by Terry Toler
“They didn’t check in last night,” Hamid mumbled, as he tried to soften the reaction from Amin, the Director of the MOIS, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. Amin was one of the most powerful men in Iran. Hamid was an important diplomat as well, but not like the Director. With one command, Amin could have Hamid and every member of his family imprisoned, tortured, or killed. If a mission failed, they tended to blame everyone involved, even if they weren’t at fault.
That’s why he put off making this call until he had no choice.
The Director had sent two men to capture and kill the girl who stole the satchel with the nuclear codes from the Iranian agent in Wonsan. Hamid picked the two men up at the airport, gave them weapons and an envelope with a picture of the girl and her home address.
That was the last time he saw or heard from them. They didn’t answer their cell phones and hadn’t returned to the hotel. The envelope gave them specific instructions to check in with him last night. He was up most of the night waiting for their call, hoping for word that they’d completed their mission and recovered the satchel.
When he didn’t hear from them, he feared the worst. Now, he knew something bad happened, and he was tasked with telling the boss and enduring the ensuing wrath.
“Can you not do anything right?” Amin shouted into the phone.
Hamid pulled it away from his ear and could still hear Amin clearly.
“This is the third man I’ve lost,” Amin added.
Hamid decided not to respond. He did exactly what he was instructed to do. This was a disaster, but it wasn’t his fault. Hamid tried to warn the Director that sending the men wasn’t a good idea but reminding him of that would only make things worse.
“What happened to them?” Amin asked sharply.
Hamid shook his head back and forth in an exaggerated motion that, of course, Amin couldn’t see. He released his right hand from the death grip and threw it into the air. His voice couldn’t give away his frustration, but his body language could, considering the Director was more than six thousand miles away in Tehran.
“How could I possibly know?” Hamid decided to push back some. Now, he nervously tapped the desk with the fingers of his right hand. He tried to make them stop but they wouldn’t. He could feel his blood pressure rise which the doctor had warned him about several times.
He changed positions in his chair and went from his fingers tapping to his feet rapidly tapping the floor with the nervousness of an expectant father. Actually, more like a man on a death row.
“It’s like they’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.,” Hamid said. “There’s no sign of them or their car.”
“Where’s the girl and the satchel? Is she dead at least?” Amin said roughly.
“I don’t think so. I went by her house,” Hamid answered quickly. “The lights were on. The windows were open. There was a motorcycle sitting in the driveway. I didn’t see any people, but everything looked normal.”
He wanted the Director to know he did everything he could.
The family lived in a remote location. He drove up the mountain and parked down the hill and hiked up, afraid of being seen. He could see no sign that Amin’s men had even been there. No blood. No sign of a struggle. He considered knocking on the door but thought better of it. Being associated with this operation put him in danger with the North Koreans if they found out about it. The last thing he wanted was for the family to end up dead and someone seeing him leave the scene.
“I anticipated your failure,” Amin said. “I have two more men on a plane headed to North Korea as we speak. They left Iran with a stopover in Frankfurt, Germany, and then Seoul. They’ll board a plane to Wonsan later tonight. Pick them up from the airport.”
Hamid wanted to voice further objections but knew it would fall on deaf ears. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to get the other three men in. At some point, the influx of Iranian operatives was going to raise red flags among the North Korean authorities. Especially since he went outside of diplomatic channels to get the rental cars and permission for the men to travel around freely without a government guide.
He decided to change the subject. “I called the Investigator in Wonsan and talked to him,” he said. “He asked me an unusual question.”
“What was that?” Amin asked, with little to no interest in his voice.
“He wanted to know if I’ve heard anything about an American spy operating in North Korea.”
“An American?” Amin said in the form of a question, suddenly concerned. “They don’t operate on the ground in North Korea. As far as I know.”
“Apparently his name is Alex. Big guy they said. The way he asked was very strange. Like he was fishing for information. The question was out of the blue and meant to take me by surprise. Of course, I know nothing about it.”
“I’ll tell my men about that. It could be important,” Amin said. Hamid could hear papers rustling in the background and then heard the Director type something on a keyboard. Probably an email.
“I think they’re still trying to make us believe the Americans are behind the death of our men,” Hamid said.
“Who said they are dead? You just said they were missing,” Amin shouted into the phone.
Hamid winced and slapped his forehead. He kept saying the wrong thing. “What else are we to think?” he said reluctantly. “We should’ve heard from them by now.”
“Maybe the American spy is helping the girl. If the infidel killed my men, I want him hunted down and shot like a dog.”
Hamid decided not to comment. As a diplomat, he liked to deal with facts and then use them to defuse the situation. At this point, there was nothing he could say or do that would calm the Director. No amount of diplomacy could solve this problem until they got that satchel back and the girl was dead.
***
Momma-son Diner
“My husband’s name was Lin,” Momma said. “He died during the Arduous March. The Great Famine.”
