Asian Identity Thriller: Midnight in Karakorum - Pt 4
By Tom Kagy | 14 Aug, 2026

To track down the abducted First Lady, the President's Special Aide begins a secret mission to find clues on the wildly gruesome Jack Tang murder.

Tom Kagy (00:00.238)
Hello, this is Tom Kagy with Unconventional Wisdom.

North Korea. What would American presidents do without it? Want to justify a big bump in defense spending? Pyongyang's uncontrolled rhetoric provides a plausible justification without the need to alienate a major power like China or Russia.

Need a high profile peacemaking trip? Or some political distractions? Pyongyang's blend of weirdness, mystery and danger makes it the perfect subject for a barrage of sensational media coverage.

Certainly an over the top anti American exploit like kidnapping the First Lady begs to be pinned on Pyongyang. Who but North Korea is international rogue enough to execute such a wildly undiplomatic caper, especially with its long track record of abducting high profile people from foreign countries.

But Special Aide Chip Garrison doesn't like easy assumptions, especially not when the abduction seems to have been paired with another equally bizarre event, the butchering of Jack Tang, the tech tycoon and the President's law school buddy.

To avoid setting off an international incident by throwing around accusations, the President sends his special aide on a down low mission to get the first lady back unharmed.

Garrison thinks the best way to track her down may be to track down the folks who ordered Jack Tang's gruesome murder.

Welcome to Midnight in Karakorum, Chapter five.

FIVE

Garrison’s heart pounded as he opened the browser and typed the URL—a web page apparently sited in a server in France.  Before hitting the return key, he double-checked it against the note printed on the kind of laser copy paper you could buy in any Office Depot.  The web page appeared instantly, thanks to his dedicated T-3 link accessed via a secure server.  The page contained nothing but a single photo.  There could be no mistake.  It was the First Lady.

Garrison immediately rang the encrypted inside line to the President’s desk two miles across town.  If the note were real, there was no time to lose.

“I’ll see you right after the press conference and a quick meeting with McDavid,” said the President.  “I’m going to visit Bryce.  Plan on briefing me in the chopper over.”

Garrison accessed the FBI’s massive database and formulated a search.  Then he moved onto the CIA’s database.  There wasn’t much, but what he turned up did offer some perspective on the abduction.

As usual, Garrison arrived at the White House early and trotted down to his basement cubicle.  He turned on the TV in time to catch the tail end of the press conference. 

The President looked properly bereft but resolute.  If nothing else, it would shut down that battleax Nancy Bartlett and those nasty tabloids, at least for a while.  Meanwhile the President could regain the initiative by putting the blessed North Koreans back in their place.  His Tuesday evening B-2 redeployment announcement hadn’t kept the North Koreans from taking the U.S.-South Korean 12-man patrol prisoners, of course.  It provoked a warning that B-2 intrusion into North Korean airspace would be answered with “all-out retaliation”. 

The North Korean saber-rattling gave the President a nice hand, figured Garrison.  He could play the courage-under-fire card or the visionary-peacemaker card.  Either way, he could only win with voters.  How the North Koreans had gotten riled wasn’t important.  The voters would only remember the presidential soundbites in response to their tough talk.  Since Tuesday the North Korean situation had been leading newscasts.  Maybe it would do for the President what the Cuban missile crisis did for Kennedy though this morning it was taking a temporary back seat to the First Lady’s abduction and Tang’s murder. 

Garrison turned off the TV, put on the headphone and settled into the cracked leather swivel chair of the cubicle to monitor the President’s meeting with his National Security Advisor.

No question about it, a military crisis was more fun to eavesdrop than position briefings on the tax package or the trade disputes with Japan and China.  Since the North Korean crisis broke three days ago, the daily powwows with Lester McDavid were awakening the armchair general in Garrison.

As usual the President felt a stab of apprehension as his National Security Advisor strode into the Oval office.

At 68 Lester McDavid’s 5-8 frame remained so erect that everyone imagined he was wearing the dress tunic of a Marine four-star—not to mention a steel rod up his ass—though in fact McDavid sported a well-tailored black double-breasted blazer and gray trousers—with no steel, at least none implanted surgically.  McDavid’s crewcut was the same one he had worn in his beloved Corps.  McDavid’s bearing and steely eyes gave him fatherly sway over a president who had grown up without one, it had been whispered—falsely, thought the President.  The set of McDavid’s thin lips and his slitted eyes suggested they guarded matters of grave national concern that he’d be damned to share with anyone but the President of the United States. 

