“All three are from the same cell phone number,” Scanlon went on, “and the last call was a roaming charge, so we’re figuring it was Shinn calling from his car while he was driving here.”
“Nice work,” Kissinger said. “But let’s skip to the chase, okay? I take it you got a billing address.”
“Sort of,” Scanlon said. “He used a P.O. box in Prescott, Arizona. More importantly, though, we’ve got the alias he’s using.” The FBI agent pulled a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket and read the name he’d scribbled on it. “Mi Wi-Zhwin. It’s a different name from the one we set him up with in Phoenix.”
Harmon Wallace exchanged a glance with Kissinger, then kicked away from the desk he was working at and rolled his chair over to a computer next to the one the weaponsmith was using.
“Give me the spelling on that,” Wallace said over his shoulder to Scanlon.
“Here.” Scanlon handed over the slip of paper and hunched behind Wallace, staring at the monitor. “You’re thinking he registered under that name?”
“Let’s hope so,” Wallace said. “Even better, let’s hope he backed it up with his new address.”
As Wallace tapped into the Shores’ registration files, Scanlon turned to Kissinger and said, “Your partner’s riding with some guys we’ve got flying by chopper to Prescott. Hopefully by the time they get there we’ll have an address to give them.”
“What about Jayne Bahn?” Kissinger asked.
“You have to ask?” Scanlon scoffed. “Hell, that woman’s harder to get rid of than the clap. Yeah, she’s on board.”
“Hang on, hang on,” Wallace interrupted. He clicked a final command, then stared at the screen and let out a victorious whoop. “Yes!”
Wallace wheeled his chair back to the video console and entered the time Shinn had registered, then called up the SUR-CAM footage corresponding to the time print. Scanlon, meanwhile, quickly jotted down the address Shinn had given.
“Anybody know where Chino Valley is?” he called.
“About twenty minutes north of Prescott,” Kissinger said. He was in the process of blowing up the still-frame Wallace had just pinpointed from the surveillance footage.
“Then I’d say we’ve hit the jackpot,” Scanlon said.
“Right you are,” Kissinger agreed. “Check it out.”
Wallace and Scanlon moved over and checked the screen on Kissinger’s computer. Comparing the still-frame image with the head shot of Shinn Kam-Song, there could be no mistaking that they’d found their man.
“Good work,” Scanlon said. “All of us.”
“Yeah,” Kissinger cautioned, “but before we break out the champagne, we still need to get to this guy before REDI does.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Chino Valley, Arizona
It was still dark out when Shinn Kam-Song stirred beside his wife in the bedroom of their Arizona trailer home. He checked the clock on the nightstand. 5:10.
Shinn was surprised. In the months since moving to Chino Valley, he’d disciplined his body to the point where, even without an alarm clock, he would unfailingly wake up at a few minutes before 5:00 a.m. This was the first time in weeks that he’d overslept. Of course, the previous night there had been the news item about the escalating crisis back home in North Korea. That, Shinn figured, may have had something to do with it. He’d been particularly unnerved by a sound bite in which one of Kim Jong-il’s military shills had boasted of the KPA’s nuclear capability. We now have it in our power to strike out at those who would do us harm, he’d said. Were they bluffing? Shinn wondered as he lay in bed, letting his eyes adjust to the predawn light. Or had a new crew of nuclear scientists indeed succeeded in picking up where he and the other members of the Project Kanggye team had left off when they’d defected? Had they truly managed to correct all the errors he’d laid into his data before leaving the country? It didn’t seem possible, but Shinn knew how determined Kim could be.
Shinn turned to look at his wife, Mi-Kas, who was dozing peacefully beside him. He suspected that he might have tossed and turned in his troubled sleep and he was concerned that he might have kept her up. In the faint light of the desk clock he could make out her features, and to him Mi-Kas was every bit as beautiful now as twenty years ago when they’d first met. Back then she’d been the wildly popular daughter of a high-ranking general in the KPA. Shinn, fresh out of Kim Il-Sung University with a master’s degree in physics and the high recommendations of his professors, had been sought out and recruited by the army and then given special treatment, including the right to attend social functions at the officer’s club in Pyongyang. It was there he and Mi-Kas had shared their first dance, and when they’d married less than a year later, their future had seemed bright and limitless. But it had been an illusion, and the more deeply involved Shinn had become with the activities of the Kanggye nuclear team, the more he, like his long-time colleague Li-Roo Kohb, had come to regret his path in life. By then, however, it had been too late. His course had been set, and the more time he’d been forced to devote to Kim Jong-il’s nuclear aspirations, the more he’d become dependent on Mi-Kas’ warm embrace and nurturing spirit to overcome his feelings of guilt and despair. Without her, Shinn felt, he was nothing.