404: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

Decker made it to wharf No. 2 a tad early and he decided to check out the stalls by the river. Vendors were hawking all manner of wares—from food, to North Korean currency, to propaganda posters. Most of the women behind the tables spoke heavily accented Mandarin to the tourists, while chatting with each other in Korean.

  “You speak Chinese?” they said with surprise when Decker chimed back in some semblance of Mandarin. “Canadian?” they said over and over again, pointing up at his hat.

  He nodded, grinned broadly, and snapped off a few pictures.

  After strolling about for a while, Decker picked up some Korean barbecue on the square and ate it standing up by the river. Best of all was the spicy side of kim chi. All along the riverfront, entrepreneurs were renting binoculars and telescopes to tourists, mostly Chinese, eager for a glimpse of the past.

  This must have been what it was like in the golden age, when Mao ruled the land, Decker thought, before Deng Xiaoping’s long march to a market economy.

  When he was finished eating, Decker strolled along the dock, looking for slip number 14. Speed boats. Chinese junks. Ferries. All manner of boats choked the wharf. Decker spotted a Chinese junk which he thought was the one he’d been searching for. But, when he tried to climb up the gangway, a man at the top of the stairs took one look at his ticket and turned him away.

  “Wrong boat,” he told him, pointing abeam of the junk. “That’s yours,” he said with a laugh. Yāo sì. Yāo sì. Number fourteen. Then he spat into the muddy brown water.

  The number fourteen is considered unlucky in China. Yāo sì literally means one four in Mandarin, but it also sounds like yào sĭ, which means wants to die. Decker stared down at the beat-up, blue and white fishing boat moored alongside the junk. It figures, he thought.

  The vessel looked like a hulk, only marginally seaworthy. Two scrawny men were crouched in the stern by the winch, mending nets, puffing cigarettes. When Decker jumped down to the deck, they barely glanced up from their work. They simply gestured toward the cabin and prepared to cast off.

  Decker shrugged and made his way belowdecks. The cabin smelled of kerosene and dead fish.

  A large handsome man in his fifties, dressed in a navy blue jogging suit, sat on a bench by a porthole looking out the port side at the rear of the cabin. His face was lit up by a single kerosene lamp dangling down from the ceiling. Decker took in the wide, uncompromising chin, the full lips, the aquiline nose and brown hair, now quite gray at the temples. It was Ben Seiden.

  As soon as he saw Decker, Seiden leapt to his feet, took two strides, and picked Decker up in a bear hug. “John,” he said with a laugh. “It’s good to see you, my friend. You look good. Older, of course. Don’t we all. Don’t we all. But still good. Welcome to China.” He had a thick Israeli accent that always made it sound as if he were carrying rocks in his mouth. “Still working out, I can feel.”

  “Ben,” Decker said. Just then the boat’s engine started to sputter and cough, and to finally start up. Decker could sense the vessel shiver out of the slip.

  “No troubles, I see. You got the camera. Those Japanese. Still the best, I hate to say it, when it comes to things photography.”

  Decker smiled and tapped the Nikon. “Yes, thanks,” he replied. “Thanks for everything.”

  “Please,” Seiden said, raising his hand. “You helped me track down one of Israel’s most wanted terrorists and, in the process, prevented a major catastrophe. The Mossad doesn’t forget its friends. As far as I’m concerned, at least, we owe you. All of us. Although, I must say, your call did surprise me.”

  Seiden walked over to the bench and sat down once again. “Come. Sit with me.” He patted the bench.

  Decker took off his backpack and sat down beside him.

  “We’ll go topside once we’re out in the river and away from the dock,” Seiden added. “No point tempting fate. Or the KPA watchers. You’ll get a good look at our neighbors in the Hermit Kingdom soon enough. Let’s just chat for a bit, shall we? So, tell me. How’s Becca?”

  Decker shrugged. “She’s still in a medically-induced coma. The doctors say she’s recovering but...you know. It’s going to take months.”

  Seiden slipped an arm around Decker, squeezed him tight. “When I heard,” he said, leaning closer, “I just couldn’t believe it. After all this time. El Aqrab.” He said the name in his ear like an incantation.

