Jim DeFelice - Threat Level Black

Vacation.

Rest.

Moscow conference.

Reward.

What was he saying?

Kuong was smiling.

Smiling?

“Your unit has done brave work,” said Kuong. “In the current situation, it is most admirable-beyond admirable.”

Was this part of the torture: to tell him that he was being rewarded and then send him to prison?

But why so elaborate a ruse?

No, they were smiling. He was…free.

Free!

“Our Russian comrades are hosting a conference on power generation similar to the ones you’ve attended in China,” added the director. “There’s unlikely to be anything new there, but you will have to make a full report.”

Dr. Park looked at the director and then at the general. He struggled to return their smiles.

“Enjoy yourself,” said the director. He began telling him of the arrangement details: An aide would accompany him as a guide and translator. Though the director did not say so, the aide would actually be a minder from the security service, prepared to report him for any infraction and willing to kill him if necessary. But typically such men were corruptible; it was a question of finding their price.

Dr. Park had never been to Moscow.

There were trains, connections to other cities.

Or perhaps if he simply went to an embassy…

Yes.

Would the Americans take him? There had been no answer to his e-mail.

“You do want to go?” asked the director.

He made it sound as if Dr. Park had an option, which the scientist knew wasn’t the case. In North Korea, even recreation was mandatory.

“You do want to go, don’t you?” added the general when he did not respond immediately.

“Of course,” Dr. Park said, bowing. “Of course. I welcome the opportunity.”

“Good,” said the director. “Very good.”

Dr. Park smiled weakly, then left the office.

William Howe stared at the shadows on the ceiling, turning over on the thin mattress of the Hotel Imperium in Parkland, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. He knew it wasn’t quite five A.M., but he also knew it made no sense to lie here any longer. If by some miracle he managed to actually fall asleep, he would be woken by the alarm in an hour anyway. Early in his Air Force career, Howe had adopted a rule about sleep: If he couldn’t get at least two hours, he wouldn’t bother.

He got out of bed and went into the bathroom to shower and shave. Now that he thought about it, he’d made up that rule in college, which predated the Air Force. But he’d been in the service so long, everything in his life seemed to originate there.

Howe wasn’t in the service any longer. Three months before, he’d turned down a promotion and a Pentagon posting, arranging instead to resign his commission. His decision had followed a wild sequence of events that had simultaneously made him a hero and left him disillusioned about everything from love to government.

Disillusioned. One of his commanders had used that word, trying to figure out why Howe-a full bird colonel-wanted to walk away from a career that could have led all the way to the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Disillusioned. It was an interesting word, but Howe decided it wasn’t exactly right. He wasn’t disillusioned. Being disillusioned implied that he had been naive. William Howe, former fighter pilot, former project liaison officer of one of the most revolutionary war-fighting systems ever, had not been naive.

Trusting, perhaps. Too ready to assume that others held to the standards of honesty and duty and responsibility that he himself held dear. But not naive.

Burned.

That was a better word. He had been burned.

Howe pulled on the gray suit pants over his white shirt.

So, if he’d been burned, why was he back in D.C.?

Because his mother had been excited by the fact that the national security advisor to the President of the United States had called her son not once but twice. And actually spent several minutes chatting with her.

Chatting was the word she had used.

The national security advisor to the President of the United States. We chatted for quite a while. A very, very nice man.

She had had the same tone in her voice nearly twenty years before, when he was a high school junior being courted by colleges offering athletic scholarships.

He looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and laughed at himself. At thirty-five, he might be a bit younger than some of the people he brushed shoulders with in Washington, but he wasn’t going to pass for a high school kid anymore-though in some ways he felt like one again.

National Security Advisor Dr. Michael Blitz-and, to hear his mother tell it, the President himself-wanted Howe to take on a very important job. But what job that was hadn’t been made clear. Howe figured it was as some sort of advisor to the President, a glorified pencil sharpener more for window dressing than anything else. He wasn’t going to take it, but the truth was, he was getting bored hanging around his parents’ house in rural Pennsylvania; he could do with the change of scenery. And sooner or later he did really have to decide what the hell it was that he was going to do when he grew up.

Howe laughed again. Then, remembering it was still god-awful early, he clamped his mouth shut, grabbed his suit jacket, and went down to see if he might find a place for breakfast.

HELLO AMANDA

GOING TO MSCW. CAN YOU GET ME OUT? BEST CHANCE THURS. PLEASE! I HAVE INFORMATION.

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EE10”

The knock on the door had a familiar rap to it, the sort of hollow sound Death might make if he had a hangover.

“Fisher. I know you’re in there,” said a voice not unlike Death’s own.

“He’s not here,” said the FBI agent.

“We need to talk.”

“So talk, Kowalski. You’re good at it.”

“Face-to-face.”

“This early in the morning? I don’t know if my stomach can take it.”

Fisher refilled his coffee and lit a fresh cigarette: no sense approaching a Defense Intelligence Agency agent unarmed, even one like Kowalski.

“Why the hell aren’t you working up some plans to take over a minor country, like France or Germany?” he asked as he opened the door.

Kowalski stood in the hallway of Fisher’s small apartment building, flanked by a pair of men Fisher didn’t recognize. Their suits were pressed and their ties didn’t clash: The DIA was recruiting a better class of people these days.

“You’re dressed,” said Kowalski.

“Sorry to spoil your thrills,” said Fisher. He took a sip of coffee. “What happened? You took a wrong turn at Gomorrah and got lost?”