‘Death or glory,’ said Ham.
Kai had a heavy sensation in his belly. This was doomsday talk. He said: ‘But what does that mean?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Ham. ‘But keep an eye on your radar.’ He hung up.
Kai feared that the Supreme Leader might now be bolder than ever. He had done Chen’s bidding, albeit half-heartedly, and offered the rebels a deal; and he might now feel that their refusal vindicated his aggression. Kai’s peacemaking suggestion of this morning might even have made matters worse.
Sometimes, he thought, you just can’t fucking win.
He wrote a short note saying that the rebels had rejected the Supreme Leader’s peace offer and sent it to President Chen, with copies to all senior government figures. Such a note should really have gone out over the signature of his boss, Fu Chuyu, but Kai was no longer even pretending to defer to him. Fu was plotting against him and that was known by everyone who knew anything. China’s leaders needed to be reminded that it was Kai, not Fu, who sent them the crucial intelligence.
He summoned the head of the Korea desk, Jin Chin-hwa. Jin needed a haircut, Kai thought; his forelock was over one eye. He was about to mention it when he realized he had seen other young men looking like that, and it was probably a fashion, so he said nothing about it. Instead he said: ‘Can we watch North Korea on radar?’
‘Sure,’ said Jin. ‘Our army has radar feed, or we can hack into the South Korean army’s radar, which is probably more tightly focussed.’
‘You need to watch. Something may be about to happen. And put it through here, too, please.’
‘Yes, sir. Please tune to Number Five.’
Kai switched channels as instructed. A minute later a radar feed appeared superimposed over a map. However, the skies over North Korea seemed quiet after days of air war.
It was mid-afternoon before Neil returned his call. ‘I was in a meeting,’ he said in his Texan drawl. ‘My boss can talk longer than a Baptist preacher. What’s new?’
Kai said: ‘Is it possible that anyone could know what you and I discussed last time we talked?’
There was a moment of hesitation, then Neil said: ‘Oh, fuck.’
‘What?’
‘You’re using a secure phone, right?’
‘As secure as they get.’
‘We just fired someone.’
‘Who?’
‘A computer techie. He worked for the embassy, not the CIA station, but he was getting into our files anyway. We found out pretty quickly, but he must have seen my note of our conversation. Are you in trouble?’
‘Some of the things I said to you could be misinterpreted – especially by my enemies.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘The techie wasn’t spying for me, obviously.’
‘We think he was reporting to the People’s Liberation Army.’
Which meant General Huang. That was how Kai’s father had learned of the conversation. ‘Thanks for being straight with me, Neil.’
‘Right now we can’t afford to be anything else.’
‘Too damn true. I’ll talk to you soon.’
They hung up.
Kai sat back and reflected. The campaign against him was building. Now it wasn’t just gossip about Ting. Someone was trying to paint him as some kind of traitor. What he needed to do was drop everything and go head-to-head with his enemies. He should raise questions about the loyalty of Vice-Minister Li, spread rumours that General Huang had a serious gambling problem, and circulate an order that no one was to talk about Fu Chuyu’s mental health issues. But that was all bullshit and he did not have time.
Suddenly the radar came alive. The top-left corner of the screen seemed to fill with arrows. Kai found it difficult to estimate how many.
Jin Chin-hwa phoned him and said: ‘Missile attack.’
‘Yes. How many?’
‘A lot. Twenty-five, thirty.’
‘I didn’t think North Korea had that many missiles left.’
‘It might be just about their entire stockpile.’
‘The Supreme Leader’s last gasp.’
‘Watch the lower part of the screen for the South Korean response.’
But something else happened first. Another cluster of arrows appeared, also on the North Korean side but nearer to the border. Kai said: ‘What the hell . . .’
‘They could be drones,’ said Jin. ‘It might be my imagination but I think they’re moving more slowly.’
Missiles and drones, thought Kai; bombers are next.
He switched to South Korean TV. It was broadcasting an air-raid warning alternating with news footage of people running for shelter in underground parking garages and the more than seven hundred stations of the Seoul Metropolitan Subway. The high-pitched whine of the siren sounded over the traffic noise. Kai knew that air-raid drills were held once a year, but always at 3 p.m., and as it was now late in the afternoon, the South Koreans knew this was the real thing.
North Korean TV was not broadcasting yet, but he found a radio station. It was playing music.
Back on the radar screen, the incoming ordnance was beginning to encounter anti-missile defences. The sight was oddly undramatic: two moving arrows, one attacking and one defending, met and touched, then both quietly disappeared, with no sound and no indication that millions of dollars of military equipment had just been smashed to pieces.
But it was clear to Kai that, as with every other missile assault, the defences were not impenetrable. It seemed to him that at least half the North Korean missiles and drones were getting through. Soon they would hit crowded cities. He switched back to South Korean television.
In between the air-raid warnings, the shots of city streets now showed something of a ghost town. There was almost no traffic. Cars, buses, trucks and cycles were parked where they had been abandoned by panicking drivers. Traffic lights at deserted crossroads changed from green to amber to red unwatched. A few people could be seen running, none walking. A red fire engine came slowly along a street, waiting for the fires to start, and a yellow-and-white ambulance followed. Brave people inside, Kai thought. He wondered who was shooting these pictures, and decided the cameras might be remotely operated.
Then the bombs began to fall, and Kai suffered another shock.
The bombs did little damage. They seemed to be loaded with very small amounts of explosive. Some burst in the air, fifty or a hundred feet up. No buildings collapsed, no cars blew up. Paramedics leaped from their ambulances and firefighters deployed their hoses, then they stood staring in bewilderment at the gently fizzing projectiles.
Finally, the emergency workers began to cough and sneeze, and Kai said aloud: ‘Oh, no, no!’
Quickly the people began to gasp for breath. Some fell to the ground. Those who could still move hurried to their vehicles to break out gas masks.
Kai said: ‘The motherfuckers are using chemical weapons.’ He was speaking to an empty office.
Another camera showed the scene in a Korean army camp. Here the poison seemed different: the soldiers were rushing to put on hazmat gear, but already their faces were turning red, some were throwing up, others were too confused to know what to do, and the worst-affected were on the ground, jerking in seizure. Kai said: ‘Hydrogen cyanide.’
In a supermarket car park, shoppers were jumping out of their gridlocked cars and trying to make it to the store, some with babies and children. Most were too late to reach the doors and they fell to the tarmac, mouths open in screams that Kai could not hear, as mustard gas blistered their skin, blinded their eyes, and destroyed their lungs.