Star of the North

by D. B. John

  “Please,” Cho said. “My phone . . .”

  “Rest, rest,” the man said in a hush.

  Cho raised his voice to a shout. “Give me my phone!”

  The farmer entered the room, glowering at him. He handed Cho the cell phone, which was warm from charging. Cho turned it on.

  His hands trembling, he entered the code from the phone card to add the fifty-yuan credit, having no idea whether it was enough, then punched in the number he had memorized almost a year ago. He could not think what time it was in Washington.

  Jenna sounded impossibly distant, a voice speaking from another world.

  He hadn’t a second to waste. He gave no greeting; he simply told her where he was, and in between labored breaths, in English so that the farmer wouldn’t understand, began to outline what he knew of the human experimentation program inside Camp 22.

  “I was a prisoner there. I saw it.”

  She said, “This is an open line . . .”

  She was warning him. The Chinese security forces had ears on all cell phone calls to numbers outside the country, and this one would raise an instant red flag. The caller was in a remote border area speaking to someone in Langley, Virginia. But that didn’t matter now.

  “Just listen. In a few minutes I’ll be dead anyway. Your friend Fisk was right. Kim Jong-il’s nuclear threat is a bluff, a smokescreen for something much, much worse . . . The objective of the long-range rocket testing is to bring the United States within range of a nerve agent called scytodotoxin X, a WMD that will poison the food and water supply and kill millions. That’s the payload the warhead is designed to carry. I’ve seen what one microgram of this stuff does to a human body in just ten seconds. You can’t imagine it.”

  The suspicion on the farmer’s face was turning to naked hostility at hearing English spoken. He said, “Are you a spy?”

  Cho said, “It’s been good to hear your voice.”

  “Wait.” For the first time Jenna sounded panicked. “What is your precise location?”

  A vehicle was pulling into the yard outside the window and the kitchen ceiling became a kaleidoscope of flashing of red and blue lights.

  “It’s no use. Good-bye, Jenna.”

  “Hey!” The farmer tried to wrest the phone from Cho’s hand, but Cho just wanted to hear her say good-bye.

  Static filled the line, and telephones rang in faraway Langley. Jenna’s voice was cool and controlled.

  “Please pass the phone to that person in the room with you. Tell him I need a word.”

  51

  CIA Headquarters

  1000 Colonial Farm Road

  Langley, Virginia

  “Isn’t the intel worth more than the asset … ?” Fisk grimaced in that sheepish way he had when he was detaching himself from his principles. “Seriously? An operation on the ground in China?”

  “He’s the most valuable source we’ve ever had inside the North,” Jenna said, trying not to raise her voice. “He’s given us high-grade intel on not one—”

  “Okay, okay—”

  “… but two covert North Korean operations. I’m damned if we’re going to throw him under the bus in China.”

  “But the risk…”

  After a long argument in his office, Fisk had relented.

  “I’ll need a safe house in Yanji, local liaison, and a weapon,” Jenna said.

  He dropped his head back in his seat with a defeated sigh.

  Approvals were sought all the way up to the national security advisor and within hours an operation had swung into place for Cho’s exfiltration to the United States on a false US passport. Upon arrival he would receive the asylum offered all North Korean defectors.

  “We don’t have time to get you an official diplomatic cover,” Fisk said, rubbing his face. “The Chinese will smell a rat. You’ll be operating as an NOC.” He nodded as she visibly baulked. “You’re sure he’s worth that much to you?”

  Nonofficial cover was the most dangerous overseas status for a CIA operations officer. If caught, she would be at the mercy of China’s security forces. She would have no diplomatic immunity or protection. She would have to deny any connection to her own government.

  “If this goes wrong, Jenna,” he said, suddenly angry with her, “it’s on you.”

