The black Cadillac was shared by the American, British, Canadian, and French embassies in Seoul, and was parked at the latter when not in use. Sharing official hearses was not uncommon, though there was almost an international incident in 1982, when both the British and French ambassadors unexpectedly lost relatives on the same afternoon and both requested the official hearse at the same time. Since the French kept it garaged, they felt they deserved first use; the British maintained that since the French Ambassador had lost a grandmother and the British Ambassador a father, the closer relation took priority. The French countered that, arguably, the Ambassador was closer to his grandmother than the British Ambassador was to his father. To defuse the conflict, both ambassadors hired outside funeral homes and the official hearse remained unused that day.
Gregory Donald smiled as he remembered what Soonji said, with her eyes still tightly squeezed: “Only in the diplomatic corps could a war and a car reservation carry equal weight.” And it was true. There was nothing too small, too personal, or too macabre to become an international issue. For that reason, he was touched- and felt Soonji would have been too-when British Ambassador Clayton phoned him at the embassy to offer his condolences and to tell him that the embassies would not use the hearse for their own victims of today’s blast until after he was finished with it.
He refused to take his eyes off the hearse, though his tired mind roved in a stream-of-consciousness state, thinking of the last meal he had with Soonji, the last time they made love, the last time he had watched her dress. He could still taste her lipstick, smell her perfume, feel her long fingernails on the back of his neck. Then he thought back to how he had first been attracted to Soonji, not by her beauty or poise but by her words- her incisive, clever words. He remembered the conversation she had had with a girlfriend who worked for outgoing Ambassador Dan Tunick. As the Ambassador finished his farewell speech to the staff, the girlfriend said, “He looks so happy.”
Soonji regarded the Ambassador for a moment, then said, “My father looked like that once, after passing a stone. The Ambassador looks relieved, Tish, not happy.”
She’d hit it on the head in her open, irreverent way. As the crowd drank champagne, he’d walked over to her, introduced himself, told her the hearse story, and was smitten even before her eyes had opened. As he sat here now, out of tears but not memories, he took consolation from the fact that the last time he saw Soonji alive, as she ran back to his side after finding her earring, she was wearing a look of profound relief and happiness.
The Mercedes followed the hearse off the highway and toward the airfield. Donald would see his wife to the TWA flight that was taking her to the States, and as soon as it had taken off, he would board the waiting Bell Iroquois for the short hop to the DMZ.
Howard Norbom would assume Donald had gone around him to get what he wanted, and he felt some guilt over that. But at least the General wouldn’t be implicated when he tried to contact the North. Thanks to the phone call, whatever fallout there was would land on him … and on Op-Center.
FORTY-THREE
Tuesday, 11:45 P.M., KCIA Headquarters
When he got the call from Bae Gun that the arrest had been successful, Hwan was of two minds: they’d done the right thing, though he was sorry to lose a most interesting figure in Ms. Chong. His cryptanalysts had not yet cracked her code, even though they knew the contents of some of the data she was sending, having fed it to her through Bae, who told her he had a son in the military and occasionally gave her real but unimportant troop strength, map coordinates, and changes in command. Now that she was in custody, Hwan doubted that she would help them along.
The KCIA had spent four years monitoring but not interfering with the current crop of North Korean agents in Seoul. By watching one they had found another, then another and another. The five operatives seemed to form a closed loop, with Kim Chong and a pretzel-maker at their hub, and Hwan felt he had them all. With the woman’s capture, he would have the others watched round the clock to see whom they contacted or what new agent might be moved in to take her place.
It bothered him, though, that in what little of her code they had broken, there hadn’t even been a hint of today’s attack. Indeed, the pretzel-maker-who baked information into salt-free nuggets-had even been told to attend the festivities and gauge the mood of the crowd toward reunification. While it was true the North could have executed the attack on a need-to-know basis and not told their operatives, Hwan doubted they would have put one in danger like that. Why bother sending him at all if they intended to terrorize the celebration?
The Desk Sergeant phoned up when the agents arrived, and Hwan stood behind his desk to receive them-and Ms. Chong. He had never seen Kim Chong herself in the flesh, only in photographs, and went through a traditional exercise Gregory had taught him to do when meeting someone he knew only by picture or voice or reputation. He tried to fill in the blanks, to see how close his guesses came to reality. How tall they were, what they sounded like-in the case of suspected enemies whether they would be irate, abusive, or cooperative. The process served no purpose other than as a useful review of what Hwan knew about the people before meeting them.
He knew Ms. Chong was five-foot-six, twenty-eight, with fine, long, coal-dust hair and dark eyes. And that according to what Bae had told his contact here, she was a tough nut. Hwan suspected that she would also have a musician’s sensitivity, the thorny temperament of a woman who had to endure the advances of men at Gun’s bar, and the habit of all foreign agents to listen more than she spoke, to learn rather than divulge. She would be defiant; most North Koreans were when dealing with the South.
He heard the elevator door slide open followed by footsteps in the corridor. Two agents walked in with Kim Chong between them.
Physically, the woman was exactly as he’d pictured her: proud, intense, alert. She was dressed more or less as he’d expected, in a tight black skirt, black stockings, and a white blouse, the top two buttons open-the uniform for women who played in lounges and bars. He’d missed the skin, though, not having imagined it to be so sun-bronzed. But of course it would be, since her days were free and she spent them poking about the city. He was also surprised by her hands, which he saw when he told the men to uncuff her. Unlike other musicians he had known, the fingers were not thick and strong but slender, delicate.
He asked the men to shut the door and wait outside, then gestured toward an armchair. The woman sat down, both feet on the floor, knees together, those graceful hands folded upright in her lap. Her eyes were on the desk.
“Ms. Chong, I’m Kim Hwan, Deputy Director of the KCIA. Would you-care for a cigarette?”
He picked up a small case on his desk and raised the lid. She took a cigarette, caught herself as she went to tap it on the face of her watch-it had been taken from her, lest she use the glass to try to slit her wrists-then put the cigarette in her mouth.
Hwan walked around the desk and lit it for her. The woman drew deeply and sat back, one hand still on her lap, the other on the armrest. She still didn’t allow her eyes to meet his, which was more or less standard with women during an interrogation. It prevented any kind of emotional connection from being made, which kept the meeting formal and tended to frustrate many interviewers.
Hwan offered her an ashtray and she set it on the armrest. Then he sat on the edge of the desk and regarded the woman for nearly a minute before speaking.
For all her polish, there was something about this one he couldn’t quite get a handle on. Something wrong.
“Is there anything I can get you? A drink?”
She shook her head once, still staring at the desk.
“Ms. Chong, we’ve known about you and your work for quite some time. Your mission here is over, and you’ll be tried for espionage-within the month, I imagine. The mood running as it is after today, I suspect that justice will be quick and unpleasant. However, I can promise you some measure of leniency if you help us find out who was behind the explosion at the Palace this afternoon.”