by Ward Larsen
Either way, a question for Mordechai later.
As he passed directly in front of the house—the only time he would do so in the light of day—Slaton took out his phone and pretended to thumb out a text. He looked up momentarily, as if awaiting a reply, and as he did the camera drifted casually to record a panorama image of the home and surrounding grounds. He glanced once at the house itself, noting that one room on the first floor was brightly lit, as was one on the second. The other two front windows remained dark.
The house slipped behind, and Slaton crossed the street to avoid a pair of elderly women, two doors down, who were chatting amiably across a white fence. At the first side street he turned right—he’d drawn the women’s notice, but he was reasonably sure they weren’t alarmed.
Altogether, it was a neighborhood like a hundred others around Vienna. A place with nominal security to counter a nominal threat. A place much like the one he and Christine had shared briefly in Virginia. How long had it been? Three years? The memory seemed so detached it felt like a dream.
He reached the Renault ten minutes later. Ten after that, Slaton was merging into the river of traffic heading south toward Vienna.
THIRTY-THREE
Tarek El-Masri watched the final cask as it was removed from the huge airplane. The jet was an Antonov AN-124, the largest cargo aircraft in the world, and had been chartered from the Russian heavy lift carrier Volga-Dnepr. There were Western freight carriers that might have been more reputable, and certainly more expensive, but the Russians knew their protocols when it came to shipping high-level radioactive material. Truth be told, there was also a more basic logistical reason for choosing the AN-124: it was the only airplane on earth with enough lift capacity and deck strength to haul three Type B shipping casks, each of which weighed as much as a main battle tank.
They had landed at Évreux-Fauville Air Base, two miles outside Évreux, France. The three heavy trucks receiving their loads faced a long journey, the AREVA reprocessing facility in La Hague being over a hundred miles distant. Fortunately for El-Masri, that would be an ordeal borne by others—French security teams were now responsible for the material. For his team, the worst was behind them: in particular, last night’s nervous trek across the lawless Pakistani frontier.
“Our charter flight to Paris is running late.”
El-Masri turned to see Henri with a smartphone in his hand.
“How late?” he asked.
“Two hours. We will miss our connection.”
El-Masri sighed. He was extremely tired, his limbs feeling like they were filled with lead. He looked wistfully at the Antonov. Unfortunately, it had fulfilled its contract, and for the ride home they’d all been booked on a charter out of nearby Caen, then a connection at Paris Charles de Gaulle to Vienna.
“What are our options?” El-Masri asked.
“I have talked to Air France—they said we may be able to get home tonight.”
Had it not come from Henri, El-Masri would have remarked on the incompetence of France’s flagship air carrier. As it was, he lifted the clipboard in his hand and went back to signing. Authentication forms, RFID verifications, security seals, chain-of-possession documents. He was thankful the weight of the paperwork hadn’t grounded the Antonov in Pakistan.
El-Masri was midway through the fifth page when the signature line seemed to blur. His hand began shaking right before his eyes, and he suddenly swooned. The world went black. The next thing he knew, he was sitting on the ground with Henri at his elbow.
“Monsieur … are you all right?”
El-Masri blinked a few times. The world seemed to reappear. “Yes … yes, I’m fine. Help me up.”
Henri did, and once back on his feet an embarrassed El-Masri swatted the dust off the seat of his pants.
“We should go inside and sit down,” said Henri, pointing to the small aviation operations building. “I will get you something to drink.”
“No, I’ll be fine. We’ve had a difficult schedule for the last few days. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“All the same, you should at least take some water.”
El-Masri nodded, more to divert Henri than because he thought it would do any good. The Frenchman turned toward the building, and El-Masri said, “We’ll be done here in an hour. Call the airline and see what they can do to expedite things.” Henri said he would, and El-Masri called out after him, “And once the plans are confirmed, send word to the main office. I think we have all earned a day off tomorrow.”
Henri waved.
El-Masri picked up his clipboard, a pen hanging from the attached string. With his free hand he rubbed his forehead. He was glad this would be his last trip. I don’t think I could manage another, he thought. In a rush of optimism—something he’d rarely felt lately—he decided the timing of this final site visit had worked out perfectly. Any later, and the entire plan would have come up short. It had all begun eighteen months ago, shortly after his diagnosis. Now God had granted him just enough time to see it through.
God.
It occurred to El-Masri that he hadn’t prayed in days. He’d never been particularly devout, yet time was running short to make amends. Like heathens across the ages, he supposed, the relevance of piousness seemed more clear at the end.
He cast the thought away and focused on getting home. Tomorrow he could relax, take a long weekend. Perhaps drive to the mountains with his wife and son. Monday he would schedule an appointment with the director general and explain his situation. Announce that he was taking his final leave.
A few more months—that was his doctor’s best guess. But of course, it was only that. He might linger for half a year or fail within a few weeks. Whatever happened, El-Masri was glad he’d made the most of his remaining time. Indeed, that was why he was here today: to finalize the legacy to his family. The last funds would soon be transferred and put in his wife’s name—even if she knew nothing about it. The Bahamian account, the villa on the Red Sea coast. He had even arranged acceptance into a good Swiss university for his son. A future guaranteed.
