Lee had calculated that each round-trip through the maze would take seventy-five minutes. That wouldn't leave him much time to get back to Donald, but it would have to do; he didn't dare stop to do it now, lest he get caught and fail to complete his mission here.
Major Lee took the small flashlight from the pocket of his uniform, turned it on, and clipped it to the strap on his shoulder. Yoo backed a short distance into the tunnel while Lee gently took the first drum from the niche and walked it on end to the entrance. Getting on his hands and knees, he began rolling the drum after Yoo, who checked the tunnel for sharp outcroppings they may have missed on their earlier sweeps
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The KCIA car screeched to a stop in front of the casualty entrance at the National University Hospital on Yulgongno. She left the car running and ran through the automatic doors demanding help for a wounded man. Two doctors hurried into the drizzle, one toward Hwan, the other to the figure in front.
"He's dead!" Kim yelled to the second medic. "Help this man!"
The physician opened the door anyway and felt for a pulse, then climbed half into the car to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. In the backseat, the doctor carefully but quickly removed the belt and socks from Hwan's wound. Hwan had been pale and semiconscious when they arrived, but he was fully awake as two paramedics came racing out with a stretcher and lifted him on.
Hwan's hand shot out, clutching at the air. "Kim!"
"I'm here," she said, running over and catching his hand, then holding it as they wheeled him toward the doors.
"See to other "
"I know," she said. "I'll take care of it." Letting go of his hand, she watched as they took him inside, then walked back toward the car where the doctor had given up trying to revive the assassin and was examining his gunshot wounds. He motioned toward the hospital door.
"What happened, miss?"
"It was awful," Kim said. "Mr. Hwan and I were driving to our cottage in Yanguu Village when we stopped to help this man. It appeared he'd had a scooter accident. The man stabbed Mr. Hwan, who shot him."
"You don't know why?"
She shook her head.
"Would you come inside, miss? You'll have to give us information about the wounded man, and the police will want to speak with you."
"Of course," she said as a stretcher was wheeled out. "Just let me park the car."
Two orderlies removed the body from the car, placed it on the stretcher, and covered it with a sheet. When they were gone, Kim slid behind the wheel and headed toward the parking lot. As she pulled into a spot, she picked up the phone and pressed the red button on the receiver. The desk officer at the KCIA answered.
"I'm calling on Kim Hwan's car phone," Kim said. "He was wounded by an assassin and is at the National University Hospital. The man who wounded him is dead. He's also at the hospital. Mr. Hwan believes that this man was involved with the bombers who attacked the Palace, and that you check his fingerprints to find out who he is."
Kim hung up and ignored the phone when it rang. Looking around the parking lot, she saw a car she knew: a Toyota Tercel. Taking her radio from the backseat, she put it on the floor, turned it on, and angled it so the light of the dial shined under the dashboard. Finding the ignition wires where her instructors had once told her they'd be, she knotted them together, started the car, and drove off, headed north.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
As Hood arrived in Matt Stoll's office, the Operations Support Officer was just finishing up his work. There was a big smile on his round, full face, and a look of triumph in his eyes.
"Paul, this was pure, wonderful genius." he said. "I set up all kinds of safeguards and diagnostics and checks and double checks to make sure incoming software wasn't tainted, and they got it past me anyway."
"Who did, and how?"
"The South Koreans. Or at least someone with access to their software. Here it is, in diskette SK 17."
Hood bent over the screen and watched as a series of numbers and characters flashed on and off.
"What am I looking at?"
"All the stuff that was dumped into our computer system from this one diskette. I'm flushing it out— told the computer to read the original program and take it out in its entirety."
"But how did it get in?"
"It was hidden in a routine personnel update. That's the kind of file that can be thick or thin, and you wouldn't think to check on it. Not like a file on, say, agents based in the Mascarene Islands. If that one suddenly came in big as the deficit, you'd notice."
"So the virus was hidden in that file—"
"Right. And it was triggered to dump a new satellite program into our system exactly when it did. A program that scanned the Library, morphed it with incoming pictures, and created false images— the kind the saboteurs wanted us to see."
"How did it get to the NRO?"
"The virus attacked our phone line into them. It's secure from the outside but not from the inside. We'll have to do something about that."
"But I still don't understand what triggered the virus."
Stoll's big smile grew even bigger. "That's the genius of what they did. Look at this." He pulled over a laptop and booted the diskette, after carefully, almost reverently popping it from the disk drive. The title screen appeared and Stoll held a hand toward it.
Hood read everything on the screen. "South Korea diskette number seventeen, filed by him, checked by her, okayed by a general, and sent by military courier five weeks ago. What does that tell you?"
"Nothing. Read the very bottom."
Hood looked. He had to move in a little to read the fine print. "Copyright 1988 by Angiras Software. What's unusual about that?"
"All government agencies write their own software. It's not like WordPerfect where there's something to copyright. But our computers sometimes do get software with copyright notices on them, and I told the system to ignore that."
Hood began to understand. "This one triggered the virus?"
"No. This one triggered the shutdown that allowed the virus to enter undetected. That date— 1988? It's a date but it's also a clock. Or rather, a tiny program buried in the date got its hooks into our clock and shut it down. For exactly nineteen point eight-seconds."
Hood nodded. "Good work, Matty."
"Shitty work, Paul. We see notices like that on programs and they don't even register on the brain. They certainly didn't on mine, and someone in South Korea took advantage of that."
"Who, though?"
"The date may help us there. I checked our files. One of the highlights of 1988 was when radical students demanding reunification clashed with the police. The government put the movement down, hard. Someone who's either for or against unification may have picked that date as a symbol. You know— the same way the Riddler always used to leave clues for Batman out of some kind of twisted vanity."
Hood grinned. "I'd leave the Batman part out of my official report if I were you. But this is the extra push we may need to convince the President the South Koreans are behind this."
"Exactly."
"You really came through on this one. Send that title page to my computer and we'll see what Lawrence has to say now."