The general was heading toward the undercover agent when he was intercepted by the driver that had driven him to Changchon the day before. Apparently he’d discovered a problem with the jeep’s water pump when he was refueling the vehicle. It would take at least an hour for the jeep to be repaired.
“We’ll wait, then,” Oh told the driver, waving him off. “Excuse me, but I have an important matter to attend to.”
The general moved on toward the MII sergeant, who was a lean, wiry man in his early thirties with pronounced cheekbones and a slight list to his right eye. Oh had never met Dahn personally, but he knew of the man’s reputation as a no-nonsense official with an exaggerated sense of self-importance, a common trait among those in MII who’d had an opportunity to ferret out the indiscretions and character flaws of those who ranked above them.
“It was good that you called,” Dahn told Oh after they’d exchanged introductions, “but it turns out that I would have been coming here to Changchon regardless.”
Oh was stunned. In an instant, it became clear to him that his plan to steer Dahn away from any investigatory work had just been foiled. Now, instead, he found himself wondering what development aside from his phone call might have prompted MII to place the Changchon facility under suspicion. He didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
“I’ll still be taking a look at Major Jin,” Dahn confided, “but we’re also interested in Lieutenant Corporal Yulim.”
“Yulim?”
Oh stared past Dahn and the parked motorcycle at the nearby rehabilitation center. His first thought was that MII was reacting to one too many reports of prisoners being gunned down in the opium fields, but it turned out to be another matter entirely that had targeted the camp commandant for investigation.
“It has to do with Operation Guillotine,” Dahn said gravely.
The sergeant’s response was so unexpected that Oh let out a gasp and paled with shock.
“The coup attempt?” he said. “I don’t understand. I thought that plan had been thwarted last month in the purge.”
“Not completely thwarted, it turns out,” Dahn told the general. “Yes, there was a purge, but it seems that the cancer had already spread beyond the ranks of those we dealt with.”
Oh still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Less than five weeks ago, after months of investigation, MII had moved swiftly to disrupt Operation Guillotine, a plan within the upper echelons of the KPA to assassinate Kim Jong-il and overthrow the government. Eight high-ranking generals had been rounded up and hauled in front of a military court and subsequently executed along with nearly sixty other officials thought to be part of the conspiracy.
Oh had known some of the conspirators personally, and he himself had been briefly under suspicion, a case of guilt by association that might have proved his undoing had Kim not personally vouched for his loyalty. Once the executions had taken place, the matter had been quickly swept under the rug, and to Oh’s amazement, no one outside the country’s borders had so much as heard of the executions, much less the failed plot. It had remained as well kept a secret as the location of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, and Oh had assumed the matter was closed. This was the first he’d heard of any ongoing investigation, much less the possibility that plans for a coup might still be afoot. And the thought that his colleague might be implicated staggered him.
“You suspect both Jin and Yulim?” Oh asked once he managed to regain his composure.
“I’ve already told you more than I should have,” Dahn replied. “But I think you can draw your own conclusions.”
Oh still couldn’t believe it, and though he knew that defending Jin under such circumstances might yet again place himself under suspicion, he felt compelled to speak out on the major’s behalf.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if Major Jin was involved in some minor infractions,” he stated, “but part of a conspiracy of this magnitude? I just can’t see it.”
“In light of what we know and the fact that he has been privy to so much of our nuclear strategy, there is no way that we can not place him under surveillance,” Dahn said. “Especially considering this whole kidnapping business.”
“What kidnapping?”
Dahn looked hard at Oh. “Come now, General. Surely you know about it. A businessman from the south was seized along with his family two days ago in the Yellow Sea. They were brought here to Changchon.”
Oh was about to insist that Dahn was mistaken when he thought back to the day before and recalled the new prisoners he’d seen being dropped off near the opium fields. Now he understood why a handful of them seemed to have come from better circumstances than the others. In that same instant, he also felt a sudden surge of anger toward Yulim.