Northern Thunder

by Anderson Harp

  “Did you bring an additional list?” said Sin.

  “Yes,” said Nampo. “But this list will be…fragile.” Now even he was using euphemisms. The plan felt too dangerous to discuss out loud, but it was necessary.

  The figure in the rear of the room shifted his weight in his chair.

  “Who, Doctor?” said Sin.

  “Wiretrack at Oxford, Feizer at Chicago, and…Boriskof at the Ioffe Physico-Technico Institute in St. Petersburg. And possibly one other at Japan’s Riken Institute.”

  “We will take this into consideration,” said Sin.

  “Thank you, Comrade,” said Nampo.

  List acquired, the man in the shadows stood and exited through another door.

  “What is a reasonable expectation for the first launch date?” asked Sin.

  “Thirty-one December,” said Nampo, “but we must be assured of a valid GEO orbit location.”

  Chapter 11

  Arlington, Virginia

  As he swung open the shutter doors, Tom Pope chuckled at the realization that his closet perfectly matched his life as a senior FBI agent. From right to left, virtually identical Brooks Brothers suits lined up in military row. Below, pairs of spit-polished dress shoes were neatly assembled, facing forward. A set of conservative, blue-striped, burgundy-striped, and dark blue print ties hung to the left.

  “What’s so funny?” asked his wife, Debra.

  “Nothing…. Just realizing how boring I am. Where are my blue jeans?”

  Debra raised her eyebrows. Even on weekends, when he cut the grass at their Arlington, Virginia home, Tom Pope wore khaki trousers with a crease. The blue jean question could mean only one thing to her.

  “I think they’re in the back end of my closet,” she said.

  He stopped his search, closed the doors, and crossed over to her larger closet. There, behind a line of dresses in plastic storage bags, hung the worn and frayed blue jeans—the typical outfit of a hardworking, blue-collar employee.

  As he pulled the jeans and shirt off the closet rail, Debra snuck up behind her husband and gave him a hug. He turned and felt her warm, shapely body underneath her pajamas.

  “What’s this? You realize it’s a Monday morning, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  He smiled, glancing at the clock and realizing there was not enough time for anything more than a hug. The children would be bouncing into the room any minute now.

  “What’s going on today?” she asked hesitantly.

  He smiled. “Don’t worry, it’s not undercover.”

  Debra hadn’t known if her marriage would last. When Tom worked undercover in the FBI’s organized-crime section, living with danger every day, she’d asked him to move out—not because she didn’t love him deeply, but because she simply couldn’t take it when, at nine or ten o’clock at night, he still hadn’t come home. Every time he was late or didn’t show at all, it scared her to death. She was the mother of two young children, ages six and eight, and the idea of widowhood terrified her.

  And she was not allowed to call him at the Bureau. The men and women of the Agency quickly identified the wives who called, and knew those agents were destined to limited careers. A nagging wife, combined with the demands of the job, propelled most husbands and wives out of the field and into administration, performing background checks or other monotonous tasks.

  Tom knew Debra was not a caller—and loved her all the more for it. Particularly because she didn’t call, he would always tell her what was going on—sometimes more than he should. Tom felt he owed her.

  “I’m just meeting a source. She called last week and asked to meet. No danger.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “Do you have to go far?”

  “No—Alexandria.”

  “So, supper on time?”

  “Believe it or not, I think so.” He’d made it a point, years ago, never to answer “yes” to that question. As soon as he did, he was guaranteed to be late.

  Tom strapped on his Glock .40 caliber in a shoulder holster, hiding it with his jean jacket, and plopped on a dark blue baseball cap bearing the name C&C Construction Co. He hadn’t shaved that morning. It was all a part of a conscious look.

  He walked out the door of his small house before the kids woke up. A neighbor standing by his car stopped and looked twice at the Pope house. For a moment, he must have thought a thief was leaving the scene of a crime, because no one who lived there dressed like that.

  “Hey, Mike.”

