"Many of which turned out to be the same thing, " Hwan noted.

Soonji smiled. "I had a feeling that after two years you would have a lot to talk about." She looked at her husband. "Honey, if you want to continue talking or fence with other utensils after the ceremony, I can cancel that dinner with my parents--"

"No, " Hwan said quickly. "Don't do that. I'll have the post-event analysis to do, and that will run till late in the evening. Besides, I met your father at the wedding. He's a very large man. I'll try and come to Washington soon and spend some time with you both. Maybe I'll even find myself an American wife, since Greg took the best woman in Korea for himself."

Soonji gave him a small smile. "Someone had to show him how to lighten up."

Hwan told the bartender to put the drinks on the KCIA tab, then retrieved the knife, laid it on the bar, and regarded his old friend. "Before I go, though, I do want to tell you this: I've missed you, Greg."

Donald gestured toward the knife. "I'm glad."

Soonji smacked him on the shoulder. He reached around and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand.

"I mean it, " Hwan said. "I've been thinking a lot about the years after the war, when you looked after me. Had my own parents lived, I could not have had a more loving family."

Hwan bowed his head quickly and left; Donald looked down.

Soonji watched him go, then placed a slender hand on her husband's shoulder. "There were tears in his eyes."

"I know."

"He left quickly because he didn't want to upset you."

Donald nodded, then looked up at his wife, at the woman who had showed him that wisdom and youth are not mutually exclusive and that apart from it taking a helluva long time to stand up straight in the morning, age really was a state of mind.

"That's what makes him so special, " Donald said as Hwan stepped into the bright sunlight. "Kim's soft inside, hard outside. Yunghil Oh used to say that was armor for every eventuality."

"Yunghil Oh?"

Donald took her hand and led her from the bar. "A man who used to work at the KCIA, someone I'm beginning to wish I'd gotten to know a little bit better."

Trailing a thin line of smoke behind him, Donald escorted his wife onto broad, crowded Chonggyechonno. Turning north, they strolled hand-in-hand toward the imposing Kyongbok Palace, at the back of the old Capitol Building, first built in 1392 and rebuilt in 1867. As they neared, they could see the long blue VIP grandstand, and what promised to be a curious blend of boredom and spectacle as South Korea celebrated the anniversary of the election of its first President.

CHAPTER TWO

Tuesday, 5:30 P.M., Seoul

The basement of the condemned hotel smelled of the people who slept there at night; the musky, liquor-tinged scent of the poor and forgotten, those for whom this day, this anniversary, meant only a chance to get a few extra coins from the people who were coming to watch. But though the permanent boarders were gone, begging for their daily bread, the small brick room wasn't empty.