  Putt, putt, putt—the boat engine stuttered along.

  “Turns out you were right,” Decker said. “Turns out you couldn’t believe it. It was Ali Hammel.”

  Seiden sighed. “I still dream about him, you know. To this day. I still wake up sometimes as if I’m in that apartment in Tel Aviv once again. That man and those children. Wrapped up. Burned that way.” He paused, caught himself. “And how about you, my friend? Still seeing Emily? No more pies?”

  “No,” Decker said. “No more pies.” He shifted to his feet. “You know what it’s like, Ben. You have children. It’s one thing when you risk your own life for the job. You’re prepared for that. But when they come after your family. Your children. How are they, anyway? Your daughters, I mean. And Dara?”

  “Fine,” Seiden answered. “They’re all fine, although they’re not children anymore. Ruth is twenty now, at university in Jerusalem. Rachael’s eighteen. It seems like only yesterday that they were Becca’s age. If you want my advice, take advantage of this tragedy, John, and spend as much time with your daughter as possible. Soon enough, she won’t want to be seen with you. In two or three years. Trust me. I know. You need to appreciate every minute with them when they’re young.” Seiden stood up beside Decker. He was so tall that he had to duck down to avoid hitting his head. “Come on,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Let’s get some air. It stinks of fish in here.”

  The boat had swung out into the belly of the river. A cold wind tore at his face as Decker stepped from the cabin. A hundred yards or so away, a cruiser emerged from a blanket of mist. A North Korean naval ship. Decker felt a chill for a moment. He zipped up his jacket. A group of men in their fifties, wearing bulky blue uniforms and impossibly large hats, were smoking, leaning on the cruiser’s rails, chatting. Seiden waved at them and they waved back.

  “Take a picture,” he said. “You’re a tourist, remember?”

  Decker snapped off a few shots.

  They passed by another fishing boat. The cabin door was open and Decker could see a skinny shirtless man squatting over a washbowl within, scrubbing his face. Even from this distance, you could count his ribs, he was so thin.

  The boat cruised past an abandoned-looking factory, a park, and then a school, in front of which a group of children were playing an intense game of soccer. They were approaching Sinuiju’s main port, it appeared, if you could call it that, where a number of North Korean-flagged ships lay empty, run-down. One small boat had just tied up at the jetty and a group of laborers was busy unloading the cargo. Many buildings sported propaganda posters. Decker could make out one in particular, bright orange and red, which declared the new supreme leader, Kim Johng-un, the Sun of the 21st Century.

  Their fishing boat was running so close to the bank now that Decker could clearly see the weathered features of the people moving about on the shore. Children laughed and played and splashed in the shallows. Men fished with cane poles. People cruised through the park on beat-up old bicycles. All under the watchful eyes of armed guards in military uniforms, perched high on the riverbanks, patrolling the border. They all look so skinny, thought Decker. With hardly any flesh on their bones. He took pictures and waved at them but not a single person acknowledged their presence, or the presence of any of the other tourist boats skimming along, their decks bristling with sightseers, pointing and staring.

  “So, are you ready?” said Seiden. He too was staring out at the shore.

  “Ready?”

  “To tell me why you’re here. Why you called me.”

  Decker took a deep breath. “What I’m about to tell you, I haven’t told any
one else. I want your word, Ben, that you won’t pass this on. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Go on.”

  “Your word.”

  “You have it.”

  “It all began when I stumbled across a breach at Westlake Defense Systems,” said Decker. Slowly but surely, as the boat drifted along the broad muddy river, Decker told Seiden about the raid on H2O2’s loft in Philadelphia, the bombing in Georgetown, the assault on the safe house in Brooklyn.

  “But if Ali Hammel and his cell were all killed in that raid,” Seiden said, “if El Aqrab died on La Palma, why are you here?”

  “I’m mounting a mission. Tonight.”

  “Tonight? What kind of mission?” asked Seiden suspiciously.

  “A very small mission. Only me. Although I could use some logistical support. What do you know about the Korean People’s Army cyber forces?”

