White.
The tint of my polarized goggles helps, but I still need to squint. I put one snowshoe in front of the other, then switch. Paced. Steady. Breathe in. Breathe out.
It is not the hardest of climbs, but also not one that an average outdoorsman like me would typically risk. The slope is too steep for safety. Patches of ice lurk beneath the powdered snow. The drop on my right is nauseating.
I reach a vertical wall of ice. It is no more than twelve feet high, but getting past it is a challenge. Had I been here for recreation, I would have turned around and headed back down just about now. I am not James Bond. I don't seek adventure. I am used to sitting in posh bars with a glass of Scotch, having a calm conversation with gullible politicians or unaware rival intelligence agents. I would not have been here if I had a choice.
I remove my snowshoes, tie them to my pack, screw in an ice screw to the wall and attach myself to the slippery surface. Swinging the ice axe and digging in with my crampons, I pull and ratchet up a few inches at a time, scaling the wall in a little less than ten minutes.
I have arrived at a plateau. My GPS tells me I must be close, even though I don't know exactly what I am looking for. There are no discernible landmarks in the snow blanket. Everything is a uniform shade of white.
There is a creeping sensation at the back of my head, a feeling both indescribable and unmistakable. I have no scientific explanation for it, but I swear by it with my life. You can call it a sixth sense, ESP, or whatever sensationalist term you want. I don't call it anything. I just know it when it is there. There is a weapon pointed at my back.
I raise my hands and turn around slowly. The muscular figure towering at a higher ground above me lowers his shotgun.
"Hello, Sherman."
I follow the wide-shouldered silhouette along an invisible trail around the hill. It takes us to a patch of snow-covered pine trees growing on the other side. A few minutes later, we walk into a modest log cabin.
The furnishing is spartan. A board on hinges next to a lone window has been opened up and propped up on a hinged leg to serve as a table. Two wooden chairs on each side allow my host to accommodate a company of one. A low wooden bench with a thin mattress and a thick green wool blanket appears to be serving as a bed. In the middle of the room crackles a cast iron stove. Homely aroma of freshly brewed coffee emanates from a tin jezve on top of it.
"This is what retirement is like?" I jest.
Rob Burton, my former mentor, turns around, and for the first time I am able to look at his weathered face. The last eighteen years have not been kind to him. His skin is sunburned, rougher, more leathery. His hair and eyebrows have acquired an abundant amount of silver. But one thing has not changed – his bright, gray eyes still appear to penetrate into my mind the way they did when he undertook the unique project to train me for what I am.
"I hear, your idea of retirement is different from mine," he retorts.
He steps briefly outside and comes back with a bottle half-filled with an amber liquid. Holding the bottle up, he showcases it against the coffee on the stove. I arch an eyebrow in exaggerated astonishment. He shrugs and pours some of the amber liquid in a tin mug, which he pushes towards me on the makeshift table. We have spent years working together, we don't need words for that kind of communication.
He sits across from me, his hands cupped around his coffee cup. I savor the flavorful single malt, chilled naturally in the snow outside.
"They are sending me to Dokdo," I tell him. He nods. There is no surprise. Despite the eighteen year gap in our communication, and him living a hermit life in the middle of a snowy mountain slope, he knows what I am talking about.
"I need your help," I tell him.
He gets up and squats in front of the cast iron stove, facing away from me. He opens the stove door and pokes at the embers with a metal poke.
"Let's lay it on the table," he says without turning. "A few months ago, you stopped an act of treason about to be committed by an American citizen. In the process, you discovered that someone with abilities similar to yours almost succeeded in convincing you to abort your mission. You followed through, discovering the identity of the scientist who trained the enemy counterparts."
Curt. To the point. Rob does not waste words.
Yes, what I got was a name. In our line of business, that means a starting point.
"Doctor Klein," I confirm.
He is silent, rummaging for something in the kindling box, which contains wood shavings, wood slivers, and yellowed old newspapers. He picks up several pages of paper and places one in front of me.
It appears to be from the Washington Post. He points to an article.
Tourist Dies in Apparent Suicide
A vacationing bodybuilder, visiting the nation's capital, jumped to his death from the seventh floor of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington DC...
In my mind, I had referred to him as "athletic man."
His name had been Dillon Knowles. He had been a rogue field operative, hired to seduce my former lover, Marion Rosenthal, so he could use her as leverage against me. He had been successful. Masculine, fit and handsome, he had engaged Marion, using her predilection to seek thrilling escapes from the loneliness of her loveless marriage.
But he had also gone a step further. He had relished her in ways that fell outside of his job description.
He had been easy to track down, precisely because of his illicit, unscrupulous appetites. Confident, cocky, and drawn to the unexpected pleasures of Marion's willing adultery, he had, unwisely, arranged for one last date with her after his mission was over.
I had watched them walk together into a New York hotel, and then seen Marion leave in the early morning hours, ravaged, swaying, her hair tousled in post-coital disarray.
I had waited for him in the hotel lobby and watched him check out, careless in his self-satisfied confidence. He was easy to follow all the way to DC, where, I found out, he was planning to meet with a Russian Intelligence contact.
