No Way Back (15 page)

“Yes. And I don’t think you’re going to appreciate it very much,” Westley says. “All members of a Korean-American street gang in San Francisco. All with arrest records. Aged nineteen, eighteen, eighteen, eighteen, and seventeen.”

“Bangers would have no reason to try what they did. Bangers don’t usually have access to the kinds of weapons they had,” I say, coolly as I can. Won’t give him the pleasure of seeing me even slightly unsettled over killing three kids.

“That is so obvious I’m surprised you bothered saying it, Luther.”

“Somebody hired and armed them.”

“Again, why are you stating the obvious?”

“One of those two groups I believe you mentioned?” I ask. “The far-right ones who hate Kim for going up North?”

“That, I do not know yet. We’re still looking into that. It had to be one of them. What’s puzzling is the stupidity of method. Neither group is composed of amateurs. I’m leaning toward the idea those kids were pawns, sent on a suicide mission designed only to deliver a warning.”

“No speculation of a third force?”

“Luther!” Westley laughs. “What did you do, read
The Quiet American
on the flight here?”

“No, I slept through the flight, dreaming peacefully,” I say. What I’m thinking is that Westley knows very well the reference was to him, his circle. Wouldn’t put it past him to stage a very controllable incident—and last night was so easy, so controllable—just to frighten Kim, herd him closer. And if he doesn’t know I can think this, he really is getting slow and sloppy.

“A word of advice, Luther,” he replies. “Don’t start looking for conspiracies where none exist. And please don’t skip the first step and jump straight to looking for conspiracies within conspiracies. Not everything we do is as straightforward as the Sarajevo operation, true. But this operation is. What you see, what you’ve been told, is all there is.”

“Then there’s pretty much nothing to it. Since I haven’t been told shit.”

“That’s what I wanted to discuss.” Neat segue by Westley here. “In a few days you’ll leave for Busan. You’ll spend perhaps a week there, much as you’ve spent it here.”

“How much like here? Taking out another three people or so?”

“No. Some steps to ensure against that are already being taken there. You’ll have a pleasant stay. A very quiet one. Then you’ll accompany Kim to Vladivostok, to his meetings with the Russian generals. That deal done, on to Pyongyang. Two days there at most. Then back to Busan for a few more days. Finally, back to the States.”

“Who’s going with me?”

“Openly, Allison, Rob, Nadya to Busan. I’d like you to do me a favor. Observe how Allison makes the final arrangements in Busan, give me a heads-up if any little thing appears off, all right?”

“Okay.”

“Good. Then, openly, you and Nadya move on to Vladivostock, Allison preceding you by a day or two. It will be just you, with Kim’s people, to Pyongyang, naturally.”

“What about you?”

“Me? I’m leaving.” Westley consults his wristwatch. “In about forty-five minutes.”

WESTLEY GONE—NOBODY MENTIONS WHERE—AND
Sonny pleased about it, but still sulky because he knows it isn’t permanent. Some of his CIA hate splashed over me, but didn’t seem to stain, maybe because Taoists or Buddho-Confucians or whatever he is don’t have a pollution concept like Hindus and some others. Probably we could still go back-to-back in a situation and trust our backs were well covered.

But soon enough I’m feeling real uncovered in other ways. Allison triggers it.

She catches me early afternoon, the day after Westley bolts. I’m out at the spot I like so much, cantilevered over the cliff, when she comes up wearing a black Speedo, towel draped around her neck, ponytail swinging.

“Hey, Terry, are you too old and tired to pace me on some laps?” she says.

I look her up and down, then point my thumb at the pool. “What? In a circle? Round and round like seals in a zoo?”

She feigns surprise. “Boy, am I dumb or what,” she
says. Then she laughs. “There’s a four-lane, twenty-five-meter one in the basement. You never checked the basement? What kind of security guy are you?”

“Very insecure, I guess.” And getting worse.

“Well, too old and tired? Or not?”

