‘To do what?’
‘Prove that North Korea is building nuclear weapons. Your government is running a covert programme to make sure the Koreans look like the biggest threat to world peace since the rise of Germany before the last World War.’ Coburn paused to allow the information to sink in. ‘Washington needs an excuse to go in and flatten North Korea, but without United Nations approval, and with no mandate from the American people, right now they haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting one.’
‘But they will have once this covert programme of theirs starts to cut in?’ O’Halloran looked unimpressed. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
‘You read the papers. For the last four weeks, every time an arms shipment is intercepted somewhere, it just happens to have a big label stuck on it addressed to North Korea.’
‘Like those labels you and the girl found on the Rybinsk?’ O’Halloran drank some more beer. ‘Sounds like a clever idea. Pity about the facts.’
‘I’ll give you facts.’ Coburn cleared away some magazines from a chair and sat down. ‘I’ve got enough facts to know that as soon as your government heard I’d been asking the wrong questions about the Rybinsk, they decided I’d better be stopped from asking any more.’
‘And seeing as how this Fauzdarhat truck driver showed up again on the Pishan, you figure he’s the guy Washington sent to shut you up?’
‘I know he is.’ To provide O’Halloran with a summary of what had happened, Coburn started with an account of the raid on the Pishan, explaining how and why it had failed before he went on to describe how the men who’d attacked the village had been issued with his photo. He avoided any mention of Heather, but thought it would do no harm to include Hari’s contribution to the events that had allowed them to obtain photographs of the driver, and why that in turn had led them to the decision to detonate the Semtex.
By the time he’d finished, the American was no longer frowning and some of his hostility was gone.
‘Good job you’re dead,’ O’Halloran said. ‘You’ve been pushing your luck a bit, haven’t you?’
‘Do you have any questions?’
‘Yeah, I do. Why tell me?’
‘So you can help me find the guy who was driving the truck. I’ve brought the photos of him for you to run through one of the CIA’s computer recognition systems. I need to know who he is, where he is and who he works for.’
‘I don’t owe you any favours.’ O’Halloran’s expression was unchanged. ‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Because if you don’t, when the media get hold of the truth, you’ll come across as being one of the bad guys. I can make that happen with a single phone call. It was you who went to investigate the Rybinsk, and it was you who came up with the story of an illicit nuclear shipment from Russia to North Korea. Once the public hears how you and your government have been manipulating the truth and when they find out how many people have died for another great American cause that’s based on nothing more than another bunch of lies, you won’t just have lost your wife and kids; you’ll have no job, no one’s ever going to give you one, and there’s even a chance you’ll get yourself locked up for longer than you want to think about. How does that sound?’
‘Pretty much like a threat.’ O’Halloran crushed his beer can and threw it across the room into a wastepaper basket. ‘You want to be careful. The crime rate around here isn’t getting any better. Be a shame if you met with a nasty car accident on your way back to wherever you’re staying.’
‘Will you run the photos?’
‘It’s not that easy. Counter-Proliferation reports to the Defense Department. The CIA doesn’t. We don’t do a lot of business with them.’
‘Yes you do.’ Coburn had anticipated the objection. ‘That radioactivity sensor I was supposed to use on the Pishan might have been developed by your people, but it was the CIA who sent it on to Armstrong.’
‘You’re not thinking straight. If you’re right about this being some kind of US conspiracy to inflame world opinion against North Korea, there’ll be people embedded in the CIA who know every damn thing about it. If I ask the wrong department to run a facial recognition search for me, I could wind up in as much shit as you are.’
‘Not my problem,’ Coburn said. ‘You’ll have to decide who you can trust and who you can’t. You must have some idea.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ O’Halloran paused. ‘You know, I hadn’t picked you right,’ he said. ‘That morning at the hospital in Chittagong I figured you were more interested in the girl than the Rybinsk.’
‘Answer the question. Are you going to run the photos, or aren’t you?’ Coburn looked at him. ‘If you can help expose this thing you might get a pat on the head from the President.’
‘Or end up at the bottom of the Potomac River.’
‘If you don’t want to rock the boat, say so.’
‘How do you know you can trust me?’
‘I don’t. But if it’s me who ends up in the Potomac, I promise you it’s not going to make any difference.’
O’Halloran smiled. ‘Where have I heard that before? Why do you think it matters who else you’ve told? Insurance doesn’t do you a lot of good when you’re dead.’
‘I’m already dead — remember?’ Coburn was growing in confidence. The American had been taking longer to answer questions, thinking before he spoke and giving the impression that, even if he wasn’t guaranteeing anything, he might be willing to co-operate.
‘I guess it was that storm,’ O’Halloran said.
‘What?’
‘The storm in the Sea of Japan — the one the Rybinsk sailed through while she was heading south from Vladivostok. That’s what got me started on the wrong track. I had it figured for the reason why the Koreans couldn’t pick up the crates when I thought they should’ve done — and why they had to wait until the Rybinsk arrived at Fauzdarhat.’
‘Good luck selling that as an excuse,’ Coburn said. ‘It might be kind of hard convincing anyone that’s why you got things wrong, don’t you think?’
‘I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re pushing too hard. How about backing off for a minute? Where are these photos of yours?’
‘In my car.’
‘OK.’ O’Halloran got up from his chair. ‘I’ll make a couple of calls tonight and see what I can fix up for tomorrow. I’ll let you know how I get on. Where are you staying?’
‘Never mind. You don’t need to know. I’ll call you.’
The American smiled again. ‘Let me tell you something else,’ he said. ‘Right now, you’re about as near to Washington as you can get. If someone in the US Government has guessed you didn’t get yourself blown up in Singapore, and they think you’ve ridden into town looking for trouble, they’ll find you in half a day.’ He went to the door. ‘Well? Are you going to give me the pictures?’
Outside in the street, a little girl on a pink tricycle was being watched over carefully by her father, while a smartly dressed young woman in high-heels was endeavouring to prevent her Labrador from cocking its leg on the rear wheel of Coburn’s car — a pleasant suburban scene of ordinary Americans enjoying an ordinary evening, he thought, well-meaning people who, in spite of the fiasco in Iraq, were still willing to put their faith in their elected government, and equally willing to accept the lies they were being told about North Korea.
He handed O’Halloran the envelope containing the photographs, wishing he’d made copies and hoping this wasn’t another mistake that was going to come back and bite him.