Battle Born (49 page)

“This one,” the Korean officer said to his men. “Open it.”

“How dare you!” the Chinese officer shouted. “Do you realize that that contains the blessed remains of Vice-Marshal Cho Jong-sang himself? He was a former commander in the People’s Army, next in line for chief of the general staff, and one of the highest-ranking Chinese diplomats in North Korea.”

“I said, open it!”

“Why don’t you open another one, if you charge there is more than one contraband weapon in the truck?” the Chinese officer asked. “Do not desecrate the vice-marshal’s name by disturbing his coffin!” But the Korean officer refused to yield. Four of his soldiers removed the steel bands and opened the wooden crate, revealing a magnificent mahogany coffin inside. The locks had to be drilled out, which took some time, but the casket was finally opened . . .

. . . and indeed, there lay the withered body of the vice-marshal, in full military uniform.

“You bastard!” the Chinese officer spat, unleashing a tirade of invective as the coffin was sealed shut again. The Korean officer stood unmoving at its head, bowed deeply at the waist, and suffered the onslaught in silence.
Then, before the crate was lifted back into the truck, he apologized, saying, “I am most deeply sorry for my mistake,” turned to his soldiers, and pointed. “That one next.”

“What?” the Chinese officer shouted in disbelief. “You are going to open
another
one? How dare you? You will be imprisoned for this, I promise you! You will not see the light of day for fifty years!” He positioned himself directly in front of the Korean officer, going face-to-face with him. “This will cause an international incident of the worst kind if you do not stop immediately! You—”

“Step aside, please, sir.”

“I will not! You have delayed us long enough! I will order my men to keep your men away from these trucks until I can contact my embassy. Stop immediately, or I will . . .”

But he stopped as the four soldiers tried to lift the wooden crate—and it would not budge. With their flashlight, they could see that this crate and a couple of others, most of them located in the front area of the truck, were fitted with special hardware so they could be moved by forklift. They also found roller pallets that could help move the heavy crates.

“How interesting,” said the Korean officer. “The vice-marshal’s remains can be easily lifted by four men, while this one cannot be moved even a centimeter. This is rather unusual, don’t you think, sir?”

The Chinese officer swore under his breath. “You have no idea of the havoc it will cause if these crates are not delivered to China. My country is willing to go to war over these devices! Do you understand? What you are doing is tempting war between our countries. Do you want that for your brand-new little nation? Do you want to celebrate your first few weeks of existence with a Chinese invasion?
Do you?
” The Korean officer was
unmoved. The Chinese officer wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “They will execute me if I do not return with them,” he whispered. “I will be killed the minute I set foot on Chinese soil.”

“Then do not return,” said the Korean. “Remain here in United Korea. You will be welcome.”

“That would save my life, I suppose,” the Chinese said, “but it would not preserve my honor or the honor of my family, would it?” He looked at the Korean officer’s field jacket and recognized the outlines of some of the patches and insignia that had been stripped from it. They fitted a North Korean People’s Army unit. This man had been a
North Korean officer
! “Tell me, sir,” he asked, “what preserves
your
honor? You not only turn your back on your oath and your country, but you do not even procure another jacket to wear. You dishonor your country of birth by sewing this abomination on the jacket that kept you warm and protected.”

“The flag I served under, the bureaucrats and government officials that I pledged to support and defend, starved my family and me for months,” the Korean officer answered bitterly. “Last year it cost the life of my youngest son. Every family I know, military or not, was hurt by what the Communist government was doing. When the opportunity came to bring the government down, I took it. I invoked the name of my dead son for strength. His strength supports me still. Now my family is being cared for—and now I would give my life for the new nation that saved them from certain death.

“Now step aside. Order your men to leave the contraband weapons right where they are and board your ships, and you may depart in peace. Otherwise, I will order all these vehicles and your ships destroyed. I will be happy to join my son in eternity. I am ready to die. Are you?”