  Seiden continued to stare at the river. “They operate out of a host of hotels throughout the entire region,” he said. “Though mostly here in Dandong. Some in Sunyang down the coast. Why do you ask?” He looked back at Decker.

  “What else?”

  Seiden shrugged. “The KPA Joint Chiefs Cyber Warfare Unit 121 has over six hundred hackers. They’re by far the largest and best-trained cyber force, specializing in disabling South Korea’s military command and control and communications networks. The Enemy Secret Department Cyber Psychological Warfare Unit 204 has a hundred. The Central Party’s Investigations Department Unit 35, though smaller, is also a highly capable team.” Seiden turned from the rail. He smiled at Decker and said, “And Unit 110 operates out of four floors of the Shanghai Hotel right here in downtown Dandong. We’ve spotted them installing new fiber optic cables and computer systems there recently. They’re the guys responsible for the attacks back in July of ’09, after the North Koreans tested that nuclear device near Kimchaek. Similar to the PLA’s Unit 61398 in Shanghai. Over a period of less than five days, they initiated DDoS attacks by zombie PCs in a botnet against a host of South Korean and American targets, as many as a million requests per second, eventually bringing down Treasury, Secret Service, FTC and DOT servers. In total, North Korea has almost one thousand cyber agents acting in cells throughout China. They generally choose candidates at the elementary-school level and groom them specifically to become hackers, train them in programming and hardware in middle school and high school, and then send them on to the Command Automation University in Pyongyang. There are about seven hundred students there now. Some even infiltrate Japan to learn the latest computer skills there. The worst part about it is that while they train them to become experts at disrupting South Korean and American systems, we have no way to fight back. They barely have an Internet infrastructure in North Korea. Unlike us, they have nothing to take down.”

  Decker looked at the Korean side of the river. He could see what appeared to be a Ferris wheel through the trees. The baskets were wooden and narrow with steep roofs, painted red, blue and green. Even from this distance they appeared shabby, the paint peeling in places. A mist blew in off the river and the Ferris wheel faded away.

  Seiden put a hand on Decker’s shoulder. “I know that most of my peers consider me well past my prime, but even I know that you would never be asking for help—my help, John, using Mossad resources—unless yours were off limits,” he said. “Which means that either you’ve gone rogue or you don’t trust your own people. Which is it? If I’m going to be sticking my neck out for you, I think it only fair I should know.”

  “I have it on good authority that the Crimson Scimitar cell in New York was set up,” Decker said. “They weren’t getting their orders from the Brotherhood’s leadership council in Tehran. They were coming from here, from Dandong. They were being manipulated by North Korea’s Unit 110. With at least tacit approval from China.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  Decker nodded.

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “You’ve heard of Stuxnet, of course,” Seiden said. “And Duqu and Flame. The worms that our Unit 8200 and your NSA built to infect Iran’s nuclear plant at Natanz. Everyone assumes that we were responsible for the bad lines of code that let Stuxnet escape to the Net.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “No. Strangely enough. Sometimes even Israeli politicians can be taken at face value.” He laughed gruffly. “But whoever added those bad lines of code wanted the world to think it was us. When were they written? Jerusalem local time. And the coding is distinctly Israeli. For a while we thought it was you guys. Flame’s command for communicating with Bluetooth-enabled devices was named Beetlejuice, after all. And an email carrying Duqu into an Iranian company last year was sent by a Jason B, as in Jason Bourne of the Ludlum thrillers. That’s pure NSA. It’s almost as if whoever scripted that code was trying to make the Americans think it was us, and the Israelis think it was you. Then, quite by accident, one of our analysts traced a transmission back to Dandong, to a specific QQ number, the Chinese equivalent of an IM screen name, and servers controlled by KPA’s Unit 110.”

  “But why would the Koreans want to release Stuxnet to the Net? So that it could be reverse engineered? So someone else could figure out how it works? I don’t get it.”

