Chapter Thirteen

Ten years earlier…

SOMEWHERE IN NORTH KOREA

            The curtain of silence hung heavily across the small room, and Webb prayed that his practiced expression of inscrutability would hold as he struggled to organize his churning thoughts. There was a small camera mounted high up in the corner of the dingy ceiling and he had little doubt that even though Yi had left him for the moment, he was still watching --scrutinizing every move he made. Webb drew a small, shallow, silent breath to calm himself and let it out slowly, hoping that Yi would not notice how rattled he really was. –Not that it would come as any big surprise. He was wounded, captured, and being held prisoner in enemy territory on charges of espionage punishable by death. Who in the hell wouldn't be rattled?

            However, it wasn't the dire circumstances he found himself in that concerned him at the moment. It was the fact that Yi knew …everything. He'd been involved in his share of blown missions. Ironically enough, most of them had involved Rabb. '--Which would explain your overwhelming urge to run like hell when he turned up in Seoul.' 

Still, he had to admit that this was the most thoroughly screwed pooch he had ever seen. His cover was blown. His operative had been made. There was no doubt in his mind that the man who had stood at the other end of the table, grilling him for the last day and a half, knew the intimate details of the entire operation from start to finish. What's more he likely held the evidence to prove it –evidence that could turn the tides of diplomacy and World public opinion against the United States in the right situation. In the end, Webb knew, he really only had one thing riding in his favor: the very evidence which would hang him would hang General Yi Song-gye as well.

It had been sheer dumb luck when he had first encountered Yi ki-Chiang, at a guest lecture series he had given at Harvard eight years before. He had been home on long-term leave, slowly recovering from his tangle with Saddik Fahd. The neural damage had been severe, and the therapist had been raising hell with him and was reluctant to release him back to work for even light desk duty. As a result, his sick days had dwindled to almost nothing, and he'd been slowly going out of his mind when Kershaw had suggested an alternative option: a brief recruitment tour at his alma mater, given in the guise of a guest lecture seminar series on international diplomacy. The days would be brief –only an hour or two long at best—and he could still receive therapy and treatment at one of the private local clinics sanctioned by the agency.

He had jumped at the chance.

To his surprise, he had enjoyed the lecture series and the spirited debate with the eager graduate students. But the real purpose of his visit was never far from his mind, and he had scanned the rows of young faces that filled the lecture hall each morning, looking for that indefinable spark of potential. He surreptitiously scrutinized the foreign faces and accents, profiling them almost unconsciously and neatly dividing their potential into one of two categories: asset or threat. Each morning as he lectured on a variety of topics involving U.S. diplomacy in the post 9/11 world, he carefully assessed each face gauging their potential: analyst…translator…operative…and sometimes, possible terrorist. In the end, he usually just dismissed it as flights of his own fancy. He knew he was grasping at straws. He missed the game.

Even so, he couldn't completely ignore his instincts, and he always found himself coming back to one slim, sharp eyed Korean youth that was perpetually asking him the hard questions and who always seemed genuinely interested in his answers. There was something about the kid that set off his radar. He had told himself he was a fool, even as he ordered a routine background check through the usual agency channels. He really hadn't expected anything to come of it, and he wondered if anyone would even care enough to bother calling him back with the results.

He was wrong about that.

When the call came, it was from Kershaw himself. The kid's paper trail hadn't checked out. The South Korean birth certificates and travel visas had been passable window dressing, but the money trail that kept him in Harvard had led to North Korea.

"He's the son of General Yi Song-gye," Kershaw informed him. "We believe his father is grooming him as his successor in the intelligence business."

"--And providing him with a Harvard education in order to better get inside our heads," Webb surmised.

"In a nutshell," Kershaw agreed.

"I don't think it's working out quite the way Yi has planned," Webb mused. "From what I've seen of Junior, he is captivated by our bourgeois lifestyle and he's becoming disenchanted with their big brothers to the north. He's starting to get some rather revolutionary ideas."

"Can he be turned?"

"Possibly," Webb allowed, "if he's handled carefully."

The silence at the other end of the phone was long and telling.

"Congratulations, Mr. Webb. You have just made yourself useful again."

Recruiting Yi ki-Chiang had cemented his return to headquarters in Washington. Chiang had provided them with valuable information about North Korea's military and nuclear capabilities. It had been Chiang who had provided them with the first solid confirmation of North Koreas advanced nuclear weapons program, Chiang who had informed them of the secret deals with China, and Chiang who had alerted them to the fact that preparations for the invasion of South Korea were being made.