  52

  Yanji

  Jilin Province

  China

  Saturday, December 17, 2011

  The cold of Manchuria took Amy Miller’s breath away the moment she exited the glass doors of Yanji Airport. Luckily she didn’t have to wait. A driver was holding up a sign with her name and took her straight to her hotel, which was in a business district of neon signs and glitzy towers of emerald-green glass. Even the city’s downtown area looked rundown and tawdry, she thought.

  She beamed at the desk manager as he took the number of her passport; she gave her occupation as travel agent on the guest registration form, and a home address in the Arlington Heights district of Milwaukee, and asked in English if there were any other delegates to the North China Travel Fair staying at the hotel. Not until she’d tipped the porter, locked the door of her room, and got into a steaming hot shower did Amy Miller begin to feel like Jenna Williams again.

  Yanji, in the Jilin Province of northeastern China, was a small city less than fifty kilometers from the North Korean border. Its large population of ethnic Koreans spoke Mandarin as a second language. Jenna had visited several times when she was an academic—she’d learned her North Korean dialect in Yanji—and each time felt she was in a frontier town where anything could happen. The place had a buzz to it, and not in a good way. Undercover Bowibu agents were free to hunt down escaped North Koreans, underage girls were trafficked into seedy massage parlors and never seen again, and the riches from crystal meth put the city authorities in the pockets of violent gangs.

  The CIA’s station chief in Shenyang had arranged a safe house for her that was a five-minute walk from the hotel, but she knew that “safe” here was a relative term. Her presence in the city was sure to have been noted by the Chinese state security police, and the chances of their already having her under some level of surveillance were pretty high. She would have to exercise extreme caution.

  The safe house was an apartment on the eighth floor of a dingy block with landings that smelled of congealed pork fat. When she got there, after a long detour in which she’d doubled back and walked around several other blocks in opposite directions to make sure she had no tails, she found Cho under a blanket on a sleeping mat, drifting in and out of reality in the worried presence of Lim, a young bespectacled CIA asset from Shenyang who worked as a software programmer for the People’s Armed Police, and an off-the-books surgeon whom Lim had procured to treat the gunshot wound to Cho’s left calf, which had begun to redden and swell. Lim was keeping Cho stupefied on oxycodone, because the surgeon, whom Jenna suspected worked for the city’s gangs, had declined to operate until he’d been paid his considerable cash fee, which Jenna had given to him before she’d taken off her coat. Lim had handed her a thick padded envelope containing a compact Beretta 8000, her preferred sidearm, with a loaded double-stack magazine.

  The pig farmer had done exactly as she’d instructed: Cho’s cell phone was still in the farmer’s hand when he’d opened the door to the Chinese border police. She’d heard every word of his Chinese-accented Korean as he spoke to them. “He came here asking for help, about two hours ago. I told him to turn himself in. What took you so long? He could be anywhere by now.”

  She had made good on her offer, and the next day the farmer had found a small fortune in his bank account. In the early hours she had succeeded in sending a car to pick Cho up and transfer him to Yanji.

  She knew that his disappearance in China would no longer be a matter for the Chinese border police, but would by now have been escalated to a state security level, probably under political pressure from Pyongyang. There wasn’t much time. It was vital she got him out of the country in the next twelve hours. Sh
e had his US passport on her. The CIA station chief was arranging his flight out from Shenyang—an eight-hour drive away—on medical insurance documents.

  The surgeon was a small, tough-looking Han Chinese who worked on his knees in silence. She watched him clean the wound, pick out tiny fragments of bullet casing with tweezers, stitch and close the entry and exit holes, and wrap a clean bandage around the calf. He cut away the rotted swaddling around Cho’s forearm, gently felt the healing bone, and rebandaged it. On the table he placed two glass vials of a strong sedative and a packet of disposable syringes. “His blood pressure must be kept down. Give him one injection before the drive to Shenyang. Another for the flight.”

  Lim showed the surgeon out and then left to buy clothing and food. Cho had nothing to wear and would need plenty of nourishment before the long journey to Shenyang. Jenna was only now beginning to worry about that part of the plan: police checkpoints along the way routinely examined motorists’ IDs.

