The Unification Chronicles

9: Arrivals and Departures

Daniel stood out­side Sec­ond Story Books and tried to look incon­spic­u­ous. It was nearly two o’clock, and he had seen sev­eral peo­ple he thought might have been Susan Richard­son, but no one approached him. The prob­lem was that there was no pic­ture of her on the New Amer­i­can Cen­tury web­site, and he hadn’t had time to try to find her on Google, Face­book or Twit­ter. He had no idea what she looked like, so all he really had to go on was that she was female and would likely be car­ry­ing a lap­top. That described nearly a hun­dred peo­ple within his field of vision at any given sec­ond. He’d picked Dupont Cir­cle because it was a busy place with lots of wit­nesses, but he hadn’t con­sid­ered the down­side in see­ing any­one in par­tic­u­lar com­ing through all the noise.

“Are you Doc­tor Cho?” some­one asked behind him.

Daniel nearly jumped out of his shoes. “It’s okay!” the woman shouted, louder than he’d prefer.

He looked up and down the street to see if they’d drawn unwel­come atten­tion, and see­ing noth­ing alarm­ing, turned back to her.

“Sorry,” he said. “You just star­tled me.”

“I’m Susan Richard­son, from New Amer­i­can Cen­tury. You are Doc­tor Cho, right?”

“Please,” he said, shak­ing her hand, “call me Daniel.”

They stood awk­wardly for a moment, then Susan said, “Well, I’m inter­view­ing you, so I sup­pose the tab’s on me. Want to get a bur­rito?” She motioned towards the Chipo­tle just down the street, and Daniel real­ized he hadn’t eaten since the day before.

“Sure,” he said. “Thank you for see­ing me.”

They walked over and got their orders, not say­ing much else until they were seated across from each other at a metal table in the back of the restau­rant. Daniel took a mon­ster bite out of his bur­rito and said, “Thanks again.”

“Thank you. You know, it’s actu­ally pretty rare that the sub­ject of one of my arti­cles wants to talk to me afterwards.”

Daniel sat qui­etly and smiled between bites. He didn’t know if she was fish­ing for a com­ment about the site she worked for or not, but he decided he was bet­ter off not vol­un­teer­ing any­thing either way.

“Noth­ing, huh?” she said. “You’re bet­ter at this than I thought. Okay, down to busi­ness then.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a small dig­i­tal recorder. “Okay if I record this?” she asked, already plac­ing the device on the table between them and turn­ing it on.

“Sure,” Daniel said.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m here with Doc­tor Daniel Cho, cur­rently wanted by the FBI as a sus­pected ter­ror­ist.” Daniel was thank­ful she said it qui­etly enough not to draw atten­tion from the other din­ers. “Doc­tor Cho, can you tell me why you’re under suspicion?”

Daniel took a swig of iced tea and looked her in the eye. “I’m not a ter­ror­ist,” he said. “I want to get that on the record up front. I’m also rea­son­ably sure I’m not crazy. But after what I saw yes­ter­day, what I’m still try­ing to find the evi­dence to explain, you might have to come to your own con­clu­sions about my sanity.”

As he fin­ished his bur­rito, he told her the story of his last twenty four hours. The crash, the res­cue, the miss­ing body. The grin in the alley­way. His arrest, and the dis­cus­sion with Detec­tive Durante. Escap­ing the police sta­tion, find­ing Hendriks’s house, and what he found inside. And finally, read­ing her arti­cle about the FBI look­ing for him, and con­tact­ing her to set up this meeting.

“That’s some story,” she said finally.

#

Jeff Frankel pulled his RV off of I395 and into Arling­ton, Vir­ginia. He needed to find a place to set up for the night, some­where with wifi. He put­tered along until he found a motel that fit his needs. After he secured a room, he parked the RV around the cor­ner and set­tled in. The place wasn’t much to look at, but his lap­top told him he was get­ting some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of eight giga­bits down. More than enough for stream­ing video. It would do nicely. It also had easy access to a sub­way sta­tion for him to go into the city the next day. Jeff wasn’t sure how long he’d be stay­ing in DC, but he was off to a good start.

