Fires of War

might involve other problems, but he’d worry about them when the time came. His cover was solid; he knew from experience it would check out, even in Moscow.

The SUV pulled down a dirt road lined with spools of barbed wire. It bumped through some ruts, then pulled up in front of a gate. The driver rolled down his window, and a man in uniform approached. After a few words, the guard looked into the back, glared at Ferguson, then waved them through.

The SUV drove past a pair of antiaircraft guns at least twice as old as the soldiers standing in front of the sandbags nearby. The truck rounded a curve, passed a small wooden building, and then stopped in the middle of a large parade ground in front of a large, dilapidated stone building.

The door opened, and a soldier ordered Ferguson out. As he stepped out, the man pulled him by the shirt and pushed him forward.

“СТОЙ!” said Ferguson. “Stop it!”

The man continued to prod him toward the entrance. Ferguson dug in his heels and put out his hands, shrugging the man off. Then he began walking on his own power.

“Inside,” said his escort roughly in Korean. “Go.”

Ferguson entered a small room dominated by a fat coal stove. Red embers glowed behind its cast-iron gate.

A short, balding man in an officer’s uniform asked him his name in Korean.

“Ivan Manski,” Ferguson said. “Hanggungungmai mot hamnida. I don’t speak Korean.”

“That is of no concern to me,” said the man.

“I want to speak to the Russian embassy,” said Ferguson, first in Korean, and then in Russian.

“You will speak when spoken to,” said the man. He told the man who had pushed Ferguson inside to take him to a cell.

“I want to speak to the Russian ambassador,” said Ferguson. He reached for his passport, but before he could he was grabbed from behind and thrown against the wall. Two men held him there while he was searched; they found the passport and the business cards, along with the commercial sat phone Ferguson had purchased in Daejeon, his wallet, and thyroid pills. Ferguson was then pushed into another room and ordered to strip.

He began to undress slowly. This annoyed the man behind him, who pulled down the back of his shirt.

No self-respecting Russian, let alone an arms dealer with a background as unsavory as Ferguson’s, would stand for that. Ferguson spun and planted a fist in the man’s jaw so hard that the North Korean flew back against the wall, stunned. Instantly, the others were on top of him, pounding him with their fists. Ferguson fought back hard, drawing blood and breaking at least one nose, before finally the officer from the other room arrived, yelling that they were fools and to let the Russian pig alone.

Lying on the ground, Ferguson worked his tongue around his mouth, making sure he hadn’t lost a tooth. He rolled onto his knees and felt his face. His nose was bleeding, and he could feel the welts starting to swell around his eyes. His kidneys were sore.

“Much worse will happen if you do not cooperate,” said the man, standing over Ferguson. He pointed to a pair of blue prison pajamas. “Get up and get dressed in those clothes.”

Ferguson didn’t understand all the words, but the meaning was clear enough.

“I need my medicine,” he said in Russian, standing.

The officer didn’t understand.

“Pills.” Ferguson had learned the phrase in Korean but couldn’t get it out. “Jigeum yageul meok,” he stuttered finally. “I need my medicine.”

The officer waved at him to go and take off the rest of his clothes.

“Meokgo isseoyo. Jigeum yageul meokgo isseoyo,” repeated Ferguson.

They were the right words, though his pronunciation was halting. His head was still scrambled from the pounding he’d taken.

The officer said something to one of the men, who disappeared into the other room. Then he told Ferguson to get changed.

Not seeing another option, he did so.

3

P’YONGYANG AIRPORT, NORTH KOREA

Park Jin Tae stepped from the sedan and walked briskly to the ladder in front of his plane. His visit had been an enormous success, but he had much to do at home. He’d waited until evening to leave only because the vice chairman of the Communist Party had invited him to lunch, and it would not have been politick to refuse, much as he hated the ignorant water buffalo.

His assistant, Mr. Li, met him at the top of the steps, just inside the aircraft. He bowed in respect, then told Park that the defector had been shot at the crossing.

“Dead?” said Park.

“Very. There have been no news reports yet, however.”

Park slipped into the leather seat at the center of the cabin. A steward stood near the polished mahogany bar, waiting for him to nod; when Park did so, the man brought him a shallow cup and a bottle of makgeolli, a humble milky white liquor that never failed to ease his cares.

Li, as was his custom, declined the invitation to share the drink.

“Did they find the papers?” asked Park as the steward retreated.

“I have not heard. Should I inquire?”

“Not yet. Wait and see what develops in the morning, and what we learn from our usual sources. This must unfold without our hand being seen.”

4

OUTSIDE CHUNGSAN, NORTH KOREA

Without his thyroid pills, most of Ferguson’s vital organs would start to slow down. His body would have trouble maintaining its proper temperature; he’d feel cold even in a room of seventy degrees. His muscles would ache, a by-product of their difficulty removing built-up waste material. His energy would ebb, a pale of lethargy descending over him. Within two or three days he would begin to slide toward clinical depression and acute anxiety, his brain having trouble keeping its serotonin levels stable.

At some point Ferguson’s tissues would begin to swell, and he would develop fluid around his heart and lungs. Along the way his brain would turn to mush, and he’d become psychotic, assuming he was still alive.

But skipping the first dose of T4 pills he took every evening had a paradoxical effect: It made him hyperactive. His heart rate bounded upward, and his mind raced as if maybe he’d drunk one too many pots of coffee.

Unable to sleep, Ferguson spent the night pacing the small cell, one of a dozen in the dank basement block. He was the only one here. Every so often, he stopped moving, straining to hear sounds from outside or above him, but all he heard was silence.

He strode back and forth in the small cell: three and a half strides this way, three and a half that, four to the front, four to the back. He did it for hours, trying to puzzle out the situation and decide what to do.

Rather than getting tired, his energy seemed to grow with each step. So when his interrogator came for him around four a.m., Ferguson was not only wide awake but also fully alert, the opposite of what the North Korean expected.

The man stood outside the bars and introduced himself in Korean, asking if Ferguson spoke the language. Ferguson told him in Russian that he did not.

Chinese?