The new President looked stunned.
“You have to be kidding me?” General Ford said. “Kim Yong Chang never steps a foot out of North Korea. And as we all know, no one ever steps a foot into North Korea.”
Rogers shrugged.
“I would have thought the same thing,” Rogers told the General. “But this snippet of video was included in the same email.”
Rogers pressed the button on the remote control and a video began playing on the screen. The quality was excellent.
The video showed an Asian man and an Asian woman sitting at an outside table. It appeared to be someone’s backyard. The edge of a pool could be seen at the bottom of the frame. The woman was picking up a drink of what looked like orange juice. Without warning, the man leaned forward and rapped the woman on the hand with a piece of silverware.
Rogers pressed the pause button on the remote and said, “Our analysts ran face recognition software on the man in the video and it came back as a ninety-five percent match for Kim Yong Chang. Either this is the real guy or they have a great double for him.”
Rogers pressed play on the remote and the video continued.
There was a nasty exchange between the couple at the table and the woman retreated into her chair and sulked. A servant came out and the man who Rodgers had identified as Chang, pointed at his orange juice and then pointed at the woman and said something in Korean.
A moment later, everyone in the Oval Office watched Chang reach over and pick up the glass of orange juice. He held it up in front of the woman. Making sure she was watching him, he greedily drank half of the glass.
A server returned and topped off Chang’s glass and filled an additional glass for the woman.
For two long minutes nothing happened. The man chewed on some toast. The woman looked like she was afraid to drink her orange juice. She remained in her chair with her head down.
The man who was supposed to be Chang reached across the table and picked up his coffee cup. As the cup touched his lips, Chang made a strange face. He pulled the cup back from his lips and he made another face that looked more like a grimace. The coffee cup in his right hand began to tremble slightly and Chang coughed once.
Everyone in the Oval Office appeared to be spellbound.
The President and her staff quietly watched the video as Chang stood up, his coffee cup still in his hand. He began to shake. Just a tremor at first. Then the trembling turned into an uncontrolled ferocious vibration that seemed to consume Chang’s thin frame. The coffee cup fell from the man’s hand and landed on the glass table with a crash. Hot coffee went flying and landed on the Asian woman who then began to scream. Both of Chang’s hands went up to his neck and he clutched at it as if he were trying to choke himself. His entire body began to shake and convulse. Chang’s face had turned beet read. One hand came away from his neck and he began to reach across the table toward the woman. The woman screamed louder. Chang made loud choking sounds and staggered a few steps forward, arms extended in front of him. His face was red and grossly distorted in pain. The woman used her feet to propel her chair away from the table. She continued to scream. Two servants appeared from the sliding glass doors and came running out toward Chang. Chang straightened up like he had been tased. He grabbed at his chest with both hands and fell face forward onto the glass table. The North Korean’s face smashed into the bowls and the plates and the glassware. The table shattered and Chang fell through the center of it. His feet came off the ground and head over heels, the North Korean rolled into the middle of the broken glass mess.
“Oh my God!” the President called out.
Joanna Weston was an attractive woman, but for those few seconds she looked anything but attractive. Her face was warped with shock.
Rogers guessed that she hadn’t watched many men die during her career in government.
The Director of the CIA and Director of NIA looked concerned but remained silent, opting to gauge the President’s reaction before committing to a position.
The General, on the other hand, looked pretty damn happy. He smiled and muttered the words down you go asshole as Chang finished his table dive.
Rogers pressed the pause button on the remote and explained, “The video continues on for about ten minutes; long enough for us to know that the man on the video is dead. Our best guess is that a fast acting poison was delivered into a drink or possibly a dart.”
“A dart?” the President asked. She had recomposed herself but still looked shaken.
“Well, we’re just guessing here,” Rodger’s said. “We can rule out a few things. This was not a gunshot. A gunshot would look much different than what we just saw. Our analysts believe what we saw was the result of a poisoning. All the pieces fit. Chang’s weird motions, his choking, his loss of muscle control. Our experts say that Chang’s blushing or red color would indicate that a cyanide compound was used.”
The General stood up and pointed at the frozen screen.
“OK, let’s say for the sake of argument, that this man is Kim Yong Chang and he was poisoned and he is dead. My first question is how?” The General held out his arms, hands up, as if waiting to receive the answer in the form a thrown football.
Rogers noticed that the General liked to use his hands when he talked; at times using great swooping gestures and pantomime.
“If it was indeed Marshall Hail who did the hit, then we don’t know how he got to him,” Rogers responded in a confident tone.
“How did they get the video?” the General asked, tossing his hands in the air. “The video is high quality, maybe even high-def. Did Hail have a God damn camera crew sitting in the North Korean’s pool?”
“We don’t know that either,” replied Rogers, inadvertently taking a small step back from the large General who was crowding him.
The General looked back at the screen and shook his head. He pointed at the screen again.
“This just doesn’t make sense. We have known where this scumbag Chang has been for years. We’ve know that Kim Yong Chang is the mind behind obtaining missile technology for his esteemed leader. But what we didn’t know was how to get to him.”
The General paused for effect. He had the room’s attention. His voice was loud and imposing.
Continuing, the General said, “So, you’re telling me that the combined power of the United States Armed Forces couldn’t get to Kim Yong Chang, but a… a…” the General trialed off and started over.
“Other than nuclear power, what the hell is Marshall Hail in to?”
The General turned and looked directly at Rogers, staring him down, daring him to say something other than what they all wanted to know.
Rogers responded by pressing the tiny button on the remote control. A biography of Marshall D. Hail came up on the screen. The photo contained within the data, looked like it was taken by a professional photographer. Hail was holding up a miniature model of a traveling wave nuclear reactor. Hail was smiling and looking very proud of his accomplishment.
Rogers continued, “This photo was taken when Hail won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Hail was in his early-thirties. He was on top of his game, but not yet a billionaire. That came later.”
The Director of the CIA, Jarret Pepper, opened his iPad and began flipping through screens.
Rogers considered reading all the data on the screen and then decided to go another direction.
“OK, almost everyone in this room knows something about Marshall Hail, unless they have been living under a rock. So why don’t we cut to the quick and find out what we all know so we can focus on what we all don’t know. Does that make sense to everyone?”