Fires of War (24 page)

“I’m in touch with them. Did you tell them about the trucks?”

“Well, no. Am I supposed to?”

“No,” said Ferguson. “I’m handling that myself.”

“Slott wants to make sure you’re cooperating. He doesn’t want a repeat of what happened to Guns.”

“Neither do I.”

Ferguson killed the communication, then turned down a side street, aiming for a motor scooter rental company he’d scouted a few days before.

~ * ~

hether the trucks were a coincidence or not, Ferguson decided Science Industries was too interesting a place not to check out. His first thought was that he could scout the grounds from one of the hotel rooftops nearby, but it turned out that the one with the best view—the Han—showed the entrance driveway and two nondescript two-story buildings, nothing more. In fact, it was difficult to even get an idea of the size of the campus from the hotels; the landscape included a large number of evergreens on the hills and knolls that blocked the view. Only by going to four different high-rises was Ferguson able to determine there were six different buildings. The one where the trucks had been parked looked like a warehouse or perhaps a garage. It was arranged in a way that someone could make a drop-off or pickup without going through the rest of the campus; in fact, an inner fence cut off all but the rear of the building from the rest of the complex.

Two other buildings were very small cement structures, possibly for storage or machinery. One was round, the other square.

The last three were brown-brick structures with narrow, slitlike windows. The largest was three stories and only about two hundred feet long; the others were smaller two-story structures.

With a rough idea of the layout, Ferguson went to check out the perimeter, examining what sort of security measures protected it. A double fence topped by barbed wire protected the perimeter, limiting access to the single road Ferguson and Guns had taken two nights before. Security cameras were placed at irregular intervals, accompanied by floodlights to illuminate the grounds at dark. The building doors were all equipped with electronic locks that worked with card readers.

Ferguson found a spot on the road between the highway and the plant where he could watch for cars to come out of the facility. He hoped to follow them to a bar or restaurant, any place where he could get more information and maybe steal an ID card to get inside the buildings. But it was like playing the lottery—the first car he followed went onto the highway toward Seoul, and the second disappeared into a residential area west of the city.

The third was more promising—a Mercedes sedan with a driver and a passenger in the back. Ferguson had a little difficulty keeping up on the highway, but after about ten miles, the car turned off onto a local road. They drove past a series of high-rises until evergreen-clad hills burst around them, as if Nature had pushed man back and retaken its land.

The grade became steeper and steeper. When the road leveled off, Ferguson could see Daejeon laid out in the distance to his right. The afternoon sun gave the city an ethereal glow. It was a phenomenal view, but not one shared with many others—the road abruptly narrowed and turned to packed dirt.

The Mercedes turned into a gated driveway a few hundred yards beyond the end of the macadam. Ferguson slowed down, watching from the corner of his eye as the gate opened and the sedan pulled through.

Just after the driveway, the road veered to the left. A group of very old structures hugged the shoulder; a dozen men were working on one, refurbishing it with hand tools. Ferguson pulled around in a U-turn.

“Nice work,” Ferguson told the workers, getting off his bike. They either didn’t hear him or didn’t understand English, since no one paid any attention. This only encouraged him; he walked to the side of the building, staring up and nodding his head in admiration.

A man in a white shirt and tie came from around the side of the building and asked, in Korean, who he was. Ferguson stuck out his hand in greeting, then reached for the small phrase book, looking for the words for “very nice carpentry” while the man with the tie told him he should be on his way.

“They don’t have a section on carpentry,” said Ferguson cheerfully, closing the book. “But I hammer, saw.” He mimed the work, as if he were a carpenter. The man with the tie seemed to think he was looking for a job.

“No, no. On vacation. Love old houses. And big houses. Great work. I’m a contractor myself. Back in the States. Great work here. Fantastic. Make a lot of money doing this back home. You ever been?”

Ferguson’s admiration for the craftsmanship was so effusive that the man in the tie began showing him around the exterior. Ferguson, who in his entire life had been no closer to woodworking tools than the parking lot of Home Depot, bent over an ancient wood plane, admiring it as if it were the Grail.

It wasn’t the Grail, but it may have been older. The men were refurbishing the buildings with period tools to preserve the authenticity. Two of the older men began explaining their methods in great detail—and in Korean. Ferguson understood perhaps one word out of twenty, but he could be enthusiastic in any language. He spent more than a half hour admiring the project, and by the time he left he was sure he could show up in a day or so with a camera and have an enthusiastic audience.

He was also sure that the man who owned these houses and most of the surrounding mountain, including the property across the street, was Park Jin Tae: “a great and noble man, a leader of true Koreans and the heart of generosity and spirit,” according to the man with the tie.

~ * ~

19

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

One of the good things about being in the West Wing at a quarter to four in the morning was that no one was around to interrupt you.

One of the bad things was—it was a quarter to four in the morning.

