country. Many people will die.”
Ch’o stopped and looked up at Thera.
“You understand what I am saying?” he asked.
“Of course. But you should tell Jimenez this.”
“I will. But you… you understand, don’t you?”
Thera nodded.
“Maybe you could write this down,” suggested Ch’o. “To keep a record.”
“I can get Jimenez.”
The scientist shook his head. “I’d rather talk to you now.”
“All right. Let me get a pad and a recorder. Is that OK?”
“That would be very good.”
Four years of college, and I’m back to being a secretary, she thought, leaving the cabin.
22
Mr. Li had described the trip to North Korea as if it were a junket, but he hadn’t done it justice.
Ferguson went down to the lobby a few minutes before noon, just in time to see a white passenger van pull up to the curb. A young woman dressed in a short, skin-tight yellow skirt hopped from the back and strode toward him, asking in English if he was the Russian businessman Ivan Manski.
“At your service,” said Ferguson.
“Your bag, I take.”
“Is fine,” said Ferguson, laying on his heaviest Russian accent. “We go now?”
“We go, yes.” She led him to the minibus, then stowed his bag in the back.
“Mr. Manski, we are pleased to have you,” she said in a way that suggested any number of double entendres. “We can get you something, yes?”
“I’m fine.”
“Vodka?”
“A little vodka maybe,” said Ferguson.
She slipped back to a refrigerator chest at the rear of the van and took out a bottle of Zyr, an expensive vodka made in Russia, though the company was actually owned by an American.
“Straight,” Ferguson told her. “Just ice.”
“Ice? You are not a purist?”
“It’s still early,” said Ferguson, taking the glass and admiring the scenery.
A few minutes later they entered a residential area of single-family homes and pulled into a private driveway. A short man in a gray suit was waiting. He left his bag for the young woman and climbed into the van. Ferguson introduced himself as Manski, giving him a card and examining the newcomer’s. The man was an electronics salesman interested in opening his own factory up north in one of the special zones set aside for foreign endeavors near the capital. When the door closed and the van was underway, he told the woman that it was too early to drink, but since the other guest had already started, he would have a Scotch to keep him company.
The ritual was repeated four more times as the van made the rounds picking up its passengers. Everyone had a drink. And caviar. And a number of other treats Ferguson couldn’t identify by sight or taste.
When all of the passengers had been picked up, the driver got on the highway toward Seoul. About five miles south of the capital, they were met by a pair of police cars. Lights flashing, the police escorted them to Gimpo, the airport to the west of Seoul generally used by domestic flights. There a private 727, already half-filled with other guests of Park, waited to take them north.
Ferguson circulated as much as he could among the other passengers. All were male, and all had relatively important positions in their respective companies, though none were as wealthy as Park.
Nor did any seem likely buyers for the goods an arms dealer specialized in. Ferguson chatted up the virtues of his supposed company’s instruments just long enough to bore each listener, establishing his credentials before changing the subject to the trip or to the problems of doing business in the North or to Park himself.
The billionaire wasn’t traveling with the rest of the party. He had already boarded a two-engined jet aircraft similar to a 737. Built by the Korea Commercial Aircraft Development Company as a demonstrator a few years before, the plane had the latest technology, from super-efficient engines to a glass cockpit. It rivaled anything made in America or Europe, but because the company had no track record — and because it was primarily a Korean effort — other Asian countries did not place any orders, and the firm switched its efforts to spare parts.
Park, of course, had been the major investor.
“The Americans were the ones most interested in the aircraft,” explained Ha Song, who sat next to Ferguson on the 727. Mr. Ha worked for an investment group with interests in cable television but had represented some aeronautics firms around the time of the project. “This was genuinely a surprise, since usually they look down on us as little brothers.”
“A very
“Your government would have done very well to have formed a partnership.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Ferguson. “But I don’t represent the government.”
“Many good engineers in Russia.”
“The best,” said Ferguson. “Except for Korea.”
Mr. Ha’s face shaded slightly. Without prompting, he began telling him the story of his ancestors, ethnic Chinese who had been in Korea for several hundred years.
“Before the Japanese came to our country, my family had many, many shops,” said Ha.
“Did they take them away?”
“Not at first, but, during the bad time, what we know as World War II, that was very trouble-matic.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Many Korean peoples, same story,” said Ha. “Japanese very evil.”
“Good in business.”
Ha made a face. “Their money not worth it. Very evil.”
“It’s too bad,” said Ferguson.
“Russia have war with Japan, too: 1904.” Ha was referring to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, which was fought partly over Korea as well as Manchuria.
Ha took a moment to translate the slang, then they both started to laugh.
A line of North Korean officials met them inside the terminal at P’yongyang. Ferguson bumped along with the others, nodding and smiling, nodding again. There was no passport check. If the bags were inspected, it was done by whoever had retrieved them; they were collected and sent on to their destination without being reunited with their owners.
As Ferguson was about three-fourths of the way through the receiving line, a short man approached him and asked in Russian if he was Mr. Manski.
“I am Mr. Chonjin,” said the man. “I will interpret for you.”
Chonjin’s accent was so unusual that it took Ferguson a few seconds to untangle what he said.
“Your accent… Where do you come from?” Ferguson asked.
Chonjin said that, while he was Korean, he had spent much of his life in Vladivostok, a city on the coast of the Sea of Japan where he had been a member of the North Korean Trade Group. Ferguson assumed this meant that he had been a spy there, for surely he was a spy now, assigned to stay close to one of the more dubious members of Mr. Park’s party.
He had the face of a pug — a pushed-in nose, large drooping eyes, a sad-sack mouth — but he was amiable enough, smiling and laughing as they worked their way through the rest of the officials gathered in the hall.
