Red Phoenix Read Online Free PDF

race between Soviet domination and military strength. A race between his plans for the war that would secure his position and an assassin’s bullet or his father’s failing health.
    And now one incompetent officer had threatened all the preparations for that war. The fool. He should have had the man shot. Kim twisted uncomfortably in his chair.
    There had to be something he could use to distract the attention of the imperialists. Something that would cause trouble for their lackeys in Seoul. Something that would drive a wedge between them.
    He picked up his phone and started calling for files. He would work until he found what he was looking for.
    It was well past dawn before he found it.
    AUGUST 29—PARTY HEADQUARTERS, PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA

    Kang Hyun-chan sat carefully in the high-backed leather chair, bald head erect and deep black eyes fixed rigidly on an unseen point in space. The long, curiously effeminate fingers of his age-spotted hands rested unmoving on gray, peasant-style cotton trousers. Beneath his fingertips Kang could feel the damning evidence of his seventy years—his stick-thin, withered legs. Legs that had once been strong and wiry enough to carry him up and down Manchuria’s rugged hills during his days as an anti-Japanese guerrilla. He smiled wryly. He’d fought for the Party all his adult life, first as a soldier, then as a spy, and finally, as a master of spies. And none of that mattered. Not now. Not here.
    He had been ushered into this immaculately furnished office by an unsmiling bodyguard, ordered to sit down, and left waiting for nearly half an hour. He could hear water running in the small, adjoining washroom.
    Kang recognized the game that was being played. He’d played it often enough himself during forty-odd years of service as a member of the Central Committee’s Research Department. The silence, the uncertainty, the long, gnawing wait. All designed to unnerve the subordinate on whom disfavor had fallen, or was about to fall.
    His predecessor as director of the Southern Operations Section must have had a similar meeting before he’d been “retired” to special work farm. For a moment Kang felt a surge of anger at the unfairness of it all. His predecessor had blundered badly, and his blunders had embarrassed the State. But he had done nothing wrong. He’d heard the rumors of Kim’s rage over the tunnel catastrophe, but that wasn’t in his area of responsibility. Why this meeting then?
    With difficulty he pushed the anger away. It wouldn’t help him in the next few minutes, and it might make things worse. Kang had always been something of a fatalist. The position he’d attained carried great rewards, and with great rewards came commensurate risks. It was the way of things, and no amount of carping or whining would change it.
    “My dear Kang, how good it is to see you! And looking so well!” Kim Jong-Il, the plump, cherub-faced son of the Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung, bustled out of the washroom smiling from ear to ear.
    Kang was astonished. This pleasant greeting was not at all what he had expected. He stood hastily and bowed to the man known throughout North Korea as the Dear Leader.
    Kim moved around his desk and waved Kang down into his chair. “Sit! Sit! My dear Kang, this is no time for formality. This is a working meeting. A meeting of two old friends and comrades who’ve worked hard to preserve our Revolution, eh?”
    Kang sat slowly, thinking fast. What did the man want? Aloud he said carefully, “Dear Leader, I am honored by your kind welcome.”
    Kim settled himself ponderously in his own chair. He’d inherited his father’s stocky build, but unlike his father, he’d never been forced by trying circumstances to forgo the delicacies that could add pounds.
    Kang found the contrast between the North’s wiry, undernourished farmers and this bloated man who would one day rule them interesting. But he was careful to leave the thought there. Irony could be a swift road