#

“That’s some story,” Susan said, mak­ing sure the recorder was still run­ning. The tale she’d just heard was out­landish, over the top. Either Cho really was crazy, or he was a ter­ror­ist with an absolutely unbe­liev­able cover story. The prob­lem was that Susan couldn’t fig­ure out which it was.

“Mis­ter Cho,” Susan began.

“Daniel.”

“Daniel, that’s…”

“It’s unbe­liev­able, I know.”

“Lit­er­ally. What do you expect me to do with that?”

He sad back hard against the wooden chair. “Hon­estly, I don’t know. I was hop­ing you could tell me.”

“Daniel, let me be frank. You have made some extra­or­di­nary claims here. Extra­or­di­nary claims require extra­or­di­nary evi­dence. And your only evidence — “

“Got up and walked away.”

“Exactly.”

“But what about his house? No fur­ni­ture, just crates and crates of price­less antiques and men’s suits?”

“Obvi­ously a ware­house for some­thing, and a quick pit stop. There’s no way he actu­ally lived there, but that’s beside the point. It doesn’t prove he’d still alive.”

Cho — Daniel — ran a hand through his hair. Susan felt bad for the guy. She knew this wasn’t what he’d been hop­ing for. But as fan­tas­tic as he story was, there just wasn’t much she could use. Even New Amer­i­can Cen­tury had stan­dards. It was a shame. He was kind of cute, in a har­ried sort of way, and if they’d met under dif­fer­ent circumstances…

“Let’s approach this from a dif­fer­ent angle. Why do the cops and the FBI think you’re a ter­ror­ist? I know some of it, but not the whole story.”

Daniel’s head dropped. “You prob­a­bly know more than I do. They never told me why they were bust­ing out the PATRIOT act on me.” Poor guy was beyond the end of his rope, dan­gling from the strands. “What do you know about it?”

Susan didn’t need to check her notes. “You’re first gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can, and your par­ents are from North Korea.”

“Refugees,” Daniel said. “They snuck into South Korea just before they got mar­ried. They hate Kim Jong Il more than the US gov­ern­ment does.”

“I’m just relay­ing what I’ve heard,” Susan said.

“Okay, sorry,” Daniel said, tak­ing another swig of his tea. “What else?”

“You just moved across the coun­try, you have a job where you have access to emer­gency sys­tems, and you’re severely under­em­ployed. You’re trained as a doc­tor, an Emer­gency Room sur­geon, and yet you’re work­ing as a para­medic. You don’t have many social contacts — “

“Hello, new in town.”

“ — and you hap­pened to be at an emer­gency where you weren’t on duty and some­thing weird hap­pened. You have to admit, Daniel, taken all together it looks suspicious.”

“I’m not a ter­ror­ist. I haven’t done any­thing wrong other than defend myself.”

“Let’s look at the biggest ques­tion, other than the miss­ing body. Why did you leave San Fran­cisco, move three thou­sand miles and get a job so far beneath your cho­sen field?”

“You know all this about me, but you don’t know that?”

“No one at your old job would talk to me. All they’d say is that you were no longer employed at the hospital.”

Daniel sighed. “Well, at least they’re doing that much for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ms. Richard­son — “

“You’re going to have call me Susan if I’m call­ing you Daniel.”

“Okay, Susan, I was fired from St. Peter’s. I screwed up in the ER and got a preg­nant woman killed. I could have saved her, but I fucked up. Her wid­ower sued the hos­pi­tal, and they fired me.”

“Oh my God.”

“And as you might guess, other hos­pi­tals aren’t enthused about pick­ing up a doc­tor that gets his patients killed. Even if they needed a cut­ter, I’m too much of a mal­prac­tice risk. I stopped look­ing pretty quick.

“Frankly, Susan, they’re right. I’m a fuck up. Stuff like this hap­pens to me whether I ask for it or not. I’ve played it straight my whole life, got good grades, got into a good school, became a doc­tor just like my folks wanted me to be. But it all came crash­ing down any­way. And as I racked up no after no look­ing for a new job as a sur­geon, it hit me.