Chiang was perhaps their most valuable asset in the North Korean government, and they had been careful to use him sparingly over the years for fear that suspicions would be aroused. But when the brewing conflict between the two Koreas finally came to a head, with the U.S. and China stalking protectively behind each of them like tigresses protecting their young, there had been no choice but to work every asset to maximum capacity –especially Chiang.

He regretted using Chiang so much –both for personal reasons as well as professional ones. The truth of the matter was, he liked the kid, and on a certain level Webb understood the sacrifice he was asking Yi ki-Chiang to make. He was asking him to betray his government, his country, and ultimately …his father, and Chiang would do it, because he loved them. It was the ultimate irony of the spy business: one man's patriot was another's traitor.

Unfortunately, there just hadn't been any other choice. He and Galindez had been in Asia for months assessing the readiness of each CIA station and outpost in all of the major countries. What they had found had been dismaying to say the least. The orient had always been a plum assignment, and true to form, Merrill Watts had handed out postings based more upon political favor than any real merit. That wasn't to say that all of the agents posted to that part of the world were incompetent or corrupt. Some were actually very good. Rush Hallowell, the Bangkok Station Chief, had been an absolute godsend and Scott Carpenter, who ran things out of Malaysia, was definitely on the ball. But it only took one person topple the entire network.

That person, as far as he could tell, was Allan Patterson, the head of the Seoul station. On the surface, Patterson seemed competent enough, but from the moment he'd met him, there had been something about the man he hadn't liked. He knew what it was. Patterson reminded him of Edward Hardy.

And like Hardy, Patterson hadn't exactly run the tightest of ships. In fact, to say that Patterson's ship was sinking would be an understatement. Intelligence was compromised. It was difficult to tell if the information coming in was good, or if it was disinformation being fed to them by the North Koreans. The only reliable source they had to confirm it was Chiang and the more they used him, the more his position would be exposed. He knew that Hallowell, and Carpenter and the guys in Beijing were doing what they could to mitigate the damage, but they were stop-gap measures at best. At this rate, it would be only a matter of time before their entire Asian network fell apart.

As a result, Webb and Galindez had taken one look and prepared to settle themselves in for the long haul. Like every other clean-up they had done, they had carried it out covertly, setting themselves up with run of the mill official cover as State Department officials. Those who were bold enough to ask were told that they were evaluating the escalating situation with North Korea and gathering data on the exact number of nuclear warheads the North Koreans had. In reality, they were studying the Seoul office. They had run a few operations, some real, some not –just to test for leaks and somewhere in the middle of what had turned out to be a three month operation, Webb had come to a realization:

He was losing his taste for the game.

He hadn't been home since Christmas, and that had been little better than an extended stopover between continents. Sarah had greeted him enthusiastically. --More enthusiastically than usual, in fact, and he suspected it might have had something to do with diverting his attention from the puppy and the new car she had purchased in his absence and somehow forgotten to mention to him. His mother, as usual, had wasted no time in summoning him out for their usual Sunday morning ride, where she doted on him at every opportunity. But he had taken it all in stride, for these were things to be expected. It was only Penny who had given him pause. Penny had been …aloof.

She had grown at least an inch or two since he had last seen her, and she was looking more like Sarah every day. But the shy little girl that had clung to Sarah's hand in the airport was a far cry from the bubbling toddler he had become used to chattering with over the internet web camera he carried with his laptop. It was the next day before she finally worked up the nerve to climb into his lap and curiously touch his face. Her cherubic face had corkscrewed into a question mark and she'd finally spoken.

"Da? Why aren't you in the 'puter?"

Sarah had laughed. He hadn't. It was only then that he'd realized the reason for Penny's shyness. She hadn't recognized him. To her, he had become just another talking head on a screen, like the TV anchorman or Mr. Rogers. She hadn't understood who he was. That was the moment when he knew he'd been gone too long. The next day, he'd walked into Kershaw's office and given his ultimatum: one way or another, the trip to Asia was going to be his last. When he finished his evaluation of the Southeast Asian Bureau, he was coming home …for good.