  “Oh, hey, Tom.”

  Tom made a point of waving, knowing his clothes would catch his neighbor’s attention. He chuckled again, realizing the outfit he chose to disguise his true occupation stuck out like a sore thumb in his neighborhood.

  A short time after parking his white, government-issue Chevrolet at a parking lot near the Arlington subway station and hopping the Metro, Tom stopped into the Starbucks near the town center. As he ordered a cup of coffee, he realized his clothing was probably too plain for Alexandria. King Street was jammed with monogrammed, white-shirted young Turks in their khaki pants. The occasional tourist couple walked the street in shorts, overloaded with shopping bags. Several young girls, carrying backpacks and sitting in the coffee shop talking into their coffee cups, glanced at Tom. That was a bad sign. He was trying not to stand out. At a quarter to ten, it was too late to run back and change into the khakis and golf shirt combo his wife called his “grass-cutting clothes.”

  He had only met the female source twice before, but Tom had quickly come to appreciate her reliability. On the first meet, she had given him information that shocked the CIA. Very few reliable contacts passed along accurate information from or about North Korea.

  She must work in New York, at the DPRK’s UN representative’s office, Tom thought. But how does she get away? And, more importantly, why? Tom, one of a very few FBI agents who had a high-level source of information in another government—and the only one within that particular government—didn’t want to ask too many questions. He didn’t know why she had picked him, but it had worked out well. Not only was her information valuable, but it had also helped move Tom up several notches in the Bureau hierarchy.

  She must have come to me because of the liaison trip to Moscow in ’95, he often thought. Tom had been part of a small American team invited to Moscow to establish an anti-terrorist liaison with Russian intelligence. They all thought it paradoxical that after the Soviets ran out of money in 1989, fewer airplanes were hijacked, fewer bombs went off in London and Northern Ireland, and fewer Americans were killed and injured around the world. Now Russia wanted to work with the U.S. Even Moscow had its terrorists and wanted to join the worldwide effort to share information. Eventually, Al Qaeda money replaced Soviet money, and the cycle of terrorism started all over again.

  On the liaison trip, Tom had met several hundred people from several embassies in Moscow. It was his only international exposure—at least, the only exposure he could think of.

  Now, Tom’s main concern was protecting his own source. CIA types had made it clear they wanted her name because they wanted to establish a direct relationship with her. If he shared “Joan” with the Agency, he knew her death as an informant was practically guaranteed. There could be only one handler. Period.

  Someone even followed him the second time he tried to meet her. Imagine, the CIA following an FBI agent. He’d been steamed about it for months, but it only hardened his resolve to protect his source.

  He looked again at his Timex, gulped down his coffee, and headed out the door. The plan was simple. He would stop, greet her, and then join her for a walk down King Street as if they were a couple, casually talking. He’d appear to be a construction worker taking a break. They would never meet for longer than this.

  The wind gusted up just as he crossed the final street in front of the bricked city square. As he pull
ed down his beaten old hat, Tom saw a short woman in a black raincoat cross the street parallel to his path. He stopped, turned to meet her, and gave her a hug.

  “Hello, it’s good to see you,” she said with a smile. Her perfect English disguised her North Korean heritage well.

  “You, as well,” said Tom. “How’s the family?” He had no idea if she had one and he didn’t want to. She had her reasons for playing informant, but what she was doing was dangerous stuff, and he couldn’t risk getting too close.

  At least it wasn’t money, he thought. Tom respected her in that regard. She never mentioned money. In fact, she never asked for anything. But something had caused her to betray her government—likely, the contrast she’d discovered between life in the U.S. and in her native country. Anyone given the chance to travel outside the DPRK quickly realized that.

  And she was bright and savvy—courageous, too. It was because of Tom’s respect for her courage that he’d assigned her the FBI identifier “Joan,” as in Joan of Arc.

  “Everyone’s fine. And how’s your family?”

