Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

She had just left the cabinet room and collected her mobile phone from a wicker basket on the President’s secretary’s desk, when the device vibrated in her hand. She answered it without looking.

“Foley.”

“Mary Pat? It’s Gerry Hendley here.”

Foley stepped into the West Wing hall. She could tell by Gerry’s tone of voice something was wrong. “What is it?”

“Are you where you can talk?”

Mary Pat looked around. Men and women walked all around her. “I’ll be back in my car in a few minutes. I’ll call you then. Just tell me this. Is this about Colin Hazelton?”

“Yes.”

“Is he okay?”

Gerry sighed into the phone. “No. No, he’s not. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

She stopped fully in the hall, her knees weakening in shock as she did so. “Dead?”

8

One year earlier

The office of the Supreme Leader of North Korea is the Ryongsong Residence, also called Residence No. 55. It is located on a small lake in the northern suburbs of Pyongyang, and it serves as one of ten private residences for the nation’s ruler.

The compound is several miles square and surrounded with fencing and gates; the living facility is hardened for conventional and nuclear attack, and two brigades of elite troops reside on the property with the sole mission of protecting the Supreme Leader both from foreign armies and domestic insurrection.

A black limousine arrived at the compound’s outer perimeter checkpoint at ten a.m.; armed guards checked the driver and the occupant in the back, a small, thin fifty-four-year-old bald man in a gray suit. Soon the limo drove north through the hills of Ryongsong, stopped at more checkpoints along the way, until finally the vehicle pulled up to the entrance of Residence No. 55 itself. The bald man climbed out and was led with his small entourage into the building, then he was brought into an ornate sitting area by three female assistants of the Dae Wonsu, and he sat down on a straight-back chair.

Tea was placed in front of him, and a second cup was placed on the empty sofa on the other side of the table and left empty.

He sat nervously in the silence, concentrating with all his might on giving off an air of calm.

The man’s name was Hwang Min-ho; he was the new director of the Korea Natural Resources Trading Corporation, the nation’s state-owned mining concern. In his position for less than a week, he was here to meet Choi Ji-hoon; this would be his first face-to-face with the leader of his country, and the current occupant of the center of the personality cult to which Hwang had belonged every second of his life.

Both of Hwang’s parents had been on the personal staff of a colonel who served as a deputy of the Workers’ Party of Korea, his father a driver and his mother a nanny for the children, and they were both typically fervent believers of the propaganda upon which the entire society was based. Hwang was raised to revere not the party or the government but the leader of his nation, a benevolent god who created all and bestowed all his blessings upon his people. Choi Ji-hoon’s grandfather, then his father, and now Ji-hoon himself, they had all been the epicenter of Hwang’s universe.

Hwang never questioned the things he knew to be truth: His leader’s perfection and omniscience were established facts as sure as the rising and the setting of the sun. That said, Hwang was worried about his new promotion.

Hwang saw what happened to his boss. He’d done his difficult job to the absolute best of his ability; the Dae Wonsu had demanded the impossible, and when the impossible was not delivered, Hwang’s boss was taken from his home. The rumor at the state-run mining company was he’d been sent to Kyo-hwa-so No. 9, the notorious reeducation camp on the east coast of the country. The urbane sixty-year-old former director of mining was, if the rumors were true, now working on his hands and knees in a coal mine and subsisting on a cup of barley soup a day.

Hwang himself had been ordered to remove every single mention of the former director from Korea Natural Resources Trading Corporation literature. To erase the very existence of the man. He did as he was told unquestioningly, and he did not even doubt the Dae Wonsu’s decision internally (as a boy, his mother had told him the leader of the nation could read his mind so to always project love and gratitude in his thoughts), but Hwang, though brainwashed, still was a sentient being, so when he was ordered to fill the former director’s position, he could not help but recognize this great honor came with great danger.

Hwang thought of the danger now as he waited in the luxurious sitting room at Residence No. 55, especially when two armed men, both dressed in the olive-green uniforms of the Chosun Inmingun, the Korean People’s Army, stepped into the room. They were armed with AK-47 rifles that hung over their shoulders, and they took up positions near the doorway. Four more men entered and stood behind the sofa in front of him. Hwang knew these men were members of Section Five of the Party Central Committee Guidance Department, and they were the Dae Wonsu’s personal bodyguards. Still two more men, both wearing Mao suits, entered. These appeared to be personal secretaries of some form or another.

Soon Choi would enter, and Hwang knew the reason for the meeting. Choi would tell him his decision regarding foreign partnerships at the rare earth mineral mine at Chongju. Since the Chinese had been thrown off the project weeks before, there had been discussions to bring them back, if not as coequal partners in the project, at least as foreign contract employees. Hwang’s staff had sent over all the relevant facts and figures about what was required at Chongju, and the information obviated the fact that the mining operation did not have a chance for success without outside help. He fully expected the Supreme Leader to come to the same conclusion.

A female secretary in the uniform of a Chosun Inmingun major entered with a transcription machine. She set up her operation on the chair next to the sofa opposite Hwang. When her machine was ready she bowed to Hwang, and he bowed to her.

Everyone greeted one another as dongmu. Comrade.

Everyone stood or sat silently and waited like this for more than thirty minutes. Hwang was ready to wait even longer, but when a beautiful female attendant entered through a side door and poured steaming tea into the cup across from him, he knew the Dae Wonsu was on his way.

No one would dare serve the leader of the nation tea that had grown cold.

Seconds later Choi Ji-hoon entered through the massive double doors into the residence, flanked by four older men in military uniforms. Hwang had seen his nation’s leader numerous times before; as an elite of North Korea, Hwang often found himself at functions where the Supreme Leader appeared. As always, Hwang was taken by the man’s young face and the wide cut of his impeccable black Mao suit.

As Hwang leapt to his feet, his placid face morphed into one of unbridled joy. He bowed over and over as Choi approached, but he did not speak. This was the way to greet the Dae Wonsu, and Hwang was damn well not going to mess it up.

The military men took positions against the wall; in their hands were notebooks and pens, and they smiled at Hwang, who bowed in their direction. He was careful to form his bows to appear gracious and subservient, but not as deep as those reserved for the Dae Wonsu.

Choi smiled back and sat down across from Hwang. He reached forward and took his tea and sipped it silently for a moment. He looked around the room with bright but furtive eyes, as if making sure everyone in his entourage was in place. After a few moments he looked to Hwang.