About an hour later the march toward the transport
ships resumed. It took several more hours to load the ships; then the last of the Chinese Army members boarded and the vessels unleashed thick clouds of smoke as their engines pushed them away from the Korean shore. Korean helicopters flitted overhead to escort them clear of their territorial waters.

Left behind on the wharf, to the stunned amazement of the onlookers, were thirty-seven gray steel coffins, off-loaded from the trucks. Each coffin was about six feet long, three feet square, and weighed well over eight hundred pounds . . . and each contained a thermonuclear warhead for a short-range Scud missile. Some were smaller North Korean–made ABD warheads, with approximately a ten-kiloton nuclear yield; a few were Chinese-made OKD warheads with anywhere from a forty-to a three-hundred-fifty-kiloton yield.

Once word spread about what was inside those coffins, the demonstrators who had thronged the roadsides quickly left the military port at Nampo. They never wanted to set foot there again.

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
THE NEXT MORNING

T
hank you for taking my call, Mr. President,” said Kevin Martindale, speaking on the secure videophone hookup. Out of view of the videophone camera, chief of staff and senior adviser Jerrod Hale scowled at the President’s courteous words. No President of the United States of America, he said in silent admonishment, should ever have to suck up to a foreign leader, however grave the situation. Vice President Whiting and National Security Adviser Freeman were also in the Oval Office, and out of camera view.

“I am pleased to take your call and I place myself at your complete disposal, sir,” responded United Republic of Korea President Kwon Ki-chae. The man looked more cheerful than Martindale ever remembered seeing him. Well, why shouldn’t he? His grand, daring scheme to reunite the Korean peninsula had worked unbelievably well.

“Mr. President, I have just received a briefing from my staff,” Martindale began. “We heard the news of the stockpile of nuclear warheads confiscated at Nampo. Congratulations, sir, for taking control of those devices without bloodshed. Any one of us here would have guessed that the Chinese would have fought to the death before relinquishing them.”

“I thank you for your kind words, Mr. President,” Kwon said. “We thank the gods of chance and of reason that bloodshed was avoided. But when you have nothing to lose except your freedom, acts of desperation are your only alternative. Unfortunately, my military analysts tell me that it is possible we only succeeded in confiscating a fraction of the warheads stored in Nampo and the First Army region. We fear many more were already smuggled out in the opening days of the transition.”

“I agree, Mr. President,” Martindale said. He paused for a moment, then went on: “Mr. President, the confiscated warheads are the reason for my call. My analysts tell me you have uncovered over sixty such weapons caches throughout North Korea in the past few days—and these are only weapons stores that
you did not know about
before the transition.”

“That is true, Mr. President,” Kwon acknowledged. “Your intelligence information is quite accurate. We have unearthed”—he paused, checking his notes—”sixty-three weapons caches. It is also true that we did not know about these hidden weapons before the transition.
Most appear to be weapons in maintenance status that Communist loyalists tried to hide. Thankfully, those who believe in peaceful reunification reported their existence and led our teams to them.”

“We do not have an accurate guess as to how many warheads or devices that represents,” President Martin-dale went on, “but if each cache was only half the size of yesterday’s Nampo discovery, that is over six hundred weapons of mass destruction discovered.”

“It is indeed shocking,” Kwon said, choosing not to confirm or deny Martindale’s estimate. “To think that all these years the Communists denied they stockpiled such weapons. We are indeed fortunate that the Communists never had a chance to employ them against us. It would have decimated our country ten times over.”

“The entire world is grateful for your courage, wisdom, and strength through this incredible ordeal, Mr. President,” Martindale said. He looked at Hale’s scowl and nodded, this time acknowledging that his civility might be a touch excessive. “Those weapons represented a substantial threat not just to Korea directly, but to the entire world. We believe, and I’m sure you’ll verify, that the Communists were selling those warheads, along with the delivery vehicles, around the world for hard currency. Their balance of payments certainly bears this out.” Kwon said nothing.

