Hunt the Dragon (12 page)

When they reached the outskirts of Dandong, Sara stopped in front of the first taxi stand she could find. “Have the driver take you straight to the airport. I'll take care of him.”

“You better move fast!”

“Okay. Call me from Beijing, Shanghai, or wherever you land!”

I
t was
a beautiful late-March night fragrant with the first scents of spring, so Nan Dawkins decided to fire up the barbecue and dine outside—chicken, strips of red pepper and zucchini, and new potatoes. It reminded her of James, who often sat outside alone in the summer looking at the stars. Astronomy was one of his passions. The Celestron CPC 1100 XLT computerized telescope that he had bought recently sat under a plastic cover in his home office.

After dinner she sat sipping chardonnay and half listening to Karen talk about the poems they had read that day in school. One of them was Edgar Allan Poe's “Annabel Lee.” Normally, anything having to do with literature was a favorite topic of discussion, but tonight Nan seemed drawn to the stars trying to break through the city haze. She wondered if James was looking at them, too, wherever he was.

Her current theory was that he was working somewhere on a top-secret government program and would return soon. Maybe he had wanted to tell her but couldn't. Maybe he'd forgotten, which was characteristic of James. He kept different aspects of his life in separate compartments.

“Mom?” her daughter called.

She drifted to their wedding day and his shy, handsome face, and returned.

“Yes, ‘Annabel Lee' is a beautiful poem…” Nan started, and then stopped. When she looked for Karen's oval face across the table, she found an empty chair. Turning, she saw her back passing through the gap in the sliding glass doors. She was carrying dirty plates.

“That's very kind of you, darling,” Nan said. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome, Mom.”

Wonderful girl,
she thought.
Cleaning up…because she sees I'm preoccupied. Where would I be without her?

Karen's emotional steadiness through the ordeal continued to amaze her. Nan refilled her glass with wine and looked up at the stars. James, she knew, would be able to name them and recount the legends behind them. She located the Big Dipper and remembered that James had showed her how to connect the outer stars in the bowl and use them to locate Polaris, which marked the end of the Little Dipper's handle.

During a summer vacation in the Adirondacks ten years ago, he had explained that the Big Dipper was actually an abbreviated version of the constellation Ursa Major—the Great Bear. The three stars that made up the bowl were thought to be hunters chasing the bear. The constellation served as both a calendar and storybook. In the fall the hunter would catch up with the bear. According to the Iroquois, it was blood from the dead bear that colored the autumn landscape.

As Nan lowered her gaze, she noticed something gold flickering. At first she thought it was a reflection off the sliding glass door, but when she looked closer she saw that it originated inside the house. Then she noticed smoke wafting out of the crack between the sliding glass doors.

Alarmed, she called, “Karen?”

Hearing a cry from inside that sounded more like a wounded cat than a child, she let go of the wineglass and sprang. As she squeezed through the doors, smoke and the smell of burning plastic stung her eyes. To her right, red and orange flames rose from the living room rug and sofa.

“Karen, oh my God! Where are you?”

A strangled sound resounded from the front hall.

Turning, she spotted a can of lighter fluid on the wooden end table and a box of matches. A picture of what had transpired flashed in her head as flames danced three feet away.

“Karen!”

She grabbed hold of the can, screamed as the heat seared her hand, and running back three steps, tossed it out the door onto the patio.

“Karen, sweetheart! Where are you? Say something!”

The smoke made it very difficult to see. When Karen shouted “Mommy, help!” Nan turned right and saw her daughter rolling on the wooden hallway floor, trying to extinguish flames at the bottom of her pants.

She threw herself on her daughter like a wild animal, then attacked the fire furiously with her hands. The flames were stubborn, but Nan smothered them out. Ignoring the burns on her hands and the seething, tightening sensation in her throat and lungs, she scooped up her daughter and ran out the front door, collapsing on the lawn.

She was still lying there in the same position when the paramedics revived her minutes later. She saw flashes of firemen passing, lights, smoke, and hoses. Rough hands lifted her onto a stretcher. She looked up at someone but had trouble getting the words out.

