by Tom Clancy
After thirty minutes, Fisher realized no one was coming. He called for the waitress, signed his tab, then went through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk, where he turned left and started walking. He strolled along the shop fronts for the next hour, stopping occasionally to price gifts, ducking into and out of doorways, hailing taxis, then riding only a block before getting out. Satisfied that Frederick’s prediction about the two-day rule had been accurate and that he was no longer under close surveillance, he walked back to the hotel and took the elevator to his room.
Inside, he picked up the phone and asked for an outside line. The number he dialed, though prefaced by Germany’s country code, 49, and Berlin’s city code, 30, in fact took him to an NSA monitoring and intercept station in Misawa, Japan.
Grimsdottir answered in German on the third ring: “Stern, how can I help you?”
“Extension forty-two nineteen,” Fisher replied in German.
“Wait, please.” Ten seconds later, Lambert, who’d undergone his own crash course in German, picked up the line. “Kaufmann! How is Pyongyang?”
“Fine. The weather is what you’d expect,” Fisher replied. “Did some tourist sites today; tomorrow I hope to get some street interviews.”
“Outstanding! Keep us posted.”
Fisher hung up.
The conversation was scripted, and it told Lambert three things: one, Fisher had encountered no complications; two, the SSD was behaving as expected and surveillance had been scaled back; and three, tomorrow he was going after the RDEI agent, Chin-Hwa Pak.
37
Fisher stepped backward into the alley, ducked behind a garbage can, and watched, breath held, as the jeep rolled past him at a walking pace. Sitting in the back of the open vehicle were three soldiers, one on either side shining flashlights along the sidewalks and a third standing behind a mounted.50-caliber machine gun. They passed Fisher’s alley, then rolled to a stop at the next intersection, brakes squealing softly in the darkness. In the distance, toward Kyonghung Street, he could hear disco music.
After a few seconds the jeep rolled forward and turned left out of sight. Fisher let out his breath. He ran both hands through his sweat-dampened hair, then checked his watch: two a.m. He’d been moving for two hours. He was within a quarter mile of his destination.
He’d left his room just before midnight and taken the elevator to the parking garage, where’d he’d tucked himself in the shadows behind a concrete pillar and waited for the garage attendant shift change. When the replacement showed up, both men stepped into the adjoining security room, leaving the barrier arm unguarded. He’d watched this changeover process six times since he’d arrived at the hotel and never more than thirty seconds passed before the two attendants emerged from the security room.
When he’d heard the door click shut, he stepped out from behind the pillar and walked, shoeless, up the ramp, then ducked down and crab-walked below the security room’s single window, then around the barrier’s post. He stood up, glanced left then right and, seeing nothing, walked straight across the street and around the corner.
Pyongyang’s nightlife was scarce and confined to only a few pockets of bars and dance clubs around the city, so most of Fisher’s journey was done on vacant streets and empty sidewalks, which had turned out to be both a blessing and a curse: the former because he felt more in his natural element; the latter because he would quickly draw attention if spotted. A Caucasian, walking alone on the streets at three in the morning… The police would snatch him up without so much as a question and deposit him at the nearest SSD office for questioning. Of course, the same curse that applied to him would apply to any watchers on his tail. Unless they were very, very good, they would be easy to spot. The playing field was even. Or at least he hoped so. TWENTY minutes later he was lying in the undergrowth bordering the governor’s residence, studying the street through a pair of miniature binoculars. As bad luck would have it, Pak’s four-story apartment building, which sat on the opposite side of the street and fifty yards to Fisher’s right, was located in a Pyongyang neighborhood reserved for established North Korean politicians, military officers, and civil servants. Fisher was now in one of the most protected single square miles of the capital. From where he lay he could see the mayor’s residence, three semiprivate banks reserved for party luminaries, an antiaircraft battery, an ammunition depot, and the barracks for the seventy-seventh Infantry Regiment, all illuminated by floodlights and guarded by somber, rifle-toting soldiers, both roving and stationary.
