Red Shark

“Because of what happened in Russia?”

Scott gave her a look.

“I heard about the Baltic mission. They said it was Chechen terrorists with a Russian sub.”

He laughed. “Hell, Chechnya doesn’t have a navy.”

Fumiko didn’t laugh.

“Look, it was nothing, just a routine recon.”

“They said there was a woman involved… an American woman…”

“Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“…and that you and she almost didn’t make it back.” She put a hand on his arm.

Scott considered, then said, “You’re right, it was touch and go. A group of Chechen terrorists led by Alikhan Zakayev commandeered a Russian sub based up on the Kola Peninsula. They had a plan to drive the sub into the harbor at St. Petersburg during the recent summit meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents and blow the reactor, to contaminate the city and every living thing in it. I took command of a Russian Akula, tracked Zakayev down in the Baltic Sea, and prevented it from happening.”

“You mean you torpedoed Zakayev’s sub.”

“Couldn’t have done it without help from Alex Thorne. She’s a scientist attached to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Very bright. She figured out what Zakayev was going to do and, well, more or less saw us through a reactor casualty of our own. We lost coolant to the Akula’s reactor and almost had a core meltdown. If it hadn’t been for a Russian officer who patched it up, I wouldn’t be here now. And most of the Baltic region would have been radioactive and uninhabitable for who knows how long.”

Scott heard loping footsteps, someone returning to the house. Fumiko took her hand away.

“Commander Scott, we’re waiting,” Kennedy said from the driveway.

“Sorry you won’t be there in Pearl to see us off,” Scott told her.

“Me, too,” she said.

4

Chungwa, North Korea

The new Dear Leader, Marshal Jin, arrived at the special detention center, twenty-five kilometers south of Pyongyang. The high-security facility, a squat, ugly concrete blockhouse, its walls punched through on four sides with rows of narrow, vertical windows, sat at the end of a paved road, one of the few in the Chungwa region.

The stamp of the guards’ booted feet and their presentation of arms greeted Jin inside the main entrance. Jin and an aide swept past their ranks and fell in with the prison commandant, who was dressed in full military regalia, including jodhpurs, aiguillette, and Sam Browne belt.

The commandant ushered Jin into a spartan office furnished only with a coal-burning stove and metal table and chair. One end of the table had been set with cups of rice wine and bowls of kimbap — sushi — and kimch’i — fiery cabbage.

Jin, his full attention on the closed-circuit color video monitor at the other end of the table, ignored the food. The chair, held by the commandant, materialized under Jin, who sat, gripped by an image on the monitor of Kim Jong-il, transmitted via hidden camera inside his cell deep within the detention center.

Jin almost didn’t recognize the former Dear Leader. Shoeless, dressed in a filthy powder blue jumpsuit, and without his trademark black-framed glasses, Kim looked exhausted. He’d lost weight, which had caused his pudgy face to collapse. The jumpsuit hung from his body like a sack. His bare feet were purple from the cold and disfigured by bunions. Kim sat, not moving a muscle, on the edge of his bunk, which was suspended from chains bolted to the cell’s stone wall.

“He refuses food, Dear Leader,” said the commandant, inclining his head slightly toward Jin.

Jin couldn’t care less if Kim starved himself. It would save the time and trouble of executing Kim slowly in a vat of boiling salt water laced with lye. Or throwing him alive into a furnace. A bullet in his brain was too quick.

Jin studied Kim’s ashen face. Kim the traitor; Kim the drunk; Kim the womanizer. The Swedish prostitutes he favored should see and smell him now. They might think twice about allowing all that unwashed flesh to crush them, two and three at a time, against satin sheets, or they might balk at the idea of licking French wine off his body while he writhed with pleasure and called for another bottle to be uncorked.

Jin stood. “I’ll see him.”

The cell door shivered and swung open. Kim blinked; a flash of recognition ignited his dull eyes.

“I have nothing to say,” Kim croaked, his throat blocked with phlegm, his doughy lips barely moving. He warmed his hands under his armpits.