He should have known it would all go to hell. Murphy's Law would have dictated that –even without Rabb showing up. The Seoul office had been hemorrhaging information  and they hadn't even begun to get a handle on it when the North Koreans had suddenly announced their complete graduation into the nuclear arms race with the detonation of a nuclear missile at a testing site less than 50 miles from the DMZ. Attempts at diplomacy didn't last long, and within a matter of days U.S. forces were mobilizing for deployment and defense along the coastline of South Korea. In short, all hell had broken loose. The missile test had come as a surprise to everyone, and the Seoul station had been damned near the last to know. Hell, Rush Hallowell had heard about it in Bangkok before they did. Clay knew that for a fact. Rush had been the one who had called to tell him.

And then the Chinese had come into play. That hadn't come as a big surprise to anyone who had picked up a history book in the last fifty years or so, but the ramifications had sent every agent, operative and State Department official scrambling. A flood of agents had been sent in, but too many of them were green and untried, fresh from training at the Farm. None of them had the foggiest idea of where to start. The result had looked a little too much like a performance of the Keystone cops.

Even worse was the fact that when the situation with the Chinese P-3 knock-off had registered on Company's radar, there wasn't a single agent in either Beijing or Seoul capable of taking on the job. He'd felt the sinking in the pit of his stomach when Galindez had dropped the photos on his desk. He was too goddamned old to be going into the field, but he had known even then that he was going to have to be the one to do it. Chiang was getting edgy. He would trust no one else.

Webb certainly couldn't blame him. Right now the only person he trusted on this whole damned continent was Galindez. And a lot of good that was going to do him, he thought sourly. He had little doubt that the boys back at Langley would waste no time in yanking his partner back home for a debriefing. By now, Galindez was probably thousands of miles away, rattling around in the back of one of the Company's unmarked C-130's bound for D.C. –And even if he wasn't, there wasn't going to be a hell of a lot that Victor could do by himself.

He had to face the facts, Webb thought grimly. He was on his own from here on out. No one would be riding to his rescue this time.

***

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

Thirty-six hours earlier…

            The boy was nervous. Rabb could feel the tension in the small lithe body that was tightly wedged into the back of the cab between himself and Galindez. The kid wasn't the only one on edge. It seemed to flow like an electric current, spreading from the boy to the men on either side of him and back again.

            The cab turned suddenly, winding its way through the filthy dilapidated warehouses that loomed on either side of the street to the docks. Rabb peered down into the small, anxious face.

            "Just where is this place we're going?"

            "Not much farther," Kim said, not really answering the question, and leaned into the front seat to speak to the cab driver in a short burst of Korean. The soft glow of the dashboard illuminated his features as he turned back to the two men with a faltering smile. "We be there soon."

Galindez frowned. He hadn't been crazy about this whole idea, and it was clear that he was liking it less as time went on, but the fact of the matter was that they just didn't have any better ideas. His gaze skittered from Rabb to the kid.

"Just who is this guy we're meeting anyway?"

"A representative," the boy said, pronouncing the word with careful pride. Rabb bit back a smile. It was probably one of the bigger English words the kid knew. "He is the Dragon's man in Seoul."

"What's his name?" Rabb asked.

Kim threw him a disdainful look. "He work for the Black Dragon. He does not need a name." The boy leaned back into the front seat and exchanged more words with the driver, indicating for him to turn.

Galindez shot Rabb another look. "Just who is this Black Dragon character, anyway?" He asked softly.

Rabb sighed. "According to the kid, he's a Chinese smuggler. A real big shot. Works pretty freely throughout the orient and has a raging business here on the peninsula. Crossing the DMZ is apparently not a problem for him. He's pretty well connected with both governments, and he's been known to slip a few refugees across the border every now and then. The kid seems to think he's our best shot."

Galindez raised an eyebrow at the kid. "Heavy connections," he murmured. "So what's this one going to set you back?"

Rabb smiled faintly as the boy turned back to face them, "Kim hasn't told me his price yet."

The boy's face darkened. "I have not yet put a price on this thing that you ask. It is very dangerous."

"How dangerous?" Harm asked warily. They needed to get to Webb, but he didn't want the kid getting hurt.

The boy shrugged. "Not so dangerous that I do not think I can do it," he said, "but dangerous enough." Kim considered the case for a moment. "This time Joe, I think you gonna owe me one."

The cab slowed and the boy leaned into the front seat once again, peering intensely through the window. "There," he said, his voice hushed. "It's that building, the tallest one at the end of the street."