Corrine waited as the coffee dripped through the coffeemaker, the aroma filling the small room. Her body cried out for the caffeine, but she knew from experience that the first quarter of the pot the machine made would be cold and taste like metal shavings; for some reason the pot had to be half full before the liquid was fit for human consumption.

She leaned back against the cupboard, waiting. And thinking of her conversation with Ferguson.

Clearly he didn’t trust Seoul, and he didn’t trust Slott. Whatever his suspicions were, they must be pretty strong. Ferguson didn’t like her at all, though obviously he trusted her to some degree.

Or he was using her.

Had she even done the right thing? Getting an outsider involved, even one who’d worked for the government in the past?

Slott’s reluctance to tell her that he was involving Seoul—even if Parnelles took the blame for the actual decision—told her that something
was
going on. Maybe it only amounted to Agency politics, but there was no way for her to figure it out without considerably more information from the principles, Ferguson especially.

Had she done the right thing?

If Ferguson was up to something
illegal,
he surely wouldn’t have involved her.

On the other hand, was it really in the president’s interest to be subverting the chain of command at the CIA?

Then again, some might say that her very presence on Special Demands subverted it.

Slott would certainly say that.

The coffee machine gurgled at her. Corrine grabbed the pot and poured herself a cup, then went down the hall to get a jump on the day’s work.

~ * ~

20

SOUTH CHUNGCHONG PROVINCE, SOUTH KOREA

By the time Ferguson got back to Science Industries, it was nearly six p.m. Even so, there were plenty of workers in the complex, and within a few minutes five cars came out in a bunch. He went with the two that turned off the first highway ramp, following as they went into the bar district. Seven young women got out of the cars, joking and laughing as they went down the stairs to a
hof,
a Korean bar that served food and drinks.

By the time he parked the scooter and got inside, the women had found a place at the far end of the bar. Ferguson made his way over to them nonchalantly, ordered a
maekju
—beer.

“Saeng maekju?”
said the bartender, asking if he wanted a draft.

Ferguson gave her one of his best goofy smiles. “Hang on,” he said, taking out his phrase book.

One of the women next to him glanced over.

“You speak English?” he said in a lost voice.

“English, a little,” said the woman.

“Do I want
saeng maekju?”

The woman giggled, and tapped her friend. Within a few minutes Ferguson was surrounded by young women who found the handsome but clueless foreigner quite amusing. They got him a Hite—a brand of bottled beer popular in Korea—and a plate of food whose identity he couldn’t decipher.

Midway through the beer, Asian techno-pop began playing in the background. Ferguson proved deft on the nearby dance floor, dancing with three and four of the women at a time. When a slow song came on, he took the girl named Lin-So in his arms and held her close; she clung to him furiously, her head against his chest and shoulder.

She didn’t want to let go when the music stopped, but the punchy, driving beat of the next song got her moving. Ferguson took her by the hand and twirled her backward and forward, around and around several times before segueing into a kind of jig and sharing himself with two of the other young women, who’d been shooting jealous glances in their direction for several minutes now.

When the song ended, he excused himself to find the restroom; he went down the hall and slipped outside, having obtained what he wanted: Bae Eun’s identity card, with its magnetic key to open the doors at Science Industries.

~ * ~

ad Ferguson looked even the vaguest bit Korean, or if he had thought the plant routinely employed foreign workers, he would have used the ID card to go in the front gate; most guards rarely took a good look at credentials, especially when they were outside on a cold night. But the circumstances called for a slightly more creative approach: hopping the fence.

At half-past nine, a limo drove up the drive to the front gate. The driver told the guards that he had come to pick up Mr. Park. The men immediately ordered him out of the car. The driver objected, and within seconds one of the guards was holding him down on the pavement while the other was frantically calling for backup.

Ferguson, meanwhile, scaled the first perimeter fence, clamping down the barbed wire strands at the top with a pair of oversized clothespins. Though the spot he had chosen was only a few yards from the front gate, it wasn’t covered by a video camera, not so much an oversight as a commonsense decision by a security designer who had only so many cameras to work with and saw no reason to cover an area under constant human surveillance.

Now inside the compound, Ferguson trotted up one of the interior roads, circling around to a set of lights that indicated where one of the surveillance cameras had been placed. He blinded the camera with a rather low-tech application, the wrapper of a local fast-food restaurant artfully tangled and stuck on with a gob of mayonnaise. This done, he sprinted past it, racing for a second camera, located at the base of a tree.

This camera covered one of the nearby buildings as well as the route he wanted to use to get out, and here he had to rely on something more dependable than tainted mayonnaise. He inserted a fader in the back housing, hit the button to dim the view and then ran in front of it toward the nearby building.

By now other guards had responded to help their brother at the front gate. Red and yellow lights were flashing, illuminating the grounds. Ferguson trotted to the largest building on the campus. He walked around the side farthest from the gate to the back, trying to see through the windows as he went. But the windows had been designed to prevent that, and all he could catch was a glimpse of his own reflection.