Time to get creative. “What about breaches of your IT systems? Or attempted attacks? Have you had more of those recently?”
“No. In fact, there’s been a marked decrease.”
“That could be good or bad news.”
Nang cocked his head. “Explain.”
“It’s good news if the North Koreans have truly ramped down their searches. It’s bad news if they’ve figured out a way to launch a cyber-attack without detection.”
“Knowing the North as I do, I’d assume it’s the latter,” said Camron, “but we can’t work with assumptions. How do we figure out which alternative is true?” The man studied Alton with curious eyes.
Alton steepled his hands. “For the moment, let’s go with the assumption that you’re right. The North is launching undetected cyber-attacks. If that’s true, we have to start by determining their attack vector.”
“Attack vector?” asked Camron.
“It’s the specific technique a hacker uses to break through a firewall and access a computer system.”
“I thought they just sat at a computer launching virus programs,” said Camron. “I mean…what other ways are there?”
“Most involve what you just said, but there are others, too. Either way, we start by looking for breaches. Once we find those, we determine the attack vector and follow it backwards to the source.”
“And the particular system being attacked should reveal a lot about their plans, right?” said Mallory.
“Exactly,” said Alton. “If we discover the power grid server has been compromised, for example, we know that’s their target.”
Nang leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “If we haven’t detected the firewall breach already, how do we find it now?”
“Good question. First, I’d recommend a review of any recent cyber-attacks that were detected. Those attacks may have continued but in an undetected manner. Second, let’s look for any kind of physical breaches.”
“How does a physical breach help us?” asked O’Neil. “I thought you said you’re looking for a cyber-attack.”
“If the North is planning some kind of attack, they’re probably not going to waste their resources on some other unrelated project, either physically or in cyberspace. They’d want to focus all their attention on their objective.”
“If they’re acting logically,” pointed out Camron, “which we know they don’t always do.”
“True,” said Alton. “We’ll just have to look for physical and cyber-breaches and see where those clues lead us.” He turned to Nang. “Can you pull this kind of information together?”
“Yes, and I can tell you about a few events I already know about. The eastern half of our DMZ border has been quiet, but I heard a report from my counterpart at the western section that two North Korean soldiers were caught in the DMZ. We fired shots in the air, and the soldiers fled back to their side.”
“Where exactly did this incursion take place?” asked Camron.
Nang manipulated switches on an electrical panel. The lights lowered, and an enormous map of the Korean peninsula illuminated an entire wall at the room’s end. Nang pointed to the western edge of the border. “It was here, near Kanghwado—not more than twenty kilometers from the western shore.”
“Anything else?” asked Alton.
“Yes. In the last few weeks, there have been the usual daily cyber-attacks on servers of the Ministries of National Defense and Foreign Affairs—nothing out of the ordinary. There were also two on the Ministry of Agriculture database, which is a bit unusual.”
“Has the Agriculture server been attacked before?”
“Yes, but it’s been a month or so since the last time.”
“Hmm,” said Alton, giving his head a shake. “It could mean something. It’s kind of grey. Anything else?”
Nang gathered his eyebrows in thought. He shook his head.
“There’s been unusual activity of a good sort,” said Chegal. “A few months ago, Kim sent a delegation here to conduct a summit on micro-lending.”
“Micro-lending?” asked O’Neil.
“They wanted South Koreans to make small loans to North Korean start-up businesses.”
“That is unusual,” said Camron. “Kim is normally only interested in negotiations that concern weapons, food, or U.N. sanctions.”
“But it didn’t work,” said Chegal, “not that we expected it to. Why would we make loans to a country we’re at war with? Of course, the Northerners said we were being unreasonable. They left issuing their usual threats.”
“That makes me think of another angle we can pursue,” said Mallory. “The international flow of money.”
“What do you mean?” asked Nang.
“We suspect North Korea is up to something. The agent we spotted at the Olympic village supports that idea. But the country has been broke for decades. That’s why every few years you hear about its citizens being on the verge of starvation. If they’re planning on pulling off something big, there’s a good chance they’ll need money from another country.”
“China,” said Camron.
“Probably,” agreed Mallory.
“But the U.N. has issued sanctions against helping Kim’s regime—including financial assistance,” said Nang.
Mallory smiled. “That actually makes it easier to trace. There’s a limited number of techniques that can be used to transfer money illegally, and I know them all.”
“For example?” asked Nang, angling his head in curiosity.
“Say one country wants to pay another secretly. They’ll often both use dummy holding companies. It makes the flow harder to trace.”
“So how do you trace these payments?”
Mallory smiled. “My husband isn’t the only expert in pattern recognition.”
“That’s for sure,” said Alton. “Why don’t you proceed with that line of inquiry? That is…if Agent Nang agrees.”
“Of course. No stone unturned, right?”
“And I’ll look through North Korean press releases for any change in their usual propaganda,” said Camron. “It might suggest their target.”
“Good,” said Alton. “In the meantime, I’m going to look into the cyber-attacks on the Ministry of Agriculture.” He paused. “The opening ceremony is tomorrow night. If North Korea has some kind of attack planned, our time to discover it is about to run out.”
