“I know nothing more than what I saw on television, Mr. Hwan.”
“You were told nothing in advance?”
“No. Nor do I believe that my country was responsible.”
“Why do you say that?”
She looked at him for the first time. “Because we are not a nation of lunatics. There are some madmen-but most of us don’t want war.”
That was it, he thought. That’s what was wrong. She was following the rules for interrogation, and would probably stonewall wherever she could. But her heart wasn’t in this. She’d just made a very clear distinction between “some madmen” and “us.” Us who? Most operatives came from the military and would never say anything against their countrymen. Hwan wondered if Ms. Chong might be a civilian, one of those North Koreans who served against their will because they had a criminal record, were fighting to regain lost family honor, or because a sibling or parent needed money. If that was true, then they did have something in common: both of them desperately wanted peace.
Director Yung-Hoon would not approve of revealing privileged information to the enemy, but Hwan was willing to take that risk.
“Ms. Chong, suppose I were to tell you that I believed you-”
“I’d ask you to try another tack.”
“But what if I meant it?” Hwan slid off the desk and squatted in front of her where she had to turn away or look at him. She looked at him. “I did poorly in the reverse psychology training, and I’m a terrible poker player. Suppose I also told you that while someone tried very hard to make this look like the work of your military, and the evidence points to that, I don’t believe it is.”
She frowned. “If you were to tell me that, then I’d implore you to persuade others.”
“Suppose they didn’t believe me. Would you help me prove my suspicions?”
Her expression was wary but interested. “I’m listening, Mr. Hwan.”
“We found footprints near the bomb site-the prints of North Korean military boots. For someone to frame your military, they’d need the footwear, of course, as well as the proper explosives and possibly weapons from the North. We don’t know in what quantities these might have been taken-not a large amount, I’d imagine, since a group like this would want to remain close and very small. I need you to try and find out if such a theft has occurred.”
Kim stubbed out the cigarette. “I think not.”
“You won’t help?”
“Mr. Hwan, would your superiors believe me if I came back with such information? There’s no trust between our nations.”
“But I’ll trust you. Can you contact your people any way other than through the bar?”
“If I could,” Kim said, “what would you do?”
“Go with you and hear what they have to say, find out if any other mat6riel was taken. If these terrorists are as desperate as I suspect, they may be planning other attacks to push us toward war.”
“But you said yourself that your superiors don’t agree with your suspicions-”
“If we can find evidence,” Hwan said, “anything to support my suspicions, I’ll bypass my people and contact the head of the crisis Task Force in Washington. He’s a reasonable man, and he will listen.”
Kim continued to look at the Deputy Director. He sighed and rested his temples in his thumb and index finger.
“Time is very short, Ms. Chong. The result of today’s explosion may not just be war, but the end of reunification talks for our lifetime. Will you help me?”
She hesitated, but only for a moment. “You’re certain that you trust me?”
He smiled faintly. “I won’t give you the keys to the car, Ms. Chong, but in this matter-yes, I trust you.”
“Ah right”-she rose slowly-“we’ll work together on this. But understand, Mr. Hwan, I have family in the North-and I will only go so far for you … or even for peace.”
“I understand.”
Hwan walked briskly back to his desk and punched the intercom. He told the Desk Sergeant to arrange for his car and driver, then regarded his prisoner.
“Where are you taking me?”
“I’ll direct your driver as we go, Mr. Hwan. Unless you would care to give me the keys, in which case-”
“I’ll let you guide us, thanks. However, I’m required to file an itinerary in case there’s a problem, and that’s the first thing the Director will ask for when he returns. Give me a general direction.”
Kim smiled for the first time and said, “North, Mr. Hwan. We’re going north.”
FORTY-FOUR
Tuesday, 10:00 A.M., Washington, D.C.
Hood felt as though he’d been cut off at the knees, but he didn’t dislike the President. He couldn’t.
Michael Lawrence wasn’t the brightest man who ever held the office, but he had the touch, he had charisma, and that worked on TV and at rallies. The public liked his style. He certainly wasn’t the best manager to hold the office. He didn’t like getting his hands dirty with the nitty-gritty of running the government: he wasn’t a detail man like Jimmy Carter. Trusted aides like Burkow and Lawrence’s Press Secretary Adrian Crow had been allowed to create their own little fiefdoms, power bases that won over or alienated other government agencies by rewarding cooperation and success with access to the President and increased responsibilities, punishing failure with backwater assignments and busywork. Even when he was making his rookie failures in foreign policy, this President didn’t suffer the kind of bad press that dogged his predecessors: by wining and dining the Press Corps, increasing perks and amenities for reporters, and carefully doling out leaks and exclusives, Crow had put all but a few crusty columnists in her hip pocket. And no one read the Op-Ed pages anyway, she maintained.
Sound bites and advertising controlled the voters, not George Will and Carl Rowan.
Lawrence could be ruthless, blind, and stubborn. But if nothing else, he had a vision for the country that was bold and intelligent and was just starting to work. For a year prior to announcing his candidacy, Florida Governor Lawrence had met with industrial leaders and asked if, in exchange for considerable tax breaks and deferments, they would buy into the privatization of NASA with the government managing all launches and facilities, the companies assuming most costs for personnel and R&D. In effect, Lawrence was proposing to boost the space agency’s budget nearly threefold without going through Congress. Moreover, government expenses on space would be cut by two billion dollars, money that Lawrence earmarked for crime fighting and education. He also suggested that one third of the new blue-collar work force for NASA be culled from welfare, making for an annual savings of half a billion dollars.
U.S. industry agreed to the plan, and Lawrence’s campaign advertisements reminded Americans of the lost glory of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo days, of blue-collar and white-collar workers laboring side by side for a common goal, of high employment and low inflation. He tied them all together, and hammered voters with views of existing spinoffs-personal computers and calculators, communications satellites and cellular phones, Teflon and portable video cameras and video games- and with visions of anticipated spinoffs-medicines to cure cancer and AIDS, space-based generators to convert solar energy into electricity to reduce costs and reliance on foreign oil, and even weather control. During the campaign, every time his opponent argued that the money would be better spent on Earth, Lawrence countered that Earth had become a sinkhole, swallowing up jobs and tax dollars, and that his plan would put an end to that… and also end foreign inroads in technological advances that were stealing American jobs.
Lawrence won handily, and as soon as he was elected he met with those same business leaders and the new heads of NASA to get some tangible results, fast, while they worked on getting the space station into orbit before the end of his first term. Leasing the abandoned Russian space station Nevsky, they put medical researchers and engineers in space, and within eighteen months Adrian Crow’s press machine was touting the developments: most startling of all were images of a young medic, paralyzed below the waist in Desert Storm, playing zero-gravity basketball with an astronaut. The President had cured the lame, and it was an image people would never forget.
You could be frustrated with the man for his faults and for his frequent heavy-handedness, but you had to admire his vision. And even though his foreign policy faltered badly in the early going, he was smart enough to put together Op-Center to help run things. Burkow had argued that less bureaucracy and not more was what they needed to make things work abroad, but the President had disagreed with him on that-creating the ongoing tension between Hood and the National Security Council.
But that was okay: Paul could live with that. Compared to some of the special interest groups and political correctness monitors he’d had to deal with in Los Angeles, Burkow was a day at the beach.