I flick my cigarette into a long floating fall I don’t bother to watch, follow her back to the house, down some stairs, and into the pool room. Off to one side’s a gym full of the latest workout machines. On the other there’s what seems to be a row of very large closets. “Try the last door left,” Allison says. “There’s a bunch of men’s Speedos in there. One ought to fit you.”

I’m stripped, tanked, and walking toward her end of the long, narrow blue rectangle. She looks like a serious swimmer, slim, long-muscled, but minus the overdeveloped shoulders female competitors get.

“Interesting set of scars, Terry,” she says when I’m next to her on the concrete lip of the pool.

“Exactly what you said in the spook house when I was standing around in my underpants one morning,” I say. “You might want to consider acquiring some fresh lines, Allison.”

“But I like my usual ones. How about ‘I don’t think I’ll even get to my aerobic level pacing you’?”

“Great tone, Allison. Your body, I mean. Tight and toned. I wouldn’t mind—”

“Lap time,” she says, race-diving.

I’m after her in a blink, and we settle into an easy freestyle, flip-turning at the end of each lap. My arms are starting to feel leaden after about ten, I’m breathing on every stroke instead of every other. After twenty, I’m gulping air hard. I start my flip too far from the wall, get a noseful of water, and Allison turns it all on for the last lap, beating me by at least five meters. She’s already up
and sitting on the edge, grinning, when my hands touch it.

“Think he caught something from Terry Uno,” she says, me still in the water, chest heaving. I check out where she’s looking. Rob’s in the gym, pumping iron as if his life depended on it, almost as wet with sweat as I am in the pool. I heave myself out, twist and sit, then give that up and lie down. The concrete’s rough as sandpaper on the skin of my back. Couldn’t care less.

“Jesus, Terry! You’re a disgrace,” she says, looking down over her shoulder at me. “Smoked you again!”

“Who cares? Laps isn’t real-world. Party night was real-world.”

Puzzled little crease appears on her forehead. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The smoked guys on the ground, what else? Dead is real,” I say.

The crease deepens, her eyes change fractionally, too.

“Uh, Terry? You getting enough oxygen to your brain? Because you’re kind of babbling, you know? Bodies on the ground, stuff like that?”

For a moment I simply cannot believe it. Westley wasn’t being literal when he said nobody outside the monitor room would know. Couldn’t have been. Major protocol violation, not informing your team’s leader of something like that. No, I definitely don’t believe it. She’s got to be playing with me. Everything’s a test, right? But it’s way late to be testing. It pisses me off.

“Get fucked, Allison. I’m tired of these games.”

“There you go again. You all right, Terry? You aware you’re not making sense?” She actually looks worried now.

That’s it. I stand, grab her bicep, tug her up. Then I switch my grip to her wrist and lead her, both of us still
dripping, down a few corridors to the monitor room. The guy on duty—Lee or Park or Lee, I don’t know which—looks at us like we’ve dropped from heaven or some shit. I tell him to run the party-night tape, cueing up around midnight; I’m betting Westley did not have it wiped. Lee or Park or Lee just stares, mainly at Allison’s puckered nipples pressing the thin nylon of her tank, judging by the trajectory of his gaze. I tell him again.

“Ho, Mistah Prentice. You up to some kind of no good, right?” It’s Sonny behind me, but he’s chuckling, not serious. And probably he’s staring at Allison’s ass. “What I tell you after the other night? No more bouncy for you.”

“What the hell is going on here, Terry?” Allison snaps, wrenching her wrist from my grasp, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Hey, Sonny, can you get your colleague here to show us the tape? You know which one,” I say.

“Aw, Mistah Prentice. In front of the lady? You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Sonny says a few words in Korean, Lee or Park or Lee flips through the tape rack, finds one, slips it into the player. He fast forwards, the digits in the lower right of the frame blurring time, slows a bit so they’re readable, goes to standard speed.

Allison doesn’t say a word, and neither do I, during the three minutes the action lasts, including a very long thirty seconds of still life with corpses.

“Want a replay?” I ask.

“No. I want out of here right now. And you come with me. Understood? Now.”

I nod. “Thanks, Sonny,” I say as we depart.