Rabb's eyes flashed to Galindez. With a brief nod, Victor quietly opened the door and rolled out into the darkness. Rabb moved quickly, reaching behind the surprised boy to grab hold of the door handle and close it. He stole a glance out the back window, but Galindez had already melted into the darkness.

The boy stared at him with round frightened eyes. "Where he go!" Kim demanded, his English slipping in his excitement.

"To watch our backs," Rabb said softly.

The boy stared at him as if he were an imbecile. "This is the Dragon's man we are meeting! The most powerful man on the peninsula! The Dragon's men find him, they kill all of us!" Kim hissed.

"Then we'd better hope they don't find him," Rabb replied.

The cab rolled to a stop in front of the dilapidated three story warehouse.

Rabb handed a small wad of money to the kid. "Tell him to wait."

The sharp burst of words that erupted from the cab driver at Kim's instructions had the boy turning uncertainly back to Rabb. Harm handed him more money. Placated, the cab driver tucked the money into his shirt.

"He say he stay ten minutes," Kim warned, "no more."

"Let's hope this guy doesn't have a waiting room," Rabb muttered and shut the door of the cab. He studied the rows of darkened windows and barred doors. "So where do we go?"

"There," Kim said, pointing to a shadowed recess in the wall of the building. Something stirred in the shadows, and Rabb felt himself wishing for his revolver. At Kim's insistence, he hadn't brought it with him. He resisted the urge to scan for Galindez. He had to trust that he was out there somewhere, watching their backs with that rifle he'd hidden in the loops of his trench coat. Taking a deep breath, he followed the boy.

The slight movement in the shadows grew larger as they approached, gradually taking human shape. As they drew near, Rabb saw that it was a woman, small and slight and dressed in loosely fitting black tunic and pants. She nodded slightly to the boy, and motioned for them to follow her.

Rabb half expected her to lead them inside, but to his surprise, she turned and walked them along the building and into a narrow alley. By the faint sliver of moonlight that filtered down between the buildings, he could just make out the looming shape of the black panel truck. The woman motioned them to stand aside and then walked up to the truck. She rapped twice on the side. There was a moment of silence, and then a faint whirr of electric motors as the rear of the truck slowly lowered, offering a ramp and view of the lighted interior within. Rabb stared in surprise. He had to admit it, he was impressed.

It was a slick operation, for a smuggler. Sleek, stylish and utterly mobile, it would be nearly impossible for the authorities to detect. The back of the truck had been outfitted as an office. Soft, plush carpeting covered the floor and small pieces of artwork had been fixed to the walls. A buttery soft white leather sofa and chair lined one side of the truck. The other was dominated by an elegant black lacquered desk. A laptop computer, open and running was the only item resting upon it, and behind the desk, seated in a modern looking black executive's chair was a lean, wiry looking Asian man of indeterminate age. This, Rabb thought, was obviously the man they had come to see.

The woman motioned them inside, following closely behind and indicated that they should take a seat. Pressing a button just inside the back of the truck, she raised the ramp, sealing them off from the outside world. Rabb glanced to Kim, uncertain what the proper protocol was for meeting with the most feared smuggler on the Korean peninsula.

The woman moved to a side board and returned with a tea tray. Setting out the cups, she carefully poured tea for each of them and then retreated to a small mat in the corner where she knelt and waited patiently, her expression carefully neutral. The man took a sip of his tea. Rabb and the boy followed suit. Setting down his cup, the man fired a sharp question in Korean.

Kim answered carefully, and then turned to Rabb. "He wants to know our business here."

"Tell him," Rabb said quietly. "Just like we talked about back at the hotel."

The boy nodded and turned back to the man. The conversation that followed was lengthy and completely incomprehensible to Rabb. Unable to follow the words, he watched the faces instead. Kim's expression was careful and earnest and he could tell by the formality with which the boy spoke that he was scared to death. But he had to hand it to the kid. He didn't falter. –Or at least, he didn't seem to. The man behind the desk was cool and indifferent, though Rabb though he detected the faintest gleam of interest beginning to grow in the dark eyes. Periodically, he would ask a question and the boy would answer, but for the most part he seemed content to let Kim lay their case before him.

As for the woman, she might not have been there at all. She sat silently in the corner, as still as a stone Buddah. Her face was expressionless and her eyes seemingly oblivious to the scene before her. Harm wondered if she was even listening. He wondered who she was. She seemed more like a slave than a servant, and he could not help but wonder if she was just another example of the merchandise in which these men traded.

