“How long do you expect that to take?” Anders asked.
“Five minutes tops, sir.”
His mind quieted, Dawkins turned off the light and slipped under the coarse sheets. Usually when he got in bed, Sung left quietly, except on those rare occasions when he asked her to stay. He hadn’t done so tonight, which was why he watched with curiosity as she entered the bathroom through the door beyond the foot of his bed.
He knew almost nothing about her life. Judging from her appearance, he assumed she was in her late twenties. In conversation she sometimes referred to her family, but she never talked about how big it was, or whether she had a husband or children. Dawkins had always been introspective and self-involved, but during his captivity he spent even more time thinking about his own family.
Now he lay on his back with his eyes closed, remembering a picnic with Nan and Karen on the shore of the Potomac. Karen, who was five at the time, had been given a pink Barbie kite for her birthday. He watched her run with it attached to a string, trying to get it to take flight as the sun glistened off the river and her dark hair flew behind her. He heard her squeal with excitement, “Daddy! Mommy! Look at me!”
Sensing something moving above him, he half opened his eyes and saw a shadow. Sung leaned over him and whispered, “Mr. Dawkin, I show you something.”
“In the morning, Sung.”
“Important. I show now.”
The breeze along the Potomac carried the faint scent of cherry blossoms. Sung shook him. “Come to bathroom. Bring you glasses. I show you, Mr. Dawkin.”
Her aggressive behavior surprised him. He sat up and watched her beckon him with her hand.
“Okay, Sung. You sure this can’t wait?”
He put on his glasses and shuffled across the cold tile floor. Sung had entered the small five-by-five-foot space ahead of him. He saw the planes of her face shift under the bare light.
“What?”
She held a thin finger up to her lips, reached behind the rust-stained shower curtain, and turned on the water. He had always assumed his quarters were bugged and had been careful never to talk about anything that could get him in trouble. Now he watched her unscrew a five-inch-long plastic cylinder, reach inside it, and remove a piece of paper. He assumed the cylinder had been hidden somewhere on her body.
She carefully unfolded a small sheet of paper with blue handwriting on both sides.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
Sung pushed the paper under his nose. “For you, Mr. Dawkin…for you.”
He squinted through his glasses and started to read:
“Sir, my name is Dr. R. S. Shivan. I was a professor of nuclear engineering at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai before I was kidnapped and forced to come here. TIFR is the Indian version of MIT. Part of my university training was at the University of Rochester. I have a PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan. I was brought to NK against my will over a year ago. Since then and after some delays due to illness, I have been working to solve the challenge of miniaturizing a nuclear weapon to fit in the warhead of an Unha-3 intercontinental missile. I don’t know if you know this, but that is an important component of what the NKs are trying to achieve. As of this week, that critical engineering problem has been solved, which is both good and bad. The good part is that soon, God willing, I will be allowed to return to my home in India. It is my understanding from being privy to many details of the Unha-3 program that there are very few engineering and rocketry issues left to solve before NK is able to launch a nuclear strike at targets in China and the US. It is my fear that this is what the NKs are planning to do. Based on numerous things I have seen and experienced during my year in captivity I believe that they are going to foment a war between China and the US and use this as a cover to invade and take over SK. This isn’t a theory. I have spoken to people here who have told me this. It’s a very alarming situation. I have several questions for you:
How long have you been in NK?
What are you working on?
What is the status of your project?
Do you know anything else about NK plans?
“As I mentioned above, my project has been completed. I am hoping to be allowed to return to India soon. Once I am home I will talk to officials of my government and tell them to alert the US. I have heard you are American. I don’t know if that is true or not. If you tell me your name and where you live, I will communicate with your government and your family. I am a faithful servant of God and your colleague in captivity, Dr. R. S. Shivan.”
As Dawkins finished reading, his entire body started to tremble. With the shower hissing to his right he stared at Sung, who seemed more psychologically complex than she had moments before. Maybe daring, maybe cunning or deceitful. Perhaps some of all three.
He tried to grasp the choices he faced and their implications. “Have you read this?” he whispered so close that their noses almost touched.
“No, Mr. Dawkin.”
“Do you know what it says?”
“No.”
“Where did you get it from?”
“Woman like me. Work here for different man.”
“Do you know this man?”
“No.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Yes.”
“What does he look like?”
“Black hair. Brown skin. Same height as you.”
“And this woman, does she have a name?”
Sung nodded. “Chiang-su.”
Dawkins had never heard of her. “Does she perform the same functions for that engineer as you do for me?”
She looked confused.
“Do you trust her?”
Sung nodded.
Chapter Fourteen
To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
– Mark Twain
Five minutes had passed, and Crocker was starting to sweat through his shirt. He kept thinking about the blackout in Las Vegas, and couldn’t help wondering whether that event and this power outage were connected. Across the table, Min was describing the elaborate underground facility on the island of Ung-do, off the east coast of North Korea, that housed Office 39’s new high-tech money counterfeiting facility, complete with intaglio press.
Crocker started to see where this was headed, which excited him. He’d been to North Korea once before, in ’03, on a mission to knock out a radar and listening station in the north. He and his ST-6 teammates parachuted at night into freezing water, climbed into a Zodiac, and motored to shore. By the time they reached land the six men were suffering from hypothermia, their feet and hands were numb, and their clothes and gear had frozen. They spent the next three days climbing icy mountain trails. At night they slept huddled together on a bed of sticks to stay off the frozen ground. One night, one of Crocker’s feet slipped off the bed and was frostbitten.
He still felt it more than a decade later. That mission to North Korea, three hundred miles north of Ung-do near the city of Kimchaek, had ended in success. Ung-do, according to the map Anders brought up on his computer, was approximately 102 miles east of the capital of Pyongyang and roughly on the same 39th parallel of north latitude. The island was covered with a forest of pine trees, which provided perfect cover for the large excavation project started in 2007. With the help of Iranian and Russian construction engineers, the North Koreans had expanded a series of natural caves. It was here, according to Min, that 2HK1 counterfeit hundred-dollar bills were being printed.
Interestingly, it was off Ung-do where the spy ship USS Pueblo had been seized by the North Koreans in 1968, sparking a very tense international standoff. One American sailor was killed when the ship was fired upon by a North Korean submarine chaser. The remaining eighty-two crew members and officers were captured and held in North Korean prisons, where they were starved and tortured. Almost a year later, the officers and crew were released. The vessel itself was never returned and was publicly displayed in North Korea as a monument to resisting the American imperialists.