“Hey, no problem, Mistah Prentice. For me, anyhow.” I can hear him and Lee or Park or Lee laughing as
Allison power-walks down the corridor, takes the stairs up to the outside deck two at a time, and turns on me like she’s going to strike.

“Westley knows,” she says. But her voice is taut, strained in a way I haven’t heard before. It’s difficult to tell if she’s making a statement or asking a question. Come down on question, respond appropriately.

“He had no clue as it went down. Just like every other punk inside partying,” I say, keeping my suspicion that Westley may have organized the incident himself locked well away. “But of course he fucking knows. Sonny reported soon as we finished, Westley and Kim came right to the monitor room, watched the show. Then Westley celled for cleaners.”

“That’s it.” Again, hard to be sure if Allison’s confirming or asking.

“You didn’t know? You weren’t told?” I say.

“I did. I was.”

It doesn’t feel convincing.

“So, what? Too trivial to ‘discuss’ with the security man who did the job?”

“No reason to discuss,” she snaps.

“Big-time reasons, Allison. We’re on what’s been billed all along as a low-risk op. We’re not even in the operational zone and I gotta kill three kids before they waste Kim, you, Westley, and every other live body having a swell time behind that glass wall. Seems worth a word or two, at least. If you knew.”

“I knew.”

“Yeah? Then what was all that shit at the pool? About lack of oxygen making me babble nonsense? What was that ‘what the fuck is he talking about’ look on your face?”

“Christ, Terry. You stay too intense way past the point you need to be.”

“Hey, Allison, you, uh, getting enough oxygen to
your
brain?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you? I suppose I do. I was hinting to you then, Terry, that it would be wise to shut up. That sitting there poolside was not the time or the place.”

“Oh, Rob isn’t supposed to know? Excuse me. But he was too deep into his muscles to hear anything but his own breathing.”

“Mikes are more sensitive. How smart would it be to have a conversation we don’t want on tape in a place where it would go straight to tape? Hence, the hints. Which obviously went over your head.”

“Hey, if you say so, Allison.” I’m getting anxious now. Very edgy. Westley never told her about the hitters. The tape was a total surprise.

“Yeah, and I also say it was a dumb move dragging me out to see the video in front of Kim’s boys. That certainly must have really filled Sonny and his pal with confidence in our professionalism.”

“He doesn’t have any. I already told you that.”

“You told me he does not like Westley. That is not the same thing as doubting our team. Not the same at all.”

“No? You really missing the subtext or just pretending, so you don’t have to face it? Kim’s chief security doesn’t like Westley. Doesn’t trust Westley. Therefore, he doesn’t much like or trust Westley’s people.”

“If that’s what you read, then you should be trying to correct his impression, not reinforce it by making us look as foolish as you just did, Terry.”

“That’s part of my job now, is it? I’m no longer just a contractor hired to protect a package? I’m supposed to do
your
job, too?” I say. “Well, fine. I reckon somebody has to, since you’ve disengaged. But how about telling me what your job is, so I can do it?”

“I haven’t disengaged, asshole. But that’s obviously over your head too,” Allison says.

I turn to go but Allison moves faster, elbowing me aside and going down the steps three at a time. When I get back to the pool, dump the Speedo and get dressed, she’s nowhere.

Bad static. Bad enough to postpone, even scratch a mission if timing was discretionary. Timing is not. Green light’s on, so Westley told me. No choice now but to make the jump. What he did not tell Allison—and almost certainly others who very much needed to know—means I’m likely in serious jeopardy. It means Rhino’s rumor about Westley possibly having a side agenda, possibly setting up Allison to take the fall if anything goes wrong, about side players like me being expendable as those five kids who tried to assault Kim’s party, may not be just hearsay, but fact. Or it could be a reverse: Allison’s the bad actor here, and Westley’s trying to counter her. Either way, I’m in the middle, first to go down if cross fire erupts. I have to reduce my personal risk level somehow.

