The old woman had closed her eyes as soon as Lori approached, as if, not seeing, she could safely deny something she was unprepared to accept. She shook her head. "I have no granddaughter," she said in a choking voice. "My family is all gone. I am alone. Please go and leave me with what memories I still possess."
Lori looked up, tears streaming down her cheeks. She could not get through to this tragic, aging figure. It had all been in vain, the trip over here, the day of digging through the AVO files, a fruitless search for a past that must remain forever buried in the graveyard of Margit Szabo's splintered dreams.
Then Mrs. Szabo's wrinkled lids cracked open, like an ancient turtle preparing to peer out of its shell. Lori saw the weary eyes stare down at her, as if really seeing her for the first time. A frail hand reached out, a shaky finger traced the line of her nose, touched her lips.
"You are a reincarnation of my son, Istvan," she murmured.
Lori buried her face in her grandmother's lap as the old woman leaned down and kissed her cheek.
Chapter 2
When the clocks showed 3:00 p.m. in Budapest, it was ten o'clock at night in the Chinese capital. A small army of mechanics had just finished a maintenance inspection in a special hangar at the Beijing International Airport on the northeast outskirts of the city. The Yun-7 aircraft, modeled after a popular airliner from the West, would transport Vice Premier Yip Mun Tong and a precious cargo to Pyongyang, North Korea the following morning.
Although the Cold War might have been merely a lingering bad memory across the continent of Europe, it had continued to maintain its chilling grip on the Korean peninsula. The simultaneous requests for United Nations membership by both North and South in the fall of 1991 had been hailed as a hopeful sign, but periodic attempts to reach some sort of understanding on a variety of issues had achieved little more than a lingering mutual suspicion. Old memories, unlike old soldiers, did not simply fade away. The South could not forget the penchant for dirty tricks exhibited in the past by the northern Democratic People's Republic's wily old dictator, Kim Il-sung. In one of the worst outrages, Kim's agents staged a terrorist attack on a presidential delegation in Rangoon, Burma, slaughtering four South Korean cabinet ministers and thirteen other government officials.
Following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea found itself one of the few remaining communist dictatorships. Kim was hands down the longest reigning despot, though he had turned over daily operation of the Party and government to his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-il. Because of his age, now past eighty, Kim made only an occasional public appearance designed to show the world that the crown of power still rested comfortably upon his thinning gray hair.
After the new Democratic Unity Party scored a shocking upset victory in the South with special elections following vote rigging charges, retired General Kwak Sung-kyo had become president of the Republic of Korea. The party's platform was centered around two main objectives — unification of the Korean peninsula and a reduction of outside influences, apparently directed in large part toward the United States. Kim Jong-il decided it was time to stage a grand appearance of the old warrior, Kim Il-sung, to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of his installation by the Russians as North Korean premier. The tribute to the suryong, "great leader," a title Kim had chosen for himself, would take place at Pyongyang's Presidential Palace.
Those invited to the celebration were the trusted elite, including members of the Politburo and Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Administration Council, the Supreme People's Assembly, the General Staff and key military leaders, plus guests from the two remaining communist powers of significance, China and Cuba.
Eager to further their growing influence in Pyongyang following the Soviets' withdrawal as North Korea's chief military and economic supplier, the Chinese decided upon an impressive gift for the occasion. Vice Premier Yip Mun Tong would present Kim with a magnificent fifteenth century Ming Dynasty vase. Measuring over two feet in height, it was a peach-colored thing of beauty, with designs fashioned by an ancient potter in bright green, red, and yellow enamel.
Others to the south were equally pleased and set in motion their own plans to take advantage of China's magnanimity. With the Pyongyang celebration scheduled for the following day, the prized piece of ceramic art was delivered, carefully packed and crated, to a storage room in the hangar that housed the Yun-7 aircraft at Beijing International Airport.
When the maintenance crew left, a lone security guard with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder walked a solitary post outside the locked and darkened building. His orders included periodic checks around the sparsely illuminated rear of the hangar. It was a routine assignment that carried about as much excitement as a game of ping-pong with a cross-eyed opponent. This was a long way from Tiananmen Square. There had never been anything remotely resembling a problem out here. On this night, however, a shadowy figure lurked behind a large truck parked near the hangar.
The phantomlike observer checked the sentry's movements for an hour and a half. The soldier's periodic treks to the rear of the metal-roofed structure, spaced at regular twenty-minute intervals, were timed with the luminous-dial watch on the intruder's right wrist. The dark-clad figure had chosen to make his move a little past midnight. The operation had been planned with surgical precision. There would be no overt moves, no causes for alarm, not even the slightest evidence that anyone but the young sentry had been here.
The elusive man was Hwang Sang-sol. Though Korean by birth, he had spent the last dozen of his thirty-five years traveling constantly about the nations of East Asia, a successful entrepreneur whose stock in trade was death and destruction. The major terrorists of Europe and the Middle East bore widely recognized names like Carlos the Jackal and Abu Nidal. They were media celebrities, men with consuming hatreds who relished seeing their misdeeds chronicled on front pages and in newscasts around the globe. Hwang, by contrast, cared no more about publicity than a politician who had been caught with his hand in the public till. He was slave to no ideology, sought no cause to promote. He was a smooth, polished, behind-the-scenes manipulator, as adept as any operator on the Washington political scene.
From a comfortable hideaway in Hong Kong's New Territories, he ranged the area on freelance assignments for a variety of masters. His price was high, but his performance was exceptional. A man with more faces than a Swiss diamond cutter, he could slip in and out of nearly any location with virtual anonymity. He prepared himself meticulously, worked from his own strengths against his adversaries' weaknesses, and analyzed each operation with the thoroughness of a surgeon.
The guard had remained out of sight for eight to ten minutes on each of his patrols. Hwang waited exactly four minutes following the man's disappearance around the far corner before crossing swiftly to the nearby office door. He carried a cloth bag with handles, designed to make no sound should it brush against anything metallic. It was no larger than a shopping bag. In the chill of the night air, he felt the dampness of nervous perspiration collecting around his collar and at the wrists of the black sweater he wore. A little fear never hurt, he reflected. It pumped the adrenalin, provided incentive for a constant state of alert. Using the key that had been supplied, he quickly unlocked the door and stepped into the darkness inside.