Someone had breached his security. They had gotten all the way downstairs from the People's Palace without being detected. They had slaughtered his personal guard without so much as a whimper and left one man alive on the premier's doorstep as a gruesome calling card.
He looked down at the pleading man on the floor. "You're on your own," Kim Jong Il said to the dying soldier. "I'm not helping anyone but me." Grabbing for the doorknob, he started to slam the huge door shut. It wouldn't budge.
And then he noticed the hand. It was pressed to the door, holding it open. The hand was attached to the man who was suddenly standing before the premier. The man wore a black business suit and had a dead look in his hazel eyes.
"Forgive me, my premier, I have been away from my homeland for many years," the man in the suit said. "Has Pyongyang now made it a crime to help others?"
And with that he put his foot through the dying soldier's skull. The soldier collapsed with a sigh.
The premier saw that his visitor's shoe came back clean. It should have been a mess. And if this man was responsible for the rest of the carnage in the hallway, he should have been covered with blood. He had walked through the slaughter without so much as a speck of blood on his neat suit.
The premier felt a tingle in his belly.
The way the man stood was familiar. So calm, so centered. Hands pressed together, fingertips tucked into the sleeves of his white dress shirt. But the eyes clinched it. He had seen those eyes before. On a little old man who, with a twist of pinching fingers, could bring the mighty premier of North Korea to his knees.
"Oh, my God," Kim Jong Il whimpered. "There's another one of you."
The man offered a smile that not only lacked warmth, but also seemed to drop the room temperature by ten degrees.
"No. There is only one," he said. "My name is Nuihc. You have heard of me."
The way he said it, the premier could tell he should nod. He did so. Vigorously.
"Oh, yeah. Nuihc. Right. I should have known."
Nuihc's expression grew cold. "Do not lie to me," he spit. He shook his head. "Have I been gone so long?" he muttered bitterly. "I am not even remembered in my own land by the son of the man to whom I promised the world."
Kim licked his lips nervously. "You knew my old man?"
Nuihc nodded. "Once, many years ago, I made a bargain with your father. I offered him my services."
"Services? You mean like with the killing and all? Thanks, but I've got folks to do that. Hell, one more winter like last year and we'll all freeze or starve to death. Great of you to think of me, though."
He tried the door again. Though he strained to close it, Nuihc held it open, no strain on his flat face. "My motivation in your father's day was greed," Nuihc said. "That has changed. The world can go to whoever desires it. I want vengeance."
The premier could see he was getting nowhere. With a grunt he released the door handle. "Vengeance against who? The old guy or the kid?"
"Both murdered me. Both will pay."
Kim Jong Il wasn't sure he had heard right. "Did you say murder?" he asked.
There was no response. At least not verbally.
In that moment the premier saw something more than death in this man's eyes. It sparkled beneath the surface. The leader of North Korea had seen it before. The eyes of this Nuihc who stood before him held a touch of madness.
"I extend to you the same offer that I made to your father," Nuihc said, "with the same price. I give you the world, but Sinanju is mine."
Kim Jong Il clenched his hand. The pain lingered where the Master of Sinanju had assaulted him at the airport. "The old Master will have something to say about that."
"He is long past his time. His skills are no match for mine. I will tear his belly wide and scatter his withered entrails that the fish and the gulls might feast upon them."
The leader of North Korea could sense the madness in this man. But then the premier noted the bodies in the hallway. From the evidence before him, this new Sinanju Master might actually be able to deliver on his threat.
"What about the young one?" Kim Jong Il asked. "He'd be a match. That white scares me half to death."
"I have already dealt with him."
He said it with such certainty. So offhandedly. The leader of North Korea could scarcely believe his ears. "He is dead?" he asked, astonished.
"As good as dead," Nuihc replied. "Even now he runs around the world with the fool thought that he will succeed the one he calls father. The soft white imbecile has no idea he is about to fall into a trap."
This Nuihc seemed confident. The premier wanted to believe him. But he had seen those other two in action too many times in the past.
"You have doubts," Nuihc said. "There is wisdom in that. You know what they are capable of. But see-" he waved a hand across the soldiers' bodies "-that I am as skilled as they are. And I am not fettered by the weakness of their emotional attachment to each other. When the young one dies, the old one will be a shell. Easily disposed of."
"I don't know," the premier said.
"They have threatened to harm you?"
"They've done more than that. Every time they're in town I end up covered with bumps and bruises."
"And yet they allow you to live," Nuihc said. His face and tone hardened. "That will not be the case with me. I promise you that I will kill you if you stand in my way. That is your choice. On the one hand unquestioned power, on the other death. And all you need do is allow events to unfold as I have designed. Merely stay out of the way."
Understanding the impossible choice he was being offered, Kim Jong Il felt the life drain from his shoulders. "What do you need from me?"
"There will be a plane arriving here from the South within the hour. Allow it to land in safety. I will need helicopters to transport men and a clear air corridor from the capital to Sinanju. Beyond that, all you will need to do is sit back and the world will be yours."
Kim Jong Il looked at the bodies of the men littering the floor of the hallway outside his impenetrable bunker. They were supposed to be safeguarding his life. The premier of North Korea looked into Nuihc's cold eyes.
"You will have my cooperation," he vowed.
HYUNSIL WAS TENDING the hearth fire when she first heard the sound. It rolled up over the wail of the wind off the bay.
At first she thought it was the noise that had been the terrible harbinger of her beloved father's death. But as she listened she realized this sound was mechanical.
Her tears had dried in the warmth from the fire. Still, she wiped her eyes as she went to the window. The Master of Sinanju had instructed the villagers not to leave their homes. Hyunsil had done as she was told. But there was a little space between the slats on her wooden shutters where she was able to see out.
Putting her eye to the pane, she saw low lights amid the twinkling stars of the night sky.
They moved too slowly to be planes. Helicopters. There seemed to be many of them. The lights came within a mile of the village and then descended, disappearing from sight.
Hyunsil continued to watch, her warm breath steaming up the cold windowpane. A few times she had to wipe the gathering mist away with her apron.
After only a few moments the strange helicopters returned to the sky. They headed back in the direction of Pyongyang. In a minute the noise from the shushing rotor blades was consumed by the howling wind.
All that was left was the rattling of the boards in the old wooden house. So strange a thing was it that Hyunsil stayed at the window for a few minutes. But though she watched the sky, no more helicopters came.