First, I make sure I run into Sonny, so we can trade some coarse banter about “bouncy bouncy,” about Allison’s sexual performance and preferences. I make it colorful as I can. Raw and raunchy. At the end I feel he’s seeing me well outside the Westley-crew box, which is the whole point, and that we’re tight as we were in those moments after we capped the intruders. The way guys who’ve just teamed in battle always feel bonded.

Next task is harder, and I’m cursing myself for not doing it from the start. Got to get into cop mode, start an investigative jacket. Not on the key players: Kim and those Russian generals. Nadya’s done good work there. What I need to decipher is the message Westley’s sent
me; he had to know I’d discover he’d cut Allison and the team out of the loop on the hit attempt. What I also need to know is precisely what Westley thinks I should not. Specifically, what Kim’s buying and selling, how high-value it is, and how likely someone will go to extremes to take it.

The start point seems to be one simple question: What would North Koreans want very badly? If I’d had the sense to search this out back at the Washington spook house, I might have found at least approximate answers in the
Post
. Or the
New York Times
. We only get the
San Francisco Chronicle
here, I’ve looked at it, it’s just a rag that must be edited by reader focus groups instead of news professionals. No serious international coverage, lots of
LOCAL MAN MAULS ROTTWEILER
–type stories, plus lots of garbage about entertainment, restaurants, even a TV critic’s column. I guess a few tube junkies, eyes glazed and brains mushed, might take a break once in a while to read a sixth-grade opinion of what’s glazing their eyes and mushing their brains.

I’m drifting, dammit. Stay focused. Got to stay focused.

Okay. The basics I know. They’re in the air, accessible to anyone who bothers to pay attention. North Korea’s one of those countries the Bush Two administration has designated a rogue terrorist state. It’s got some nuclear capabilities—unless that’s as inaccurate intel as the stuff about Saddam’s WMDs. There’s no negotiation with the North, maybe because they’re paranoid, feel targeted, or simply watched what we did in Talibanstan or what the Fourth Infantry and some Brits did to Iraq on CNN and Al Jazeera.

The laptop in my room’s got DSL net connections. Quick and easy to search the
NY Times
site. Find a nice analysis piece there. Says U.S. intelligence believes the North already has one, maybe two nuclear weapons.
Also opines that maximum leader Kim Jong Il has drawn a different conclusion from seeing Saddam dragged out of his spider hole by U.S. troops than Qaddafi, who scurried to inform the world that Libya had already abandoned its weapons of mass destruction program, and would welcome U.N. inspection to prove that was no bullshit. Chairman Kim is speculated to now believe his best chance of avoiding a Saddam-like fate is to hurry the fuck up building a bigger and better nuclear shield.

And another, earlier story says North Korea has sucessfully test-fired medium-range missiles. Very tough luck for Seoul or Busan if the shit comes down, but Tokyo doesn’t have to worry yet; it’s too far away. Even so, China and Russia and particularly the U.S. are getting extremely edgy about Chairman Kim.

And what do Bolgakov and Tchitcherine presumably have access to? God, I’ve been dumb. Nadya said clearly they’d moved well past spare parts, fuel, petty stuff like that. And would Kim Jong Il’s gang of four bother dealing personally with our Mister Kim over anything less than really serious shit—say, plutonium? Possession of a bit of that would save the North years of troublesome transformation of uranium into its weapons-grade derivative.

Then I realize I’ve gone down, in cop mode, one of those speculative blind alleys. No motive. No possible fucking motive. It’s insane to entertain the notion that our Mister Kim would want to increase the power of what’s already the biggest threat to the ROK and his
jaebeol
. An idealist, Westley called him. His goal is some sort of rapprochement with the North through peaceful trade, he’s dreaming of eventual reunification. Even if Westley lied, I do not read Mister Kim as any kind of fanatic with a crazed secret agenda. Not for a minute. It’s
also insane to think of the CIA actively assisting a regime the U.S. wants to cut the balls off. Not that the CIA hasn’t acted rogue or failed miserably or gone off halfcocked in a dozen different places around the world. But something like this? Even the most obsessed and blinkered conspiracy addict would reject it out of hand.