“My dau…”

A male voice said, “Relax, ma'am. You'll be fine.”

“My daughter. Where's Karen?” She felt panic.

“She's okay, ma'am,” the man said in a reassuring voice. “We've got her. We're taking you both to the hospital now.”

“I want to see her. I've got to see her!”

“Hold on, ma'am. You will.”

Her panic grew with every face they passed and jostle of the stretcher. Blue, red, and white flashed across the front lawn and driveway. Neighbors stood in silence and watched.

In the back of a red ambulance, she blinked into the bright light. To her left she saw Karen seated on a gurney. An EMT was using scissors to cut away the right leg of her pants.

“Karen, is that really you?” Nan shouted.

As soon as Karen saw her mother, she started to cry.

Restraints prevented Nan from sitting up, so she reached out and touched her daughter with the back of her injured hand. “It's okay, darling. The doctors will take care of us now.”

“I'm sorry, Mommy,” Karen cried. “I'm so sorry. I started the fire, Mommy. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, darling. I don't care about that. But…why?”

Karen's chest heaved and tears poured down her soot-covered cheeks. “I thought that maybe if Daddy heard about the fire on the news…he'd come home.”

Dawkins shuffled down the drab, cold hallway with Kwon behind him, trying to convince himself that he had accomplished something, which brought him a step closer to freedom. The new platform shroud that had been machined in a nearby shop under his supervision fit perfectly around the gyro compass and torque motors. Another couple of months and the GSP system would be fully functional and ready to insert into the Unha-3 missile. Allowing for several more months for testing and adjustments, he figured the process would be complete by September, at which time his service wouldn't be needed anymore.

The seventeenth of September was Nan's birthday. Maybe, just maybe, Dawkins thought, he'd make it home by then. As soon as he did, he'd contact the FBI and CIA, and brief them about the underground facility and the progress the North Koreans had made in their nuclear missile program. He'd spill all the information and impressions he'd stored in his brain.

He told himself that under the circumstances, informing U.S. authorities was the best he could do. He wanted to believe that the North Koreans were still a year or more away from building a nuclear missile that could hit the mainland United States. He based his estimate on the numerous other engineering problems they still had to solve, including miniaturizing the warhead, finding the right mix of fuel, and engineering the warhead housing so it wouldn't burn up on reentry into the atmosphere.

Back in his room, he sat at the square wooden table as Sung prepared his dinner in the kitchen down the hall. He opened the journal he kept on the shelf that he assumed was read daily by NK officials, and wrote. “Day 25. Milestone day. The shroud fits…Goal accomplished! Tomorrow we begin testing. No. Tomorrow is my day off. Looking forward to another walk with Sung. Hope to see more red-crowned cranes. The fresh air gives me energy.”

Sung entered quietly in a dark blue tunic and matching pants, and slid the plastic plate in front of him. It was
ton-yuk-kui,
rice with pork strips, and
banchan,
spicy cabbage and cucumber. As she had explained, a good meal was one that harmonized warm and cold, spicy and mild, rough and soft, solid and liquid. This seemed to accomplish that.

“You like, Mr. Dawkin?” Sung asked. She had her hair pulled back and held with a rubber band. The skin over her high cheekbones was pulled tight. No makeup to conceal the brown circles under her eyes.

“Yes. Very good.”

“You watch movie after?” She pointed to the new videos the honored general had given him, stacked on top of the box of pornos from Japan, Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines.

The North Korean films he'd watched so far were stagey, propagandistic tropes with names Sung had translated as
Order No. 27, The Kites Flying in the Sky,
and
The
Respected Supreme Commander Is Our Destiny.

“No thank you,” he responded.

When he finished, she took the plate and chopsticks away and waited for Kwon outside to inspect them. Nothing that could possibly be used as a weapon was allowed to remain in the room. Every morning he had to request a razor. Kwon would carry it in and watch Dawkins while he shaved, and then take it away.

“I think I'll meditate a little, then get ready for bed,” Dawkins said.

