She shook her head.

"Would you come inside, miss? You'll have to give us information about the wounded man, and the police will want to speak with you."

"Of course," she said as a stretcher was wheeled out. "Just let me park the car."

Two orderlies removed the body from the car, placed it on the stretcher, and covered it with a sheet. When they were gone, Kim slid behind the wheel and headed toward the parking lot. As she pulled into a spot, she picked up the phone and pressed the red button on the receiver. The desk officer at the KCIA answered.

"I'm calling on Kim Hwan's car phone," Kim said. "He was wounded by an assassin and is at the National University Hospital. The man who wounded him is dead. He's also at the hospital. Mr. Hwan believes that this man was involved with the bombers who attacked the Palace, and that you check his fingerprints to find out who he is."

Kim hung up and ignored the phone when it rang. Looking around the parking lot, she saw a car she knew: a Toyota Tercel. Taking her radio from the backseat, she put it on the floor, turned it on, and angled it so the light of the dial shined under the dashboard. Finding the ignition wires where her instructors had once told her they'd be, she knotted them together, started the car, and drove off, headed north.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Tuesday 1:10 P.M., Op-Center

As Hood arrived in Matt Stoll's office, the Operations Support Officer was just finishing up his work. There was a big smile on his round, full face, and a look of triumph in his eyes.

"Paul, this was pure, wonderful genius." he said. "I set up all kinds of safeguards and diagnostics and checks and double checks to make sure incoming software wasn't tainted, and they got it past me anyway."

"Who did, and how?"

"The South Koreans. Or at least someone with access to their software. Here it is, in diskette SK 17."

Hood bent over the screen and watched as a series of numbers and characters flashed on and off.

"What am I looking at?"

"All the stuff that was dumped into our computer system from this one diskette. I'm flushing it out-- told the computer to read the original program and take it out in its entirety."

"But how did it get in?"

"It was hidden in a routine personnel update. That's the kind of file that can be thick or thin, and you wouldn't think to check on it. Not like a file on, say, agents based in the Mascarene Islands. If that one suddenly came in big as the deficit, you'd notice."

"So the virus was hidden in that file--"

"Right. And it was triggered to dump a new satellite program into our system exactly when it did. A program that scanned the Library, morphed it with incoming pictures, and created false images-- the kind the saboteurs wanted us to see."