As he nodded for McDavid to take a seat beside Reiner, the sparkle that normally warmed the President’s blue eyes was quickly overshadowed by solemn duty.

“What would it take to get our boys back?” asked the President.

“A formal mea culpa, more food aid and a reversal of our B-2 decision.”

“I’d rather go down on Nancy Bartlett.”

“We could steam a carrier battle group into the Yellow Sea and one into the Sea of Japan, scramble their F-14s and our land-based F-15s to tie up their air defense systems, then launch a B-2 raid on their command centers.  We’ll cut off their head before the body even knows what happened.”

The President closed his eyes as though giving the scenario serious consideration.  “Just so we’re on the same page, Lester.  World War III would do wonders for my numbers, but let’s explore other options first.”

McDavid shrugged, his eyes glazing over.  “Only other meaningful option is to turn up the heat by taking away the North Korea’s’ only ally.”

“How?”

“Arm twist our allies to let China join the WTO.”

“Get real!” snorted Reiner.  “That goes against every trade principle we stand for.”

McDavid smiled broadly and nodded as though Reiner had helped him make a key point.

“Intriguing,” said the President, stroking his tie and ignoring Reiner’s outburst.  Then, turning to Reiner, “Make a pass at Jen without tipping off Dirk’s people at Commerce.  If Jen gets hard, we can start massaging our key allies.”

“You can’t be serious,” Reiner protested with undisguised horror.  “That would wipe out all the progress we’ve made with the Chinese for the past ten years!  They’ll never take our trade demands seriously again.”

“Trade’s one thing,” said the President.  “War is another.”

“Why not just apologize?  We did violate the armistice.”

“The American people would hate like hell to see our President kowtow to some fourth-rate dictator,” muttered McDavid.

“You think the American people want us to throw our weight around for no good reason?” said Brock Reiner.  “We’ve been down that road before!”

The President fidgeted and shifted in his seat.  “What about that, Lester?  What do we gain by facing down the North Koreans?”

“It’s just basic dentistry, Mr President,” said McDavid calmly, almost yawning, as though he were a little tired of going over the same material for the slow kids in the back of the class.  “We can pull that rotten molar now or do a root canal down the road.  We believe the Dear Leader has no nukes yet, but for all we know, he’s trolling for some down in the Ukraine.  The North Koreans have between two and five hundred agents in the South.  It wouldn’t take much to stash backpack nukes in Seoul, Pusan, Taegu and every other big city in South Korea.  That would put tens of millions at risk, including 37,000 U.S. troops and as many civilians.  We won’t get a good night’s sleep until we drill out that rotten molar.”

“That cuts both ways,” Reiner retorted.  “For all we know, they may already have nukes in place all over South Korea.  The minute we start a war, BOOM!” He pounded the desk for emphasis, causing the President to start, “—the whole country becomes a sea of fire.  For all we know, they have some stashed here in the U.S., maybe a couple right here in D.C.”

“Now, is that really a possibility?” the President asked skeptically.  He was hoping like hell his National Security Adviser would reply that the possibility simply didn’t exist, what with our topflight intelligence network and hi-tech security devices.

“Of course, it is,” McDavid replied nonchalantly.  “And my money says they’re the ones who abducted the First Lady.  They do have the capability to engage in covert overseas operations.  But the point here is, the odds of their delivering nukes against the South Koreans or us increases with each passing day.”

“Unless we just stop provoking them,” Reiner said.  “I don’t see why that’s so unthinkable.”

“He means appeasement, Mr President,” McDavid said with regal disdain, brushing an imaginary crumb on his lapel.  “I believe we’ve been down that road before.”

Still entertaining the creepy thought that any second a nuke might go off right there in D.C., maybe right beside the White House, the President didn’t hear McDavid.  “Just for the sake of argument, what would happen if we just ignored the North Koreans?”

McDavid snorted to let the President know just how preposterous his suggestion was.  “Finish digging their tank tunnels under the DMZ, put more agents throughout the South, maybe some with nukes, then hand us a long list of extortionate demands.”

“Like what?” Reiner sneered.  “More food for their starving kids?  A little respect for their borders?”

“Force us to pull out of South Korea, then force the South Korean military to lay down its arms.  They’ll simply roll across the DMZ and take over the world’s third largest industrial base.  Look, Mr President, it’s really quite simple—we cook their goose, or they’ll cook ours.”

“All right,” the President said, signaling the meeting’s conclusion.  “Let’s see what we can do about getting the Chinese into bed with us.”

