Kim Jong Il, the Korean ruler and his half-brother, in two weeks. He had begun to believe even that he was dead.
There were many plans to assassinate the leader. There were even plans to assassinate Kuong Ou. He had already killed the conspirators he was sure of, but to eliminate every possible enemy he would have had to kill the entire division he commanded, and half the leadership of the rest of the army and air force besides. And that didn’t even include the silent traitors, those who told lies and claimed they could be counted on but who Kuong knew would vanish at the moment of need.
Kuong Ou had to publicly maintain his position and the regime. This was his duty, and to shirk it would bring dishonor much worse than death: Death was merely a stage in the cycle, whereas dishonor followed one through many cycles and could only be expunged with great exertion. On the other hand, he was not a fool: Given the choice, he preferred to live. He had made many plans to escape, holding them as contingencies against disaster.
One by one, they were disappearing. The easiest — escaping north to China or south to the so-called Republic — had been blocked long ago. The units on both borders had leaders who were his enemies, and even if he made it past them he would never be safe in either country, even for the short time he needed to get away from there.
But he would succeed. He would have revenge against the Americans who had placed his country, his leader, and himself in this predicament. The bones foretold it.
Kuong Ou scooped up the tablets and prepared to play another game.
Chapter 9
Ten years before, Applegate, Arizona, had been a pristine patch of sand and tumbleweed populated only by the wind. Now it was a pristine patch of high-tech factories punctuated by macadam and people who smiled a lot, undoubtedly because they had just cashed their latest stock options. The factories had been built by a collection of new-wave defense contractors; as far as Fisher could tell from the backgrounder he’d been given, the companies specialized in making things that didn’t actually work — and taking a very long time to prove it.
The airport terminal looked like a pair of trailers piled one on top of the other, with a few windows added for light and structural integrity. Fisher walked inside with the other dozen people from the airplane, noting the No Smoking signs and strategically placed ashtrays filled with pink-colored sand. This seemed to Fisher the work of a particularly perverse antismoking group: Not only did they want you not to smoke but they harassed you with Day- Glo colors.
Then again, it could be part of a guerrilla movement intent on undercutting the antis by mocking their weaponry. Or, worse, it occurred to Fisher that the sand might mask some nefarious incendiary device lurking just below the surface of ash. Deciding the matter needed more investigation, Fisher took out his cigarette pack and lit up, tossing a match into the tray to see if it was flammable.
“You can’t smoke inside,” whined someone behind him.
Fisher glanced left and right without finding the source of the voice.
“Fisher, right?”
Something bumped his elbow. Fisher looked down into the gnomelike face of a forty-year-old woman. The face was attached to a body that barely cleared his belt. Fisher was tall — a bit over six feet — but not that tall. This woman defined vertically challenged.
“I’m Fisher.”
“Special Agent Katherine Mathers,” said the woman, jabbing her hand toward his. “And you can’t smoke in here.”
“That’s good to know,” said Fisher. He took another drag. “Are we walking to where we’re going, or is there a car?”
“I’ve heard about you,” said Mathers. She frowned and headed across the reception area, all eight feet of it, toward the exit. Fisher caught up outside at the curb, where Mathers was waiting behind the wheel of a 1967 puke-green Ford Torino.
“Nice car,” he said, getting in.
“Oldest Bu-car in existence,” she said, using the accepted slang for a Bureau-issued vehicle. If she hadn’t, he might have thought of asking to see her ID.
“No smoking,” she told him.
“No?”
“No.”
He was almost at the butt anyway, so Fisher rolled down his window and tossed it.
“You do that again and I’ll have to bust you for littering,” said Mathers. “We’re very ecology-conscious here.”
“I could tell from the car you were driving.”
Mathers stomped on the gas pedal — or, rather, the three wooden blocks taped one atop another on the gas pedal. The Torino lurched away from the curb, smoke and grit flying.
“Can you see where you’re going?” Fisher asked the other agent.
“I heard you were a wiseass.”
“That’s me.”
“I can see fine,” said Mathers, whose head would not have been visible from outside the car. “They brief you or what?”
“You got some guy who met some other guy who knows someone who built an E-bomb for North Korea and wants asylum,” said Fisher.
Mathers shook her head. “First of all, the guy’s a gal.”
“Okay.”
“Second of all, the gal met the scientist himself, not someone else. There’s only two players.”
“That’s a relief. I was afraid we’d have to use zone coverage. Now we can just go man-to-man.”
“What are you going to do?” Mathers asked.
“After we stop for some coffee, I’m going to talk to the guy who’s a gal,” said Fisher. “And we’ll take it from there.”
“We don’t have no fancy bullshit coffee here,” said Mathers, in a tone that made Fisher forgive not only her driving but the business about smoking in the car. “Just stuff that’ll burn a hole in your crankcase.”
“The only kind I drink,” said Fisher.
The e-mail that had brought Fisher to Applegate consisted of exactly two words:
OUT, PLEASE.
Attached was a technical diagram of an E-bomb — or, as the technical people preferred to call it, “an explosive device intended to render a disruptive magnetic pulse.”
The e-mail had been sent to Amanda Kung. While Kung worked at a defense-related company, neither she nor the company had anything directly to do with E-bombs — or any weapons, for that matter. The company built UHF radios that could fit on pinheads, undoubtedly seeking to exploit the burgeoning market of seamstresses who needed walkie-talkies.
According to Mathers, the connection between Amanda and the Korean who had sent the e-mail was personal: They had met in China during a conference two years before and occasionally corresponded electronically.
“Love thing?” Fisher asked as they drove toward the complex on a road that might be charitably described as a succession of bumps interrupted by gullies. Fortunately, Fisher had equipped his coffee cup with a safety shield; when you found java this bad, you didn’t want to spill a drop.
“Could be love. Probably just curiosity: how the other half lives, that kind of thing,” said Mathers. “Typical flighty-scientist kind of thing. Women. You know what I mean.”