One heart-to-heart conversation with him in a dim hotel bar, and he had headed up to his room on the seventh floor of the Ritz to write a brief suicide note and plunge to his death from the balcony.
Rob seems to be following my thought process, his face expressionless. He places a second page in front of me, pointing to another article.
Murder-Suicide in Suburban DC
Bodies of two elderly gentlemen, killed by the same apparent murder weapon, were found in the living room of a small suburban DC home...
These had been the two "picnic buddies", who had performed the operation on my mind in Washington, convincing me that Marion is in mortal danger.
Before heading out to jump to his death, Dillon Knowles had divulged their identity: Archibald Durang and Elijah O'Brien, both British, both on Russian payroll. Durang had been the one who had operated on me in an attempt to thwart my counter-intelligence mission. O'Brian had been his sidekick, an apprentice, learning the art, but still a beginner.
I had confronted them in their rented suburban home in DC, where they had been waiting for a debrief. O'Brian had opened the door, and I had swiftly talked him into letting me in.
Durang had sensed danger. He had attacked me, a targeted, deliberate, focused attack, aimed to take over my mind. He was not as skilled as me, but he knew what I was capable of, and he had not wasted time. O'Brian had joined in as soon as he had gotten his bearings back.
Right there, in that house's vestibule, plastered with fading pink wallpaper, I had performed the hardest mind-hacking operation I had ever attempted. It had been a duel, a fight for mind prevalence, two on one. We went back and forth. There were times when my influence on them slipped away, then latched on, then slipped away again. Their attack weakened my capabilities. My words were less effective, slipping on the surface of their consciousness instead of penetrating it. It took time for me to finally prevail.
Subdued, standing next to each other with blank stares, both of them had uttered a name: Doctor Klein. That was the person who had taught them how to operate on someone's mind. Doctor Klein lived and practiced his craft on the Japanese-Korean island of Dokdo, also called Takeshima by its Japanese residents.
I gave O'Brian, the easier of the two to control, step by step instructions. Then, I left the house, found myself a cozy bar that would confirm my alibi, and sipped Scotch in the middle of the day, while O'Brian fetched a gun, shot Durang, and then himself.
Rob collects the pages and puts them back in the kindling box, an excellent place to store them in case he needs to destroy them quickly. I wish I could read his thoughts, but of course, I cannot. His face is a non-committal mask.
Still, if I were him, I know what I would be thinking. None of these enemy agents had to die. I could have let them all go, let them wake up from the surreal dream of my mind operation, and face their superiors to explain their exposure. Instead, in the decision of the moment, channeling my anger from their intrusion into my mind, and their threat on the life of an innocent civilian, Marion, I had crossed a line that I should never have crossed. I had committed murder.
Technically, it was not murder. Technically, they all killed each other or themselves. But a strict definition aside, I was the one who had taken over their decisions and given them the go-ahead. Traditional definitions of murder do not take into account capabilities of someone like me.
Rob sits across from me again and waits.
"They knew, with surprising certainty, that using a former romantic interest of mine as a pressure point would work," I say. "They also knew, during their operation, that I had taken their bait. They knew more than it was possible for them to know with the information they had available. How?"
Rob stares down at his coffee mug, his forehead wrinkled in thought.
"Does anyone have the capability of reading minds?" I ask.
He takes his time, thinking. Then shrugs. "I don't know."
"Theoretically?"
"We are threading in uncharted waters, Sherman," he replies.
I look at my now empty mug, but Rob does not offer a refill. I sigh. "If they are capable of reading minds, I stand no chances," I say. "None of us do. And... innocent people may be harmed."
Marion. There was nothing innocent in our clandestine affair, barely hidden even from her timid, workaholic husband, nor in her other subsequent adulterous exploits. She lived a life of self-serving indulgence and escapism, which I accepted as being part of who she was. Still, as far as the mind games of the world intelligence community are concerned, she was innocent, an oblivious, expendable pawn in an invisible war.
Last Summer, they had tracked her down, brought her to Washington where I was conducting a mission, and threatened her life to get me to do their bidding. That choice meant that they had uniquely identified her as my breaking point, my Achilles heel.
They had ways of finding out about our affair, which, despite its illicit nature, was still there in plain sight to see, but, save of looking inside my head, they had no way of knowing what she meant to me. They had no way of knowing that even now, years after we have last spoken, she still frequents my dreams, I still long for the smell of her hair, and the glint of her eyes. Even she did not know that.
Only a few days before I started my journey to find Rob, I had passed by the tavern where I had first met her. I had walked by, without getting inside, and felt the pang of loss inside my chest. It all came back, our courtship, our dances, our secret rendezvous. She was not mine. She was not faithful, not to me, not to anyone. She was not someone I trusted. And yet, I missed her.
I had made peace with losing her, but I had not let go in a way that would keep her safe. Washington had made that clear. And as long as they could get to her, they could get to me.
Time had come to say a different goodbye, a goodbye from which there is no recourse back.
"I need to do whatever I have to to make sure my mission succeeds," I say.
Rob fixes his tranquil, gray eyes on me. "How far are you willing you go?" he asks.