The image amounted to a truly gross Freudian slip, and Reiner recovered from a snort almost in time to disguise it as a cough from that nasty summer cold going around.

The President was about to shoot him a withering look when Lorraine Walker stuck her graying head into the office to announce that the presidential helicopter was ready for the flight to Foxboro Academy, the school attended by his son Bryce.  Before hurrying out McDavid offered his steely-eyed condolences. 

The President grabbed his jacket and hurried out to the South Lawn where the Marine VH-60 was kicking up a lively gust.  Chip Garrison followed on his heels.  Two S.S. agents were in the forward cabin, leaving the President and his special aide alone in the back.  A chase chopper carrying four more agents lifted off a few seconds after Marine One.

“This was slipped under the door of my Georgetown office just this afternoon,” said Garrison as soon as they were off the ground.  He handed the President a plain white envelope containing a laser-printed message on copy paper.  It read: “Mr President, The First Lady is safe as long as you play by our rules.  This must remain strictly between you and me.  Dear Leader.”  A couple of spaces below the message was a long series of characters separated by slashes which the president recognized as some kind of URL, a web address.

“Looks like some hoax to me,” said the President.  Dear Leader indeed!

Garrison shook his head.  “I checked out the URL.  It had this picture.”  He handed the President a glossy sheet containing a low resolution color photo, probably taken with an ordinary digital camera and stored in JPEG format.  It was grainy but the subject was unmistakably Megan.  Her short black hair was wet, making her elegant neck look even longer.  She was wearing a white bathrobe and was sitting on an ornate armchair sipping from a coffee cup.  Behind her was a regal-looking canopied bed covered with ornate bedding.  The room seemed to be choking in red.  Nothing in Megan’s expression suggested she knew she was being photographed.

“It could have been faked,” the President said, not knowing what to think.  It sure as hell looked like Megan though.

“That’s more difficult than most people realize,” Garrison said.  “The neck, the legs, the arms.  They would have had to use someone who looked just like the First Lady.”

“Did you trace the URL?”

“The address is a server in Paris.  Apparently some French internet company is giving away free server space to anyone who signs up for a dialup account.  As you know the North Koreans have an intelligence operation out of Paris.  Even if we could trace the account’s owner, it would be meaningless.  The photo could have been uploaded to that URL from any computer in the world.  I’ve refrained from asking Langley for a workup until I checked with you.  The note does suggest we should keep it strictly between us.”

“So you think this is real?”

“As far as their having the First Lady, yes, Sir.  But I’m not convinced the abductors are North Koreans.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It just seems odd to ID themselves right up front like that.  And to sign the note as coming from their President.”

“Maybe they want to temper my response to this DMZ thing,” the President said.  “There would be no point in not identifying themselves.”

“It’s more their style to fabricate some local radical underground group that supports the North Korean cause.  That would give the same leverage without potential embarrassment if things turn sour.”

“Have they abducted anyone in the past?”

“A South Korean filmmaker and his actress wife while they were traveling in Hong Kong, presumably because their Dear Leader liked their movies.  Apparently, he’s quite a film buff with a massive archive of foreign movies.  Then, there have been numerous abductions from Japan, France and the U.S. which some believe have been the work of the NKs.”

“For what purpose?”

“The FBI database turned up no case where a demand was established.  But that’s not surprising since they would have demanded secrecy from the families of the abductees.  The speculation is they take people as leverage for extorting classified information or other advantages from well-placed family members.”   

“So maybe this is in keeping with their MO after all.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way, Sir.  It’s just that in the past, no one ever turned up a note taking credit for the abduction.  And they’ve never used an abduction as leverage in a highly publicized international confrontation.”

“But we don’t have a demand yet, so we don’t know yet what their motive is.”

“No, Sir.  But I expect they’ll send one soon.  Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Maybe it’s some kind of psychological warfare.  Aren’t they supposed to be into that sort of thing?”

“To beat them at their game, we need to figure out what it is.  It may make a huge difference to all concerned, especially the First Lady.”  Garrison’s eyes locked on the President’s.  “But before we do anything, we need to decide whether you want to risk pissing them off by letting our intelligence agencies in on it.” 

The President was silent.  Only three days earlier his big worry had been keeping Megan from filing for divorce.  Now, that fear was gone—as long as she was out of the picture.  Of course, if she somehow returned, she could well go through with the divorce.  On the other hand, if he failed to get her back safely, his presidency would be blemished.  The ideal scenario, President Taylor decided wistfully, would be to succeed in getting Megan back after the election.  If the web photo was to be believed, she didn’t exactly look to be in acute distress.  Probably best to put some wheels in motion so as not to look like he were sitting on his hands.

