The Patriot Threat (Cotton Malone 10)

“Why do you ask this?”

She knew his tricks. Answering a question with another question was his way of diverting a conversation.

“How did my mother end up in the camp?”

“Why is that important now?”

“How did my mother end up in the camp?”

He needed to know that she wasn’t going to budge.

“I sent her there.”

His words shocked her. She hadn’t expected the truth. So she asked the obvious, “Why?”

“We do not have the time to discuss this now.”

She leveled her gun at him. “I think we do.”

“And if I refuse? Would you shoot me?”

“I would.”

He stared hard into her eyes, and for the first time she allowed him to see through them. The camp had taught her about desperation. Little was lost to those who had nothing to lose. Like here. And she wanted him to know that.

“Your mother and I carried on a love affair. She wanted it to be more permanent. I could not allow that. She insisted, so I sent her away.”

“To that place.”

“I considered it more humane than killing her.”

“And did you know she was pregnant?”

He shook his head. “I learned of you years later, just before I came to the camp to find you.”

“You told me then that your father sent her there.”

“I lied. I thought it best. You were so young.”

She lowered the gun. “I hated her for me being there. I blamed her for everything bad that happened to me. She told me once that her sin was falling in love. I’ve come to realize that I was wrong in hating her. Instead it is you I should despise.”

He seemed wholly indifferent, unaffected by her rebuke. “Then I should have left you there where you would by now surely be either dead or used up by the guards.”

“You are beyond evil.”

“Really? And what were you when you asked that I have that teacher tortured, then killed?”

“That was justice for his wrongs.”

“Is that how you rationalize it? You kill and it’s justice. I kill and it is barbaric. Have you ever considered that I might be entitled to justice, too?”

Actually, she had, but she’d decided that his justice probably came when his father disowned him. Never had he shared with her the truth of what happened. That fanciful tale she’d read back on the cruise ship was surely lies. Once, on the Internet, she’d found news articles that described what happened. Sure, they were from a Western perspective, but she trusted that information far more than anything from him. All of the commentators agreed that her father was inept, reckless, and irresponsible. To a degree they were right. But she also knew that he liked people to underestimate him.

And she would not make that mistake.

* * *

Malone listened from his perch, ten feet above where Kim and Hana Sung stood. A waist-high wooden wall formed a railing that encircled the building, the balcony there for more worshipers, its wooden pews all empty. Below, the nave seemed immersed in timelessness, full of motionless shadows. The warm air carried the stale pall of all the anonymous people who thronged here each day and breathed it over and over. He hadn’t expected a confrontation, but there was obvious tension between Kim and his daughter. He’d risked a look down and watched as Sung lowered her weapon.

He gripped his own gun, ready to react.

* * *

Kim was perplexed. He’d never seen Hana in such a mood. In her eyes and on her face was nothing but anger. Emotion had always been foreign to her, and he’d grown accustomed to that solemnity. Which was why he hadn’t lied about the camp and her mother. He truly did not realize that it mattered. But apparently it did.

“Give me the documents,” he said to her.

She stood three meters away, near the prayer candles that continued to flicker in the apse, their light dancing across the wall frescoes. She tossed the clipped bundle to the floor, where it thudded at his feet. The disrespect was both obvious and offensive. He bent down and lifted the stack. For an instant he understood his father’s anger at his own lack of respect. Never before had any of his children shown him such rudeness. All they did was avoid him. Hana, to her credit, was here. But why?

“You hate me that much?” he asked.

“I hate what you are.”

“I am your father?”

“You are a Kim.”

“Then you must also hate yourself.”

“I do.”

She was clearly troubled, but he’d meant what he said a few minutes ago. There was no time for this. He needed her to think clearly and help him escape from this town.

“Hana, we can discuss this once we are away from here. I came into this church simply as a way to flee the street and think. I need your assistance in getting us out of here.”

“You care nothing about the camps,” she said. “They will continue under you.”

No sense denying the obvious. “Enemies have to be punished. I could kill them—”

“No, you can’t. Murder has consequences.”

She was more astute than he’d imagined. “That is true, but it is also necessary, at times. The camps offer a simpler, more controlled way to deal with problems.”

“You are no different than your father and grandfather.”

No, he probably wasn’t. Kims were meant to rule and rule they would. But he would be different, just not in ways she seemed to want.

“You allowed Howell to die without a thought,” she said. “The same was true for Larks, the woman on the boat, and the man in the hotel. Their lives meant nothing to you.”

“All of which was necessary to achieve our goal.”

She shook her head. “Not my goal. Yours.”

Then a thought occurred to him. Her obstinacy. The anger. He stared at the stack of papers in his hand. He still held his gun, but was able to shuffle through the pages. “Where is the original?”

Nowhere had he seen the crumpled sheet, darker in color, thinner,

more fragile than the others.

Hana stayed silent.

“Where is it?” he demanded, his voice rising.

* * *

Malone kept listening, a saying from Sun Tzu’s ART OF WAR spinning through his mind. When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, stay out of the way. Sound advice, particularly here where containment meant everything. When he and Stephanie had talked, laying out the plan, setting the stage, one thing had been stressed. Nothing about this could leave Solaris. It had to end here. So they’d purposefully pointed the Chinese, luring them down a concocted path, hoping anyone and everyone would follow.

And they had.

Time to intervene, but first he, too, wanted to know the answer to Kim’s question.

Where was the crumpled sheet of paper?

* * *

Isabella, with Luke, followed the street up through a honeycomb of dark houses. All of the clamor remained behind them as the embassy envoy had assured them that no police would come their way.

The fog had thickened, limiting visibility to maybe fifty feet. Beyond that everything blurred away into a wall of vapor. They’d proceeded with caution, keeping watch on the buildings and the many side streets, seeing and hearing nothing. Now they’d found the lit cathedral and an irregular-shaped piazza that fronted it. All remained shrouded by an unnatural quiet.

“Where the hell is he?” Luke whispered.

* * *

Kim had waited long enough for an answer to his question, so he aimed the gun at his daughter. “Where is the crumpled sheet? I will not ask again. You were right when you said I am a Kim. You obviously know what that means—after all you are one, too. If I have to shoot you, I will.”

“Why did you come for me? Why not just leave me in the camp?”

“You were my daughter. I thought you deserved not to live there.”

“But my mother did?”

“Your mother was just one of many women I encountered. They were objects of pleasure, nothing more. My wife, with whom I have my legitimate children, will always be my wife. And what do you care? You hated your mother. You told me that the first day we met. Why is she so important now?”