  “Oh, very good. Cathy and young George are doing great.” She knew there was no Cathy or George.

  They started walking down King Street toward the river, keeping up the small talk. Tom stopped on the curb, waiting for traffic to cross, and carefully glanced around. No one stood out. He felt his shoulders loosen slightly with relief.

  His relationship with Joan was one of respect and in a strange way, a friendship.

  Never get too close, he reminded himself.

  “A month ago,” Joan said quietly, “a Dr. Harbinger died of a sudden heart attack on a Delta flight into San Francisco. Within a week after that, a professor at MIT died—struck by a car. He was thirty-five, but died of a heart attack before the car hit him.”

  Joan had connected two seemingly unrelated events. Tom wanted to ask more: Who else, when, where, how, and—most importantly—why? But he knew better. She would tell him everything she knew, or at least everything she was willing to say.

  At the bottom of King Street, near the river, she stopped, turned, quickly gave him a hug, and left. Before Tom knew it, she had disappeared into a crowd of tourists.

  Tom caught the subway back to Arlington and drove home, where he changed and shaved before going in to FBI headquarters. He felt comfortable back in his blue charcoal-striped suit and black loafers. As he walked out the door wearing his unofficial Bureau uniform, Debra gave him a second kiss good-bye.

  “See you for supper,” she reminded him.

  * * * *

  On the third floor, Tom passed through security to the door marked Anti-Terrorist Unit. Several agents looked up, curious. He had marked the day off for a visit to the dentist, but they all knew better. He wouldn’t miss a day of work even if he had a mouthful of toothaches. They all suspected he’d been out to meet his contact.

  Tom addressed the room. “I need everything on a Dr. Harbinger in San Francisco, who died of a heart attack on a Delta flight last month. Ditto an MIT professor who was struck by a car a week later. Also fatal.”

  Everyone in the room stood at attention, waiting for further instructions. This clearly had something to do with Tom’s North Korean source.

  “Also, I need to talk to Bob Mentor at the Agency as soon as possible.”

  “Got it,” said Tom’s assistant. “But you know he always asks me, ‘What’s it about?’”

  “Tell him I talked to Joan.”

  “I bet he’ll be over here before lunch,” said the assistant with a smile.

  Tom nodded, his thoughts elsewhere.

  DPRK operatives killing American scientists in the United States. What the hell was going on?

  Chapter 12

  A Gulfstream Inbound to Joint Base Andrews

  The red seat-belt light blinked again as the Gulfstream turned in a final bank over Washington, lining up with the main runway into Andrews.

  Will glanced at his watch and pushed the indigo illumination button. The cabin was dark. The dial showed ten minutes after one.

  “What’s the plan, Mr. Scott?” asked Will.

  “We go straight to the Pentagon. They’re waiting for us.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Believe it or not, I don’t know. Of course, Krowl will be there.”

  Krowl. Not Admiral, Admiral Krowl, or something more respectful. Interesting…

  The jet landed and quickly taxied to a large, oversized hangar that dwarfed the others nearby. Will knew of this hangar, its sides well lit, layers of concertina wire covering the tops of the fences, airmen patrolling the building with M16s over their shoulders.

  “Air Force One hangar,” said Scott.

  The Gulfstream taxied like a race car past the large hangar, down a line of smaller buildings, and into a hangar at the end of the row. Will noticed a black government executive car parked well within the shadows of the hangar. The government license plate and several antennas would make the automobile stand out elsewhere, but in Washington, it was one of many.

  Scott led the way down the stairs and to the black automobile. The driver, a heavy middle-aged man in a plain dark suit, held the rear door open. Both men hopped into the back as the driver took Will’s small bag. In the middle of the rear seat were two neatly placed newspapers—a Washington Post atop a USA Today.

  Nice touch.

  After a short, quiet ride, Will spied lights illuminating the low profile of the Pentagon.

  “Have you been here before?”

  “Only once,” Will answered. He had been there briefly, well before the events of that infamous September.