Kim paused to look at Harm. "He says this thing which you ask may be possible, but it will cost much."

"How much?" Harm asked.

Another brief exchange. "One million of your American dollars," Kim replied.

Well, Harm thought grimly, that would just about empty Webb's piggy bank. "Done." He replied.

Kim relayed his assent. "He wants proof," Kim said, "that you can pay this amount."

Rabb smiled. "Our credit is good," he assured the boy. Swiveling his eyes to the man behind the desk, he slowly opened his jacket to reveal his interior breast pocket. With careful fingers, he extracted the slip of paper and handed it to Kim. "Tell him that's the name of the bank in Hong Kong and the account number. He can check the balance. When the job is done to our satisfaction, the money will be transferred to the account of his choice."

Kim and the man conversed further. "He says half up front, half when the transaction is complete."

Rabb smiled. "I wouldn't' have it any other way."

"There's more," Kim said uneasily. "He says this fee just covers the Dragon's services. It does not cover the cost of the officials they must buy."

Rabb bit back an involuntary groan. Terrific, --he should have known this was going too smoothly. "And what will that take?"

The boy queried the man, and then shook his head. "He doesn't know," he said at last. "But whatever it is that the North Koreans will want, he is sure that the price will be high."

"How high?" Rabb asked softly. Damn it. They just didn't have the resources to go any further.

The boy looked at him with serious eyes. "He says …more than you may be willing to pay."

***

SOMEWHERE IN NORTH KOREA

Forty-two Hours later

            The door swung open unexpectedly and Clay raised his head to see Yi, as pristine as ever, standing in the doorway. He had lost all sense of time since they had brought him here, but it had been daylight when Yi had last left him and now it was daylight again. He had tracked the sun's path across the sky by the lengthening shadows of his barred window and judged that it was somewhere close to late afternoon, though how late, he could not be sure. He vaguely missed Sarah's impeccable sense of timing. She could have told him to the second, but he guessed that he had been here now for something going on three days and he could tell by the expression upon the General's face that Yi had at last come to some sort of decision.

            Yi seated himself once again in the chair at the opposite end of the table and looked at his prisoner expectantly. After a long moment's hesitation, Clay slowly unfolded himself from the reclining position he had taken on the floor against the wall and hobbled back to the chair in which he had earlier been bound. Yi's dark eyes swept speculatively over him, noting the clean white dressing that now bound the bullet wound in his thigh.

            "I trust you have received adequate medical attention?" The General's face bore no expression as he raised his eyes to meet Webb's.

            "Adequate," Clay agreed, privately thinking that there was a great deal of latitude in that particular word. The leg still hurt like hell, and there hadn't been much to use for antiseptic, but at least the bandage was clean.

            Yi nodded his satisfaction and leaned back in his chair, resting his palms flat upon the table before him. "We would not want it to appear that we have not made every effort to keep you alive."

            "How hospitable of you," Webb said dryly.

            Yi shrugged. "A matter of necessity, really. Normally, I would not bother, but it has come to my attention that word of your capture has reached the ears of the Supreme Leader. I am given to understand that he is negotiating to grant the Chinese an audience with you even as we speak."

            "That must put a crimp in your plans," Clay observed.

            The General smiled thinly. "It does advance the timeline substantially."

            "I see," Clay replied, all pretenses of cockiness gone from his voice. This was it then, the end of the road.

            "So, what's it going to be? --An unfortunate accident? –Or an attempted escape?" He was proud of the fact that he somehow managed to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

            The older man studied him thoughtfully. "That, Mr. Webb," he said at last, "is entirely up to you."

            He flipped open the ever-present manila file folder, and extracted a single sheet of unlined white paper. From his tunic, he withdrew a gold ballpoint pen and slid it, along with the paper, across the table towards Webb. "If you would consider making out a full confession of your crimes and be so good to include a list of your operatives inside our borders –excluding of course, the one with whom we are both so intimately acquainted—I might be willing to negotiate a more acceptable conclusion to this matter."

            Webb stared at him stonily. "No deal," he said tersely.

            Yi smiled benignly, "I thought as much, considering your reputation." He referred to the file again, opening it this time to a page somewhere near the middle of the thin stack of papers. "By all accounts you are a very dangerous man, a true warrior. Even our counterparts in the old KGB bore a healthy respect for you. Major Sokol wrote a very lengthy dossier." Yi hesitated, as if re-reading a small portion of the page before him. "He even went so far as to describe you as an 'honorable' man," Yi smiled thinly, "…so far as those in our line of work can be considered honorable."