“Can’t we get Sam Hanson to put together a small team on a confidential basis to work from this note?”

“That would be impossible, Sir.  If we get Hanson to assign a team, CIA will find out about the note within hours and let it leak down to every field guy in the world if for no other reason than to make Hanson look bad.  That NK URL will get so many hits, it could become a top 5% site.  And they’d be able to see exactly where each hit came from.  I know for a fact from my FBI days that Hanson always knows what Underwood is up to.  We have to assume Martin Underwood keeps an eye on Hanson’s doings as well.  They’ve both got their boys spinning their wheels out there trying to find the abductors without a clue.  They’ll both end up passing the note down to all their boys just because they couldn’t stand the thought the other team might sneak an unfair advantage. 

“I think we pretty much have to tell our spooks and risk pissing off the abductors, or keep it to ourselves and pray three times a day.”

“I couldn’t live with myself if they did anything to Megan because of me,” the President declared.

“Then we’d better keep quiet and hope everything works out for the best.”  Garrison was disappointed, though he couldn’t exactly fault the President for not wanting to be the one to put the First Lady even more at risk.

“Unless you want to take a crack at it,” the President offered.  The notion of sending out his personal aide to track down the First Lady had a certain rough-and-ready appeal.  And being only one man with a pair of junior assistants, Chip wasn’t likely to succeed any time soon. 

“You must be kidding, Sir,” said Chip.  “It could take weeks, maybe months, for my little team to work all the angles.  And if it turns out the First Lady’s been shipped overseas, it could be even longer.”

“Don’t be modest, Chip,” said the President, glad for the chance to engage in at least the motions of securing his wife’s return.  “You’re a crackerjack agent.  Take whatever time you need to do the detective work and see where it leads.  You know you have my full support.  At the right moment we’ll call in whatever resources are needed to get her out.”

“But don’t you need me at the White House?”

“You’ll be reporting to me from the field.  I have a feeling you’ll have this solved so soon you’ll surprise the living daylights out of everyone.”  The President hadn’t quite forgiven his young aide for barging in on him so unceremoniously last night and for trying to push him to curtail his evening teas.  It was getting to be like living with his mother.  Having Chip out of his hair would be nice for a change.

“To be honest, Sir, I wasn’t the worst agent in FBI history.  And I have worked a couple of kidnappings.  I’ve been thinking about a few angles I wouldn’t mind checking out.”

“Wonderful,” the President said, glancing down at the Blue Ridge Mountains.  “I feel better already knowing someone I trust is on the case.  This can’t be easy for Bryce.  Now I can look him in the eye and tell him it’s only a matter of time before his mother’s back home.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Sir,” Garrison said.  In truth, he had begun to get a bit bored being cooped up as President Taylor’s special aide.  He could hardly sit still for thinking about his plan of attack.  He felt he would have a huge advantage over the others working on the kidnapping.  Having been assigned the task of staying on top of all developments that might affect the president’s personal interests, Garrison could confidently rule out several dead-end alleys right off the bat.  He had studied the note and the First Lady’s picture.  He had analyzed the timing of the past few day’s events.  He had arrived at some solid conclusions but had decided not to tell the President.  Not because he was disloyal to the man he was serving—that simply wasn’t in Garrison’s psychological makeup—but because the President had too much on his mind at the moment to listen to conjecture, no matter how brilliant.  Whoever the perpetrators were, Garrison felt sure of two things—they were acting extra-governmentally and they were somehow connected with Jack Tang.

The choppers touched down on the Foxboro Academy football field.  The baseball team had just finished practice and was clustered around a Gatorade dispensor on a bench at the edge of the field.  Among the boys in white and purple uniforms, Bryce Taylor was easy enough to spot—he was the one not gaping at the choppers.  The two additional agents the Secret Service director had personally assigned to Bryce that morning, the President noted approvingly, were positioned unobtrusively in the background.  As it was, Taylor was bracing himself for Bryce’s protests at the doubling of his security detail.  As the President stepped down to the field, he gave his son’s schoolmates a smile and a wave.  All returned the gesture with varying degrees of respect, goodwill and humor.  Bryce didn’t so much as glance up being evidently absorbed in a more interesting event somewhere on the horizon.  Even cutting the kid slack for the tribulations of adolescence, the President had to admit his son was every bit as beautiful, cold and baffling as his mother—not exactly the popular young kid he liked to recall himself as having been at that age.  Knowing better than to give his prickly offspring a hug, especially in full view of teammates, the President simply placed a hand on the boy’s broad skinny shoulders and nudged him into a stroll across the grass to the aluminum bleachers on the other side of the field. 

