by Ben Coes
* * *
The guard on the left saluted and reached for the large mahogany door handle, pulling the door open.
Yong-sik stepped into Kim Jong-un’s private chambers.
Yong-sik had been head of the Korean People’s Army now for two decades. This was considered miraculous in Pyongyang’s ruling hierarchy. Kim Jong-un, like his father, had no problem beheading aides and associates close to him on sheer whim. Yet Yong-sik had somehow survived. On several occasions, Yong-sik was convinced that Kim would have him killed. But it never happened. Kim Jong-un—like his father—found something comforting in Yong-sik’s quietude and calm.
Yong-sik stepped inside the suite of rooms, entering a large, luxurious room of mirrors and large paintings, white leather couches, and gold-leafed walls, ceilings, and furniture. Music was playing. The air was cantilevered in smoke. Several half-naked women were positioned about, serving drinks, lighting cigarettes, or letting Kim and his friends grab their asses.
Yong-sik had seen this before. He was emotionless as he walked to Kim.
Kim was smoking a cigarette. A short, large-breasted Chinese woman was sitting in his lap.
Yong-sik saluted.
“General,” said Kim, waving his arm drunkenly. “Won’t you join us?”
“My supreme leader,” said Yong-sik, bowing slightly. “It would be my honor except that as your appointed leader of the army, I feel it is not in my best interest to take enjoyment as long as I am in your trust.”
Kim’s smile turned into a sideways scowl.
“I asked you to have a drink with your supreme leader,” said Kim, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Yong-sik bowed.
“My supreme leader, if it is your insistence, then of course I will have a drink with you,” said Yong-sik.
Kim Jong-un smiled.
“That is why I love you,” said Kim, waving to a servant. “You are sober-minded and yet your loyalty guides you.”
A glass of champagne was handed to Yong-sik, who took a large, awkward sip.
“Might I have a word, my supreme commander?” said Yong-sik.
Kim’s smile disappeared.
“Of course,” he said, shoving the woman from his lap.
“Perhaps in another room?” whispered Yong-sik, glancing at the small crowd gathered inside the spacious, luxurious room.
Kim did not want to rise from his perch. Yet Yong-sik’s eyes told him it was important.
Yong-sik followed Kim to a room off the main living room. It was another massive room, one wall made completely of glass, looking out onto the few lights that dotted Pyongyang, North Korea’s largest city and yet a place where electricity was rationed. The ceiling was two stories tall. One wall was covered in bookshelves, the other with three massive oil paintings, one of Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung; another of his father; and the third of him.
A large, oval-shaped leather sofa sat in the middle of the room. The two men sat down.
“I leave for Macau in an hour, Your Excellency,” said Yong-sik.
Kim nodded, suddenly remembering. “Ah yes. To meet with the Iranian.”
“Correct,” said Yong-sik. “The exchange will take place tomorrow evening. I wanted to apprise you of this, my supreme one, and to make sure you still want to do it.”
Kim took a large swig of champagne, then reached to the table, where a silver tray was stacked high with cigarettes. He picked one up and lit it, took a large drag, then leaned back and exhaled, blowing the cloud of smoke in Yong-sik’s direction.
“We know how to make highly enriched uranium,” said Kim, “but our missiles fall into the sea. Iran can send a missile anywhere but they have no highly enriched uranium.”
“Correct, Your Excellency.”
“It is a good and fair trade. I want you to go and make the exchange. When you return, we will finally have the capability to strike at our enemies. North Korea will at long last be able to attack the United States of America.”
9
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
The briefing was already under way when Jenna walked by Hector Calibrisi’s glass-walled office. A group of people—ten in all—was gathered inside the CIA director’s expansive corner office on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters. She passed by and was about to take a right and go to her office but stopped. She turned around and started walking toward Calibrisi’s office.
Jenna had on a thin brown cashmere turtleneck sweater, which clung tightly to her frame. She wore a pair of white designer slacks that flared at the ankle, revealing stylish white flats. Her hair brushed the tops of her shoulders and was parted in the middle. Jenna’s face was chiseled and pretty. She had brown eyes that were as mesmerizing as they were cold.
