The Expediter (34 page)

Handcuffed in the backseat of the diesel-powered Toyota police cruiser racing down the nearly empty highway into Pyongyang, Kim had plenty of time to rehearse her lines. She would only get one shot and she’d have to be convincing. It was worth her life to save Soon’s, but it would have to be played just right. Not every North Korean was as stupid as the two cops who’d arrested her.

“Who are you taking me to see?” she asked the detective who had interviewed her.

“Shut your mouth,” he said, glancing at her reflection in the rearview mirror. “We’re almost there and I’ll be well rid of you.”

“Maybe if you help me you’ll get a promotion.”

The detective said something she couldn’t quite catch, but she was certain that he was frightened. Whoever he had called must have been important because the man drove like someone possessed by an evil ancestor.

They crossed the river on the Okyru Bridge and suddenly they were in the city, on the broad Mansudae Street, the government buildings huge and imposing, and the reality of the situation hit her for the first time since Soon had convinced her to take the job.

They were murderers who had brought the region to the brink of nuclear war, and no matter what happened neither of them would walk away from this alive. It was almost funny in her mind, and she stifled a laugh, but she’d never really thought of herself as a killer until this instant—except for the two cops outside the hotel that night.

He would call her a perfect little fool when she showed up, but she knew that he would be secretly glad that she had come to be with him. Life without him was impossible. She’d felt that the instant he’d
been taken off the airplane. By rights she should have jumped up then and there and turned herself in.

The detective stopped at the gate in front of the State Security Headquarters Building and handed out his identification booklet to the uniformed guard, a Kalashnikov slung over the man’s narrow shoulder.

“You’re expected. Drive around to the back, but stay in your vehicle until someone comes for you,” the guard said, handing the booklet back. He glanced at Kim in the backseat then stepped away and waved them through.

A young man in a corporal’s uniform was waiting for them. He had the detective let Kim out of the car and unlock her handcuffs. “Go back to Ich’on, and say nothing to anyone about this. Do you understand?”

The detective nodded dumbly and handed over Kim’s ID. She felt a brief pang of sorrow for him. He’d only been trying to do his job until she’d shown up. And now she had brought him trouble.

“Is this all she had with her?” the corporal demanded.

“Yes.”

Kim held her silence. If she’d wanted to make trouble she could have mentioned the money, but it wasn’t worth it. She would gain nothing.

The detective gave her a bleak look, then got in his car and drove away, belching black smoke, as the corporal took Kim upstairs to operations on the third floor.

Lieutenant Hang-gook came to his office door as the corporal appeared with the woman prisoner from Ich’on, and it was all he could do not to rub his hands together like a greedy moneylender, something his wife pointed out he did whenever he was nervous or overwrought. Like now.

Everything on the floor went dead silent as the corporal brought Kim across.

“This is the prisoner’s wife,” he said unnecessarily. He handed over the South Korean identity card. “It doesn’t look like a forgery to me, sir.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” the lieutenant said. The woman was small,
but with a full round face and a hint of muscles. Best of all she seemed frightened and unsure of herself, as well she should be if she was telling the truth.

“I would like to see my husband,” Kim said, and Hang-gook could hear the South in her accent.

“Go back to your duties,” he told the corporal, and he motioned Kim into his office where he closed the door. For just a moment he wondered if he was doing the right thing by conducting the initial interview himself and not immediately taking her downstairs to the lockup and then calling the colonel. But he couldn’t pass up such a golden opportunity.

“Is my husband okay?”

“Why did you come here, if you’re who you say you are?” Hang-gook asked, rubbing his thumb and forefinger over the sleek plastic of her ID card. He couldn’t feel any irregularities that might indicate it had been tampered with.

“To trade for his freedom.”

For just a second Hang-gook wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “What are you talking about? He admitted that he’s an assassin, and if you really are his wife, that makes you a killer as well.”

“That’s right, I helped assassinate General Ho, the driver that Dear Leader sent to the Chinese Embassy, and the Chinese guards at the gate. I also killed one of the police officers outside our hotel on Yanggak Island.”

“Neither of you will ever leave Chosun alive,” the lieutenant blurted before he could stop himself.

“My husband will, because of what I came to tell you.”

“Whatever you have stored in your head, we can find out,” Hang-gook warned.

“But you won’t have the proof until I’m sure Soon is across the border.”

“Proof of what?”

“Who hired us,” Kim said. “It was the American CIA. They want China to destroy your Dear Leader and his cronies.”

“We know this already—”

“Our paymaster was Kirk McGarvey. He came to Seoul to kill me so I wouldn’t talk.”

Hang-gook stared at the woman. Nothing would ever be the same in his life from this moment on. She was the golden Buddha here to bring him salvation from someday retiring as a fifty-year-old junior lieutenant with a pension so small he and his wife would have to beg from their relatives just to survive.

“If I find out that you’ve lied, I may shoot you myself,” he said, careful to keep the excitement from his voice.

“We worked for a Russian doing business in Tokyo, but he was hired by McGarvey. And I can prove it.”

“Yes, what is this proof?”

“When Soon is free.”

Hang-gook suppressed a smile. “Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t do anything foolish, and I’ll bring you to see your husband.” He jumped up and rushed out of the office.

No one had gotten back to work but that didn’t matter right now. He motioned for the corporal who came over.

“Sir?”

“The American who Colonel Pak brought here. He has a room at the Koryo. I want you to go over there right now and search it.”

“For what?”

“Anything incriminating.”

A cunning look came into the corporal’s eyes. He too sensed opportunity. “Shouldn’t we call the colonel?”