There was an upside, however. As well-guarded as the area was, most of the protection was focused on private residences. Pak’s building, two blocks from the barracks, sat on a relatively dark and quiet street surrounded by dogwood trees and lilac hedges. Whether Pak was at home Fisher didn’t know; all he knew was Stewart’s beacon was there, probably still attached to the clothing Pak was wearing aboard the platform.
Fisher checked his watch again.
Patience, Sam.
* * *
He forced himself to lie still for another hour, watching the comings and goings of the guards, looking for that one defect, that one gap in coverage he could exploit. And, as he’d expected, when he finally spotted his opening, it came not from flawed logistics or training but from individual idiosyncrasy. One soldier, a boy in his late teens, was a chain-smoker, and he clearly lacked the self-discipline to wait for scheduled breaks.
On every third patrol around the block that encompassed the governor’s and mayor’s residences, as well as Pak’s apartment, the boy would stop, duck behind a tree, and greedily smoke a cigarette before completing his round. It gave Fisher an extra two minutes to do what he needed to do.
Fisher watched the soldier stroll past his hiding spot, then turn the corner and start back toward the mayor’s residence. Then, like clockwork, he stopped, furtively glanced around, then stepped behind a tree and lit up.
Fisher rose to his knees and padded, hunched over, across the street, moving diagonally away from the smoking soldier until he was behind the screen of lilac hedges that bracketed the covered walkway that led to the door to Pak’s building. Fisher slipped along the wall to where the walkway and front wall met, then turned around and pressed his back into the corner. Now he would see if his daily exercise routine, which included seven hundred single-leg squats for just such occasions as this one, would pay off.
He took a deep breath, planted the rubber sole of his left shoe against the wall, and pushed hard. He leaned to the left, shifting his weight, and pressed his shoulder into the wall. Next he braced his right foot against the adjoining wall, coiled his leg, and pushed again, lifting himself off the ground. He was now in what’s called the chimneying position. Used by mountaineers and rock climbers to navigate right-angle outcroppings and vertical rock chutes, chimneying took patience, stamina, and brute strength, but it came as close to defying gravity as one could without the aid of pitons and carabiners.
Luckily for Fisher, he had to cover only twelve vertical feet, which he did in forty seconds, pulling himself level with the walkway’s roof. He reached out with his left hand, hooked his fingertips in the eaves trough, then froze.
Beyond the hedge he could hear footsteps echoing on the sidewalk and coming this way. Over the top of the hedge he saw the peaked cap of his smoking soldier glide past the apartment’s walkway gate, then continue down the sidewalk, where he eventually disappeared into the darkness.
Fisher shifted some weight to his left, testing the eaves trough. It groaned softly, sagged slightly, but held. He pushed off with his right foot, swung it upward, hooked his heel on the trough, then boosted his body onto the roof. He spread himself flat and went still and stayed that way for a few minutes until certain he’d attracted no attention.
He was now within arm’s reach of the building’s first-floor hallway, which in a curious break with the communist gray architecture that seemed to dominate most of Pyongyang’s older neighborhoods, circumnavigated the building. Bordered o
n the exterior side by a waist-high railing and arched openings, and on the interior side by apartment doors, the style was more Mediterranean than Soviet-industrial. Beside each apartment door was a wall sconce, a lengthwise-cut cylinder of brushed stainless steel that cast light on the ceiling. Whatever else Pak had done for the RDEI, he must have succeeded; in North Korea, apartments of this quality were reserved for political stars. This was luxury, North Korean style.
Fisher was about to reach for the railing when he stopped. Cameras. He pulled back and spread himself flat again. Almost slipped up, Sam. In his earlier surveillance of Pak’s building, he’d seen a doorman sitting behind a desk in the lobby. Judging from the flickering glow Fisher had seen reflected in the doorman’s glasses, he’d been watching a small, unseen television. But what kind? Regular, close-circuit security, or both?
