Dark Zone Read Online Free PDF

words meant “excuse me” or “pardon” in Putonghua, the official Mandarin dialect of northern China. Lia’s cover called for her to use Putonghua, though she was more comfortable and familiar with Cantonese, which she had first learned as a very young child after her adoption in America. The similarity between the two dialects sometimes got in the way, as her brain tended to blur them.
    “What is it?” replied Lia in Chinese. She looked back toward the car, thinking she had left something inside.
    “A comrade wishes to speak to you,” said the minder. “Those men will escort you.”
    Lia spotted two soldiers walking toward them from the terminal building.
    “Why?”
    “Oh, routine,” said the minder.
    “A fee?” asked Lia.
    “Zaijan,” said the minder without answering the question. “Good-bye.”
    “Yes, good-bye, and thank you,” Lia told her.
    Fee was a euphemism for a bribe, which tended to be customary.
    Lia gripped the handle of her overnight bag tightly. She had no weapon on her. Her only link with the outside world was her communications system, which was powered by circuits and a battery built into her belt. She clicked it now, making sure it was on. “A fee,” she muttered under her breath, just loud enough for the Art Room to hear.
    “We briefed you on that,” answered Jeff Rockman, who had just taken over as her runner. “Pay it and come home.”
    The men carried AK-47s that were perhaps twice as old as they were. Several paces behind them was an officer; he was a few years older and shorter than Lia.
    “Nu xing shenme?” asked the man in Korean. He was a lieutenant.
    “He’s asking your name,” said the translator in the Art Room as Lia hesitated.
    Actually, he was asking her family name, Lia realized, and the implications were very different. She felt her body tense.
    “Why?” Lia answered sharply in Chinese.
    “Come this way, miss.”
    “Wo xing Wang,” she told him, saying that her family name was Wang. She then asked what was going on, as she was due aboard the flight waiting out on the tarmac.
    The officer’s face flushed. He stamped his right foot and pointed in the direction of the building. “Jepjjok!” he thundered. “That way.” The two soldiers flinched.
    “I am on important private business,” she said.
    North Korean officials tended to back off when she spoke firmly and with implied authority. But the young lieutenant was too full of himself—or maybe too worried about losing face in front of his men—to do that. “You will come now or be dragged away,” he told her.
    Lia struggled against her instinct to lash out. She probably could deck the lieutenant and wrestle one of the weapons from one of the soldiers. But there would be no escape after that.
    I played it wrong, she realized. I should have been more submissive, more in character. He needs to feel superior.
    Lia bowed her head forward. “Mianhamnida,” she said in Korean, giving an apology. “Yes, I am going.”
    The officer said something in Korean that she did not understand. The translator back in the Art Room apparently did not hear it or thought it unimportant to relay.
    There was a subtle etiquette involved in the bribe exchange. The official would not be merely after money. While China was North Korea’s strong ally, there was a great deal of resentment among most Koreans toward their large northern neighbor. China’s historic domination and long occupation of the Korean peninsula caused deep animosity, which could not be erased over a period of only fifty years. Many Chinese—and this would especially apply to anyone associated with the Westernized and hence “decadent” Hong Kong area, where Lia’s credentials as well as her travel arrangements declared she was from—were viewed by the Koreans as greedy, soft, and worse. The fact that she was a woman, alone, young, and single, didn’t help the situation, as it only lowered her status in the eyes of the official, at least partly