“Send him right in, Bugs.”
Bugs looked like he wanted to loosen his collar; his round face grew red.
“I can’t do that, sir.”
“Why? Where is he?”
“On the phone.”
Hood was reminded of the funny feeling he’d had when Rodgers quoted Lord Nelson. His features darkened. “Where is he?”
“Sir-somewhere over the Virginia-Kentucky border.”
TWENTY-ONE
Tuesday, 9:00 P.M., Seoul
Gregory Donald walked for a while after leaving the Embassy. He was anxious to get to the base, to look after his wife, and to call her parents with the awful news. But he needed time to compose himself for that. To reflect. Her poor father and younger brother would be devastated.
He also had an idea he needed to mull over.
He made his way slowly down old Chongjin Way, past the markets with their brightly colored lanterns, banners, and awnings, all of them alive under the streetlights. The area was more crowded than usual, packed with the curious who had come to look at the blast site, to take pictures and videos and collect mementoes of scrap metal or shards of brick.
He bought fresh tobacco at an open-air stand, a Korean blend; he wanted a taste and smell to associate with this moment, one that would always bring back the aching love he felt for Soonji.
His poor Soonji. She gave up a college professorship in political science here to marry him, to help expatriate Koreans in the U.S. He had never doubted his wife’s affection for him, but he had always wondered how much she was moved to marry him by love and how much because it was easier for her to come to the U.S. in his company. He didn’t feel guilty thinking that, even now. If anything, her willingness to sacrifice a career that was important to her, to take a husband she barely knew, just to help others made her seem more precious in his eyes. If he had come to realize anything about people in his sixty-two years, it was that relationships between them shouldn’t be defined by society, but by the people involved. And he and Soonji had surely done that.
He lit the pipe as he walked, the glow of the flame playing off his tear-filled eyes. It seemed like he should be able to turn around, pick up the phone at the Embassy, and call her, ask her what she was reading or what she’d eaten as he did every night they weren’t together. It was inconceivable to him that he couldn’t do that- unnatural. He wept as he waited to cross the street.
Would anything matter again?
Right now, he didn’t see how. Whatever the level of love they shared, they were also a genuine mutual admiration society. He and Soonji knew that even when no one else appreciated what they were doing or trying to do, they themselves did. They laughed and wept together, debated and fought and kissed and made up together, and hurt together for the hardworking Koreans who were being brutalized in American cities. He could carry on alone, though he no longer seemed to have the desire. It would be his mind and not his heart that drove him. His heart died at a little past six this evening.
Yet, there was still a part of him that burned, that flamed hotter as he thought about the act itself. The explosion. He had known tragedy and loss in his life, had lost so many friends and colleagues through car accidents, plane crashes, and even assassination. But that
was random or it was targeted: it was fate or it was an act aimed at a specific figure for a particular deed or philosophy. He simply couldn’t comprehend the shocking impunity that drove someone to commit a blind act like this, to snuff out Soonji’s life along with the lives of so many others. What cause was so urgent that the death of innocents was the best way to get attention? Whose ego or ambition or singular world view was so strong that it had to be satisfied in this way?
Donald didn’t know, but he cared. He wanted the perpetrators captured and executed. In ancient days, the Koreans decapitated murderers and left their heads on poles for birds to feed on, their souls blind, deaf, and speechless as they wandered through eternity. That was what he wanted for these people. That, and for them not to run into Soonji in the afterlife: in her boundless charity, she was liable to take them by the hand and lead them to a place where it was safe and comfortable.
He stopped walking in front of a movie theater and stood for a minute, thinking again about the footprints and the water bottle. He found himself wishing that he could be a part of Hwan’s team, not just to bring the bombers to justice but to give himself something to focus on other than his grief.
Yet maybe there was a job for him, one that could get to the bottom of this quicker than men at the KCIA. He would need General Norbom’s help and confidence to succeed, and he would have to know, somehow, that she would have approved, his Soonji.
Thinking about Soonji again brought tears spilling onto his cheeks. Stepping to the curb, Donald hailed a taxi and headed for the U.S. base.
TWENTY-TWO
Tuesday, 7:08 A.M, Virginia-Kentucky Border
Rodgers pressed the radio headset to his ear and, though the volume was turned way up, he was still having a tough time hearing what Paul Hood had to say. Which was just as well: when he’d pulled out his yellow earplugs to take the call, he’d known it wouldn’t be warm and fuzzy-and it wasn’t.
It would be better if he were screaming, because then he could have heard. But Hood wasn’t a screamer. When he got angry he talked slowly, measuring his words with care as though afraid a wrong one might slip in on his wrath. For some reason, Rodgers had this image of Hood wearing an apron and holding a large pallet, feeding his words gingerly as though he were slipping pizzas into an oven.
“… has left me dangerously understaffed,” he was saying. “I’ve got Martha as my right-hand man.”
“She’s good, Paul,” he yelled into the microphone. “I felt my place was with the team, first time overseas.”
“That was not your decision to make! You should have cleared your itinerary with me!”
“I knew you’d have your hands full. I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You didn’t want me to say ‘no,’ Mike. At least admit that. Don’t jerk me off.”
“Okay. I admit it.”
Rodgers looked at Lt. Col. Squires, who was pretending not to listen. The General drummed the radio, hoping that Hood knew when to stop: he was as much a professional as the Director was, more so in military matters, and he didn’t intend to take more than a bare-bones, there-I’ve-had-my-say dressing down. Especially from a guy who was busy fundraising with the likes of Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise while he was leading a mechanized brigade in the Persian Gulf.
“All right, Mike,” Hood said, “you’re there. How do we maximize your effectiveness?”
Good. He did know when to stop.
“For now,” Rodgers said, “just keep me apprised of any new developments, and if we have to go into action make sure my staff runs the simulations through the computer.”
“I copy on the sims, and the only new development is that the President put us in charge of the Task Force. He wants to play hardball.”
“Good.”
“We’ll debate that over pizza and beer when it’s all over. Right now, your orders are to continue to your destination. We’ll radio if there are any updates or changes.”
“Roger.”
“And, Mike?”
“Yes?”
“Let the kids do the heavy lifting, Middle-Aged Man.”
The men signed out and Rodgers sat back, chuckling over their favorite Saturday Night Live character. Yet what really got him was the pizza reference. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but Hood had an uncanny instinct for picking up people’s vibes about things. Rodgers often wondered if Hood had developed those talents in politics or whether he’d been drawn to politics because of it. Whenever Rodgers felt like kicking Hood in the ass, he reminded himself that the guy got the top spot for a reason … however much he wished he’d been offered it himself.
He also wished Hood would join him at the track once in a while, instead of doing the Family Man of the Year drill. They could probably make a fortune together, and some of the girls he knew might loosen Hood up a bit- make everyone’s life a little less uptight.
Slipping off the headset, Rodgers lay back against the cold, vibrating aluminum rib of the transport plane. He ran a hand over his graying black hair, freshly buzz-cut the day before.
He knew that Hood couldn’t help being what he was any more than Rodgers could change himself, and that probably wasn’t a bad thing. What was it that Laodamas had said to Odysseus? “Enter our games, then; ease your heart of trouble.” Where would any of them be without competition and rivalry to spur them on? Had Odysseus not participated in and won the discus throw, he would not have been invited to the palace of Alcinous and been given the gifts that proved so important on his journey home.