He pulled his DARPA-enhanced iPhone from his pocket and scrolled through to his Images folder, typed in the password, and called up the blueprint of Pak’s building. It was incomplete and partially speculative, cobbled together by Grimsdottir using a collage of sources: satellite imagery, tourist photos, electrical grid maps, similar buildings in other parts of the country… She’d used it all to give Fisher at least a sketch of what he’d be facing.
Looking at it now, his best guess put the elevator directly behind the wall at his back. He looked up. The wall, ten feet wide — typical of an elevator shaft — extended all the way to the roof. If there were cameras in the building, the first place he would likely find them would be on each floor, facing the elevators.
After waiting for his smoking soldier to pass by once again, Fisher rose into a crouch, then reached up, grabbed the railing, chinned himself up, scanned the hall for cameras and, seeing none, rolled over onto the floor, where he pressed himself flat against the elevator shaft’s wall and sidestepped up to the corner.
He heard the whirring of the camera before he saw the camera itself. He stopped short, went still.
Long before his days with Third Echelon, Fisher had dealt with more than his fair share of surveillance cameras using only his ears and his good timing. Faint though they were, camera motors had a distinct aural signature, especially at their range stops, the point at which a rotating camera reaches its panning limit to the left or right. It is at this point, as the motor pauses then reverses the camera’s direction, that a well-tuned ear can detect the barely perceptible strain on the motor. And it was this sound Fisher was listening for as he stood motionless, back pressed against the wall, eyes closed…
There… there… there… there. Twelve seconds from range stop to range stop. Which stop was which — facing left or facing right — didn’t matter. With no other cameras in the hall, this one would be calibrated to full rotation so it could see down the length of each hall. It was at this point when the camera’s blind spot was most accessible. Stand directly beneath the camera’s mount, and you’re as good as invisible.
Fisher waited, listening and counting, then stepped out from the wall and centered himself under the mount. Above him, the camera, which had been panning right, reversed course and started coming around. Fisher looked left and counted doors. Pak’s apartment number was 9, the third door down. The trick would be reaching that door and getting inside in the time it took the camera to complete a full pan.
Suddenly, Fisher’s decision was made for him.
Pak’s door opened, and Pak himself stepped out.
38
Pak, juggling a bag of garbage in each hand, leaned back into his apartment, trying to get the door closed.
Fisher glanced up. The camera was pointed directly at Pak. It paused, then started panning in the other direction. Fisher counted One one thousand, two one thousand, then pushed off the wall and sprinted, hunched over, straight at Pak. He covered the distance in less than three seconds, but at the last moment, either sensing Fisher’s presence or hearing his approach, Pak spun to face him.
Fisher’s earlier hunch about the man’s physical condition and training was dead-on. In the blink of an eye, Pak, still holding the garbage bags, lashed out with a front heel kick. It was perfectly aimed and delivered, a strike that could easily snap a neck or crush a skull. But Fisher, having registered Pak’s slight shifting of weight to his back leg, was ready for the kick. Still moving at a sprint, he dropped his shoulder, somersaulted beneath the leg, caught the raised heel with his right hand, then rose up and caught Pak squarely in the chin with a short jab. Pak stumbled backward into the apartment, stunned. Fisher didn’t give him a chance to react but kept driving forward, raising Pak’s leg until he toppled over sideways, sliding back-first down the wall and landing with an “Umph” on the floor. Fisher twisted Pak’s foot, flipping him onto his stomach, then dropped to one knee, grabbed a handful of his hair, and slammed his head against the floor once, twice, three times. Pak went limp.
Fisher grabbed him by the foot again and spun his limp body around and dragged him farther into the apartment, then shut the door. He pulled a pair of plastic flexicuffs from their hiding place in his jacket’s lining and bound Pak’s wrists and ankles, dragged him into the living room, laid him face-first on the floor, then picked up a nearby coffee table and placed it over his body. He found a narrow-based vase and placed it on top of the table. The rudimentary early warning system would give Fisher a few seconds’ notice should Pak regain consciousness and get frisky. Knowing now how dangerous the North Korean was, Fisher wasn’t going to give him even the slightest advantage.