  She boiled a saucepan of water on the tiny hot plate in the kitchen, made herself a cup of green tea, and sat on the floor with her back to the wall as it began to snow again in swirling flakes and the world outside the window became a diffuse white, an empty space. It was 2:00 p.m. As soon as Lim returned with the provisions she would wake Cho and assess his fitness to travel.

  She watched his breath rise and fall, and this had the effect of making her slip into a meditative state. The wall clock ticked. The heated floor gave off a scent of chemical forest. On the table, the room’s only other item of furniture, were Cho’s entire worldly possessions: a packet of Double Happiness containing two cigarettes, a few crumpled notes in yuan, and a couple of small cellophane-wrapped balls of some mysterious white powder. Nothing else to his name. He must have ditched the cell phone.

  He could be anybody, she thought, picking up the cigarette packet and turning it over in her hand. A nobody. An everyman. His body was just bone and sinew, but the tight skin made his face strangely serene, like a young boy’s. She adjusted his blanket, pulling it up to his chin, and felt a strange inclination to brush his cheek, smooth his brow. All that arrogance she’d seen in New York had fallen away. She was not religious, but it seemed to her that his soul had been unburdened, and was now so humbled and light it could float through the snow clouds. It reminded her of something Solzhenitsyn had written. You only have power over a man so long as you don’t take everything from him. But when a man has been robbed of everything, he’s no longer in your power. He’s free.

  When she saw him in Pyongyang he was already in serious trouble. Condemned to Camp 22, a zone of no return … and escaped? She shook her head in silent amazement. He must have gravely offended the regime. She tried to think what law he might have broken, but then she remembered there were no laws that mattered in North Korea, except one, for which the severest punishment was imposed if it was broken: absolute loyalty to the Kim dynasty.

  “Don’t touch those.”

  She was startled out of her reverie. Cho’s eyes were narrow slits.

  “I … don’t smoke. I won’t touch them.”

  “Throw them away. I filled one of them with crystal meth … in case I needed to … kill someone with an overdose.”

  She nodded dumbly, and put the packet into her jacket pocket. She would dispose of them properly in a garbage can in the street.

  His voice was barely above a whisper. “You … saved me. Why?”

  He was turned on his side, watching her, his face half hidden by the pillow. She sensed that his pride did not like her seeing him like this.

  “You showed me my sister. I got you out. Wasn’t that our deal?”

  It was so quiet in the apartment they could hear themselves breathing.

  She said, “Why Camp 22?”

  He looked at her for a long time before answering. Then he gave a faint smile and lay back, staring at the ceiling. “You could say it was my destiny … written in the stars before I was even born.”

  “You survived,” she whispered.

  He nodded very slightly. “Through the love of my mother.”

  Before she could ask him what he meant their heads turned to the door at the sound of the elevator opening in the corridor outside. Jenna knew it was only Lim returning with the provisions, but she was instantly on her guard. She left Cho’s room and closed the door behind her, then she followed procedure, taking out her Beretta and turning the safety catch off. She had checked the magazine that morning and cleaned the bore and the bolt. She had fifteen rounds. She waited for the agreed signal: two double knocks on the door. The signal was given. She unchained the latch and opened the door ajar. Suddenly it burst open inwards, almost hitting her in the face. She raised the Beretta, aiming it with both hands.

  Lim was outside. His lip trembled. He mouthed the word sorry.

  The man pointing the Glock 17 to Lim’s ear had a shaven head and wore a cheap black leather jacket. Four Chinese state security police in navy uniforms stood behind him. The man in the leather jacket spoke calmly in Korean. “Drop your weapon.”

  Slowly Jenna lowered the Beretta to the floor.

  “Now step forward.”

  Faster than she could react a rough hood was over her head. To warn Cho, she screamed, as loud as she could, until a hand covered her mouth. Her hands were grabbed and cold steel cuffs were slipped over them.