In her brief time at the CIA, Jenna had made a grand total of no friends. She kept to herself and her work. She was a mystery. She arrived early, usually before six A.M., and was working when most people left the building. Several people had tried to befriend her, asking her to join the group headed out for Friday-night drinks. But she invariably said no. Calibrisi and Polk were the only ones who knew her story, and they ignored questions about her, especially questions from male members of the Agency’s senior staff. Derek Chalmers had asked them both to shield her, at least for a time, and that’s what they did. But, as both men realized within a few days of Jenna’s arrival, she didn’t need their protection.
She reached the door and pushed gently in, then shut the door behind her. She found Calibrisi, who was staring at the screen. She looked for Polk, who turned and subtly acknowledged her entrance.
The briefing was about North Korea. It was an operation that had been in planning for more than a year. Its design preexisted her arrival, though she had read the details of it.
Jenna caught Polk’s eyes and pointed at herself, as if to ask, with her eyes, “Is it okay for me to be here?” Polk nodded yes, then smiled.
Two large photos cut across a plasma screen in the middle of Calibrisi’s office. The briefing was just getting going.
“The man on your right is, as you all know, Kim Jong-un, supreme leader of North Korea.”
The speaker was a man in his early thirties with curly blond hair: Mack Perry, the head of Special Operations Group, the clandestine paramilitary arm of the CIA.
“The man on the left,” continued Perry, “is General Pak Yong-sik, head of KPA. This operation is a designed strike on Yong-sik, an action we believe is warranted and will lead to increased instability within the inner corridors of Kim’s regime.”
Jenna unconsciously, but noticeably, coughed. Perry turned, as did Calibrisi. She held her hand up to her neck, indicating that she had simply coughed and that it had nothing to do with her opinion of the operation.
Perry hit the remote. The plasma shot to a view of a tall building on a crowded strip of buildings.
“Macau,” said Perry. “Asia’s Las Vegas. This hotel, the Mandarin, is where the operation will occur. We have ascertained that Yong-sik will be in Macau this weekend, staying at the hotel. A three-man team will penetrate his security cordon and kill him in his hotel suite. Weapons are sanitized. Special Activities Division will work reporters and tell them it was Kim who ordered the kill. We believe the effect will be extremely detrimental internally.”
Jenna was shaking her head.
“Is something wrong?” asked Perry from across the room, staring daggers at Jenna.
Jenna looked at Perry.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said in a soft, aristocratic British accent. “I wasn’t meaning anything, I apologize. It’s just—”
“It’s just what?” said Perry.
“It’s just that this operation is … well, it’s bloody awful,” Jenna said.
The entire office turned and looked at Jenna. She caught Calibrisi’s eyes. He was grinning.
Perry looked dumbfounded, though not angry.
“What’s awful about it?” he said. “I’m always open to suggestions.
”
“Where to start?” said Jenna in her British accent. “Let’s see then. Tell me, what is your name?”
“Mack. We’ve met, like, twenty times.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Tell me, Mack, what is your intended goal?”
“To harm North Korea.”
“If that’s your goal, it will not be achieved,” said Jenna, commanding the room. “The loss of Yong-sik will simply result in someone else stepping into Yong-sik’s position, and the status quo in North Korea will continue on. Kim has executed countless generals over the years and, while he does have a certain loyalty to Yong-sik, the fact is he won’t care that he’s dead. In fact, it will expose a key vulnerability to Kim, making him aware as to the extent of our knowledge of their movements outside North Korea, possibly preventing future foreign travel and thus further reducing our ability to potentially go after North Korea.”
“I disagree,” said Perry.
“Really?” said Jenna.
“I’ve been inside North Korea,” said Perry. “I know the country.”
“How many of his own generals has Kim killed in the past year?” said Jenna, staring at Perry.
“Six.”
Jenna smiled.