He took the pen and began signing again, the lines on the forms seeming suddenly more sharp. He scrawled his name in flourishes, giving no heed whatsoever to the thick blocks of legalese printed above. In time, he knew every page would be scrutinized. An internal investigation to be sure, and probably less familiar faces from the outside. Police forces, intelligence agencies. But that would all take time. And time, for El-Masri, was in perilously short supply.
Henri approached from the administration building. He was walking quickly with a water bottle in hand. He twisted off the top before handing it over—as if El-Masri himself was incapable.
“I’m fine,” El-Masri said more sharply than he should have. He took the water all the same.
“I have talked again with Air France. They assure me they can get us home tonight, but very late.”
“Then very late it is.”
Henri stared at him with concern. “I hope you don’t mind my saying it, monsieur, but you don’t look well. Perhaps you should see a doctor.”
“I have, and he assures me it is only fatigue. I’ve been working too hard. Now…” El-Masri handed the clipboard to his subordinate, “… go and finish the readings on the Antonov.”
The Frenchman took the paperwork and set out toward the now empty transport.
El-Masri pulled his phone and composed a text message to his wife: Home very late tonight. Don’t wait up.
He sent the message, and seconds later a phone vibrated on a granite counter in the warm kitchen of 23 Eicherstrasse, Kapellerfeld. It was picked up by his wife.
* * *
What El-Masri could not know was that his message, via a bit of cyber trickery, had also been directed to a second receiving number. The echo of El-Masri’s text took a few beats longer to reach the second destination, for the simple reason that it was physically farther away. Much, much farther.
An alert chimed on a computer in the basement
of a blasé building in Datong, China. Even for a country not known for adventures in contemporary architecture, the brooding rectangle of cinder blocks was remarkable in its unremarkability. It could have passed for a small business, a modest warehouse, or even a lesser government agency.
The building’s true vocation had been a matter of some speculation to those who lived and worked nearby. Neighboring shop owners, the residents of nearby buildings, and a handful of Datong’s city elders all had their opinions. The workers who populated the place were definitely not locals. They were a silent bunch who kept to themselves, and who shared a tiny hovel on the far side of town. The local police seemed complicit in the whole affair, and it was rumored they’d been instructed by higher authorities to give the building and its occupants a wide berth—the kind of “suggestion” from national that was never questioned. So no one complained, and whatever was happening inside the place kept happening. Even the resident colony of marmots burrowed beneath the building’s foundation seemed oblivious to the goings-on.
The truth, known by few, was that the outpost in Datong, situated on the frontier of Inner Mongolia, was staffed not by Chinese nationals, but a team of twenty-six North Koreans. The cell was part of a unit called Bureau 121, a title as nondescript as the nameless chain of buildings through which it operated. “The Office,” as it was internally known, fell under the firm but shadowed control of the Korean People’s Army. Bureau 121 cells were spread widely across China, and a few farther afield—in countries where the leadership was either grossly incompetent or reliably corrupt.
For North Korea, the concept of foreign-basing intelligence work, risk-laden as it might seem, was ultimately a matter of necessity: the country was itself entirely unsuited to hacking operations, with a power grid and internet infrastructure lacking basic functionality.
Bureau 121 cells were composed of between twenty and fifty hackers, and its technicians were an exclusive lot, hand-picked from the elite University of Automation in Pyongyang. By North Korean standards, its recruits were well paid, and they enjoyed the rarest of perks—the benefit of living outside the worker’s paradise of the People’s Republic. Escaping no one’s attention, however, was that the families of Bureau 121’s technicians invariably remained behind on the peninsula. And while wives and children and parents enjoyed accordant privileges, their ability to travel abroad was strictly prohibited. The question of what might happen to them in the event of a defection was better left unasked.
The text message sent that day by El-Masri had been scribed in English, but it was effortlessly translated into Korean—all of Bureau 121’s technicians were English-proficient. Indeed, it was a point of internal pride that no fewer than sixteen languages could be translated within the building. A senior man had been assigned to monitor El-Masri’s devices, and when he received the text he was battling a terrible headache—the result of a fourteen-hour shift wearing a headset that fit like a shop clamp. His orders were to forward any results, through their best encrypted link, directly to headquarters, skipping any attempt to analyze the material. He followed them to the letter.
Which was how, thirty seconds after El-Masri sent the text to his wife, General Hai-joon Park began reading it in his office thousands of miles away. He went through the message twice, combined it with what he knew, and found himself consumed by one thought: It was time to tidy up the burgeoning mess in Vienna.
THIRTY-FOUR
On the way back to his rented room, Slaton made one critical stop: at a large electronics store he purchased a tablet computer.
Back in his room he stood up the computer on the kitchen counter. Next to it he placed a small stack of printer paper pilfered from the bedroom desk. He connected to the apartment’s Wi-Fi—the password had been included in the rental confirmation, and he decided the network had no more chance of being compromised than any other available to him.