            Clay could not quite suppress the small smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth as he considered the irony in that. He'd said much the same thing in the dossier he'd written on Sokol. God only knew where his copies had ended up, probably with MI-5 and the Israeli Mossad to name a few. He wondered if some day Mark Sokol might find himself at the end of an interrogation table with Clayton Webb's words summarizing his character and career. He certainly hoped so. The son of a bitch deserved it. –Just as much as he did.

            "And all this time I thought he didn't like me." Clay mused, easing back in his own seat as he tried to discern exactly where this was leading. Yi was fishing for something, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what.

            "He didn't like you," Yi snapped as he turned a page, "But he respected you."

            "The feeling was mutual," Webb murmured, thinking of his old adversary.

            "An honorable man," Yi muttered, half to himself, and then turned the full intensity of his obsidian gaze upon his prisoner. "I am curious to know what price such an 'honorable' man must pay to be able to purchase the honor of my son."

            Ah, so that was it, Clay thought. They had finally reached the crux of the matter.

            "You want to know how much I paid him to spy for my country?"

            Something flared briefly in Yi's eyes, then slowly cooled and hardened. The General nodded slowly.

            "Yes."

            "Nothing," Clay replied.

            The black gloved fist lashed out in a lightning move, striking the table with a blow that echoed loudly in the barren chamber.

            "Liar!" Yi hissed. "You seduced him with your capitalist greed! You bribed him with the wealth your country's rich industrialists have made off the backs of Asians! You convinced him to whore for your money!"

            "Chiang didn't do it for the money," Clay said quietly.

            "Then what did he do it for?" Yi sneered derisively.

            "He did it for his country," Clay replied. "He did it for his people."

            This time the fist lashed out across the small table, knocking Clay from his chair. The blow blinded him with white-hot pain and he felt a dull ringing in his ears as he struggled to right himself. He brought a hand to his lip, carefully touching the fresh blood that welled at the corner of his mouth. His murky green eyes narrowed upon Yi, and in spite of the pain, he managed to smile. That answer, it seemed, had scored a direct hit through the General's armor.

            "This is his country!" Yi spat, and gestured wildly in the direction of the window, where the thin faced peasants toiled in the distant fields. "Those are his people! He has betrayed them!"

            "He's trying to save them," Clay gasped, "the only way he knows how."

            His head was still pounding and he felt too unsteady to try to regain his feet. Instead, he settled for scooting himself across the floor and easing himself back against the wall where he openly studied the duplicate versions of Yi that swam before his unfocused eyes.

            "Think about it, General. The Chinese cut you off for bad credit for the last ten years and now they suddenly turn around and lend you billions of dollars worth of food and weapons to outfit your army, not to mention the use of their latest new military toys? Haven't you asked yourself what they want out of this deal? –Chiang has."

            "They want to help us remove the capitalist oppressors from our continent and reunify our country." Yi said, spouting the party line.

            Clay scowled. "Under your terms. The millions of Koreans who live South of the 38th Parallel might have a slightly different vision for reunification." He shrugged painfully, "But that's really beside the point, isn't it?"

            "And just what do you believe the point to be, Mr. Webb?" Yi asked in cold, polite tones.

            Webb smiled grimly. "Come on General, much as you hate to admit it, you and I both know this really isn't about North and South Korea. This is about the two big kids on the block finally squaring off to see if there's going to be a new King of the Mountain."

            Webb shook his head. "Don't you get it? The Chinese have set you up…and us as well."

            Yi looked intrigued. "Go on," he said slowly, taking the chair Webb had been seated in and straddling it, unmindful of the dried blood that smeared the back and the seat.

            "It's a power play," Webb said irritably, disgusted that Yi could not realize it for himself, "plain and simple. China has the largest standing army in the world. What they don't have is the super-power status and prestige of the United States --and they want it."

He hesitated, "It's really quite brilliant in its simplicity. Everyone knows that our military forces are stretched thin in the Middle East. –Not to mention the fact that most of Europe is still plenty irritated by the way we went into Iraq so quickly. We're over-extended and we're vulnerable. –And we're also obligated by our treaty with the South Koreans to protect them if things get hot along the DMZ."

            Yi offered him a bland smile. "You really believe that all of this is some sort of grand conspiracy to bring your country to its knees?"
            Webb smirked. "Isn't it?"