“He’s killed eight in all.”
“Bullshit,” said Perry. “I’ve read the intelligence—”
“He killed two more men last night,” said Jenna, interrupting. “Wonsan Province.”
“How do you know?”
“There was a red flag on BULLRUN last night,” said Jenna, referring to an NSA program that produced intelligence based on cracking encryption of online communications and data. “It came out a little after midnight.”
The room was silent. There were a few awkward coughs. Finally, Perry spoke up. After an initial few moments of being pissed off, he was now grinning.
“Okay,” said Perry. “I’m tracking you, Jenna. I hear you. So let’s discuss it.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“So what would you do?” said Perry.
Jenna remained composed, staring icily at Perry. She glanced at Calibrisi. She took a furtive look around the room.
“What is our goal, that is, the goal of the Central Intelligence Agency and thereby the United States of America as it relates to North Korea?”
“Stability,” said one man.
“De-nuclearization of the peninsula,” said a woman across the table.
Jenna listened impassively.
“The goal of the West is the removal of Kim Jong-un,” she said emphatically. “Destabilization should only be pursued in that context. Killing the general brings the U.S. no closer to removing Kim and in fact pushes that possibility further away. Additionally, it would be futile and likely cost us several lives. The general’s traveling security regime is well trained and deadly. My apologies, but there are few Langley agents who can both gain entrance to the Mandarin and then dispatch a scale kill team. In fact, there’s only one.
“Who are you talking about?” said a man on the far side of the office.
“Dewey Andreas. I designed an operation he worked in Beijing.”
“So what would you do, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Perry.
“Start with the fact that a wasted operation is a hated thing at all intelligence services,” said Jenna. “There is a decent hook into the operation. Whomever tracked down the Macau lead should be complimented. So let’s start with that, shall we?”
She walked into the middle of the room and eyed the analyst who was managing the photos.
“Can you bring back Yong-sik?” she said.
A moment later, the face shot of Yong-sik filled the screen.
“Yong-sik is on his way to Macau,” she continued. “Rather than kill him, permanently sidelining him, why don’t we utilize him?”
“How?” said Polk. “It would have to be without his knowledge.”
Jenna looked thoughtful, staring at Yong-sik’s photo.
“We poison him,” she said. “A neural toxin, slow acting, doesn’t kill him for a day or two. We somehow embed the antidote in Pyongyang. We poison Yong-sik in Macau and ask him for something, for example, real-time SOQ on their nuclear program. Give us the details of the North Korean nuclear weapons program and we’ll tell you where the antidote is. The poisoning takes place in Macau. We plant the antidote in Pyongyang. We give Yong-sik the antidote only after he sends us the information.”
“Why does it need to be in Pyongyang?” said Perry.
“If he doesn’t believe he has a chance to live he won’t give us the information.”
“How the hell do we get an antidote inside Pyongyang?” asked Polk.
Jenna looked at Calibrisi.
“River House has an asset there,” she said, referring to MI6. “Hector, you would need to make the ask. From what I know, he’s quite reliable. Whatever poison is used needs to be a one-off, something customized, otherwise they’ll draw his blood and be able to antidote him before he sends the plans.”
Calibrisi stood up.
“So we utilize the general to send us the nuclear plans,” said Calibrisi. He looked without emotion at Jenna. “And how does that get us any closer to getting rid of Kim?”
She stared back at Calibrisi. After a moment, she shrugged innocently.
“We’ll know his capability set, his strengths, his vulnerabilities,” Jenna said. “When he’s lying, when he’s not. We’ll know if he’s bluffing and if he’s not. I assume we’d rather not start a nuclear war based on a bluff? On the other hand, if he’s not bluffing, we’ll have a peremptory window. If we must remove him—in the nuclear sense—we’ll know when and where to strike.”
“I like it a lot,” said Perry, grinning at Jenna. “It’s a dramatic improvement.”
“When does Yong-sik land?” said Calibrisi.
“Sometime in the next forty-eight hours,” said Perry. “We won’t know until his plane leaves Pyongyang.”
