Third World War (38 page)

He stopped, looked up at Mary and shook his head. 'No. No. No. No fucking no, if you get my message.' He stabbed his finger in the air to make his point. 'I've got a new fucking generation of troublemakers to deal with. The last generation, they wanted democracy. They hated the fucking dictators. And they won. This new lot, they love their brothers across the border. You get it? If they love their brothers, they hate you. I know it sounds crazy. Here we are, a living example of how the developing world can become the developed world, the fucking miracle which has escaped most of the rest of the Third World, how South Korea, battered and pummelled by war, used the American security umbrella to pull itself up and succeed, and the young kids don't appreciate it at all and want to fuck it up.' He clasped his hands in front of him and lowered his voice. 'You get my drift, both of you?'

'Cho, there's nothing I like more than a straight talker,' Newman smiled. 'Even if your language leaves something to be desired.'

'Good,' said Cho, putting his chubby hands on his small hips and leaning forward before beginning his pacing again. 'So, second point. What happens if that shit Park Ho loses and North Korea collapses?' He stopped in front of Brock and shook his finger. 'I'll tell you what will fucking happen. For three months, you'll all be in there, China, Russia, you guys, the damn Europeans with their blonde aid workers and their strapping lovers, Australian backpackers and their home-grown dope plants, the huge goddamn white bandage of the UN, their Toyota Land Cruisers, their 192 fucking languages. And you'll all fuck it over, just like everywhere else. And you'll say to me: "No, Cho, it's too sensitive for South Korea to be seen in there right now. Give it time. Let the international community handle it."'

He swung round to Mary, eyes glaring, halfway between humour and fury. 'Just like you did in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and all those other post-Cold-War fuck-ups. Then what will happen? Colombia or Kazakhstan will blow up. And the Toyotas, the backpackers - the whole lot of you will be shipped off there and you'll leave us with the mess of what? Do you know what?'

He retrieved his coffee from the table, sat down and crossed his legs, his silence switching the question from rhetorical to real. Both Newman and Brock stayed quiet, hoping he would give the answer.

'What, Peter? Tell me what we will be left with.'

'We won't abandon you, Cho,' said Brock.

'You fucking would if there wasn't a North Korea any more,' he laughed. 'What are you going to do, move the ceasefire line up to the Chinese border?'

Brock shrugged. 'Tell us. Tell us what would happen.'

'Reunification,' he said in barely a whisper. 'Fucking reunification.' The flare of his eyes faded and his expression, overcome by daunting reality, lost its fire. 'Look what happened to West Germany when it absorbed the East. Calculate it for us and it makes it ten times worse. Ten times the cost.'

For a moment he seemed to retreat into that ultimate nightmare. Brock nudged him on. 'So what's it to be, Cho? What's the way through?'

'Keep it local. Jamie Song and I will handle Park Ho. We can strangle him.'

'And in his last throes of life, he launches a few missiles?' suggested Newman.

'I'll nuke him.'

Cho let those words settle in the room. He fixed Brock and then Newman with an unflinching expression of certainty. No wonder he didn't want his advisers with him. South Korea's dozen or so nuclear reactors would give it ample uranium or plutonium. Its scientists had the knowledge. The parts could be procured from here and there. For Newman, it was like hearing the mechanical clicks of a round being put in the chamber of a revolver. She had known the likelihood of South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and a few others having nuclear weapons. The declaration of it in a meeting like this had elevated it to another level.

'You'll nuke him?' said Newman sceptically, not reacting to Cho's declaration and keeping to Cho's Hollywood-style language. 'If he doesn't mind being nuked by us, why should he mind being nuked by you?'

