it used the term
It was also a door for Rebecca and her lawyer.
“I know that there are, that you have objections,” said Rebecca.
Rubens pushed the elevator button.
“My father merely filled out a form that the government told him to fill out,” said Rebecca.
“Even if the agency had advised him on that matter, which I’m not sure that they did, the fact remains that he was free to do as he pleased.”
“Oh, give me a break.”
Rubens welcomed the sarcastic tone; he felt more comfortable dealing with Rebecca when she wasn’t pretending to be nice. The door to the elevator opened. Rubens stepped inside. Rebecca did so as well.
“Dale Jamison told my father that he had to have someone from the NSA as his guardian,” said Rebecca. “He was ordered to insert you. That’s no more an act of free will than being robbed.”
“Quite a comparison,” said Rubens.
“A hearing will be very embarrassing for your agency, I can guarantee,” said Rebecca.
Rubens took a long, deep breath — a yoga breath — before answering. He could be cruel, but it was not necessary; all he had to do was state the facts. “The General carefully considered the circumstances, and chose to nominate me to handle his affairs. I think that’s significant.”
The elevator opened. Rubens, thankful to be released, strode out.
“Mr. Rubens. Billy.”
Rubens did not break his stride. He hated to be called Billy.
Still, he stopped when she touched his arm.
“We shouldn’t be enemies,” she said. “We want the same thing.”
A lie, but he let it pass.
“I’m not your enemy,” he told her. “But I have my duty.”
“Because the agency wants you to do this.”
“No, because your father asked me,” said Rubens. “I owe it to him.”
“I’m his daughter!”
Of the many possible responses, he prudently chose silence.
“Legally, I should be entitled to be his guardian,” continued Rebecca more calmly.
“Legally, if it is submitted to a court, then the matter will be decided,” said Rubens. It was the mildest thing he could think of to say.
“Bill, please, be reasonable. I thought we were friends.”
She gripped his arm gently, squeezing it like she might squeeze the hand of a baby. He wanted to believe that her motives and emotions were sincere. But he couldn’t; if she had been sincere surely she would have made things right with her father long ago. The General had given her plenty of chances.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think any of this should go to court,” said Rubens honestly. “The informal arrangement was fine with me. You’ve always been able to see whatever records you wanted. There’s no need to do any of this.”
“This isn’t a matter of looking at bank records,” said Rebecca.
And so, she was flushed from her lie. She wanted control — undoubtedly for financial gain. Greed, not concern, motivated her.
“I have to do my duty as I see it,” said Rubens. “You’d ask no less if I were doing it for you.” He resumed his stride toward the car.
4
Lia DeFrancesca got out of the vehicle with her light bag and waited for her escort, feigning considerably more fatigue than she actually felt. Her two-day visit to North Korea had been an utter and complete bore. It was North Korea, of course, and no undercover American operative could afford to take a visit to the world’s most tightly controlled enemy state lightly. But it had been, in a word, dull.
As Deep Black assignments went, her job had been relatively straightforward: visit the North Korean port city of Hungnam while posing as a Chinese journalist. She was supposedly writing a story about the port, but this was merely intended to be a cover for passing along a business card from the Hong Kong industrialist who owned the newspaper. The high-ranking military people she had met with upon her arrival knew this, of course, and anticipated a successful business relationship in the future.
Which surely would be possible. But that cover was itself a cover for Lia’s real mission — giving the phone number of a dedicated CIA line that could be used to set up a visit to China by one of the men who wanted to defect.
Lia had passed along the card within an hour of arriving. The rest of the time she’d pretended to be a journalist, accompanied by a Korean whose Chinese was rather limited, though if Lia were to complain the woman stood a good chance of being sent to a retraining camp from which she would not emerge alive. Lia’s Korean was also limited; fortunately, the Art Room had round-the-clock translators to help fill the gaps.
Her keeper had taken Lia on a one-hour stroll around the city each day. She had seen a residential area that combined a 1950s-style apartment building (built in the 1970s) and much older traditional homes. She’d also walked through what appeared to be a factory district, though it was completely devoid of people and there was no smoke coming from any of the stacks.
On the way back to the hotel yesterday, Lia had seen a group of musicians with battered brass instruments pass nearby. Lia asked who they were and her minder explained that they were a band recruited to perform for workers in the countryside as they labored on nearby farms. The practice had been very successful after a flood in 1999, and the great leader Kim Jong II had requested it be renewed.
The minder said all of that without taking a breath and then stopped speaking so abruptly that Lia thought she had suffered a seizure. They walked silently the rest of the way to the hotel.
Working in fields after harvest time? Only in North Korea.
The 737 that was due to take Lia back to China was visible beyond the terminal building at the airport. North Korean airports were all under military control, and the only airport that saw much “normal” civilian business was near the capital. The facilities hosted aircraft used for long-range patrols of the oceans to the east, but the base was not considered an important one and even by Korean standards appeared run-down. Flights from China came twice a week. The airline, Hwatao, was owned by a conglomerate that listed Shanghai as its home address, though Lia knew from her brief that its stock was split between a general in southern China and two brothers from Taiwan — an interesting example of the intertwined interests of free and communist China.
“What is it?” replied Lia in Chinese. She looked back toward the car, thinking she had left something inside.
“A comrade wishes to speak to you,” said the minder. “Those men will escort you.”
Lia spotted two soldiers walking toward them from the terminal building.
“Why?”
“Oh, routine,” said the minder.
“A fee?” asked Lia.