“Maybe I’m not sup­posed to be play­ing God. When you’re an ER doc, peo­ple expect you to work mir­a­cles. They expect you to look at the dam­age, no mat­ter how cat­a­strophic it is, and make every­thing okay. I can’t make every­thing okay. And I decided I didn’t want peo­ple to look to me for mir­a­cles any­more. I moved as far away as I could, and I got a job as a para­medic. I still get to save lives, I still get to help peo­ple, but they don’t expect me to work mir­a­cles. It was a good job. I was on my way to build­ing a life again. And then…”

“And then you see a dead body walk away from death itself and you won­der what all of your strug­gle has been for.”

The look in Daniel’s eyes nearly broke Susan’s heart. “Exactly,” he said. “That’s it. That’s why I couldn’t let it go.”

Susan wasn’t sure if Daniel Cho was crazy or not. Lord knew the guy had been through enough, it wouldn’t be too hard to believe he finally snapped. But some­thing told her, her reporter’s instincts maybe, that there was still more to this story. Some­thing told her it would be worth see­ing this through, find­ing out where it led. And at the very least, if she could help this poor guy get some clo­sure, she’d feel a lot bet­ter about her­self sit­ting in that pew Sun­day morning.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m in. We need to find out what really hap­pened yes­ter­day and see this through to the end. Let’s get out of here and—

Daniel wasn’t lis­ten­ing to her. He was watch­ing the front door.

#

Jack Har­ris sig­naled to his agents. The last hour had been con­stant activ­ity, but he thought they were ready. They were parked in a van across the street from the Chipo­tle in Dupont Cir­cle, prepar­ing to appre­hend the suspects.

The kid, Dante, was good. Jack thought about hav­ing him trans­ferred to the antiter­ror­ism unit. They needed the best hack­ers they could find. He was able to trace the email Cho sent to Susan Richard­son, a blog­ger work­ing for a polit­i­cal rumor rag here in the city. While they couldn’t read the email with­out get­ting a war­rant and jump­ing through a lot of red tape with Microsoft, Jack was able to pull some strings and get a wire­tap order for Richardson’s GPS coor­di­nates from her phone. As soon as she stopped mov­ing, they pin­pointed her loca­tion to the Mex­i­can restau­rant across the street and moved in.

He had the DC cops posi­tioned down the street in both direc­tions, but not block­ing traf­fic. He didn’t want to tip their hand. He’d lost a ter­ror sus­pect in San Diego by being too aggres­sive. Some of these guys were flunkies, espe­cially the ones from the outer ter­ri­to­ries of the Mus­lim world. If the tar­get was from Oman or one of the for­mer Soviet “Stans”, he wouldn’t have wor­ried. They were ide­o­logues and more con­cerned with their God than with get­ting caught. But the smart ones, the ring lead­ers, the ones from Iran, Pak­istan, Saudi Ara­bia and yes, even North Korea, they watched the signs. They noticed when traf­fic pat­terns, even pedes­trian traf­fic pat­terns, tapered off. So Jack had to approach this qui­etly, with a min­i­mum of dis­rup­tion. He had to assume Cho was a pro, had been taught by pros. He would notice if they started plac­ing men at the exits ahead of time.

Jack watched up and down the street. It was almost time. At exactly 2:50, the cops were going to stop traf­fic going both direc­tions on both M and 19^th. As soon as the last cars passed, Jack and his team would charge across 19^th street and into the restau­rant. The place was on the bot­tom floor of an old town­house, so there was only one way in or out for the cus­tomers. Jack had a plain­sclothes offi­cer watch­ing the employee entrance in the alley, but discretely.

[upon con­sult­ing a gor­ram map, turns out the Chipo­tle on M & 19^th is way too far from both Sec­ond Story and the Dupont Cir­cle Metro sta­tion for my pur­poses. Move them to James Hoban’s Irish Restau­rant, maybe for some corned beef and cab­bage, for the sec­ond draft. Jack need only stop NS traf­fic on 20^th.]

At just a few sec­onds after 2:50, the traf­fic dis­ap­peared on 20^th and Jack flung open the door. “Let’s move, peo­ple!” They darted across the street and into the Irish restaurant.

#

Daniel’s eyes widened as he saw the men bolt into the still crowded restau­rant. “Come on,” he said to Susan, grab­bing her by the wrist and pulling her up.

“What’s going on?” She tried to reach for some­thing on the table [make her voice recorder and her phone the same thing, so she leaves her phone on the table], but Daniel was already mov­ing and tak­ing her with him. She glanced behind her and picked up the pace when she saw the men wear­ing bul­let­proof vests embla­zoned with FBI on their chests.

