyone tried to hack your systems?”

Rencke chuckled. “Not possible, Mac, I shit you not. Leastways not by anyone here on campus. They warned you to stay the hell out of it. Maybe Howard is giving you enough rope to hang yourself.”

But there was more to it than that, McGarvey was convinced of it. He’d seen things like this before. As soon as a national crisis hit us, like 9/11, everyone got superbusy trying to cover their own asses.

“What assets have we got trying to figure out what really happened in Pyongyang?” McGarvey asked.

“Until you showed up everyone was convinced that Kim Jong Il ordered it.”

“Just to show the Chinese that he can’t be dictated to?”

“Something like that,” Rencke said. “It’s what the president wants
to hear. He doesn’t want another war, so he’s siding with the Chinese, telling them what a shit Kim Jong Il is, and that he oughta be taken out with as little damage to the country as possible. It’s gonna happen, the president just wants the Chinese to finesse the situation, because if they push too hard Dear Leader will launch.”

The Korean peninsula had come into view out the canopy, and Major White was practically diving the Aurora straight in.

“Anything new on Turov?”

“Nothing yet,” Rencke admitted. “But I’m going on the assumption that he’s our man, and that he
wants
to be reached by the right sort.”

“Someone who needs his talents.”

“That’s right, but for now he’s probably lying low until this blows over. He might already have left Tokyo, but a man like him will always have his ear open for something new. Which means he can be contacted.”

“When you get to him, what are you going to offer?” McGarvey asked.

“President Haynes, and I’m going to ask that he hire you as the shooter.”

Huk Kim got out of bed at last, and padded into the bathroom where she looked at her face in the mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her complexion sallow. She’d managed to hold back the tears on the flight to Beijing and then here to Seoul and even in the taxi to the apartment. But the moment she’d walked in the door without Soon, she’d broken down.

From the day she’d laid eyes on him, he had been the center of her universe. She never did anything without him, or at least without his face, his feel, and his strong masculine smell in her mind. She made no decisions without him. Every thought she had was about him. Her entire future was intertwined with his.

Now he was gone.

She splashed some cool water on her face, dried off, and went into the living room, but stopped. She’d completely forgotten why she was there.

For several long seconds she stood in the middle of the room trying to remember something. Maybe she was losing her mind, she thought, and she turned to tell Soon what a little fool she had become. But of course he wasn’t there. He hadn’t come back from Pyongyang with her.

She’d almost forgotten about how he’d been marched off the airplane by two men, one of them brandishing a pistol. They were cops, or maybe state security, they had the look. Now he was either in an interrogation cell or he was dead.

In Pyongyang. In North Korea.

Suddenly she knew why she’d finally woken up and why she was here, what she had to do.

She got her cell phone from her purse where she’d dumped it and her hanging bag by the door last night when she’d returned. She flipped it open, got a dial tone, and with fumbling fingers entered a local number.

Alexandar could normally be contacted on the Internet, using a sophisticated encryption program that he’d sent as a download to Kim and Soon’s laptop. If the entry procedures and passwords were wrong, the program would erase itself as well as the laptop’s entire hard drive.

In an emergency he could be reached at a redialer number that was unique to the operator. Her number was different from Soon’s. It was the only secret she’d ever kept from him, and it had been at his insistence. “Our lives could depend on it,” he told her.

It seemed to take forever before the call went through, and when it rang she let go of the breath she’d been holding.

After two rings the connection was made, though no one answered.

“We have a problem,” Kim said, trying to keep her voice as even as she could.

For several long seconds she pressed the phone to her ear, hoping that he would be there, that he would answer her, but the connection was broken and she had a dial tone again.

The Aurora landed at Oasan Air Force Base shortly before ten in the morning local and was immediately directed to an empty maintenance hangar at the opposite side of the field from the operations terminal. Flying in, McGarvey got very little chance to see anything of Seoul from the air because of their speed and the extreme angle of descent, and once they were inside the hangar the main doors trundled closed before the aircraft engines had fully spooled down.

A boarding ladder was brought over as the canopy came open. Major White was already standing up when McGarvey undid his harness and unplugged his helmet and took it off.