He did a quick search of Pak’s studio apartment and found no one else home. In the bedroom, however, he did find a portrait of Pak sitting with a woman and two young girls. Many North Korean political up-and-comers were given two residences: a working apartment in Pyongyang for use during the week and a private rural home for weekends. This, Fisher suspected, was where Pak’s family was. Also in the bedroom he found a wireless-capable laptop and, in Pak’s nightstand, a Type 69 7.62mm pistol in a leather holster along with two fully loaded magazines. He pocketed the pistol and the magazine and turned his attention to Pak’s closet. He found what he was looking for almost immediately: the thigh-length black leather coat Pak had been wearing at the Site 17 platform. In the coat’s left pocket he found Stewart’s thumbnail beacon. He stared at it a moment. Thanks, Calvin. He stuck it in his pocket, grabbed the laptop, and returned to the living room.
He pulled the iPhone from his pocket, called up the iPod feature, scrolled to the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” and punched a code into the keypad. The screen changed to an amber-on-black compasslike display with the words ENGAGED > SEEKING SIGNAL flashing near the bottom edge of the screen. Fisher spent the next ten minutes sweeping the apartment for audio and video devices. He found none, so he went into the kitchen, found an English-version of Diet Coke, then returned to the living room and sat down in a wing-back club chair a few feet from Pak’s head. He stuck a magazine into the pistol, chambered a round, and waited.
* * *
Fisher was almost finished with his Diet Coke when Pak began stirring. He groaned, and his eyelids blinked open, then closed again as he tried to focus. He tried to raise his hands to his face; his knuckles rapped the underside of the coffee table with a dull thud, and the vase teetered, then went still.
“Just lie still,” Fisher said. “It’ll be easier for both of us.”
Pak went still. He rotated his eyes and craned his neck until he could see Fisher. Instead of the typical “Who are you” and “What do you want,” Pak said simply, “You’re an American.” His English was only slightly accented; Fisher noted his use of the contraction. Pak had had extensive language training, which was to be expected from an RDEI agent.
“I am,” Fisher said.
“Don’t you know where you are? You’ll never get out of the city alive. You probably won’t get off this block alive.”
“We,” Fisher replied.
“What?”
“We’ll never get out of the city alive.” He held up Pak’
s pistol. “I guarantee you, if that time comes, you’ll go before me.”
“How’d you find me?”
“Western imperialist technology at its best.”
“Why have you come here?”
“Complicated question.” Too complicated, Fisher thought. If not for Omurbai and Manas, Pak would have gotten a bullet a long time ago. But that wasn’t the situation, was it? He needed Pak alive. “I want you to tell me where Carmen Hayes is, and I want you to tell me everything you know about Manas: Where it is, where Omurbai plans to use it, and how to neutralize it.”
Pak offered him a condescending grin. “I’m not going to help you.”
“I thought you’d say that,” Fisher said. “And I’m sure I’d have a hard time changing your mind. Am I right?”
Pak nodded.
Fisher gestured to Pak’s laptop, which sat, powered up, on a side table. An SD/USB card reader jutted from one of the laptop’s side ports. “You’ve got some pretty good encryption on there. Unfortunately, it’s not good enough. Right now, I’m loading a virus onto your hard drive. I won’t pretend to know how it does what it does, but here’s what I do know: Two hours from now, and every two hours after that, if a specially coded e-mail doesn’t land in your in-box, the virus goes active.”
“That’s your plan?” Pak said, smiling smugly. “You’re going to ruin my laptop?”
“No, I’m going to ruin your life. You see, you trusted your encryption a little too much — put too much dicey information on your hard drive. What that virus will do is plant digital tracks in every corner of your life — your e-mail accounts, your finances, your travel logs — and the story it will tell is that of a traitor, a trusted RDEI agent who volunteered to spy for the United States and has been feeding the CIA information for the past three years. You might not be afraid of what I can do to you, but I know you’re afraid of what your bosses at the SSD do with traitors. I’ve seen video of their interrogation methods. It’s not pretty. But, of course I’m sure you know that.”
