It was another fifteen minutes before Kyong came to a stop at the edge of a rolling, open meadow where the road dead-ended. Smith squinted into the sunlight, looking for something that distinguished it from every other rolling, open meadow in the area, but came up empty. He pulled out his satellite phone and looked down at the screen again, confirming that there was still no signal. It was likely that the North Koreans had started jamming and that the text from Fred had skidded in under the wire.

“This was my village,” Kyong said. “I was born here. So were my parents and my grandparents. We were farmers. Very poor like all the workers in my country. Twenty years ago, the complex opened. They paid a little money to people willing to go there. A little bit of food.”

“Go there?” Smith said, noting the interesting turn of phrase. “You mean ‘work there’?”

Kyong shook his head. “The old people went first. They couldn’t farm anymore but they wanted to contribute. My grandmother never returned. My grandfather came back blinded, though there was nothing wrong with his eyes. When the weather turned bad, the crops failed and more of our people went there. I was small then, but I still remember. We were starving.”

“I don’t mean to question you,” Randi said. “But are you sure we’re in the right place?”

It was a valid question. There was no trace of irrigation ditches or crop rows. No paths or home foundations. If Kyong was telling the truth, someone had done a hell of a job of wiping his birthplace off the map.

Their skepticism must have shown because the Korean started east toward the trees. “Come. I’ll show you.”

He crashed into the dense forest with them lagging a bit behind, scanning the shadows for troops and secret police. When they finally caught up, they found Kyong standing in front of a tiny house with the remnants of white paint still clinging to rough-hewn boards. The glass was still intact in the only window, so Smith rubbed the dirt from it and peered into the gloomy interior. It looked like the people had just walked out and never come back. There was a sewing machine with a piece of cloth in it, metal cups on a makeshift table, a small bed left unmade. All that gave away the passage of time was the thick layer of dust and a few empty animal nests.

He stepped back, listening for a moment to the chirp of birds and wind-rustling leaves. The bomb blasts were silent now and Smith wondered if it was over. If the facility was a corpse-ridden pile of rubble.

He turned back to Kyong. “Do you know what Division D was?”

By way of an answer, the Korean started walking again, motioning for them to follow.