THE MIST IS VERY BEAUTIFUL TODAY,” the young man said. His Korean accent was clearly audible but not so thick that his words weren’t intelligible over the flapping of the jeep’s canvas top. No doubt he recognized the importance of his mastery of English in keeping him from living at the edge of starvation like so many of his countrymen.

Gerhard Eichmann nodded absently, and stared out the side window. It really was beautiful. Tall, jagged hills sprang up everywhere around them, emerald green where there was sufficient soil to support life and grayish brown where the rock had been laid bare. Hazy clouds, only a few hundred meters above, threaded through them, being pulled toward the vortex created by a massive waterfall to the west.

It was easy to be lulled into a sense of contentment and peace. But it was there in North Korea that the contrasts nature had created were the starkest. It was a place that demonstrated with heartbreaking clarity the power of a small group of twisted men to create needless destruction and suffering for millions.

The dirt road turned rutted as it detoured around a recent landslide. Eichmann looked past his driver, catching a glimpse of a large facility nestled into a deep canyon. It was normally invisible from the road but the diversion allowed for a brief flash of the fencing and heavily camouflaged roof. His driver, Kyong, suddenly stared straight ahead as though not looking at it could make it cease to exist.

Odd, since two years before he had delivered Eichmann there for a series of meetings relating to the work being done behind its thick walls. Or at least, most of the work being done there. He twisted in his seat as the facility disappeared from sight, trying to pick out the west wing through the trees. Beyond the fact that it was called Division D, he didn’t know anything about it. Every query had been politely rebuffed and every request for access flatly denied. At first, he’d thought it was a mistake—one of the many edicts garbled in translation or subverted by the country’s dysfunctional bureaucracy. Further investigation, though, proved that assumption to be wrong.

They turned onto a narrow dirt road and wound along it before finally parking at its end. The foot trail that started there, used only very occasionally to transport supplies and personnel, was virtually invisible. Eichmann had been up it once before, though, and vividly remembered the four hours he’d spent struggling along the steep, eroded path.

He stepped from the vehicle and hesitated, looking down at his unsteady legs and the old hiking boots on his feet. There was no point in questioning this excursion now. He had spent three months begging for the opportunity and now here he was—about to personally witness the last, symbolic moment of his life’s work.

The beginning of the end to a life that he never could have imagined.

* * *

THE YEARS HAD SETTLED in even harder than Eichmann realized and this time the trip took a full six hours. His exhaustion and the pain from his bleeding feet were so profound that he nearly cried when he saw the first hint of human inhabitation. Not in the form of buildings or roads, but in a bizarre image of farmers tending an expansive rice paddy. From a distance, it looked completely ordinary, deceptively idyllic. As they approached, though, the picture became more complex.