by Ben Coes
“And do we have more poison?”
“No. I explained that. I can try and re-create the strain, but even then the odds of achieving the precise compound needed to create an effective antidote … my God, Jenna, it’s small. Too small. There’s timing, temperature, and a million other factors.”
“So the only way Dewey lives is if he goes to Pyongyang and gets the antidote before Yong-sik? There’s no chance—Yong-sik will get there first.”
“Can you call the agent who planted it?” said Morris. “He could move the antidote.”
“And if Yong-sik sends what we ask, he dies?”
“It’s better than Dewey dying.”
“It’s moot,” said Jenna, thinking aloud. “We can only reach Talmadge by mail. We wouldn’t have the time.”
“Wait,” said Morris. “I just realized. We may have sent two antidotes.”
“Two? Why? Why didn’t you tell me—”
“We sometimes do,” said Morris, “if there’s a break in the custody chain. In case of breakage in transit. Hold on.”
Jenna shut her eyes, shaking her head back and forth, waiting for what seemed like an eternity. Morris came back on the line.
“Harvey sent two,” said Morris.
Jenna breathed a sigh of relief, then realized it meant practically nothing if Dewey couldn’t get to it.
“The problem is,” continued Morris, “we send two because they do often break in transit. What will the agent do if both survive?”
“Hide it,” she said, “at least that’s what he’s trained to do.”
Across the bullpen, she could see into Hector Calibrisi’s office. She couldn’t tell if he was in there, but she moved to the door and walked quickly around the edge of the bullpen. She looked inside, seeing no one.
“Do you know where he is?” said Jenna.
“He went to the State Department,” said Lindsay. “Is everything okay?”
“No.”
Jenna ran back to her office. She found her old cell phone, the one from MI6, and dialed. This time, it started ringing almost immediately. It rang for half a minute then went to an automated voice mail message. Jenna dialed again. This time, it only rang once before Fields picked up.
“Jenna,” said Fields. “It didn’t take you long, did it?”
“I need your help, Jayson,” she said.
“And I told you, I’m midstream. I can’t.”
“Please,” said Jenna softly. “It’s a guy just like you. He would do the same thing. He’s in trouble. Please, Jayson.”
Jenna’s voice was filled with desperation and emotion.
Fields let out an exasperated groan.
“Fine,” he said. “Where is he?”
“At the Grand Hyatt.”
* * *
Yong-sik was carried to the elevators, his eyes closed, his clothing drenched in perspiration. One of the soldiers inserted a white card in the elevator console and the elevator descended without stopping until it reached the basement, where a black limousine was idling, the back door open. Yong-sik was carried to the limousine and set down on the backseat. Three soldiers climbed in with him and the limo screeched forward, moving quickly through the parking garage and shooting from the hotel.
Fifteen minutes later, Yong-sik’s jet was moving down the runway, skirting above the blue water of the South China Sea. North Korea’s top military commander was clinging to life. His temperature was 104 degrees. His body was wracked by convulsions.
An hour into the flight, Yong-sik regained consciousness as his temperature abated. Then he remembered the man at the hotel. He looked out the window and realized that nothing would ever be the same, that in the next twenty-four hours he would either die or commit treason.
“You have lost everything,” he whispered to himself. “All for a game of blackjack you didn’t even get to play.”
* * *
Jenna entered Polk’s office on the second floor of CIA headquarters. It was one of three offices Polk kept inside the sprawling facility that housed the Agency. As head of the Directorate of Operations, he had responsibility for both Special Activities Division and Special Operations Group, the two prime pieces of the Directorate of Operations. The other offices were in the basement, inside the two separate suites. This was where Polk went for more formal meetings with military leadership, senators and key congressional staff, and high-ranking visitors from foreign intelligence services. Polk also used the space to come and do paperwork—and to think.
Polk was seated in a white leather chair when she entered. He didn’t need to ask. He could see the urgency on Jenna’s face.
“What happened?”
“Dewey’s been poisoned.”
Polk was a short man. He was bald and wore glasses with tortoiseshell rims. He wore a yellow Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, gray flannels, a green-and-silver-striped rep tie, and cordovan loafers. A product of Groton and Trinity, Polk would have looked at home in the faculty lounge at any number of New England boarding schools—but appearances were deceiving. It was Polk who ran the CIA’s vaunted kill teams, the individual charged with executing covert missions across the globe.
Polk had never warmed to Dewey. He was against Calibrisi bringing him in-house and he hated the lack of predictability that came with everything Dewey did. But he understood full well the value of Dewey’s involvement. Calibrisi was close to Dewey on a personal level. Polk was unmarried and had few personal attachments to people. Yet, something connected Polk to Dewey in a way even he refused to admit. Dewey somehow took operations to places they were never meant to go—places Polk originally joined the CIA to find. Trouble always seemed to find Dewey but in that trouble oftentimes lay the seeds of darker truths the Agency’s analysts could never see.
* * *
Jenna explained the situation, including the fact that Dewey was now on a plane bound for Osan Base in South Korea, near the border with the enemy, and that a second antidote existed—and may or may not have survived the long trip to Pyongyang.