Sung had taught him how to sit quietly on the chair with the lights out and monitor the thoughts and images that floated into his head. Pushing away the negative ones, she said, would give him a healthier mind and body.

Dawkins sat quietly. He found the time between dinner and bedtime to be the most difficult, because he had nothing to engage his mind. He wasn't allowed music to listen to, or books to read, and the videos were awful. The first thoughts that drifted into his minds were concerns about Nan and Karen. It felt wrong to try to will them away.

Three mornings after the op in China, Crocker hopped a cab from Honolulu International Airport to Pearl Harbor. During the drive he listened to the balding driver talk excitedly about how he had driven a famous pop star named Iggy Azalea back to her hotel last night and how she had tipped him twenty dollars. Crocker pretended to care, even though he didn't know who she was. He was thinking about how he had missed Easter dinner and had to call Jenny.

Even at 0740 the sun was blinding. He got out at the entrance to the base, stretched, and looked out over the harbor, which still seemed filled with ghosts. His grandfather had passed through here on his way to Guam back in '43. His dad had billeted here often while serving on various destroyers and aircraft carriers in the Pacific fleet.

Inside, he found a mess where he fortified himself with a cup of coffee and scrambled eggs, then hustled over to the CINCPAC building, where he checked through security again and was escorted to a third-floor conference room.

Anders looked up from some papers, saw Crocker in his customary black jeans and T-shirt, and said, “You're on time. Good. How was China?”

“Strange.”

“How come you can't execute a mission without causing complications?”

“Shit happens. How's the kid?”

“Alive. Still in Dandong. Interesting that you inquire about some North Korean boy you barely know before you ask about the intel.”

“People come first. You got a problem with that?”

“No. But the Chinese aren't happy.”

“They'll get over it. Choi get you the intel you wanted?”

“He did. Thanks. Our guests should be here any minute. Get yourself some coffee and a muffin and relax.”

He didn't want coffee or a muffin. He'd rather be running along Waikiki Beach, which he spied out the window on the left. Staring at the breaking surf, he remembered his honeymoon with Holly and happier times—the two of them splashing one another, the time he broke a surfboard in two on a monster wave while he was showing off.

The door opened and three serious-looking Asian gentlemen and a guy wearing a white hockey mask marched in. Two of the Asians were wearing uniforms, one had on a suit. The dude with the mask sported a white polo shirt and pants.

Any doubts Crocker might have had that the subject was North Korea were dispelled the moment Anders introduced one of the men in uniform as Park Yong-koo of South Korea's National Intelligence Service—NIS, their equivalent to our CIA. They took their places in upholstered chairs around the oval table and without ceremony or small talk got down to business. They were here to pick the brain of the man wearing the hockey mask—Min Sang Fu—a recent defector from North Korea and colonel in the North Korean Special Operation Force (NKSOF), an elite military unit trained to perform military, political, and psychological operations. He had served as personal liaison to Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un since 2013 and had defected during a recent visit to Beijing to consult with his Chinese counterparts.

Min was compact, with a square head and close-cropped black hair. Through an interpreter, he said he was currently a target of the North Korean secret police. He had decided to cooperate with U.S. officials, he explained, after hearing about the brave action Crocker had taken on the Tumen River.

“The kid was going to drown. I had to do something,” Crocker said, and turned to glance at Anders as if to remind him that in the end everything was personal, even covert ops.

Min proceeded to warn them about the dirty tricks of Office 39, which he described as a criminal enterprise run like the Mafia, designed to raise revenue for all of the Supreme Leader's special programs and activities, including a very large gift and privilege system designed to buy the loyalty of his top lieutenants and military leaders and keep the regime in place. Office 39 also funded the regime's aggressive nuclear missile program, which the North Koreans viewed as the key to their survival. The enterprise was run by one of Kim's right-hand men, a former criminal and businessman named Chou Jang Hee. Chou, according to Min, was the most feared man in North Korea and had been given the title Honored General. His elite staff at Office 39 headquarters in Pyongyang consisted of about 150 operatives, planners, managers, and accountants.