“How’s the batting average?”

“How’re the poll numbers?”

“Great.  Shot way up after I had your mother kidnapped to get some quick sympathy.”  The President was used to sparring with his son.  Often that was the only communication available to them.  “So how’s the batting average?”

“Shitty.  Plummeted after I found out you were coming out to visit.”

“You know why I came out here, don’t you?”

“Good for the poll numbers?”

“Exactly.  You’ve got the makings of a future president.”

“I’d rather eat shit.”

“You get to do a lot of that as president.”

“Is that why you’ve always got that shit-eating grin every time I get ambushed by your mug on TV?”

“You got it.”

That robbed the kid of any easy rejoinders.  In silence they climbed to the top row of bleachers and sat down.  On the other side of the field the baseball team was trudging up the long broad flight of redbrick steps that rose the sixty feet or so to the school’s front parapet.  The Secret Service agents, now eight in all, had repositioned themselves discreetly around the bleachers.  A cluster of curious townies had stopped across the street to gape first at the choppers, then at their president sitting on the bleachers.  A Dodge Charger carrying some laughing rednecks honked as it roared by on the street behind the bleachers. 

“You see all those agents around us?” the President asked.

“Who doesn’t?”

“You know what they’re for?”

“Making sure I can never lead a normal life?”

“They’re there to make the American people feel better knowing their President is well protected.”

“They sure did a super job protecting Mom.”  Bryce leaned back against the aluminum siding and folded his arms.

“That’s my point,” the President said.  “It isn’t really possible to protect anyone from a determined assailant.  Even with all these agents, you or I could be abducted or killed any time, if someone wants to badly enough.  There’s really no way to be completely safe and remain a functioning human being, much less a President.  Or a First Lady.  Or a First Son.”

“The difference is, you wanted to be the Big Guy.  Mom and I never wanted any part of all this.”

“And that’s the only thing that I feel truly bad about every day of my life in the White House.  I would give my left arm to spare you from the imposition on your lives.  But I can’t.  I can only hope you can somehow understand and forgive me.”

“Well, I don’t understand,” Bryce cried in exasperation.  “As far as I can see, it wouldn’t make any difference who’s in the big white house.  Everyone knows you and Nancy Bartlett are both a couple of selfish, power-hungry jerks who would sell your families for three poll points.”

“That’s a bit unfair.  I like to think what I’m doing will make the world a safer, cleaner, richer place by the time you’re grown up and raising a couple of snotnosed little ingrates.”

“Ingrateful?  Not me, Dad.  I thank my lucky stars every time I turn around and catch my friends snorting over some juicy tabloid story.  But then I guess you’re porking Miss Eggroll and Miss Jiggleshow to make the world a safer place for me and my kids.”

“A wise man once said, ‘Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear’.”

“You mean the guy who got off O J Simpson?”

“No, the guy who screwed around on his estranged wife and got caught.”

Bryce discharged a lungful of air in a hurry and looked away.  “It’s none of my business anyway.  Don’t you have to get back and sign some bills or something?”

“Your mother’s fine, Bryce.  We’ll have her back soon.”  The President clapped his son on the back and gave him a quick squeeze before his arm was shrugged off.

Despite himself, Bryce couldn’t keep from asking, “You got a demand?”

After a brief hesitation, the President nodded.

“What the hell do they want?”

“Nothing, yet, except to keep it secret.  It’s important that you not mention this to anyone.”

Bryce turned to glare at his father.  Quietly, menacingly, he murmured, “Whatever they want, you give it to them.  Got that?  If you don’t, I’ll—I’ll ruin you!”

For a second the President thought the snarling little shit was about to grab him by the collar.  Evidently, Foxboro Academy was going to seed, letting its students stay up late watching old gangster movies, the ones with a lot of smoke, trenchcoats and collar-grabbing.  Megan had thoroughly spoiled the little brat.

Abruptly the President stood, forcing a fatherly smile for anyone watching.  Bryce stayed sitting on the bleacher while his father made his way down to the field and hurried into his chopper, toward which four secret service agents were now converging, for the flight back to the big white house.  The President was seriously annoyed.  His son had all but spoiled what should have been a moment of father-son solidarity.