“What will Talmadge do with it, if it survived?” asked Polk.
“He would’ve hidden it inside his apartment.”
“That’s a start. What are you thinking?”
“The only scenario I see is infiltrating the border and hijacking a vehicle,” said Jenna. “There’s no other way. He can’t enter under some sort of tourist visa. He’s barely alive right now. It needs to be something where he can move on his own. He’ll stand out like a sore thumb. By the time they finish interrogating him, even with a decent cover, he’ll be dead.”
Polk nodded. “I agree.”
Jenna sat down in one of the two leather chairs in front of Polk’s desk.
“I don’t know what to do.”
Polk stood up and walked to a filing cabinet. He opened a drawer and sifted through various files until he found what he was looking for. He removed a red-bordered manila folder with the words “EYES ONLY” printed diagonally across the cover. The tab said “Operation Achilles.”
“Driving won’t work,” said Polk. “There’s not enough time. Look at this. We never used it. It was designed twenty years ago, a contingency plan for taking out Kim’s father.”
Jenna took the file and started reading. Polk sat in his desk chair, looking through a stack of papers with a pen in his hand, occasionally writing something down or signing his name, then flipping the page, all the while watching as Jenna pored through the file.
When she was done, she looked up at Polk.
“It’s brilliant,” she said. “Did you do this?”
Polk had a blank expression on his face.
“No,” said Polk. “We had another architect back then, that is, another architect on your level, Jenna.”
Jenna blushed.
“My level, that’s ridiculous.…”
Polk smiled. He took a piece of paper and scrawled a phone number down.
“Call Mark Prestipino. He’s in charge of Osan. Tell him I told you to call. Also
, tell him this is a Category Four Directive.”
30
GRAND HYATT HOTEL
MACAU
A tall black man moved swiftly through the sleek, well-lit lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. He had short hair, and wore a striped polo shirt, jeans, and running shoes.
His name was Jayson Fields.
He climbed aboard an empty elevator and hit the button for the eighteenth floor. At eighteen, he got off the elevator and moved down the hallway. He went around the corner and came to room 1844. He looked both ways to make sure nobody was looking, then inserted a thick white plastic card which had a wire extending off the back. He inserted the other end of the wire into his cell phone and pressed the “Start” icon and waited as the screen became green lines of numbers, scrolling from top to bottom in dizzying fashion.
After more than ninety seconds, a light on the door handle suddenly turned green. He grabbed the handle and twisted the knob, removing the card and putting it in his pocket along with his cell.
He entered the suite, removing a thin stainless steel case from his back pocket. He came into the living room, but it was empty. He went through a door into the bedroom and turned on the lights. Dewey was on his side, tucked into a fetal position. His eyes were closed. His body appeared red. The man could see him shivering.
He stepped in front of Dewey and knelt down.
“Dewey,” said Fields, reaching over and lifting one of Dewey’s eyelids.
Dewey reached out and grabbed Fields by the wrist, but his grip was weak and Fields continued to examine Dewey’s eyes.
“My name is Jayson Fields. I work for British intelligence. Jenna sent me. How you feeling?”
“Not too good,” Dewey whispered.
Fields removed a syringe from the thin case.
“It’ll sting,” said Fields.
In one fluid motion, Fields jammed a needle into Dewey’s neck, then pressed the plunger.
“What is it?”
“Adrenaline. Enough to get you on a plane.”
Dewey cringed as the liquid hit his bloodstream. He closed his eyes as it took effect. When he opened them again, he was breathing rapidly.
“Where’s your clothing?”
Slowly, Dewey sat up, then climbed to his feet. He found his jeans and shirt in the bathroom, pulling them on. He found his leather weekend bag and reached inside and took out his knife, inside a leather ankle sheath, and put it around his left leg. He stuffed his gun and a few other belongings inside the bag.
“How long was I out?” said Dewey.
“I have no fucking clue, but we need to get going.”
Dewey stared blankly at Fields.
“Where?”
“The airport, that’s all I know.”
31
RYONGSONG RESIDENCE
PYONGYANG
Kim stumbled awkwardly into the bathroom. He was drunk, but that’s not why he was stumbling. The nausea was overwhelming.
The bathroom was huge, with marble everywhere, two bathtubs, a large open glass-walled shower, and four separate sinks. Kim made it to the first sink by the time he started vomiting.
With every passing hour, Kim felt the cancer coming on. The one thing that got him through it was the thought that perhaps it was all in his mind, that the cancer didn’t exist, that he would live forever.
He finished throwing up. His face was drenched in sweat. He looked down into the sink. Blood streaked the brownish liquid from his stomach.
When Kim accepted the fact that the cancer was real, the blood his own, the pain that approaches before death, he found the strength to keep going in a different thought, a more powerful idea. He thought of America. The country that looked down on him, that sought to control him as it had sought to control his father. “Democracy,” a word America used to colonize the world with as much death as any dictator. It was the thought of America that guided Kim. He wouldn’t destroy America. He couldn’t destroy it. Only America itself could do that. But he could rip into the very fabric of the country in a way that would last indelibly, as 9/11 had. He would get the blame, but Kim saw it as credit. He would be one of the last to fight back against the coming Americanization of the world.