“Mr. President, I’ve spoken with representatives of the Chinese government,” Martindale went on. “They’re worried about what you intend to do with those warheads. The stockpiles must be enormous—while North Korea’s chemical and biological warfare capability was well documented, we now realize that their nuclear capability was equal to or even greater than what we ever anticipated.”

Still, Kwon said nothing. He stared directly at the
camera, hands folded, a slight benign smile on his face, as if waiting for the punch line to a joke.

“President Kwon? Can you hear me, sir?

“Of course, Mr. President,” Kwon responded.

“I ask you, sir—what do you intend to do with the special weapons you have?”

At the Blue House in Seoul, United Republic of Korea, President Kwon sat with his national security advisers, all out of videoconference camera range: Defense Minister Kim Kun-mo, a retired Army general; Prime Minister Lee Kyong-sik; Foreign Affairs Minister Kang No-myong; Director for National Security Planning Lee Ung-pae; and Chief of the General Staff General An Ki-sok. Kwon looked at each of them, searching for some indication of what he should say to the President of the United States. Finally, he said, “Please forgive me, Mr. President. I must confer with my aides,” and put the videoconference call to Washington on hold without waiting for a response.

“So,” he said to his advisers. “The question has been asked, as we feared it would be. Your thoughts, please?”

“Do the Americans
deserve
an answer?” General Kim asked angrily. “They sound to me as though they are accusing us of some duplicity. How dare they?”

“In case you have forgotten, General, the United States protected South Korea for two generations,” President Kwon retorted. “They spilled the blood of their children on our soil less than ten years after fighting a terrible world war that eventually defeated our Japanese oppressors. They risked nuclear devastation to keep South Korea free and democratic. I think they deserve to know.”

“Sir, it is as you have said in the past: they did this in
their own self-interest. The Americans, like the Chinese and Russians in the North, used Korea as a way to intimidate their superpower enemies, not to protect us,” Kim replied. “You know as well as I that Washington would have never agreed to your plan to reunite the peninsula. We were forced to do it on our own because of American intransigence. And now they want to take our hard-won weapons away? I say no!”

President Kwon was accustomed to his defense minister’s strident tone, although it troubled him. He looked around the conference table. “Your opinions, gentlemen?”

“I disagree with Minister Kim, sir,” Foreign Minister Kang said rather nervously. “Retaining those weapons will only harm our relations overseas. We will be seen as a nuclear wild card, like Israel or Iran. That will not be good for our cause.”

“I agree with Minister Kim,” General An said. No surprise there, Kwon thought. Although in this room he was considered an equal in rank and status, An needed Kim’s endorsement to move up the ladder and become the next minister of defense when the general retired, so he usually sided with Kim on policy questions. “We should deal with China and the rest of the world from a position of strength, not weakness. Although I agree that the United States has been a trusted friend and ally to us, they do not have the right to dictate terms to us.”

“I am sorry to put the monkey on your back, sir,” Prime Minister Lee said with a wry smile, “but I disagree with Kim. We should not keep any weapons of mass destruction. I do not think we have anything to fear from China
unless
we keep those weapons.”

General Kim could sense that the tide was turning away from him, so he said, “I certainly see their point, sir. Maintaining a nuclear weapons deterrent will undoubtedly cast our new nation in a different and disturbing
light. But I truly feel it is our best and perhaps our only deterrent to Chinese aggression.

“Consider this, sir: We use those weapons not as devices for mass destruction, but as bargaining chips. We force China to agree to stop harboring Kim Jong-il or supporting his government-in-exile in exchange for removing those weapons. Or we remove the weapons in exchange for a disarming of our border with China—an equal number of troops within three hundred kilometers of the border on both sides. Or both. But we should not even hint that we are willing simply to hand over the weapons to anyone, not even the United States.”

“I think that is a very good tactic to pursue,” Prime Minister Lee said quickly, thankful that an option presented itself that would avoid directly opposing the powerful retired general.

President Kwon thought for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you, gentlemen, for your thoughts. You are all indeed true patriots.” He pushed the HOLD button on his phone and resumed his videoconference call with the President of the United States.