CHAPTER 13
Most of the room’s occupants dispersed to begin work on their tasks.
“What can Silva and I do to help?” asked O’Neil.
Nang drummed his fingers on a chair, deep in thought. “The mole’s presence here in the South suggests an active North Korean mission on our soil. If that’s the case, we’ll need to be ready for armed combat. Why don’t you work with Sergeant Chegal and Corporal Ru to draw up a list of the tactical equipment we need. Once the list is ready, I’ll send it to the Quartermasters for provisioning.”
“Will do,” said O’Neil, who seemed relieved at having the chance to work on a purposeful activity. The four soldiers sequestered themselves in the back of the room and huddled around a small round table covered with artificial maple laminate.
Camron booted up his laptop and took a seat between Nang and a towering rack of servers with a black matte finish. “So your commander is General Zheng, huh?”
Nang nodded knowingly.
“That’s interesting,” said Camron, “and unusual.”
“What’s unusual about it?” asked David.
“Zheng is not a Korean name,” explained Nang. “It’s Chinese. The general’s father came here from China just after the Korean War broke out.”
“That doesn’t happen very often?”
“Certainly not,” said Nang, stifling an emotion of some kind. “It’s…irregular.”
“Looks like he made the most of it,” said David, “considering he’s your boss now.”
Nang forced a plastic smile but said nothing.
The team members settled into their individ
ual tasks, and the electronics room fell quiet, the whisper of fingers over keyboards, subdued murmurs, and the soft whir of cooling fans the only sounds.
After three hours of research, Mallory sat back in her chair with a sigh.
“Any luck?” asked Alton.
“No. I haven’t found any evidence of covert loans to North Korea. I checked holding companies, national banks, government ministries…”
“It was worth a shot.”
She twirled a lock of obsidian hair around a finger, deep in thought. “Maybe the financial angle isn’t a complete dead end.”
“What do you mean?” asked Camron.
“White-collar criminals are constantly changing the techniques they use to hide their financial shenanigans. So a lot of what I do for the FBI is figuring out the latest-and-greatest money-laundering methods. Since half of these techniques involved bogus loans, one of the best ways to stay on top of their criminal techniques is to study the minutes from the World Bank’s international-lending summits.”
“And that helps us how?” asked David.
“I don’t recall ever reading anything about South Korea helping the North with loans, big or small.” She turned to Nang. “Last month’s micro-loan summit seems odd to me. Was this kind of meeting typical?”
“No.”
“But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t try,” added Camron.
Sergeant Chegal rubbed his chin. “It was a strange meeting—organized at the last minute. I usually hear about summits between the two countries months ahead of time.”
“True,” said Nang, “but as Agent Camron has said, a hallmark of the Northerners is their unpredictability.”
“Still,” said Mallory. “It seems weird. They had to know there was no chance of success.”
Rising from his chair, Alton stretched stiff legs and limped over to Chegal. “Tell us more about the conference. Did anything else seem odd besides its timing?”
After talking through the details of the negotiations for fifteen minutes, the team paused. No strange details jumped out.
Corporal Ru spoke up for the first time. “One thing was different. The gift baskets from the North. They were better than usual.”
“Gift baskets?” said Alton.
“Yes, there’s always a ceremonial exchange of gifts at the beginning of each conference,” said Camron. “Usually traditional items—incense, rice, and the like.”
“But this time the Northern delegation went…how you say?…high tech,” said Ru. “It was nice. They gave us things we can actually use.”
“Like what?” asked Alton.
“Thumb drives, USB cables, the computer cards for the memory. It was…how you say…pretty cool.”
Mallory studied her husband. “What is it?”
Alton furrowed his brows in concentration. “This sounds familiar. Let me go look something up.” He hunkered down over his computer for a few minutes of research, his fingers dancing over the laptop keyboard at a furious pace.
After a minute or two, he turned back to his companions. “I thought so. A few years ago, Russia hosted the G-twenty summit, an annual meeting of the world’s twenty most economically influential countries. Russian gave out tech equipment, too. But after the conference, Italian news sources claimed that the thumb drives and USB cables the Russians supplied to the delegates were programmed to spy on them.”
“I don’t get it,” said David. “The things you just mentioned are hardware devices, not software. That means someone had to take them out of their packaging to put spy software on them. Wouldn’t the delegates get kind of suspicious about receiving unwrapped thumb drives?”
“That’s just what I thought when I first heard about it,” said Alton, “but the answer is what made this whole event stick out in my mind. It turns out that malicious code was incorporated during the manufacturing process. The thumb drives were fully packaged and looked empty when plugged into USB ports, but they actually contained a number of spyware programs.”
“Alton,” said Mallory, “did the article say where the thumb drives were manufactured?”
“Let me check.” He returned to his computer for few minutes of research. “Yep, here it is. China—a company called Jiyi Manufacturing.”
“China, huh?” Mallory twirled another lock of hair. “That’s not too far from here.”
