“I’ll send a chopper for you as soon as we can get one safely in the air,” Krause told him.
“All right,” Walsh agreed. “You keep them under lock and key for now. You have military on premises.”
“That’s correct.”
“Well use them.” He paused. “With Captain Krause’s cooperation, of course.”
“At your disposal,” the Navy man told the bureaucrat, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“And Sandor,” Walsh added, “don’t engage in any of your unique interrogation methods in the meantime.”
Sandor almost laughed, knowing the DCI was in a room full of Washington toadies. “Oh come on, sir, just a little torture?”
Before Walsh could ream him out, Sandor heard chairs and people moving, followed by the familiar voice of President Forest as it came booming over the line.
“Just got back down here, my NSA briefed me. Good job, Sandor.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“When you get back here I’ll want to hear all the details. And I’ll want them directly from you, you got that?”
“Of course, sir.”
“And Sandor.”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“I heard that last comment you made.”
“I apologize, sir.”
“No apology required, son. You’re in charge down there, and you have my full confidence, all right?”
“Roger that, sir.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
Kim’s government would not agree to an exchange of prisoners inside the United States. They resented any implication of wrongdoing on their part or that of their minister, Hwang Hyun-Su. They claimed his kidnapping was an unprovoked violation of international law and they would not sanitize the barbaric actions of the United States by having him released to them in Washington, D.C. There should not even be an exchange, they insisted, since he was entitled to diplomatic immunity and should be returned to his country as a matter of course. They also categorically denied any involvement in an attempt to sabotage the refineries in Baytown and Baton Rouge, which attacks were not officially reported or confirmed by Washington.
James Bergenn and Craig Raabe were quite another matter, according to the emissary from Pyongyang. They were Americans who had posed as Canadian citizens, entered North Korea under false pretenses, wreaked havoc on the peaceful people of the Great Leader’s nation, and committed any number of capital crimes. They were spies and subject to the death penalty.
The White House saw things a bit differently.
There was no hard evidence of North Korean involvement in the failed attacks on the American refineries in Texas. However, as President Forest put it so succinctly in response to the North Korean denials, “I may not be able to tell the difference between foie gras and chicken liver, but I sure as hell know chickenshit when I smell it.” He made this observation in a debriefing just thirty-six hours after a nuclear cataclysm was averted through the efforts of Jordan Sandor and Captain Krause’s team. That meeting included the President’s National Security Advisor, DCI Walsh, and DD Byrnes. Sandor was also in attendance. He had just been flown back to Washington together with the two Venezuelan terrorists and Hea, who had spent the past two days under the safekeeping of Ronny Young.
Unfortunately, as the President conceded to the assembled group, without proof of Kim’s collusion in the assaults, the best he could do was trade for the safety of their men. Hwang was of no use to them now and, as Sandor observed, they were not doing him much of a favor by sending him back home, where he would be made to explain how the Americans had managed to frustrate their scheme to blow up two oil refineries.
Up to now the media had been kept away from the story, the explosion on the Mississippi being described as a Coast Guard accident amid the violent storm. There was no telling how long they could keep the terrorist assault under wraps, but for now the matter was referred to the State Department.
Later that afternoon Byrnes and Walsh met with a representative of the State Department to discuss the extraction of Raabe and Bergenn. When the Brooks Brothers — clad, thin-nosed, briefcase carrying bureaucrat arrived, Sandor requested that he be allowed to attend the meeting. Walsh agreed, his generosity due in no small part to the gratitude the White House continued to express for the remarkable services Sandor had provided his country.
Sandor remained uncharacteristically civil throughout the meeting as the functionary from State gave a presentation of the “back-channel” list of Kim’s complaints about the actions of Sandor and his colleagues.
“You have got to be kidding,” Sandor finally said.
The man from State suggested that a more measured response was required.
“Does ‘Kiss my ass’ get it done?”
Deputy Director Byrnes quickly interceded, sharing some of the information they were permitted to divulge — that they had reason to believe agents of the Kim and Chavez regimes had engineered an attack on the United States that had only recently been frustrated by the efforts of Jordan Sandor and others, including the men being held by the DPRK.
This was obviously news to the diplomat.
When Byrnes was done, he added, “There will be no apology or any Asian face-saving nonsense here. You can tell them it will be an even swap, Hwang for Bergenn and Raabe.”
And then, to Sandor’s amazement, Director Walsh added, “And you can tell them from me, if they don’t like the deal, we’ll keep Hwang and I’ll send Sandor over there to pick up his friends personally.”
The transfer occurred two days later, with the State Department voicing its strenuous objection to Sandor attending the exchange. Sandor made it clear to anyone within earshot that he didn’t give a damn what the State Department had to say, he was going to be there.
And since President Forest liked the idea, no one was in a position to refuse.
So it was that, along with a relatively unhappy representative from State, Jordan Sandor and Deputy Director Mark Byrnes accompanied Hwang on his trip to Panmunjom.
The so-called Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is anything but. The joint security area looks like a temporary barracks designed by a group of Bauhaus architects on a bad day. Both sides of the border are seen by the North and South as an opportunity to prove their military preparedness for each other, and anyone else in the world who happens by. Soldiers march back and forth, weaponry is constantly on display in the distance, and at times it is rumored that the collective troops from both nations populating the few miles on either side of the supposed DMZ exceeds a million in all.
Sandor was not impressed.
The American delegation sat in the neutral building where meetings and exchanges between the two countries usually take place. It is a long, single-story structure, as cozy as a tomb, and they were left there to cool their heels for more than three hours before someone from the North arrived.
When the DPRK diplomat finally pranced in, Sandor judged him a smug little embassy type, just the sort to get along with their own boy from Foggy Bottom. The North Korean immediately began speaking and the interpreter went to work, creating a version of discordant stereophonic sound that went bouncing off the blank walls until Sandor held up his hand.
“Let’s knock off the pretense. You undoubtedly speak English as well as Laurence Olivier, so why don’t we cut the interpreter crap. Where are Bergenn and Raabe?”
When the two diplomats started stammering about protocol and propriety, Sandor broke in again.
“We’re not here to make friends or influence people. We’ve got Mr. Hwang sitting in a car out there, under guard, and he’s waited a long time to get home to all of his other little Kim groupies. I’ve got two friends I want to see right now so I can be sure their brains haven’t been fried or their balls cut off. Now either we move this along or I’m going to stop sugarcoating this and tell you what I really think.”