He saw movement in the mirror. He saw his wife’s face.
“What do you want?” he said.
She was crying.
“I want to know if you need my help, my leader, my brave one.”
Kim shook his head.
“Leave me,” he said. “Now!”
32
IRAN DESK
CIA
Lloyd Edgington’s phone started beeping as he stared at his computer screen.
DIA Parizeau, W
An hour before, Edgington had called Parizeau, the top satellites expert at the Defense Intelligence Agency, requesting retasking of one of DIA’s satellites. Edgington wanted to scan above the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan north of the DMZ, the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. Edgington had also asked Parizeau to have DIA’s computers sift through archival satellite feeds from Iran over the past month. Edgington needed Parizeau to see if there was any unusual activity. He needed to find out why Paria was in Macau to meet with Yong-sik.
Edgington picked up the phone.
“Hi, Will,” said Edgington. “Do you have anything?”
“I think I might,” said Parizeau. “So I called NSA. They keep track of all planes and ships that go to or come from Iran, down to the GPS. I ran the coordinates of every ship or plane coming out of Iran for the past month. I was able to locate the plane that arrived in Macau, Paria’s plane, I guess. It’s still sitting on the tarmac. But there’s something else. A container ship left Hormuz. It popped the algorithm.”
“What does that mean?” said Edgington.
“The ship is in the Yellow Sea. It’s in Nampo, a city on the coast. It arrived last night.”
“Can you take some decent pics?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem.”
33
OSAN AIR FORCE BASE
SOUTH KOREA
Colonel Mark Prestipino felt one of his cells vibrating. It wasn’t the one he usually used. It was his private cell, the number unknown to most people. In fact, only three people knew the number: his wife, back in Chicago; General Torey Krug, commander of JSOC Pacific Theater; and Bill Polk at the CIA.
He looked at the screen.
URGENT
“Presto,” he said.
“My name is Jenna Hartford, sir, and I work for the Central Intelligence Agency,” came Jenna’s soft, aristocratic British accent. “Bill Polk said to call you.”
“How is Bill?” said Prestipino, his voice gruff.
“Fine. It’s a Category Four Directive, Colonel.”
“Oh, shit. Let’s hear it.”
“Colonel Prestipino, we are midstream in a Tier One operation involving North Korea. The operation has been complicated and we need your help.”
“How do I know you’re CIA?”
Jenna ignored the question.
“We have a priority asset who needs to get inside North Korea without being killed,” said Jenna. “He needs to get to Pyongyang.”
“Good luck,” said Prestipino.
“He’s an American,” said Jenna. “In fact, he was a Ranger, like you, Colonel. He’s been poisoned. The only antidote is in Pyongyang.”
Prestipino stepped to the window and looked north, toward North Korea.
“Jenna, the border is extremely well guarded,” said Prestipino. “Remember that war we fought? There are no weak points.”
“Actually, that’s not true,” said Jenna. “There’s a stretch of coastline south of Haeju, on the west coast. Enter correctly and you have some time.”
“As you would expect, every inch of border is on SAT,” said Prestipino. “It’s all tied into the KPA missile defenses. We might be able to get someone near the shore—but they’re shooting everything from the DMZ all the way out to the international waterline. The o
nly way to deal with that is an SDV, which we don’t have.”
“There’s a difference between being seen and being shot,” said Jenna. “A helicopter moving due east at this particular place will be seen on satellite immediately. But it will have approximately seventeen minutes until a missile hits it. We need to drop our asset as close to Pyongyang as we can.”
“So we fly inside the border, drop him, and turn around? It doesn’t work. They’ll hit the chopper way before it’s back over the border.”
“That’s why we called,” said Jenna. “I have an idea. Actually, it’s Bill’s idea. We’re going to have to sacrifice a helicopter. We’ll also need a corpse or two.”
34
KOREAN PEOPLE’S ARMY HEADQUARTERS
PYONGYANG
Yong-sik uploaded the two key documents the Americans wanted. His hands shook. He’d started to feel the fever coming on again. He needed the antidote. There was no time to fuck around with the CIA if he wanted to live. He wanted to live. He would have died for Kim’s father, his mentor. But Kim Jong-un, Yong-sik decided, wasn’t someone he was willing to die for. He was a madman. His father and grandfather would be astonished and deeply embarrassed if they could see him now.
The two documents were North Korea’s most closely held secrets, a report entitled:
KPA MILITARY POWER ASSESSMENT AND STATE OF READINESS
And a thinner document:
SUPREME LEADER’S DECISION MATRIX
Both documents were updated in real time, throughout the day. The first laid out in precise detail all assets of the Korean People’s Army in terms of manpower, weapons, border vulnerabilities, missile program assessment and data, and, perhaps most important, nuclear program. Everything was there. It was a virtual blueprint for a capable military planning group on how to attack North Korea.
The second document was ten pages long. Nine of the pages each had a small map on top. Each page displayed a different location: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, and other cities in the American Southwest. The maps showed each city with circles on it, with numbers.