“Exactly,” said Alton. “Kind of makes you wonder where the North Koreans got their thumb drives, doesn’t it?”
“How do we find that out?”
Alton turned back to his keyboard. “If I could get my hands on one, I might be able to track down the manufacturer.”
Ru beamed. “I have one at home! Like I say, the gift baskets were nice.”
“Can you bring it back here as quickly as possible?” asked Alton.
Ru turned to Nang, who nodded.
“Yes, sir,” said the corporal. He turned on his heel and exited the room.
Nearly an hour later, Ru returned with an apologetic shrug. “Sorry—traffic.” He handed the device over to Alton.
The only marking on the red thumb drive was an Asian character stamped in gold on one side.
“Can you make anything of this?” Alton asked the Korean team members.
“This is definitely Chinese,” said Nang, “but I don’t read their script very well. I think it’s Zyr Ji.”
“If you’ll pardon me, sir,” said Chegal, maneuvering around Nang and stepping closer to Alton. “My granny is Chinese, so I can read their script pretty well. Can I see the device up close?” He squinted as Alton held it at eye level. “It’s Jiyi, the same company the Russians used.”
“It makes sense,” said Alton, nodding. “China is one of North Korea’s strongest allies.”
“One of their only allies,” said Camron. “Do you think this is a Chinese plot? The Chinese exploited the upcoming conference to place their code inside these devices?”
“Maybe,” said Alton. “Or maybe Kim’s flunkies placed a special order. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” He lifted the thumb drive up to eye level. Its smooth, blood-red finish reflected the room’s florescent light. “First, we need to see if this baby is infected.”
CHAPTER 14
Exhaust fumes filled the air around the tunnel’s narrow entrance, but Commander Yun didn’t care. In fact, he couldn’t have experienced more joy or inhaled a fragrance more delightful. The plan he had envisioned for years would launch within minutes.
Not only that, but conditions for the mission were better than he could have dreamed of: strong winds and blizzard-like conditions along much of the border, rendering the South’s motion-based detectors useless. Their infrared satellites would have a more difficult time picking up the team heat signatures, too.
Penetrating into the South would be child’s play. The reinforced concrete tunnel was a marvel of clandestine engineering, a smooth corridor that would have warmed the hearts of President Kim’s jailbreak-minded political prisoners. Rows of bright florescent lights ran along the ceiling, bisecting sleek grey walls.
And the mission team’s training and provisioning had proved flawless. They were ready. The muted growl of the motorcycles’ engines couldn’t have been more pleasing to the ear.
Agent Kam approached with eyebrows drawn together. He stopped in front of Yun. “Commander, the axle of Sergeant Tokko’s motorcycle has broken.”
Yun smiled, knowing he had covered this contingency long ago. “It must have been damaged during the exhaust modifications. Use one of the replacement bikes out of the shed.”
“Yes, sir. But will there be time—?”
“Tokko is a member of the second wave, right?”
Kam nodded.
“So he’ll have enough time to transfer his gear, as long as he starts now. Go see it to.”
Kam lingered a moment.
“Well,” said Yun. “What else?”
“Corporal Somun is vomiting and has a fever. He’s not fit for duty.”
Losi
ng a soldier—another contingency Yun had anticipated. Although truth be told, he had expected training injuries and mission casualties to be more likely than illness. No matter. He had built redundancies into the mission team’s expertise, knowing men would be lost along the way. “We have two more demolitions experts on his team. That will be sufficient. Divide Somun’s supplies among them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Kam…take a deep breath. The men are looking to you for confidence. We’re ready. Your demeanor should reflect that. It will inspire the soldiers with courage.”
Kam sucked in a lungful of air and released a slow exhale. “You’re right, sir. Thank you.”
“Now go,” said Yun, “and take care of those problems.”
His second-in-command scurried off.
Yun chuckled. The magnitude of the occasion must have affected his younger colleague. Kam almost never addressed Yun as sir any more.
Five minutes later, a crackle sounded in his earpiece. “Commander Yun, Lieutenant Pi here, Wave One team. Do we have permission to initiate?”
“Wave One team,” said Yun into the mike clipped onto his winter jacket, “may you bring glory to our nation and our president. Proceed with the mission.”
CHAPTER 15
“First things first,” said Alton, stretching in his chair in the counterintelligence command center. He turned to Nang. “Can you get me a spare laptop?”
“A spare one?” interrupted Camron.
“Yes,” said Alton. “I’m sure as heck not going to stick a potentially virus-infected thumb drive into my own laptop. There’s no telling what that thing might do.” He turned back to Nang. “I need a true spare. One it won’t be a problem to lose if it’s damaged beyond repair.”
“Sergeant Chegal,” said Nang, “you’ve worked here at command for the last few years. Since they know you, you’re more likely to have better luck acquiring such equipment. Report to the Quartermasters and request it. If you have any problems, see me or General Zheng.”
“Yes, sir.”
A quarter-hour later, Chegal reappeared with a late-model laptop and presented it to Alton.
When the Killing Starts (The Blackwell Files Book 8) Page 4