Daniel ran to the other side of the restau­rant, towards 19^th street. He dragged/​guided Susan by one hand, and tipped over strate­gic tables with the other, try­ing to slow the agents down. Just add dine and dash to my list of charges, offi­cer, he thought. He saw two more through the glass doors to 19^th street, block­ing their escape. Too much to hope for that this would be easy, he thought.

“Plan B!” he shouted, and redi­rected Susan for the kitchen.

“This was your Plan A?” she replied.

They burst through the dou­ble doors and Daniel was nearly over­whelmed with the heat and smell of boil­ing cab­bage. “Just pass­ing through!” he said as he con­tin­ued past the sur­prised cooks and around the cor­ner near a big walk in freezer. Off to the left, he saw what was look­ing for.

They ran through the ser­vice entrance next to a small load­ing dock and out into the sun­light north of the restau­rant on 19^th street. The two agents that had been posi­tioned at the 19^th street entrance had dis­ap­peared, pre­sum­ably inside to give chase.

“We’re not out of this yet,” Daniel said and darted across Dupont Cir­cle itself, nar­rowly avoid­ing a mov­ing van and then a hybrid owner mon­key­ing around with some­thing on their dash­board before run­ning into the tree-​​filled park in the mid­dle of the circle.

“I didn’t ask to be in this in the first place!” Susan shouted. “And we left my phone behind in the restaurant!”

“Good!”

“My ass! That phone cost me six hun­dred bucks! How is that good?”

They ran directly for the Dupont Cir­cle Metro sta­tion entrance, and had just hit the esca­la­tor when they heard some­one shout “Stop!” and then a bul­let whine off of the esca­la­tor hand rail.

“Shit!” Daniel and Susan said in uni­son. They ran down the esca­la­tor, Daniel shov­ing aside any­one stand­ing in the mid­dle rather than to the right. “On your fuck­ing left!” he shouted.

The hit the main plat­form at a run and Daniel was sur­prised that Susan didn’t hes­i­tate when he vaulted the turn­stile. She jumped just after he did, and for once, luck was with them. The train was stand­ing at the sta­tion, but he could hear the auto­mated voice telling peo­ple to stand back as the doors closed.

“Run!” he shouted as they both dove for the last car just as the doors started to close. They both wound up in a tan­gle on the floor as the doors shut behind them and the train picked up speed, mov­ing north out of Dupont Cir­cle Station.

#

“Shit­shit­shit­shit­shit…” Jack mut­tered as he raced down the esca­la­tor only to see the dim and quickly reced­ing lights of the train in the north­bound tun­nel. He ran up to the kiosk in the mid­dle of the turn­stiles and slammed his FBI iden­ti­fi­ca­tion up to the rein­forced window.

“Jack Har­ris, FBI!” he shouted. “Stop that train!”

The ticket taker mum­bled and fum­bled around for a phone, clearly shaken. “Wow, I knew we were crack­ing down on turn­stile jumpers, but — “

“This is a National Secu­rity mat­ter! I need you stop that train!”

“I can’t, sir! You’ll have to talk to my supervisor — “

“Shit!” Jack said and turned away, leav­ing the pan­icked and befud­dled ticket taker alone.

“What should we do, sir?” asked Horowitz, one of his agents. “Get PD to the next sta­tion up the line?”

Jack scratched his head, still try­ing to calm down. He wasn’t going to make good deci­sions if he was upset. Breathe in, breathe out… “No,” said. “Cho’s too smart to get off at the next sta­tion, so the local cops would just be wast­ing their time. Put out an APB with his pic­ture and hers, make sure Metro reports any­one jump­ing a turn­stile to get out of a train sta­tion, and give me a loca­tion on Richardson’s phone.”

“This phone?” Horowitz asked. He held out a sleek black smart­phone. “I picked it up off their table dur­ing the chase.”

“God. Damn. It,” Jack said, tak­ing the phone but not snatch­ing it out of Horowitz’s hand. It wasn’t his fault Richard­son didn’t take the phone with her. And maybe they could pull some­thing use­ful from it.

“Come on,” Jack said. “Let’s head back to HQ and plan our next move.”