“Not yet,” Hang-gook said, not able to keep the excitement from his voice. “That stupid woman told me that Dear Leader was correct, it was the Americans. And Kirk McGarvey was the one who gave the orders. If we can prove this for the colonel . . . anything is possible.”

“Give me ten minutes,” the corporal said and he left.

Hang-gook stood for several moments lost in thought, and when he turned back all of his clerks were staring at him. “Have you nothing better to do?” he demanded, and everyone scurried back to their desks like frightened mice.

He went to the door of his office but then hesitated, and turned back again. “Someone call downstairs and have the prisoner Huk Soon brought up. I’ll sign for him.” He wanted to see the look on his face when he saw that his wife was here.

One of his clerks got on the telephone and after a brief conversation hung up. “The prisoner is gone, Lieutenant. Colonel Pak and Sergeant Ri signed for him an hour ago.”

It made no sense to Hang-gook. The colonel fetches the very American who engineered the assassination and then releases the prisoner. He couldn’t get his mind around any set of circumstances that would fit such bizarre facts. Unless Colonel Pak was so brilliant he had lured the American here, or was a traitor.

He opened his office door and looked in at the woman who had hunched her feet up under her and sat crouched on the chair as if she were a cat ready to spring. She turned to him.

“May I see my husband now?”

“Just a few more minutes,” he said unnecessarily, and he closed the door and perched on the corporal’s desk, the other clerks studiously avoiding looking his way.

Ten minutes stretched to twenty before the corporal called from the hotel. One of the clerks answered and handed the phone to Hang-gook who was beside himself with nervous energy. If he were wrong, if the woman was telling some crazy lie, he would be in a great deal of trouble.

“It’s here,” the corporal shouted. “She’s telling the truth.”

“What did you find? Tell me!”

“Two CIA files with photographs of Huk Soon and Huk Kim. I don’t read English but it’s them, and I’ve seen pictures of the CIA’s seal.”

The relief was more than sweet. “Good. Bring them here.”

“I’m on my way.”

Hang-gook broke the connection then called the agency’s radio communications section and had them reach Colonel Pak on his car radio.

The call went through almost immediately. “This is Lieutenant Hang-gook, I’m so sorry to interrupt you, sir, but I have some information that’s for your ears only.”

“Standby,” Pak said, and he was back a minute later. “Yes, what is it?”

“The other assassin showed up this morning in Ich’on, and I had her brought here, on my authority.”

“You have the wife?” Pak demanded.

“Yes, sir, but that’s not all. She claims that Kirk McGarvey, working for the CIA, was the one who ordered the assassinations.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Sir, I sent one of my men to the Koryo to search McGarvey’s room. He found CIA dossiers on Huk Soon and his wife.” Hang-gook closed his eyes. He felt like a man teetering on the edge of the cliff. “She said he came to Seoul to try to kill her. And, as incredible as it seems, I think that’s why he came here. He means to finish the job, and maybe kill the husband.”

“Fantastic,” Pak said. “We’ll come back immediately.”

At State Security headquarters they were passed through the gate and Ri drove around back and parked. After the radiophone call ten minutes ago Pak’s mood had subtly changed, and McGarvey figured that the colonel had gotten some bad news.

“Anything I should know about before we go up?” McGarvey asked. “Your phone call back in the park?”

“It concerns you,” Pak said coolly. “Someone who wants to see you showed up.”

Ri took charge of the prisoner and just inside the door Pak held out his hand.

“I’d like your pistol now.”

Rats’ feet were pattering at the back of McGarvey’s head. The situation was wrong. “No.”

Ri stopped and glared at him. “The colonel asked for your weapon.”

McGarvey stepped back. They were in a small entry room. A security door with a keypad led to the downstairs corridor. The only way out was back to the car, and McGarvey knew that he wouldn’t make it to or through the front gate without being shot down.

“I won’t go anywhere unarmed,” McGarvey said to Pak. “It’s the deal we made when you came to ask for my help, remember?”

“Who do you think you are, you bastard,” Ri said, and he started to reach for his weapon, but Pak held him off.

“Our guest is correct, and I don’t think he means to shoot anybody today. He’s here to help us prove that we did not assassinate General Ho. And I think we’ll learn something instructive upstairs. Keep your pistol, Mr. McGarvey, if it makes you feel more comfortable.”

Ri wanted to argue, but he entered the code on the keypad and the door buzzed open. The corridor was busy but no one paid them any attention, and they took the elevator up to the third floor and down the hall to the operations center.

The clerks stopped what they were doing and Hang-gook jumped up from where he was perched on a desk, talking with the corporal, relief on his round face.

“Where is she?” Pak demanded.

Hang-gook nodded across the room. “I put her in my office.”

“And the files?”

Hang-gook handed him a large green envelope, tied shut with a red ribbon, of the kind used by couriers carrying classified documents between departments.

“Good work, Lieutenant,” Pak said. “I’ll take it from here if you don’t mind us using your office until we get this sorted out.”

“Of course not.”

This was the heart of badland, and McGarvey had been tense from the moment he’d gone aboard the ferry to Wonsan, but at this moment he wondered if he had made a serious mistake coming here. He’d been in over his head any number of times, but this was about as bad as it had ever been, and the moment they walked into the lieutenant’s office and Huk Kim jumped up from the chair into her husband’s arms, he realized it was even worse than that.

“You little fool, what are you doing here?” Soon demanded. “How did you get up here? Are you out of your mind?”

“I had to come back for you,” she cried. “And I told them everything, how we got here and how we killed the general and the others, and about Alexandar and about—” She spotted McGarvey in the doorway and she stopped in midsentence. “It’s him,” she said breathlessly, her eyes wide.