“It feels like we’ve reached a turning point,” he concluded. “I think our hardest times are behind us.”
“One would hope,” Jin said.
“We’ve all had to be a little resourceful to get through these past few years,” Oh confessed. “I don’t know about you, but there have been a few occasions when I’ve bent the rules to make things easier for myself. I’m not proud of it by any means, but I guess one does what once has to.”
Jin paused in midsip and glanced briefly at Oh, then slowly set down his tea cup. Finally he offered a shrug and responded cryptically, “Sometimes one has to create one’s own opportunities.”
“Yes,” Oh concurred. “Within limits, of course.”
“Of course.”
“One mustn’t be too brazen,” Oh went on. “There is a point when one might become a slave to his opportunities.”
Jin fell silent again and slowly stirred sugar into his tea. His neck had reddened, however, and soon he glanced up and stared hard at Oh.
“What have you heard?” he asked the general point-blank.
Oh did his best to look puzzled. “Heard?”
“Come, now,” Jin said. There was now a harsh edge to his voice. “If you’re going to make accusations, you can at least be specific.”
“I’m not accusing anyone,” Oh maintained. “I was just speaking in general terms.”
Jin wasn’t buying it. “Was it the workers in the tunnels? Your nephew? Who’s accusing me?”
“I just told you,” Oh countered defensively. “None of this was directed at you. If anything, I was pointing the finger at myself. I was just saying that once the country is back on its feet, I want to make an effort to steer clear of gray areas. I want to set a better example for those who serve under me.”
The color faded from Jin’s neck and he relaxed slightly. He sipped his tea again, then said, “I suppose there is room for improvement with all of us. We are, after all, only human.”
“Exactly,” Oh said. “And I apologize if my remarks were misconstrued.”
“No offense taken,” Jin said.
The officers were interrupted when the uniformed private returned to their table.
“You have a visitor, General,” he told Oh. “A Sergeant Dahn from Kaesong.”
“That was fast,” Jin interjected.
“He came by motorcycle,” the private explained. “He’s waiting at the main entrance.”
“I’ll be right there,” Oh said.
As the officers rose from their table, Oh told Jin, “There are a few things at the launch facility that I want to discuss with him. I’ll bring him in afterwards, and you can put him to work surveying the walls around the vault.”
“Very well,” Jin said. “I’ll most likely be in my office.”
Jin watched Oh head off toward the main entrance, then strode back to his office. Once inside, he closed the door behind him and locked it. Six weeks ago, when Jin had first joined ranks with Lieutenant Corporal Yulim in the plot to overthrow the government, he’d been concerned that overly curious subordinates might stumble upon the conspiracy and sound the alarm to the Ministry of Internal Intelligence and had consequently rigged his office with a pair of well-concealed Web Cams. His paranoia had proved unfounded, however, and after a few weeks of uneventful surveillance, he’d stopped monitoring what went on inside his office while he was away. He hadn’t bothered removing the cameras, however, and now he was glad for the oversight. Using the chair from behind his desk as a foot ladder, he quickly inspected the minicams, which had been concealed in the overhead light fixture as well as the smoke alarm posted over the doorjamb.
Convinced that neither camera had been disturbed or tampered with, Jin then went to his desk and hauled out his laptop. Once he’d uploaded the software necessary to activate the minicams’ microwave transmitters, he found himself staring at two separate views of his office, each of which clearly showed him poised in front of his desk.
“Perfect,” Jin whispered under his breath as he shut down the computer. It seemed that all the time and expense he’d put into rigging the cameras might finally pay off. Or, as he’d heard it said on more than one occasion among his fellow officers in the KPA, sometimes to catch a spy you had to be a spy yourself.
ONCE HE STEPPED outside of the storage facility, General Oh spotted Sergeant Dahn Yun-Bok standing fifty yards away along the Suzuki Intruder 1500 he’d ridden from Kaesong to Changchon. The motorcycle was equipped with a sidecar from which Dahn was removing an instrument kit. Oh suspected that, along with the expected array of engineering tools, the kit also contained bugging devices and other spy paraphernalia.