            Yi laughed, but there was no real humor in his tone. "-You Americans," he shook his head in the picture of bemusement, "…always so arrogant --and so afraid. You seem to believe that everything is about you." Yi snorted. "And they think that my people are paranoid!"

            He leaned in closer, his dark eyes gleaming. "Such a fanciful tale, it is something right out of the pages of one of your American spy novels, is it not? It sounds very much like something that writer –what is his name— …Clancy would have written."

            Webb offered Yi a narrow smile. "Tom Clancy once wrote about a terrorist taking over a jet-liner and crashing it into the Capitol. We all know how fanciful and unlikely that idea was, now don't we?"

            Yi nodded. "Everyone gets lucky now and then."

            Webb shifted slightly. "The Chinese are using you, General. They're setting you up as cannon fodder. They know that if you do mix it up with us, our tanks and planes will be rolling up your borders so fast it will make your head spin. –In fact, they're counting on it."

            "And once again the world will see America's arrogance and greed as it topples another sovereign nation." Yi said coldly.

            Webb nodded, accepting the statement for the truth that it held. "And when China comes riding to your rescue, and takes control of your country for you, no one will protest. If they play their diplomatic cards right, they could even turn both the U.N and the Economic Union to their side."

            "And put an end to America's choke-hold upon world policy," Yi added. "I confess I really am not seeing a down side here, Mr. Webb."

            "The down side, General, is that millions of Koreans are going to die, soldiers and civilians –on both sides of the DMZ. And when all of this is over, your government will be in a shambles, the Chinese will be in control, and what's left of your country won't be worth keeping."

            "Are these the lies you used to turn my son?" Yi demanded.

            Clay shook his head. "I didn't have to lie to Chiang. I didn't have to tell him anything. He came to us." He drew a deep breath. "Chiang did what he did because he saw all of this for himself. He understood what was happening. He didn't want his people to die as pawns for the Chinese. He was trying to save his country."

            Yi sighed heavily. "Then my son is a fool," he said with quiet bitterness, "…and a coward as well."

            Webb's face must have revealed a glimmer of his surprise, for the General raised his chin and smiled thinly.

            "Do you think I am so old I cannot see what is happening in my own country? I can, but it does not matter. Whether or not we fight this war, our people will die anyway. I say it is better that it be quick and brutal at the hands of our enemy, than the long agonizing death we have endured these past twenty years."

            He rocked back in the chair. "Do you know how many have starved to death because of your trade sanctions? Do you know how many of our children have perished from malnutrition and the lack of proper medical care? Have you any idea of the numbers of our revered elders who have frozen to death in their beds for want of fuel to keep their fires?"

            "Two million," Clay said softly, "according to the last U.N. estimates."

            "Try three!" Yi snapped. "And more are dying every day!"

            The General rose slowly from the chair, and for the first time, Webb thought he actually looked his sixty-odd years and more.

            "I am not blind, Mr. Webb," Yi said heavily. "I know what this war will bring. I understand what our agreement with China must cost us, perhaps better than you. Sooner or later, they will want their money back, and once again we will be unable to pay it. But I would rather our sons die like men than continue to live as beggars in the street."

            Webb was silent for a moment. "I suppose I can understand that."

            Yi nodded. "Of course you can. You are a man –and a warrior." The black eyes drilled green, measuring and assessing. "And perhaps," Yi murmured, "You should have the right to die like one."

            Crossing back to the other side of the table, he gathered his papers back into the file folder. "The Chinese agents will arrive tomorrow at sunset." Yi glanced down at the pen and the single sheet of writing paper still lying in the middle of the table. Slowly, he picked up the blank sheet of paper and returned it to the folder.

             "You have a choice, Mr. Webb." He said softly, his tone was almost conversational. "You have until tomorrow afternoon to make it."

            "And that would be?"

            Yi's eyes locked upon the pen, but he made no move to pick it up. "In our culture, it is a matter of honor that a warrior should take his own life in order to deny his enemy the honor and glory of doing so." The General looked up from the object on the table, and Webb suddenly found himself caught in the cold darkness of those deep black eyes.

            "You may die by your own hand …or by mine." Yi said at last. "I leave the decision entirely up to you."

            Without another word, Yi Song-gye turned and stalked out of the chamber, leaving Clayton Webb to contemplate his fate …and the slim, gold object that remained in the middle of the table.