  Leather Jacket said, “Not another sound, and we’ll do this the nice way.”

  They escorted her along the corridor, past the prying eyes of neighbors, into the elevator, and took the hood off her. Her legs were wobbling. They had seen through her cover like a bad disguise. She was just surprised they had found her so soon.

  The door closed and the elevator began its descent with a shudder. She thought of her mother, and of how she would explain this to her. She thought of Soo-min, and of Fisk and his disappointment. Miserable way to end a career.

  Leather Jacket had his back toward her. Two of the Chinese police were behind her. The other two, she supposed, had gone into the apartment to arrest Cho.

  “Where are we going?”

  Leather Jacket said nothing.

  Outside the building’s entrance she was shown into an unmarked black Volkswagen Bora sedan. The two policemen sat either side of her in the back. Leather Jacket got into the passenger seat next to the waiting driver.

  The car signaled and turned into the traffic flow, the windshield wipers creating a blur of sleet and neon. Jenna shivered without her coat. She was wearing jeans, her running sneakers, a light sweater, and just a padded black sleeveless vest.

  She tried to think, and guessed they were taking her to Shenyang, the nearest big city. At best she’d be charged with illegally entering the country on false documentation, and used as a bargaining chip after Beijing had lodged a diplomatic protest in Washington. At worst she’d disappear into a secret prison, find herself locked in leg irons, and opened up like a can of beans. Cho wouldn’t be so lucky. Whatever they had in store for him it was nothing good, and she discovered in that moment that it was his fate she was worried about, not her own.

  A strange calm came over her in this moment of crisis. When others panicked, the operations officer calculated. Surely she could negotiate for Cho’s release with the intel he’d already given her … The Chinese were just as alarmed as Washington by the Kim regime’s lethal capability. She had to judge this correctly.

  The early evening rush hour had slowed traffic to a crawl in downtown Yanji, but after about half an hour the roads became quieter. The car had passed every turning for the expressway and it was now clear that their destination was not Shenyang. By her estimation they were heading south. The tower blocks became sparser, the suburbs petered out, and soon they were leaving the city environs altogether, barreling southward through industrial parks and bare farmland barely visible in the wintry gloom that was fast descending.

  Jenna’s equanimity began to evaporate, and her mood gave way to fear.

  South of Yanji the
re was nothing but the North Korean border.

  Her breath became shallow; she felt dampness beneath her arms.

  “Sir,” she said to Leather Jacket, “could we talk?” Leather Jacket remained immobile in the passenger seat. “I have it in my power to create a highly beneficial outcome for all of you,” she said, glancing at the two policemen, “if you’d just pull over so we can talk for a minute.”

  The car picked up speed.

  A red sun was setting behind turbulent snow clouds, and onward the road stretched, southward into eddying snowfalls.

  Oh my God, no.

  The two Chinese policemen peered down at Cho, lying on his sleeping mat beneath a blanket, with his arms out of sight. A lapel radio crackled.

  “Get up. Get dressed,” one of them said in Mandarin. He turned on the ceiling light and cast his eyes about for Cho’s clothes, but saw none.

  Cho regarded them with interest. Their appearance in the room had not surprised him completely. Jenna’s cry had alerted him. They were both young, barely into their twenties. Plain faced. Dull eyed. Had they even finished their training? The guards he’d been accustomed to were seasoned killers, unmatched in ferocity by any other class of people he’d ever encountered. But the Chinese state security forces had sent two kids to arrest him. He, Cho, who had escaped Camp 22. He gave a weak smile. His previous self would have felt quite insulted. He’d bet his last yuan they’d never fired their service revolvers.

  “Come on, get up,” the same one said again. He had a bumpkin’s accent.

  “I can’t move,” Cho said evenly in Mandarin. “I’ve suffered a massive trauma to my back. If you want to take me out of here it will have to be on a stretcher.”

  “What’re you talking about? Show me.”