  “To put Israel and the United States at each other’s throats, perhaps. To sow discord. Or to ensure that the code was embedded in other systems, including those in both the U.S. and Israel. We don’t know. That’s what we’ve been trying to find out. Unfortunately, ever since the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, things have gotten somewhat tense on the Korean peninsula. Kim Johng-un’s still untested. He talks about giving up their nuclear program, and then he goes ahead and successfully launches a satellite. No one is happy with this unstable mess so close to the world’s fastest growing economy. Although a man...a man who’s gone rogue, as it were. With a grudge, perhaps. Maybe we can help each other. Why are you here, John? Even if Unit 110 set up that Crimson Scimitar cell, your superiors would hardly send you—no offense—to investigate. They’d send someone from SCS. I mean, you’re not exactly anyone’s favorite field agent. Why don’t you trust your own people, John? What’s going on?”

  Decker smiled grimly. The SCS or Special Collection Service combined the clandestine skills of the CIA with the technical capabilities of the NSA, and were generally the nerdy spies government called upon when they wanted to put sophisticated eavesdropping equipment on the ground. An umbrella could double as an ad hoc parabolic antenna in a pinch when placed strategically in a tree along the microwave narrowbeam of some enemy field office.

  “Unit 110 wasn’t just communicating with Ali Hammel and his cell,” Decker answered. He glanced over at Seiden. “They’ve also been communicating secretly with someone within the Center itself.”

  “A mole? At the NCTC? Are you sure?” Seiden looked thunderstruck. “Who? CIA? NSA? FBI? Do you know who it is?”

  After a moment, Decker smiled his crooked smile and said, “Me.” He spat into the murky water. “Mine was the only terminal compromised. I’m being set up, Ben. And there’s only one way I can find out why, and who’s doing it, and that’s by breaking into North Korea’s Cyber Command.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Monday, December 9

  Two figures in black carrying duffel bags dashed across the top of the Hualian Department Store, ducked beneath a twenty-foot sign with red and white neon characters, and swung in behind a jumble of air conditioning units. They paused for a moment at the lip of the building, peeked over the parapet, and stared down at the street eighteen stories below.

  Scooters and cars jammed the thoroughfare. It was just after midnight but couples and groups of young men still crowded the sidewalks, forcing many pedestrians to spill out onto the boulevard or to pick their way carefully between lines of parked cars. In nearby alleyways, laundry, strung up on clotheslines, fluttered like Tibetan prayer flags in the breeze blowing in off the river. Cars honked. Boom boxes blared
. Someone was cleaning his dishes on an adjacent fire escape. Someone else was smoking a cigarette. It was just another Sunday night in Dandong.

  “Once you’re across, you’ll be on your own,” Seiden said, looking over at Decker. “It’s one thing for me to help you out unofficially, because of our friendship, but my government can’t be seen to be linked to this mission.”

  Decker, his head completely covered, save for a slit for his eyes, continued to stare down at the street. “Yeah, you said that before.”

  “Just so you understand.”

  “I get it,” said Decker. “I’m on my own. I’m...I’m not very good with heights, truth be told, Ben.”

  “It’s not too late to call things off.”

  Decker turned and faced Seiden. “They tried to kill Becca,” he snapped. “They almost killed me. And now they’re trying to make me look like a traitor. There’s no going back, Ben.” He shrugged, trying to settle himself. “And besides,” he added, “what’s there to go back to if I can’t prove that I’m innocent, if I can’t figure out who’s setting me up?”

  “As I said, there’ll be at least one guard on the other side of the roof. Maybe two,” Seiden added. “It varies, although there doesn’t appear to be any order to their posting rotation. Once you take care of them, you’ll have ten minutes to anchor your line, lower yourself to the cables, set the transponder, and return. Here.” He handed Decker a box. “Like I showed you before. We have a truck parked a few blocks away that will pick up the signals. But remember. They rotate the guards every hour. And once the men you’ve dispatched are discovered, they’ll find the transponder. That means we’ll only have forty minutes, probably less, to hack into their systems. And John.” He tapped him gently on the forearm. “Don’t hesitate. If it comes down to it, use your gun or your knife. Being a codebreaker will only get you killed now. Don’t think. Just react.”

  Decker slipped the box into the zippered pouch in his vest. Next, he unslung the crossbow from his back. He pulled out a bolt and secured it to the bundle of Kevlar line in the bag at his feet. Moments later the rope was exposed, coiled and ready. Decker knelt down and took aim.