Her tone had changed. Before Momma was full of life and energy and spoke every word with a sense of urgency. Now, her tone was somber but earnest. Her face was melancholy, and her eyes sagged, and her shoulders drooped as she recounted the painful memories of the past.
“We’d been demoted to commoners,” Momma said slowly. “Before, we were elite. With many privileges. Thankfully, we were not labeled anti-party.”
Her voice trailed off until she regained the composure to continue.
“What would’ve happened to you if you were classified as anti-party?” I asked.
“We would’ve been thrown into prison camps. All of us. Instead, they let us keep working the diner. They actually put us in charge of distributing the rations in the valley during the famine.”
“How did your husband die?” Bae asked.
“From starvation. At the end he didn’t weigh much more than I did.”
“If you were in charge of the rations, why didn’t he take his share?” Bae asked.
My mind was elsewhere. As riveting as the story was, a sense of unease had come upon me. An intuition I got on missions, a feeling when I perceived imminent doom or danger. I searched my mind to find the source of the angst.
“He refused to eat the government rations,” Momma continued. “The stubborn fool. I tried to get him to, but he gave his rations away.”
What a noble thing to do.
It’s been sixteen hours.
My mind was conflicted. Going back and forth between Momma’s story and doing calculations. Sixteen hours ago, I knocked the policeman in Wonsan unconscious and stole his police cruiser.
“The rations weren’t much anyway,” Momma continued with her story. “We got the cobs from corn after they had been eaten by the elite. We got the leftover apple cores after the apples had been eaten. Bags of sugar were part of the rations. That was it.”
Two to four hours. That’s how long the policeman would be unconscious.
I didn’t hurt him that badly. He’d still be able to
remember the American spy and the girl. Would they discover him last night or this morning? That would make a difference. This morning, we still had time.
If last night . . .
“We grew our own rice,” Momma said, “but the regime took eighty percent of what we produced and gave it to the military and the elites. We were left with twenty percent. All of the rice we grow in the valley is barely enough to feed everyone, much less trying to do so on a fifth of the supply.”
I could hear the anger in Momma’s voice.
“When we were left with only twenty percent, there just wasn’t enough. They said it was our sacrifice for the fatherland.”
The countryside was filled with billboards espousing that exact philosophy. The regime called it patriotism to work hard, and labor on behalf of the leaders who were gods and the military and others who served them. After all, the elites deserved to benefit from the labors of the commoners.
The secret police. The talk of the anti-party and police state brought clarity to my thoughts. Those same powers would be after me if they weren’t already.
The SSD. The State Security Department. They were the enforcers. When the policeman regained consciousness, a call would be made to them immediately. The local police couldn’t do anything about an American spy loose in the countryside. Out in the outer regions, there were no phone lines or methods to communicate. In the United States, an APB could be put out on a fugitive and every law enforcement agency in the country would be on the lookout.
North Korean communications outside of the big cities were in the dark ages. Police cruisers weren’t equipped with radios. Most local police stations didn’t have phones or the internet.
The SSD did have the equipment to track an American spy. They answered directly to the Divine Leader and were given the resources to do their jobs. They ran the concentration camps and arrested people for crimes against the state such as treason. This situation fell within their jurisdiction, and they would no doubt make finding me their number one priority.
Momma interrupted my thoughts.
“My husband, Lin, went to the lake and caught beetles and insects,” she said. “That’s what he ate.”
“Are there fish in the lake?” I asked Momma, not wanting her to think I wasn’t listening.
“There are. That’s the only way we survived. My husband set up nets and fish traps and at first, we caught a lot of fish. We hid them from the regime, or they would’ve taken them. Eventually, there weren’t many fish left. My husband fished until he didn’t have the strength anymore.”
Several people were crying now, including Momma who fought back the tears. Most of the people in the room had lived through it. Many of them may have even lost someone. They understood firsthand the horrors of living in a totalitarian state. I needed to remember that I was deep in enemy territory.
The SSD would start looking for me this morning.
That’s the soonest they would act, I decided. The communication would go to headquarters in Pyongyang. They would mobilize a search after it went to the highest levels. Agents of the SSD would be dispersed throughout North Korea in every direction in search of Bae and me.
We were two hours from Pyongyang. Two cars would be sent on each road. They’d have to stop in each village and question the locals. That would take time.
The Diner.
This was where they would stop in this village. We were putting the people in the room in danger by being there.
The SSD would be arriving about now.
I abruptly stood to my feet. “Momma, how much do I owe you for the meals? We’ve got to get going.”
Momma wiped the tears from her eyes and stood slowly. Talking about the famine had taken some of the strength out of her. She walked back to the kitchen and returned with a pencil and a piece of paper.
I saw them first. Momma, shortly after me.
Two unmarked cars drove by the front of the diner. They were clearly government issued cars.
SSD.
I reached for the gun in the belt of my pants. Momma grabbed my hand to stop me as if she knew what I intended to do.
“Come with me,” Momma said.