  “We’ve made arrangements for you to stay at Fort Myer after the initial briefing.”

  The small army base, tucked behind Arlington Cemetery, allowed for security but was also close to the Pentagon. Will knew Fort Myer well because it was a neighbor to the Marines’ Henderson Hall. Both Fort Myer and Henderson Hall topped the natural bluff overlooking the Potomac River basin.

  As the vehicle entered a tunnel leading into the bowels of the Pentagon, Will felt a sudden sense of apprehension and excitement.

  Scott didn’t wait for the driver to open the door, instead swinging it open as soon as the car braked. “Follow me. You can leave your bag in the car.”

  Will was briefly blinded by the bright lights of the tunnel. He followed Scott through a side tunnel and past a guard, who briefly examined Scott’s identification card.

  “He’s with me,” said Scott.

  The guard gave Will a clip-on pass that said Visitor—Escort Required.

  The smell, like the faint odor of smoke and well-waxed linoleum, struck chords in Will’s memory as he entered. They moved into a corridor and down another stairway, passing several other hallways as they went. The side hallways were silent and dark—only an occasional light. Door after door had tumblers on them, like vaults in a bank. That much had not changed.

  Scott set the pace as the two men charged down the hallways and up several flights of stairs, finally ascending a dark, oak-lined stairway with marble steps, which opened into a broad hallway—the Eisenhower Corridor, according to bold letters printed above. As they sped through, Will passed glass boxes containing photographs and letters of Ike Eisenhower—one as president of the United States, one as president of Columbia University, and so on. Each hallway box delved into an earlier time in Eisenhower’s life. As he passed the last box, Will found photographs of an Army lieutenant with the innocent young eyes of a boy from Kansas.

  Another stairway led farther into the depths of the Pentagon. As they headed to the higher floors, they passed oil paintings, models of ships, and portraits of admirals and generals. On the top floor, the offices became simpler, their doors made of black or gray metal. It was in this part of the building that the far less visible work of the Pentagon was conducted.
/>   Finally, Scott stopped in front of a plain gray door marked Restricted.

  To Will’s surprise, it did not have a keypad or tumbler. Inside, Will found a narrow corridor lined with a gray, carpet-like material on the walls, ceilings, and floors. As they proceeded down the hallway, Scott remained behind him until they arrived at a small cubicle at the end. Scott then sidestepped Will, punching in a series of numbers and looking down into a microscope-like device. The door opened and, after passing through additional security, an armed guard, and another hallway, they stood in front of a set of steel gray doors with a lit sign above marked

  TS…SCI…Conference in Session. After another click, the door opened to reveal Krowl.

  “Well, I see you made it, Colonel.” It was too late in the day, or too early, for Krowl’s smug, irritating voice.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Scott, you know Mark Wolf of the DIA?”

  “Yes.” Scott and a nondescript, middle-aged man exchanged handshakes.

  “Let’s begin.” Krowl pointed to four chairs—tall, sleek, executive-style—around a small table facing a wall with a screen. The clocks above the screen ticked away.

  “Colonel Parker, earlier this week, you asked what this was all about,” said Krowl. “Mr. Wolf, let’s start with you.”

  “Thank you, Admiral.” Wolf swung his chair around and pulled a computer keyboard out from below the lip of the desk. A small, slim computer screen, built into the desk surface, popped up. As he typed into the computer, he said, “Gentlemen, this brief is top secret—need to know only.” The words appeared on the screen above an FBI warning about severe penalties for violations.

  “We know Peter Nampo is one of the world’s leading scientists on nano-engineering and nuclear engineering,” said Wolf. “Since obtaining a PhD in engineering from Russia’s Ioffe Physico-Technico Institute, Nampo has been intent on leading North Korea in its development of a multistage rocket, its nuclear weapons program and, we believe, its satellite interdiction program. He’s on the world’s cutting edge of micro-engineering in electronics. He’s effectively their Wernher von Braun.”