Jenna turned and went to the door. She felt her heart racing. She felt so completely alien. She put her hand to the door just as she heard her name.
“Jenna,” said Calibrisi. “You and Mack design it. We reconvene in two hours.”
* * *
Jenna stormed from the office, more mad at herself than anything. Why did she need to come in and immediately make everyone hate her? She knew her style and her opinions were an acquired taste. Derek and Veronica had understood her foibles and bitchy nature, the way a family member does. But now she was alone and no one knew her. She sat away from her desk, away from the glass wall which let people in the hallway look in.
A knock came to the door. She turned. It was Mack Perry.
“Hey, mind if I come in?”
“Fine.”
Perry stepped inside her office.
“I just wanted to say, first of all, I appreciate you interrupting and fixing that,” said Perry. “I think I gave you an angry look.”
“You didn’t, don’t worry about it.”
“I mean, you did show me up, but then I was thinking, you’re supposed to do that. What I mean is, I don’t care if you do that, as long as it’s making things better, which it is. The people around here who end up becoming terrible are the ones who have an ego about being right or wrong. Anyway, sorry about that look.”
Jenna had a blank expression on her face. She allowed a small smile to hit her lips.
“It’s fine, Mack,” she said in a soft British accent.
“Can I say something else?”
Jenna nodded, her arms crossed guardedly.
“I know what happened and I’m very sorry about that,” said Perry. “I’m not sure what to say. I’m glad you’re here. Everyone is. Even if you did ruin what was a great operation.”
Jenna laughed.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Want to get started?”
“Sure,” said Jenna. She leaned forward. “We’ll need your top chemist.”
“Dave Morris,�
� said Perry. “I’ll get him up here.”
10
GEORGETOWN
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The motorcycle—a red-and-blue Suzuki Hayabusa—followed a meandering, leisurely course as the dull orange of dawn colored the Washington sky. The rider was a large man; his face was hidden by a black helmet and by visor glass tinted dark. He took the bike through Georgetown and Woodley Park, keeping the powerful bike in check, its low thunder barely interrupting the quietude of a Sunday morning in the nation’s capital. It was five A.M.
The motorcycle rumbled along at a calm speed, its 1340cc, four-stroke, DOHC, four-cylinder, sixteen-valve engine sounding like the dark clouds on the proverbial horizon, coughing and punching the air as the storm approached. The Hayabusa was one of the fastest production motorcycles in the world.
The man on top wore cut-off shorts, running shoes, and a blue T-shirt. He trotted the bike slowly along Woodley Park’s residential streets, like a cowboy atop a stallion just before the run.
It was early spring and flowers were blooming everywhere.
He passed the Omni Shoreham Hotel and put on his signal before the entrance to Rock Creek Parkway, even though there were no other cars or vehicles on the road. He cruised slowly downhill into the curving entrance to Rock Creek Parkway, glancing left, seeing no one. He entered Rock Creek Parkway and headed north, clutching and shifting as his hands worked the throttle, his leg kicked, and the Hayabusa’s low, impatient thunder turned into a throaty, angry roar. With every shift, the engine went high to low, then came more acceleration, more speed, until he needed to shift again, and it repeated itself, the scream of the engine echoing through the forests and canyons that bracketed both sides of Rock Creek Parkway. He kept pushing the bike harder and harder and harder, shifting and gunning it until there was no place else to go, until there was nothing more the superbike could give him.
He glanced down at the digital speedometer. In glowing blue light, he registered his speed at that moment: 172.6 mph.
The driver took the Suzuki up the two-lane parkway with ferocious speed, slowing ever so slightly whenever the road curved, regrouping, then ripping like all hell again. The wind was like a wall against the overwhelming force of the motorcycle. The man clearly possessed advanced riding skills. He was also confident, even reckless, some would say insane, though had someone been able to read his thoughts, all they would’ve discovered would be an eerie calm—for the speed, the challenge of the road, the knowledge that the slightest mistake would kill him.