Henry Wray wouldn’t have beaten the North Korean prisoner — at least not as badly — but the man had said “Migook!”—American — and spat at him. With his overtime robbing him of sleep, and contrary to all the rules and practices for self-control he’d learned at Langley, Wray snapped and punched the Korean off his haunches, the man falling over, crashing into the two-foot-high wall of cardboard that had formed the “disciplinary square” about him. At this, the Japanese interrogator went wild, kicking the man in the head twice before Wray, his hands trembling with the strain of the war between the anger and common sense raging inside of him, yelled, “That’s enough!” at his JDF colleague. But the North Korean spat again and Wray lost it. Besides, what was it that detective used to say on “NYPD Blue”? he thought afterward. At some point in the interrogation room you take off your belt and leave the Constitution outside.
Wray and the JDF agent had gotten each other going, and once or twice their blows coincided, they were so frantic to give it to him. Little bastard was probably holding the key to an attack on the Second Army convoy, which was now out over the Macclesfield Bank, 350 miles east-southeast of the PLA’s Yulin naval base on Hainan Island.
“Who did you contact?” Wray yelled. “Who did you call?”
The North Korean either couldn’t or wouldn’t talk.
That night, Wray signed out and faxed Langley that he was ill and would have to be relieved from — in effect taken off— Songbird.
He went home and opened a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, an expensive escape in Japan, and drank long into the night, occasionally flipping channels but mostly watching CNN for up-to-date news of the war. He saw a raging argument going on among demonstrators of various political stripes in the front of the White House, then a zoom shot showing the state of play between a Greenpeacer and an animal rights advocate. The animal rights lady, who looked remarkably like a cat — where did CNN get this stuff, he wondered, from some casting agent? — was complaining loudly about the barbaric practices of the Chinese, their crimes against animals, and the Greenpeacer was arguing just as loudly about how Greenpeace was for animal rights too, but that the animal rights issue was a red herring put out by the fascist administration in Washington to divert all attention away from the real war — against the environment.
“If this was a fascist administration—” said the woman.
“It is,” the Greenpeacer charged.
“If it was,” the woman replied, “the police would be dragging you away right now.”
“They’ll be here. You wait.”
Another demonstrator, an unkempt redhead, shoving her way into the fray proclaimed, “It’s not the Chinese who started this — it’s the Vietnamese. They’re the real aggressors.”
“Bullshit!” someone called out.
“Yeah — piss off, lady!”
Wray didn’t know which lady was being referred to — the animal rights one or the redhead. Now there was a special news bulletin reporting that there had apparently been some “naval activity” in the South China Sea. Wray grunted in drunken disgust. It was about as helpful as saying there was a weather disturbance somewhere in Texas. The nonspecific nature of this newscast upset Wray much more than it normally would have. He was a perfectionist, and vagueness about anything irritated and at times disturbed him, especially when he’d been drinking heavily. On top of this, there had been the day’s dismal failure of not getting anything out of the Korean, and on top of that, of losing his cool and the unspoken, maniacal encouragement he’d given the JDF man. Which made him, Henry Wray of the CIA, no better than the North Koreans, he told himself. Worse.
He finished his scotch and walked over to a map of southern Japan, surprised there had not yet been any kind of attack on U.S. and Japanese shipping by North Korea. Maybe the Korean had made contact about something else? But not knowing what it was, even what it might be, filled Wray with a despair, despite all his years with the firm, made infinitely worse by the booze — a plunging feeling deep in his gut, his conscience telling him that he had stood far too long at the edge of the abyss, and now it was staring back at him — that he was out of control. He reached inside his jacket, took out the 9mm Beretta automatic, and fingered it like a blind man for a few minutes, as if it was something he’d lost touch with, as if he was reacquainting himself with an old friend. Then he put it atop the TV.