Tom Clancy Zero Hour

MUSUDAN-RI MISSILE TEST FACILITY, NORTH KOREA

“How is he?”

The innocuous-sounding question was anything but. In fact, to refer to the man in question simply as he without the accompaniment of one of his many honorifics was grounds for execution. But for Eun Pak, that ship had long since sailed. He remembered what was at stake with every breath, and Pak intended to ensure that his coconspirators did as well.

“The same.”

Pak examined the man standing before him, considering.

Choi Ha-guk, chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and its Supreme Leader, had been incapacitated for the last week. One week since the Russians had unexpectedly handed Pak the opportunity of a lifetime. In most other places on earth, one week was not a significant amount of time.

Seven days.

The length of a typical American vacation.

But in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, one week was time enough for an empire to fall.

Or rise.

But only if the weak-kneed man standing before him was telling the truth.

“And how is your baby daughter?” Pak said, coloring the question with a smile. “Her name is Seo-jun, correct?”

Of course it was correct.

Though Pak was an unremarkable middle-aged man with a slight build, hairless scalp, and thick glasses that magnified his watery eyes, he was also a member of the Korean Workers’ Party. More important, Pak was a ranking member of the Politburo. A role with no parallel outside of the hermit kingdom. But here, in the land that time forgot, Pak was a minor deity. Certainly not on the same scale as the Supreme Leader, but powerful in his own right. Even a minor god such as Pak could erase an entire bloodline with a single telephone call.

Judging by the pasty look on the man’s face, this knowledge wasn’t lost on him. The man was a party member also and a doctor to boot, but in the DPRK, science was no match for deity. Either way, the doctor’s time on earth was finite. If Pak was successful in his endeavor, there would be no witnesses. If he wasn’t, well, Pak didn’t intend to die alone. But just because the doctor had to be silenced didn’t mean his infant daughter had to share the man’s fate. Pak might be thorough, but he wasn’t a monster.

Not without reason, anyway.

“She is fine, comrade,” the doctor whispered. “Just fine.”

“Good,” Pak said with a nod. “Then let’s ensure she stays that way. Tell me again his status.”

Even here, in the sanctity of his temporary office located at the Musudan-ri Missile Test Facility, over six hundred kilometers from the seat of government in Pyongyang, Pak refused to speak the Supreme Leader’s name. Past generations had attributed mythical qualities to the nation’s ruling dynasty, and while Pak didn’t subscribe to such superstitious nonsense, he was cautious for a different reason.

Unlike many of his fellow ruling elite, Pak made it a point to keep track of the advancements taking place beyond the DPRK’s borders. He’d heard of listening devices that activated based on the utterance of a specific word. While Pak had his office swept for bugs regularly, one of the Supreme Leader’s sycophants in the Ministry of State Security might have hidden some technological marvel that activated only when the Korean dictator’s name was spoken. Pak hadn’t risen to his current station through cowardice, but neither did he spit in the face of fate.

The man huffed out a breath, his lips smacking together like a horse’s.

Pak thought the gesture something that a peasant might do. A mannerism unworthy of a doctor who attended to the Supreme Leader, but Pak let it pass without comment. Pak had ascended to his current station through meritocracy, but not the kind that resulted in promotions for bureaucrats in other corners of the world. No, Pak’s skill was in a discipline much more basic.

Survival.

As a sitting member of the Politburo, Pak worked in the DPRK’s decision-making apparatus. The Politburo’s members were second only to the Supreme Leader and his family when it came to governance authority. Contrary to his predecessor cousin who’d championed the concept of Songun, or military-first as it pertained to DPRK politics, the Supreme Leader had vested more authority in the Politburo. The Supreme Leader had assumed power in a military-backed coup. He evidently didn’t want to lose his position and life in a similar manner. This restructuring of the government had muted the all-consuming influence of the Korean People’s Army and increased the influence of Pak and his fellow cabinet members.

But Pak’s high-profile position wasn’t without risk. Members of the Politburo who fell out of favor with the Supreme Leader often just disappeared. A single misplaced word or misunderstood facial expression could mean death. And when it came to the deaths of those who disappointed them, the leaders of the DPRK both past and present were anything but boring. In his three decades of service to the Korean Workers’ Party, Pak had seen men stabbed to death by bayonet-wielding soldiers, burned alive by flamethrowers, mauled by attack dogs, and torn limb from limb by antiaircraft guns.

The Supreme Leader’s lust for capital punishment wasn’t limited to hapless paper pushers or military officers. Several branches of the dictator’s family tree had been pruned in a manner only slightly less morbid. In addition to the cousin who predated him, the Supreme Leader had consolidated his power by dispatching a team of killers equipped with an experimental nerve agent to Malaysia to deal with a wayward half-brother. Pak had survived the lethal palace intrigue this long because he’d learned how to read people, how to recognize their tells. For instance, the doctor standing before him was as prone to hedge against relaying bad news as anyone, but when the man mimicked a horse, his words were true.

