“The Americans do not control the IAEA.”
“No. They don’t. They’re here to help you. You needed help.”
Thera steered him to the chair. When he sat, she pulled over the other chair and sat in front of him.
“The Americans can help,” said Thera. “They want to know what’s going on. I know you’ve heard many bad things about them, but you have been outside Korea. You know they are not all evil. Not all of them.”
That much was true, Ch’o thought.
“They’re working with the IAEA. They can get your message out. And you don’t have to stay with the Americans; you can go where you want. You were in Europe when you were younger.”
“People are being poisoned,” said Ch’o.
“And you can stop that.”
Someone pounded at the side of the cabin.
Not now, thought Thera, but the young ensign who’d been assigned to liaison with the First Team people came in anyway.
“Ma’am, the psychologist is in-bound… Uh, you can’t smoke in here,” he said. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
Thera shot the private a look of death. She was about to tell him what he could do — a direction that would have been physically impossible — but then remembered that she was supposed to stay in character for Ch’o.
“I’m sorry,” Thera said meekly, stabbing out the cigarette.
A wave of indignation rose up in Ch’o. “Get out,” he told the man at the door. “Out!”
The ensign ducked away. Ch’o pushed his legs over the edge of the bed and put his arm around the young woman.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “We’ll be all right.”
I told him I have my own cabin and would see him in the morning,” Thera told Rankin two hours later.
“He totally snapped out of it?”
“Whatever shock he was in, he’s out of that. But he’s still wary. Very, very wary.” Thera explained that Ch’o seemed to think that he was protecting her in some way. He was confused by the fact that he had been picked up by the U.S. and not the IAEA.
“The North Koreans think we’re pretty close to devils,” Thera told Rankin. “They have museums devoted to our criminal acts, so he doesn’t understand how the U.S. could be helping.”
“You helped him.”
“He thinks I’m Greek, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“He wants to talk,” she told Rankin. “He has information that will save a lot of people. Thousands.”
“A bomb would kill millions.”
“This isn’t about a bomb. He’s concerned about waste. That’s what he wants to talk about — pollution. Radiation poisoning.”
“A dirty bomb?”
“Pollution. He was going to be put into prison and maybe shot because he tried to alert the authorities. It’s North Korea he’s worried about.”
“That’s what we rescued him for?” said Rankin. “We went through all this trouble because he was worried about
“Sometimes you can be a real jerk, Stephen,” said Thera, storming away.
15
Jogging was as popular in Korea as it was in the U.S., and an early morning jogger, even a Caucasian one, rarely attracted attention on a college campus. Ferguson waved to the security men at the gate as he came up the university drive; the one paying attention shook his head at him, mouthing words in Korean to the effect of “you’re a crazy nut job.”
Crazy nut jobs could go just about anywhere, and ten minutes later Ferguson entered the parking lot where he’d seen the two trucks the night before. He took a lap around the perimeter, made sure he wasn’t being watched, then stopped to tie his shoe near the first truck.
When he got up, he slipped one of the gamma-ray counter tabs into the back, wedging it into the space near the door. Then he took pictures of the license plates with the small camera he had in his fanny pack; it was easier than trying to remember the numbers.
Ferguson stretched out a cramp, sticking another tab in the second truck. Then he resumed his exercise, taking a lap near the building where the test reactor was being constructed.
Under normal circumstances, such reactors could not produce weapons-grade plutonium, nor could the government research reactor the school was currently using. But that assumed that no one wanted them to.
Large boards of plywood and a chain-link fence ringed the construction area. Curious, Ferguson squeezed beneath the metal chain holding the gate closed. Once inside, he saw that work hadn’t progressed very far at all; at the moment the building consisted of a concrete slab and massive steel pillars, with cladding only on the corner facing the building where the reception had been held the night before. He took some pictures anyway.
Sight-seeing done, Ferguson stopped at a PC bang, a public-access computer cafe not far from the campus. It was early, but already most of the fifty seats were filled. He slid his security dongle into the USB port and pulled up the browser. Then he typed the secretary’s name into a general search engine and was rewarded with six million matches. Nine-tenths of the results, to judge by the first two pages, were of pornographic sites.
Not of her.
“Whoa,” said the teenager sitting next to him, glancing over. “How’d you get past their filter?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” Ferguson told him. “I’m looking for a girl’s address, but I don’t do Korean very well. Think you can help me?”
“You American?”
“Russian.”
Ferguson put his hand out. The kid shook it, then wrinkled his nose.
“Yeah, I gotta take a shower. This is the name.”
Ferguson took out the card with the secretary’s name, then got out of the way so the kid could sit down. Barely containing his drool, the teen called up a phone directory and then typed the name into the search box.
“What is her husband’s name?” asked the kid.
“Not married.”
“No phone with this name.”
“Maybe she lives with her parents.”
“Many, many Kims,” he told Ferguson.
“Give it a try.”
The teenager typed the surname into the computer. Sure enough, there were over a hundred pages of results.
“OK for now,” said Ferguson. He reached over and slid the dongle out of the slot.
“Mister?”
“Be my guest,” said Ferguson. When he left the store, the kid was still bent over the computer keyboard, trying to figure out what combination of keys Ferguson had used to conjure porn past the browser filter.
16
Corrine saw James Sonjae as soon as he cleared Customs. He looked tired, even more tired, in fact, than he
