Red Shark

The motorcade slowed. In the middle of the block, a red, white, and blue FedEx truck had sideswiped a cab. Both drivers were out of their vehicles, arguing, while the police tried to open a narrow lane past the accident blocking the street. Sidewalks were filled with determined-looking pedestrians heading to work. Those who had stopped to gawk at the crumpled sheet metal now gawked at the approaching motorcade with its flashing red and white lights.

Two blocks away on East 42nd Street, North Korean envoy Kil-won Sim sat stuck in traffic near his hotel. His Mercedes-Benz and NYPD escorts had run afoul of a yellow Hertz truck that had stalled backing into a parking space and was now snarling traffic. The truck’s engine cover was propped open, and the driver, perched on a tire, was bent double, apparently troubleshooting the balky diesel engine.

Sim looked back and saw that his car was hemmed in by one of the police escorts, a fleet of honking cabs, and more delivery vans. Pedestrians jaywalking around the stalled truck added to the chaos. A police officer got out of the escort vehicle heading up the motorcade and waved to Sim’s driver.

New York frightened Sim. It was too big, unruly, and dangerous. It was not at all like Pyongyang, with its rigid system of controls. New Yorkers were too carefree and too self-absorbed. Like America. He hated America’s arrogance and power, its unfettered freedoms, but most of all he hated America for its military might and for meddling in North Korea’s affairs. He would speak at length about this, to impress upon the UN delegates that, regardless of what agreements were signed, North Korea would remain forever independent from South Korea.

Sim’s Mercedes, guided by the police officer, inched forward around the Hertz truck onto the sidewalk, while another officer, bawling into a handheld radio, called for a tow truck.

Sim recalled how shocked he’d been to learn that Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s Dear Leader, had crumpled to U.S. demands to halt production of nuclear weapons. Kim’s decision had not only roiled the leadership of the People’s Armed Forces but was also said to have caused a violent confrontation between Kim and Marshal Kim Gwan Jin, first deputy minister of the People’s Armed Forces. Jin had for years opposed any accommodation with the United States or South Korea. Now the unthinkable was the new reality in Pyongyang. Rumors had circulated too that after the confrontation, two senior military officers had been executed — shot dead by the Dear Leader himself — as a warning to Jin and any other officers who might oppose Kim’s policies. Who knew what was true and what was not, thought Sim. All he knew for sure was that he faced a difficult meeting at the UN. It was said that his counterpart from South Korea, Nak-chung Paik, was a tough negotiator.

The Mercedes slowly crawled onto the sidewalk to get around the stalled yellow Hertz truck. As the car inched by, Sim looked up at the driver working on the truck’s engine and was astonished to discover that he was a young Korean. For a moment their gazes met and held; just long enough for Sim to feel the full icy measure of the man’s contempt; until a thousand pounds of Semtex packed inside the Hertz truck exploded, ending Sim’s last living thought.

Over on East 44th Street, South Korean envoy Nak-chung Paik heard and felt a tremendous thunderclap rock Midtown Manhattan. Air pressure rose sharply inside the armored Mercedes, and Paik felt it hard against his eardrums. The stuttering boom made pedestrians bolt for cover, while others froze in their tracks. A policeman went into a crouch, hand on his holstered pistol. Another officer standing beside the FedEx truck was waving wildly at Paik’s driver and shouting, “Move it! Move it!”

Paik suddenly felt a strange sensation. He looked down and saw that his body had been cut in half by a piece of jagged armored steel that a split second earlier had been part of the Mercedes’ rear door. Paik, horrified, yet fascinated, watched his dissected body disgorge its vile contents over the leather seat cushions at the same time that he felt a wave of scorching heat from exploding Semtex, which tore apart the red, white, and blue FedEx truck, the Mercedes-Benz, the terrified pedestrians, and the waving, shouting policeman.

Pyongyang

One hundred and forty miles north of the DMZ, in the fortress-like edifice that served as the nerve center of Communist North Korea’s hermetic and paranoid government, Kim Jong-il smoked a cigarette while he waited for the arrival of the two men he’d summoned.

Kim, The Dear Leader and supreme dictator of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, blew threw his teeth as he paced his gargantuan office. Kim’s volcanic temper was on the verge of erupting when he heard a pair of booted footsteps echoing like gunshots off the marble corridor outside his office.