Red Shark

The cell was filthier than Jin had thought. Kim, in addition to refusing food, had refused to use the bucket provided and instead had defecated and urinated on the floor of the cell. Jin almost gagged on the smell, which cut his nostrils like a knife. The commandant lifted, then dropped, his shoulders, as if to say there was nothing he could do about Kim’s bad habit, which was his only means of revenge for such a grave loss of face. Let Kim breathe his own shit, Jin thought.

Jin motioned that he wanted privacy; the commandant stepped into the passageway but left the cell door slightly ajar.

Hands linked behind his back, Jin looked down at the hunched figure of the man who had ruled North Korea for almost twenty-five years and who, during that period, had unleashed a wave of brutality that at times had sickened even Jin, a master himself at using terror and pain to control his enemies.

“Go away.” Kim hawked and spat between the polished toe caps of Jin’s boots. “I have nothing to say.”

“And there is nothing you can say that I want to hear,” Jin said. “Instead, you will listen to me. An indictment has been handed down by the People’s Council of Ministers. You have been charged and found guilty of treason and have been sentenced to death.”

Kim, gaze planted on the gob of gray phlegm between Jin’s boot toes, said nothing.

“The People’s Council of Justice has given me the task of carrying out your sentence. I am free to choose the time of your execution and, most importantly, the method.”

“Then kill me now.”

“There is more.” Jin waited until he had Kim’s full attention. “Your uncle, your sister and her husband, and both your sons have been arrested. They, too, will pay for your crime. I will rid the State of all traitors who have disgraced your father, the divine leader, Kim il Sung.”

Kim looked up. “Are you trying to frighten me?”

“Frighten you? No. Those are the facts.”

“As I said, kill me now.”

Jin bent at the waist to make sure Kim heard his words clearly. “No, not now, but very soon. After you watch your relatives die one at a time.”

“Is that what you came to tell me?”

“No. I came to tell you that your Japanese friend has agreed to meet me.”

Kim reacted like a muscle poked by an electric current. His gaze bored into Jin.

The marshal straightened his back. “He and I have a commonality of interests. He also has the technology I need and the means to turn our raw materials into usable tools.”

Jin did an about-face to make his exit. Kim said, “Wait. Stop talking in riddles. What are you saying?”

Jin halted, a hand on the cell door. “This: Very soon the United States will no longer be a threat to our existence or to the rest of the world. With your friend’s help we will have the means to cripple the U.S.”

“He won’t go through with it. He’s lying to you.”

“If you think that, you don’t know him at all. Believe me, he’ll do it, because he wants revenge as much as we do.”

“Then you’re both insane. You’ll turn the entire world against us.”

The cell door slammed shut; Jin’s polished boots hammered the stone passageway. Their echo faded, and Kim clamped both hands over his ears to block a dying prisoner’s desperate cry for help from deep in the bowels of the labyrinthine detention center.

5

Crystal City, Virginia

“Evening, Karl, Admiral Ellsworth, I trust you have good news.”

The president of the United States appeared on the Secure Video Tele-Conference monitor in Radford’s office at SRO headquarters. It was late, and the president, a handsome black man who spoke with the measured tones of a Harvard-trained lawyer, which he was, looked very tired.

“Evening, Mr. President,” both men answered.

The president was in the White House’s private residence, where the SVTC had been set up for the broadcast beamed across the Potomac River. NSC staff had conferred with Radford and Ellsworth earlier in the day to discuss broad objectives, and now the two men were ready to brief the president on the details.

“Are we launched?” the president asked.

Radford sensed the president’s deep concern leeching through his veneer of cordiality. The pressure put on Radford from the White House to launch the recon mission to Matsu Shan had been unrelenting, and he knew it would only increase in the days to follow.

“Yes, sir. Admiral Ellsworth is here to brief you on it.”

“Please go ahead, Admiral, but hold the jargon and give it to me in plain English.”