“Outwardly, his condition hasn’t changed. But I think he’s getting better.”

“Why?” Pak said.

Pak was careful with the amount of influence he placed on the question, maintaining a stoic face while his heart raced. Much hung on the doctor’s answer.

The doctor ran a hand through his sparse hair as he hunched forward, his thin frame sagging under the question’s weight.

As a medical attendant charged with the Supreme Leader’s health, the man ranked much higher in North Korea’s unofficial caste system than the average citizen. In practical terms, this meant that the man and his family rated rations in great enough quantity that they wouldn’t starve and living quarters with both power and running water.

But the effects of malnutrition were evident all the same.

Though only in his mid-thirties, the man looked two decades older. The wispy patches of hair sprouting from his scalp were prematurely gray, his shoulders stooped, and his skin sallow. While the median height and weight of their cousins to the south had steadily increased since the Fatherland Liberation War ended seventy years earlier, North Korea’s population had withered both figuratively and literally. Life expectancy, weight, height, and overall health had all been in a steady decline for years.

The frail men and women surrounding him were constant reminders to Pak that an existence separate from the murderous undertones surrounding the politically elite was no guarantee of a longer life. In fact, the opposite was quite often true. Pak might live with one eye always open, waiting for a dagger thrust at his back, but he wouldn’t starve to death.

That was something.

“His respiration and heart rate have begun to spike at increasing intervals during the day. This indicates that the patient is healing. His mind is slowly walking the path toward consciousness.”

“How long until he wakes?” Pak said.

The doctor shrugged, his bony shoulders barely lifting his shirt. “There’s no way to be sure. The periods between the increased heart rate and respiration are growing shorter and the manifestations longer. If the patient continues on this trajectory, I expect him to regain some semblance of lucidity in as soon as forty-eight hours.”

“Two days?” Pak said.

Another huff.

“It could take longer. Conservatively I’d estimate a week, but I think he will be conscious much sooner.”

Two days.

The words crashed against Pak’s carefully constructed façade like a howling typhoon. Up until this point, everything he’d done was explainable or deniable. There would still be loose ends to clean up, like the good doctor, but on the whole Pak’s exposure was minimal. Or as minimal as could be expected in the hermit kingdom, a place in which entire families ceased to exist at the whims of a boy-king.

Over the last several days, Pak had edged around the opportunity the ancestors had provided him. It was not unreasonable to think that the Supreme Leader’s incapacitation might even have been staged. An elaborate stunt to test his inner circle’s loyalty in preparation for yet another purge. Now that he was convinced that Choi really was incapacitated, Pak faced an ultimatum—act or watch the opportunity of a lifetime disappear.

Pak’s gaze settled on the polished brass shell casing situated at the corner of his desk. Unlike his spacious office in Pyongyang, Pak’s current quarters were decidedly more Spartan. If the scientist Pak had displaced to claim the space had a personal life, it was not evident. No family pictures or knickknacks graced the walls or shelves. Instead, every spare meter was devoted to academic books, charts and graphs covered with indecipherable equations, or reports detailing the successes and failures of previous missile tests.

Pak’s brass shell casing was the one exception.

The cartridge was from a 7.62-millimeter round commonly fired by the AK-47. Though Pak had long ago learned the value of keeping his public workspace sterile as to not provide potential enemies with anything that could give them a deeper insight into his motivation, such decorations were not uncommon. The shell casings were supposed to serve as a remembrance of the regime’s martial history, but to Pak, the length of brass signified something more.

The cartridge had been passed down to him by his father, who in turn had received it from his father. A man who’d been slated for execution in one of the many mass killings orchestrated by the boy-king’s grandfather. Learning of his fate from a trusted friend, Pak’s grandfather had arranged for his own death. A farm accident that was plausible and therefore not considered suicide. With this gift, Pak’s grandfather had maintained his family’s status in the Party and shielded his lineage from further harm. This selfless act defined Pak’s life in two ways. On one hand, Pak wanted to honor his grandfather’s sacrifice. On the other, Pak had vowed to make himself and his descendants immune to a single man’s homicidal urges. This was quite simply the opportunity of a lifetime.

Two days wasn’t much time, but it would have to be enough.

“Excellent,” Pak said, sweetening the word with a rare smile. “You’ve brought honor to yourself and your family.”

“Thank you, comrade,” the doctor said, bowing at the compliment. “I am honored to serve.”

“Yes, you are,” Pak said. “And this is how you will ensure that honor passes from you to your daughter.”

The doctor’s hopeful expression faded more with each word Pak spoke. By the time Pak finished, the doctor’s face was again the color of ash. This was to be expected. Pak was a man of his word. The doctor’s daughter would reap the benefits of her father’s sacrifice, just as Pak had with his grandfather.

Unfortunately for the doctor, the similarities wouldn’t end there.