Adam followed the man back into an administrative section of the building. He’d never been here, and he was surprised when, after climbing up a staircase, he saw Dr. Helen Powers coming out of a room with her lab coat on. She nodded to Hwang and looked at Adam with surprise, but she said nothing.
They stepped into an office and Hwang closed the door. He looked nervous, like his demeanor before had been a put-on and now he was letting true feelings show.
“Have we met before?” he asked. It was a weird thing to say, but Adam knew the man just wanted to establish that Adam was, in fact, with Chinese intelligence.
“No, Comrade Director, but I believe we have a mutual friend. Chang Lan.”
Hwang blew out a sigh of relief, but afterward he appeared no less worried. He shook Adam’s hand.
“I had no idea you were here, inside the operation, the entire time.”
Adam kept his conversation in Mandarin. Hwang seemed to speak it well enough. “I understand you have your family with you.”
“Yes,” the director answered quickly. “Can we go tonight?”
“Better we do it early in the morning. When you leave for work. We can take your car.”
“And we will go to the border? Do you have a way across?”
Adam wasn’t sure what to say. He decided to stick to as much truth as he could think of. “We will travel by air. I am to take you and your family to a location near Sonchon, and we will be picked up.”
Hwang said, “But we must leave now. You do not have the time you think you do.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Chinese technicians will be leaving tonight.”
“What?”
“The processing facility will go dormant and the workers are being sent home.”
“Why? What has changed?”
Hwang blinked in surprise. “You don’t know?”
Now Adam said, “I don’t know what?”
“General Ri of the RGB killed himself yesterday.”
Oh, shit, Adam thought. He knew he needed to look like he was in charge, so he just nodded, then asked, “What did Ri have to do with Chongju?”
Hwang said, “Ri was the only chance we had to make the refinery work. We will never get the froth flotation tanks now. My only hope is to escape with my family to China.”
Adam thought it over for just a moment, because he realized every second was important now. “Okay. If they decide the refinery won’t work, they might have you shot. We’d better go tonight.”
“With my family,” Hwang added.
“Yes. It is arranged. We can accommodate all three of them.”
“Five.”
“Five?”
“My parents are coming.”
Adam shook his head. He kept speaking in Mandarin, though it was a challenge. “Your what? Parents? Hell, no. I can’t take everybody.”
“It’s no problem, I have them staying at a vacation cottage near the water. Just twenty minutes’ drive from Chongju.”
“We can’t bring your parents.”
“Then I cannot leave.”
Adam found himself wanting to punch a wall. After thinking it over a minute more, he said, “Okay. We take your car to the hotel. Pick up your family, go to the cottage, grab your parents, and head for the extraction.”
“What about your other agent?”
“What other agent?”
“Dr. Powers. The Australian.”
“She isn’t an agent. She just gave you the note.”
“My aide saw her do it. They will think she was involved.” Hwang looked away.
Adam said, “Internal security will kill her, won’t they?”
“Oh, yes. Of course they will.”
“Goddamn it.” Adam mumbled it in English.
“What?”
“It’s English. It means ‘The more, the merrier.’”
72
Five minutes later Hwang went back to his office and explained to his staff that he would drive himself back to the hotel and then go visit his parents. They assumed the director’s parents were home in Pyongyang, and he did nothing to dispel their assumption.
While the director was taking care of this and other matters, Yao was in the geology lab with Helen Powers. They were alone, which was a good thing for them both, because Adam decided he would speak English.
He didn’t think she would think much of her chances if he told her he was a Chinese spy. She put together on her own who he worked for the moment he dropped his accent fully. “Dr. Powers. Do you really want to get out of here?”
“I… you are American?”
“You tell anyone and I will be killed. You will be suspected, at best, and stood up against a wall right next to me, at worst. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Why the blazes would I tell anyone? You think I like these people? They are mad bastards.”
“Hwang and I are leaving, and if you stay, you will be in danger.”
“Let me get my purse.”
Adam drove behind the wheel of a silver Pyeonghwa Pronto, Hwang’s seven-passenger SUV. Hwang sat next to him in the front, and in the middle row sat his wife and two small children. They were all confused, but they were quiet, because they were obedient, and Hwang told them everything was fine.
Dr. Helen Powers sat in the third row, doing her best to keep her red hair under a black cap so it didn’t draw any more attention to the vehicle than necessary as they drove through the North Korean backcountry.
As they neared the cottage, Hwang spoke in Mandarin to Adam.
“Go-you.” Hwang said it softly.
Adam turned to Hwang. He wasn’t sure what the Korean was talking about, or even if he’d heard correctly. “Go-you” meant “dogs” in Mandarin. He knew the Korean word, so he checked.
“Gae?”
“Yes.” Hwang continued in Mandarin. “Dogs.”
“What about dogs?”
“You said Choi would have me shot. You are wrong. He wouldn’t have had me shot. He would have fed me to starving dogs.”
Adam turned back to the road. He squeezed the steering wheel tighter. “We’ve heard about that. Most of our analysts thought it was just an exaggerated rumor.”
“No rumor. General Gang of foreign intelligence was killed in this manner last year.”
Mother of God. “How do you know?”
“Because General Ri told me. He was there.” After a pause he said, “Ri killed himself and his family so they would not suffer the same fate.”
Yao shuddered. He wished like hell he had some way to talk to Acrid Herald control and let them know he was on the way. They said they’d be watching from above, which meant satellites, probably the KH-12 that Adam knew monitored North Korea, but now that he was picking up strays along the way, he could only hope the helicopter they were sending was big enough to handle everyone.
They arrived at the cottage at seven p.m. It wasn’t remote at all, just one of hundreds of cookie-cutter little homes with postage-stamp fenced yards that overlooked the coastline in a massive complex. A cool wind blew in from Korea Bay, and the moon provided enough light for Hwang to pick out the right unit. While many of North Korea’s citizens starved, a few thousand elite owned vacation cottages. Hwang’s family was one of the “haves,” and while it didn’t look like much to Yao, in this country it was an unfathomable luxury to ninety-nine percent of the population.
Adam said, “Okay, just like we planned it. Quickly. Don’t answer questions, just get them moving. No luggage. Just the clothes on their backs and any medicine they need in the next twenty-four hours.”
Hwang just nodded.
Everyone stayed in the vehicle except for Hwang, who climbed out and went to the front door. He knocked, and waited.