That was surely the plan, he thought again. For Lee didn’t intend to give him the chance to do either.
Roughly 150 yards separated Lee from Hong-koo’s convoy. The General was sitting stiffly in the back of the middle jeep, a poor target now but not for long. As soon as he emerged from his jeep, Lee would run over, gun him down, and shoot as many of the six other men as he could before running back toward the tunnel.
Yet he was prepared to die, if he had to, emerge as either a leader or a martyr. All of them had been ready to give their lives for this cause, for even if the bombing, the assassination, and Sun’s attack against Tokyo didn’t start a war, their acts would strengthen the hearts of those opposed to reunification.
Hong-koo’s driver looked at his watch, turned, and said something to the General. The General nodded.
It was almost time … time for the United States to be driven from the South, for patriotism to flourish, and for a new militarism to rise, making South Korea the most powerful, prosperous, and feared nation in the region.
SEVENTY-SIX
Wednesday, 8:02 A.M., the road to Yangyang
Kim had buried nearly four million won in a cemetery east of the city. The equivalent of roughly five thousand U.S. dollars, she had hidden the won while kneeling at footstones, sitting on benches, and resting beneath trees, tucking the coins and bills in small holes, under roots, beneath rocks. All of it had still been there. People didn’t come to cemeteries to look for hidden treasure.
It took her nearly three hours to recover all the money in the dark, after which she’d filled the car with gas and followed the Pukangang River toward the northeast and Lake Soyang. There, she had rested while she looked through her notebook for the name of someone from whom she could buy a passport and passage to Japan.
Sitting in the car, Kim had kept the radio on, tuned to the frequency Hwan had used in his car to communicate with the KCIA. She wanted to hear if they had anything to say about her, and for a time it appeared that they had no clue as to her whereabouts or even what kind of car she was driving. Then, just a few minutes before she was about to leave, the KCIA found her Tercel at the BMW dealership. They were in the process of determining which car she had stolen when she was back on the road, headed toward the sea.
The two-lane road led through beautiful countryside, but it was deserted, and she began to grow concerned that she might not find another car. Her only hope was reaching Sorak-san National Park before the authorities found her. There were usually a great many tourists there, and there was a spacious parking lot just north of the Paektam-sa Temple on the park’s west side. She could get there by way of the Taesungnyong Pass and headed in that direction.
Kim was sorry she’d stopped to rest at the lake. It had been a stupid idea, but the day had seemed endless … and then there was her guilt over the man she had killed. It had been surprisingly easy at the time: a good man was in danger and she had shot the man who was attacking him. Only when it was done did she realize she knew nothing about the assailant, or if she’d even acted in time, or whether the man she killed would have turned on her… or helped her to escape.
All that really mattered was that she’d murdered someone. The spy who wasn’t a spy, the North Korean who had been damned to come here because she had loved her brother, had now committed the ultimate sin. She would always see his face as she shot him, shock and pain lit by the flash of a gun, a body crumbling raggedly, not flailing and arching the way it did in the movies….
A clear voice came in over the radio, which was nestled in the passenger’s seat.
“Chopper Seven, this is Sgt. Eui-soon. Over.”
“Chopper Seven copies, over.”
“The white BMW was seen fueling near the Tong-daemum Stadium Station about ninety minutes ago. It left headed east, which would put it past Inje by now. That’s in your area. Over.”
“We’ll check it out and report back, over and out.”
Kim cursed. She was just past Inje, which was at the northeastern tip of the lake, and they would be on her within minutes. The police in South Korea loved issuing summonses, and she dared not speed up-not without a registration for the car and millions of won stuffed in the radio carrying case on the floor. She stayed under the speed limit, looking desperately for a parked car, finding none, and finally reaching the park, with its craggy peaks and thundering waterfalls visible in the distance. Park rangers were not as difficult as the police, and she was about to speed up to get to the parking lot when she heard the distant beating of a helicopter rotor.
She pushed the gas to the floor, looking for someplace to pull off the road. She had finally decided to abandon the car and continue on foot when the helicopter passed over her, made an arcing turn, and came back.
She braked hard.
The helicopter hovered some two hundred feet up, facing her, the two men inside pointing. She heard a shrill whistle as the loudspeaker was turned on.
“There are ground personnel on the way,” the speaker said. “You are advised to remain where you are.”
“And if I don’t?” she said under her breath. “What are they going to do?”
She scanned the road ahead. About two miles off it started a sinuous course into the mountains, and it would be difficult for cars to chase or the chopper to follow.
To hell with them, she thought and, flooring the gas pedal, the BMW screamed out from under the helicopter toward the blue-gray peaks beyond.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Wednesday, 6:05 P.M., Op-Center
Hood was in his office with Ann Farris and Lowell Coffey, debating about how to handle news of the Striker incursion in case the team was captured or killed. The White House would disavow the operation, as the President had said, and SOP was that Op-Center would do the same. But Ann felt there were some PR brownie points to be gained by letting the world know that they had been looking out for the well-being of Japan, and while Hood agreed she had a point, he was disinclined to go along with the idea.
When Bugs told Hood that General Schneider was calling with urgent news from Panmunjom, the debate came to a swift end.
“Hood here.”
“Mr. Director,” General Schneider said, “I regret to inform you that your man Gregory Donald appears to have been shot to death by the Dee-Perks on their side of the border just a few minutes ago.”
Hood’s face paled. “General, they invited him to come over-”
“This wasn’t that meeting. He wasn’t in the meeting center.”
“Then where was he?”
“He was running toward the barracks with a knife.”
“Gregory was? Are you sure?”
“That’s what the watch officer’s putting in his report. And that he was screaming in Korean about the poison gas.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Hood shut his eyes. “That’s what it was. Gregory, Jesus … why didn’t he let the military handle it?”
“Paul,” Ann said, “what happened?”
“Gregory Donald’s dead. He was trying to stop the gas.” He returned to Schneider. “General, Major Lee must have snuck the gas into the North-Gregory was probably following him.”
“That’s what we figure, but it was a damn foolish thing to do. He had to know those troops would shoot on sight.”
It wasn’t foolish, Hood knew. It was Donald’s way. “What’s the present situation?”
“Our lookouts say the soldiers appear to have shot someone who may have been trying to flood the barracks with the tabun. As I just told Secretary Colon, they’re running around like headless chickens over there. One of our towers is watching General Hong-koo. He’s just sitting at their side of the conference hut in a jeep … waiting for we don’t know what. He’s got to know Donald isn’t coming.”
“He might not know that it was Donald who was killed.”
The words sounded so wrong. Hood looked at Ann for support, saw only the same sadness that he felt.
“He’ll find out soon enough. Our problem is this. The Pentagon has contacted Pyongyang and they don’t believe that Lee and his team were acting alone; they think it’s part of a plot hatched in Seoul. You can’t reason with those pricks.”
“What are we doing in response?”
“Matching them. General Norbom is shipping us just about everyone and everything he’s got, direct orders from the President himself. Somebody sneezes up here and we’re going to have ourselves a shooting war.”