Once online, he downloaded a popular application that allowed prospective buyers to view real estate listings. With the app installed, he selected English as his preferred language, then typed in “Kapellerfeld,” followed by “23 Eicherstrasse.” Seconds later a map came into view: El-Masri’s home was at the center with the surrounding property lines thickened like walls on a prison diagram. As expected, the home was listed as “Not for Sale.” Undeterred, Slaton zoomed in, clicked, and was rewarded with a screen full of information.
According to Mordechai, El-Masri had been working at IAEA for roughly three years. Before that he had lived in Egypt. On the website Slaton confirmed that a buyer, almost certainly El-Masri, had bought the home thirty months earlier for 300,000 euros—roughly 350,000 U.S. dollars. A substantial sum, but again, not eye-catching, particularly since the Egyptian government might well have subsidized the purchase. All in all, interesting—but it wasn’t what Slaton was after.
Because the sale was recent, and because real estate agents strove to generate interest in properties, the photographs from the old listing were still viewable. He saw a slideshow with twenty-four pictures: everything from outside shots with curb appeal to staged interior views of every room. In an exercise he’d performed before, generally in the role of assassin, Slaton poised a pencil over one of the blank sheets of paper.
He used a piece of cardboard packaging from the tablet computer as a straightedge and ticked off a makeshift scale in one corner of the page, settling on five-foot increments. He first referenced the street-side façade of the house, approximating the outer walls, and adding doors and windows with the greatest of care. He cross-referenced the panorama shot he’d taken earlier with his phone, and flicked between exterior shots on the website. In the end, he had a reliable blueprint of the home’s periphery.
From that template, Slaton moved inside. He studied pictures of each room, relating different angles, and paid particular attention to the scenes through windows. These were invariably open during photo shoots to provide a bright and airy look. For his purposes, the windows provided geometric relations to points outside—and, in his previous life, lines of fire. Using furniture as references, he linked together passageways between rooms. Slaton moved back and forth between images, drawing lines for interior walls only when he was certain they were accurate.
After twenty minutes, he moved to the second floor. This was smaller, and a more simple setting: three bedrooms, a bathroom, and one large storage closet. He also noted a ceiling-mounted access door to an attic.
When he was done, Slaton sat back and for the first time regarded his work as a whole. The scale was not perfect, and the furnishings inside today would be El-Masri’s—more rugs, he supposed, fewer soft-cushioned chairs and knock-off Old World paintings. Those details aside, Slaton was confident he had what he wanted, and an image he would spend the next thirty minutes memorizing—one reasonably accurate tactical diagram of the home he was going to invade.
* * *
Heeding Slaton’s advice, Mordechai spent the morning going through his normal routines at work. He culled his email inbox, and attended two scheduled meetings. The first was a briefing on new security protocols that were coming down the bureaucratic pipeline, the other an interdepartmental lashing by the senior personnel director—the Department of Safeguards’ sizeable Ukrainian contingent had “gone Cossack” at last month’s Christmas party, laying ruin to a local bar and throwing an ice sculpture through a window. Mordechai had listened along with the other department heads, nodding and wishing he were anywhere else.
It was at one o’clock that afternoon, with most of the sixth-floor staff still lingering over extended lunches at nearby cafés, that Mordechai began his day’s true work. He rode the elevator three floors down, and turned into an office marked TRAVEL DEPARTMENT. He told the receptionist who he was and what he wanted, and she directed him to a cubicle in a corner suite. There, an officious-looking older woman behind a desk glanced up. Mordechai was quite sure he’d never seen her before, even though he’d had his share of dealings with the department. Whether that
was good or bad, he couldn’t say.
“Can I help you?” she asked in Austrian-accented English. This was the lingua franca of the little United Nations that was IAEA.
“Yes, I’m Paul Mordechai, Department of Safeguards. I work under Deputy Director El-Masri.” His identity card bobbed obviously from the lanyard around his neck, its blue border verifying that he was indeed a senior administrator. “The deputy director is out on a site visit, the PARR II inspection. They’re due back soon, but I don’t have a precise schedule. Can you tell me when they will arrive back in Vienna?”
A hesitation. The travel arrangements of inspection teams were closely guarded. A matter of security.
“The site visit is complete,” Mordechai said, “so there is no longer any need for secrecy. Dr. El-Masri typically gives me the schedule, but it must have slipped his mind. I’ve got to arrange a meeting for the two of us with Director Ingalls, and I don’t have his availability.”
Dropping the name of the director himself seemed to do the trick—Dr. Ingalls, certainly, was beyond reproach. She began typing, and moments later Mordechai had what he wanted: the inspection team was expected to arrive tonight on a commercial flight from Paris, shortly before midnight.
Mordechai thanked the woman and returned to the sixth floor. There he diverted down a lengthy hallway. The north wing of the floor was not his customary working area, yet it wasn’t completely foreign ground. Many of the faces he saw seemed familiar, and a few he knew on a first-name basis. The most important of them he spotted eating a sandwich at her desk—Ingrid, El-Masri’s able assistant, and guardian to the gates of the deputy director’s office.