She led us through the kitchen to a room off the back of the building. One lone light bulb illuminated the dark room filled with stored food for the diner. Momma started tugging on a shelf in the far corner. It wedged open. Behind it was a hidden room.
“Get in there,” Momma said. “You’ll be safe.”
I had to duck my head to get into the crawl space. Bae followed. Momma shut the door behind us. The room was totally dark. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I reached out and felt around until I found Bae’s hand which was shaking in fear. I put my hand over her mouth to keep her from making any noise.
I immediately regretted having gone in the room. We were trapped. I’d rather take my chances on the outside in a gunfight rather than be trapped like a mouse in that dark room. I put my shoulder against the door but was unable to get it to budge. I didn’t dare struggle harder or it would make enough noise to attract the attention of the secret police.
Then the reality hit me. Momma locked it on the outside.
I could hear the voices of the Secret Police barking orders to the patrons through the thin walls. A bolt of panic went through my body as I feared the worst.
Momma would turn us in.
Why wouldn’t she? Being responsible for the capture of an American spy would be the ultimate reward for a commoner. It would prove her loyalty to the state. Momma would immediately be restored to an elite status. There would be money. She’d be given a better house. The designation would affect her future generations. It would mean no more suffering for her and her family. The diner would be given more supplies which would mean more food for the valley.
How could I have been so stupid?
We could’ve run out the back and into the woods. A shootout would be better than this fate.
I still have my gun.
I took it out and prepared for whatever would happen next.
We won’t go down without a fight.
29
Frankfurt International Airport
Frankfurt, Germany
Jamie slept the entire seven-hour flight from Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C., to her stopover in Frankfurt, Germany. After a long five-hour layover, she’d be on her way again to Seoul, South Korea. A ten-hour flight made tolerable only by the business class seat that reclined into a bed on the luxurious Korean Air A380.
The double deck airliner was billed as the hotel-in-the-sky. On her last flight, Jamie read about the Celestial bar and lounge on board and the audiovisual on-demand (AOVD) entertainment system available throughout the brand-new aircraft. She’d try to remember to thank her contact who made the travel arrangements. If she had to make a ten-hour flight, this was the way to do it.
Jamie hadn’t allowed herself to think about what she was going to do in South Korea until now. Sleep and eat when you can, her CIA trainer, Curly, always said. You never know when you’ll get your next chance. She took his advice and gave herself time to unwind and recharge her engines before what she knew would be a very emotionally charged mission.
Upon arriving in Frankfurt, she’d gone for a brisk one hour-walk through the terminal. After that, she sat down for a meal consisting of a shredded beef burrito with beans and rice. She skipped the chips, knowing she’d be well fed on the flight. When she finished eating, she found her gate, sat down in one of the not-so-comfortable chairs, and finally allowed herself to start developing a plan.
Three hours later, she realized she had no plan that didn’t result in anything more than a suicide mission. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got at Alex and Brad for causing this predicament. The facts were sketchy, but she drew some conclusions from what she did know.
Alex went to South Korea to find the North Korean cyber warfare lab. He found it and then obviously went to it because he accessed Kryptonite from the North Kore
an server. She tried to get into Alex’s mind and think like he was thinking, as dumb as it was.
When he found the server, Alex would be overly excited. Like she was when she found the head of a sex-trafficking ring. Missions had an ebb and flow to them. Highs and lows. Alex would be on a high when he discovered the lab. He should’ve passed on the location to Brad and come home with an attaboy for a job well done. Except, he knew the bureaucracy wouldn’t act on that information, and the North Koreans would continue for months, if not years, wreaking havoc throughout the world.
She’d experienced that frustration many times herself. After risking her life to discover a sex-trafficking ring, more often than not, the higher ups sat on the information and refused to act. Sometimes, she wondered why she went to all the effort. Lately, when she got the information, she simply acted on her own, not waiting for them to journey through the red tape of bureaucracy that had become the United States Intelligence service. Made even more complicated since there were now four agencies, the CIA, NSA, FBI, and Homeland Security, all wanting their two cents considered before any actions were taken.
Knowing the location of the lab, Alex decided to act on his own. He probably thought he could go there and destroy it. When he arrived, he found a fortress with armed guards and an impenetrable building. Jamie could picture the facility in her head and the armed guards out front. At least this was the scenario playing out in her mind. She had no idea if this was what had happened, but it seemed the most plausible thing she could think of.
At that point, Alex should’ve gone back to South Korea. But he didn’t give up easily. He got an even dumber idea―to go up to the door and offer them his services. An incredibly reckless and stupid thing to do. A smile came to Jamie’s face as she thought of how much courage it took to do such a foolish thing. It’s one of the things she loved about him. This was exactly the type of thing she’d do to infiltrate a sex-trafficking ring. Get as close to the head of the snake as you could without getting bit.
This time Alex got bit.
Still, he somehow managed to get inside and activate Kryptonite. He probably had to show them some results to gain their trust. Make some kind of payment through Kryptonite into their bank account. Probably a million dollars or more.