'That's what you don't see,' said Cho. 'You know why Park Ho's such a shit? Because his mother was killed by a GI in front of his eyes when he was a kid. So you've got a mind there no one can deal with. If his country is pulverized by you guys, he'll fight you back and feel good about it. He'll be avenging his mother's death. He'll be proving that juche is not a piece of crap, that it can take on a superpower. But if he fights me, what the fuck does he get? Nothing. No point getting nuked by little old Cho. If he's going to get nuked it has to be by Uncle Sam, and if Uncle Sam's not going to do that, Park loses. That's how he's thinking. He's Korean, I know how he thinks. We're all a bit crazy.'

Cho stopped pacing, tapped his head and his face broke out into a huge smile. 'There you go,' he said, sitting down and patting Brock's knee. 'That's my rant. Nothing to read between the lines.'

In the shower, Mary Newman laughed as she recalled Cho's language. The steam and warmth soaked into her tight shoulder muscles, letting her think more clearly about the meeting. Newman turned the shower water to the highest pressure, then switched the temperature to cold, letting her body absorb the shock right down the spine. She let it stay there until the goose pimples had subsided. Just as suddenly, she turned the water off, reached for a towel, covered herself and stepped out on to the warm underfloor heating of her bathroom suite.

Darkness had fallen, and through the window she saw the wavering lanterns of farmers making their way home through the rice paddies. Somewhere high above was the high-pitched roar of fighter jets from the base taking off into the night. But it took her a few minutes to work out the other strange sound, which sent a tremble through the building, until she remembered the base commander telling her tonight was artillery practice, the pounding of the big guns which would be moved up to the front line of invading North Korean troops.

Newman draped a robe around herself, loosened the wet towel, hung it on a rail and walked along the short corridor to the living room. She mixed herself a gin and tonic and checked her watch. Peter Brock would be at least another half an hour, and if she greeted him in her bathrobe, what the hell!

Cho had refreshed her and frightened her. As he was ushering them out of the room, having dropped his nuclear bombshell, he had unashamedly homed in on Newman's personal life. 'You getting married again, Mary?' he had said, grinning at Brock.

'Too busy stopping nuclear proliferation,' answered Newman smartly, taking up his offer to step out of the door in front of him.

'You should be married,' Cho retorted loudly so that all in the vast adjoining room, advisers and tea staff included, could hear. He tapped his chest. 'Follow my example. I have one wife and two mistresses. If Cho does anything stupid, he has three women to tell him he's talking shit and is going to fuck things up. Everyone needs that, Mary, even someone as brainy as you. Everyone needs to be told they're talking shit.'

Before Mary could answer, Cho had beckoned over his intelligence chief. 'I've told Mr Brock he can have as many agents as we can spare,' he instructed. 'You two work it out between you. Remember two things. We have big problems at home with infiltration, and that the United States is our number-one ally and no argument.'

As the helicopter had lifted off from the grounds of the palace, Newman saw shimmering winter scenes of Seoul, smashed to rubble in the war and now recreated as a Confucian American dream city. She flew over the hills and parks of the northern side, across the Han River, the pilot taking the helicopter higher to clear the skyscrapers of the business and commercial districts, glistening with advertisements and lights. If only Seoul could have been replicated amid the Catholicism of Latin America and the tribalism of sub-Saharan Africa, if only Pakistan had taken a lead from South Korea, if only it had downplayed its nuclear weapon as a friendly instrument of diplomacy and not declared it as an Islamic bomb - as if Cho had made a fanfare on television of his Confucian bomb, and not casually mentioned it in a very private conversation to people who mattered; if only . . . Her train of thought had wandered with the throb and clatter of the aircraft which had delivered her to Kunsan where, after delivering her speech, she had insisted on being driven through the red-light district of nearby Silver Town. Through the darkened windows of her Mercedes, she watched Americans, barely out of their teens, draped around Korean prostitutes, drunk and wayward, stumbling from bar to bar. How many secrets would they give away to gentle, seductive prodding? A small network of North Korean agents would probably have maps of every aircraft hangar, mess room, set of traffic lights and bowling alley on the base.*

*****

Newman must have dozed off in the chair, because a buzzer woke her, with the familiar and slightly distorted face of Peter Brock staring into the security camera. She fumbled for the remote, pressed open the door, pulled her bathrobe around her and got up. Brock appeared, looking as worn out as she had felt about an hour earlier. 'Sorry, Mary, have I barged in?' he said, hesitating.

