After taking them on a brief bus tour of the capital—the giant statue of the Great Leader was a special highlight—the North Koreans escorted the inspection team some ninety miles northward, installing them in a school dormitory about three miles from the waste plant.
The accommodations were not exactly deluxe; even the senior scientists found themselves sharing rooms barely big enough for the bunk beds that dominated them. Their hosts did not intend this as a slight; the quarters were the best available in the area. The military leaders who had met them—General Namgung, the commander of the armed forces in the capital area, and General Woo-suk, an official with the strategic weapons division—hosted a lavish dinner that lasted well past midnight, as toast after toast was offered to the visitors and their mission.
The next morning, the inspection team was presented with an elaborate breakfast featuring a variety of foods from around the world. Besides fried eggs and Korean-style pancakes filled with fruits, vegetables, and even meat, there were Western-style dishes, including bacon, potatoes Dauphine, and cheese Danishes. For a country where perpetual famine was a fact of life, the spread was obscenely impressive.
The provincial governor and some of his deputies sat at the head table with Dr. Norkelus. Thera, sitting across the room with her roommate, Lada Rahn, watched for a while as he tried to make conversation with the help of the translator. It clearly wasn’t getting far, but it was better than she was doing with Lada, who spoke English fluently with noticeable haughtiness; the syllables practically had ice dripping off them.
Thera’s adventure with the cigarettes in South Korea had given her a new status as the team’s bad girl, eliciting the interest of not only Evora but also many of the other male inspectors. This was charming in a junior-high-school kind of way: About midway through breakfast Evora came over to check on her coffee, asking if she needed a refill. She had no sooner given him the cup than another man, this one arguably the world expert in uranium isotopes, sprung up and galloped across the room, pointed at her plate of half-eaten toast, and asked if she would care for a fresh piece. She turned him down as politely as she could; as he left the table he shot Evora a glance several times more radioactive than anything they were likely to find today.
The attention continued as the team loaded up for the trip out to the site. Thera turned down several offers of rides and got into her usual truck with Julie Svenson, about midway in the pack.
“You’re awful popular today,” said Julie.
“They’re all looking for free smokes,” said Thera, buckling her seat belt.
Thera’s light mood held all the way up the twisting, rutted road to the waste plant. Then at the gate panic grabbed her by the throat. Foreboding welled inside her. She couldn’t shake the thoughts of what would happen if she were captured, as if the idea of being tortured was fluid choking her lungs.
She knew, absolutely knew, she would fail.
Four or five men with submachine guns watched the bus and trucks pull to a halt in the center of the compound.
They were going to shoot her.
Thera forced herself to her feet. She started to slip as she came down the steps. A man extended his arm outside the bus. She reached forward and grabbed it, holding tight, supporting herself, afraid that were she to let go she would melt into the ground.
“OK?” said the man. His English surprised her.
“I guess.”
“Nervous because you are in North Korea?”
“No. Just need a cigarette.” She looked up at him and smiled.
He smiled back. In his late forties or early fifties, he was about her height though considerably heavier. His temples had turned silver, and he had a perfect smile, his teeth radiant in his mouth.
“Cigarettes are bad for your health,” he told her.
“Everyone needs some bad habits.”
He smiled and wagged his finger at her, as if he were a kind uncle.
His finger brushed away enough of her fear to let her walk again. The paranoia retreated to her chest, hiding in some secret chamber of her heart as she joined the others for the introductory tour.
The layout of the plant was almost meter for meter the same as that of the site in South Chungchong Province, South Korea. There were fewer video cameras and slightly more soldiers outside the gate, along with a pair of very old tanks near the fence, but the buildings themselves were in precisely the same locations. The vegetation was browner, but the buildings were just as bright.
The North Korean officials were more long winded than their counterparts in the South, perhaps because they felt it necessary to insert the praises of the Great Leader into every other sentence. Thera found herself struggling to stay awake as the tour of the administration station proceeded in slow motion.
The man who had helped her from the bus stepped forward to speak. She’d thought he was simply one of the army of assistants, but he turned out to be a scientist responsible for “supervising precautions against pollution of the workers,” as the translator put it, reading from a prepared vitae. “Ch’o Tak has studied in Russia and France and is one of the world’s top experts in waste handling. A very important scientist for the People, who takes his duty most seriously.”
Dr. Ch’o kept his eyes fixed on the floor as she spoke, the tips of his ears turning bright red. When she finished, he raised his hand in a half wave.
“I have been blessed with good fortune,” he said, speaking in Korean and then immediately translating his words to English. “Korea’s Great Leader has directed us to answer any questions you have and to lay ourselves bare. I humbly pledge myself to cooperate fully. You may ask whatever you wish, and I shall answer.”
Norkelus glanced toward the rest of the group. When he realized no one was going to ask a question, he put up his hand, rose, and asked whether it had been difficult to install necessary safeguards. It was an extremely obvious attempt to be polite, but Ch’o took the question very seriously, saying that there had been great concern about expenses “and other considerations” among officials at different levels, but the directives of the Great Leader himself had prevailed and focused the actions of all. Money had been found and state-of-the-art precautions installed.
Norkelus thanked him. Ch’o, relieved, gave way to another official.
“What a ham,” whispered Julie as they passed out of the hall.
“He seemed sincere,” said Thera.
“Right. And Kim Jong-Il deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.”