'No, Pete. Come in,' said Newman. 'I was catnapping.' She eyed her own half-drunk gin and tonic, where the ice had melted and the lemon had sunk to the bottom of the glass. 'How was he? I mean, is what we're doing working?'

'It's working,' said Brock confidently, putting his briefcase by the door and looking around admiringly. 'Wow,' he exclaimed. 'You've hit the jackpot, at least for tonight.'

'Great, isn't it?' said Newman. 'A huge bed, the biggest jacuzzi I've seen in my life, the first heated balcony in the world, and no one to share it with.' She picked up her glass, went into the cloakroom by the door and tipped the contents into the basin.

'You want a drink?' she asked, heading for the bar, and plugging in the kettle.

'Sure,' said Brock. 'But just water. I need something to wash away Cho's caffeine.'

Newman laughed. 'And I need another coffee. Hot and black.' She tore open a sachet and poured coffee powder into a cup. 'Where have they put you?'

'Over in another wing. But nothing like this,' said Brock, unscrewing the cap and drinking straight from the bottle.

'Did you dissuade him from his nuking venture?'

'I hope so,' said Brock. 'He had a point, though. Park would dearly love us to strike from Japan or a carrier. If the strike comes from South Korea it confines the conflict.'

'But then you have a bloody land war across the DMZ.' The kettle clicked itself off. Newman filled her cup and sat down again.

'After you left, though,' said Brock with a grin, 'he was more interested in getting you married than knocking out Park Ho.'

'Oh my God,' said Newman, feeling herself blushing. She put down the coffee and cupped her chin with her hand. 'That man's a menace.'

Briefly, they fell into a companionable silence. Unlike her own, Brock's face was too expressive to hide much of what he was thinking. His talent was analysis more than negotiation where his eyes gave too much away. She sensed that Brock would not have mentioned Cho's marriage line unless he planned to move it on somewhere. 'Do you think Jim will go for a second term?' she said, casually.

'He's just past the mid-terms,' said Brock thoughtfully. 'I guess he's thinking of it. Why? Do you want my job next time round?'

Newman threw her head back and laughed. 'Not at all. I'm thinking of quitting. Getting myself a life.'

Mockingly, Brock raised his eyebrows, and swept his hand around the room. 'You mean all this is not a life?'

She eyed him bashfully. 'You know what I mean.'

'With Jim?'

'I think we've both been thinking about it,' she said, lowering her head so Brock couldn't see her embarrassment. 'Maybe we've been thinking about it too much.'

'Well, I'll be damned,' said Brock, crunching his hands around the water bottle.

'Don't tell me, with all that stuff in the press, that you're playing the innocent.'

Brock put his hands in the air as his face cracked up in a smile. 'I leave Caro to get involved in these things. But if he runs again, what then?'

'If he agrees, I become the First Lady, or whatever.' She uncrossed her legs and sat up. 'I like Jim. I like him a lot. He's one of the most decent men I know. The way he handled Valerie's illness and death has been an example to us all. Maybe it's too soon. I don't know. The thing that worries me is if even now my feelings towards him - even his towards me - affect our judgement. As you know, Chris and I don't exactly see eye to eye.'

'If I had noticed it, Mary, I would have told him,' said Brock firmly. 'And I haven't.'

'So I can keep my job, then?' said Newman with a smile.

Brock whistled through his teeth. 'With South Korea going nuclear and you marrying the US President, this has been one hell of a day for me.' He slapped his knees and stood up. 'I told Cho we didn't need entertaining tonight - just a quiet meal to chew things over together. That OK with you? They're fixing it in a private room downstairs.'