by Larry Bond
He wasn’t going to do that. He was going to take it step by step, do what should be done, no matter the personal consequences.
Jack Corrigan was just coming on duty as mission coordinator and was being briefed by Lauren. They stopped talking as he walked across the “bridge,” an open area of space between the communications consoles and the high-tech gear that lined the room.
“I’d like to talk to Ferguson as soon as possible,” Slott told them.
“He’s still sleeping I think,” said Lauren. “His phone isn’t on—”
“Why the hell isn’t his phone on?”
Lauren glanced toward Corrigan. Ordinarily Slott was the personification of cool; he showed so little emotion at times, she was tempted to take his pulse.
“Ferg’s afraid that the phone might, you know, that there would be a bad time or something,” said Corrigan. “And I don’t think he totally trusts the encryption either.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Slott. The encryption was an NSA standard, all but theoretically impossible to crack.
“He usually leaves it off unless something important’s going on,” said Lauren. “The transmissions can be detected and—”
“Something damn important is going on,” said Slott. “Who’s with him? Sergeant Young?”
“Um, Guns turns his phone off, too,” said Lauren. “I’m sure Ferg tells him to.”
Slott struggled to control his anger. It wasn’t Lauren or Corrigan’s fault that he couldn’t talk to Ferguson—they couldn’t control what the op did—and, to be honest, neither could he.
He liked Ferguson’s results—who didn’t?—but the op had always struck him as being arrogant, acting as if he didn’t have to follow the rules everyone else did.
“I called the hotel desk,” said Lauren. “He left orders not to be disturbed. Maybe—”
“I want to talk to him now,” Slott told them. “Get somebody to get him. Have him call me.”
“Colonel Van Buren’s operation has his men tied up,” said Corrigan.
“Tell Seoul to send someone down there,” snapped Slott, referring to the CIA’s South Korean office.
“How much should I tell them?” asked Lauren.
Slott hesitated. There were two separate problems he had to deal with: the plutonium itself and his people’s failure to discover it. If he had Seoul work on problem number one, he might not be able to discover the seriousness of problem number two. What he needed for now was to keep the two problems separate if at all possible.
On the other hand, he needed to talk to Ferguson ASAP, not when Ferguson felt like checking in.
“Dan?” said Corrigan.
“Don’t tell them anything. Ferguson is just an American who’s supposed to call home.”
Corrigan and Lauren glanced at each other.
“I’ll come up with something,” said Corrigan.
~ * ~
18
DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA
The knock on the hotel-room door was not quite loud enough to wake the dead, but it was sufficient to jostle someone with a mild hangover. Ferguson lifted his head and grunted, “Yeah?”
“Robert Christian?”
It was the cover name Ferguson had used to check in. The voice speaking was English with an American accent.
“Yeah?”
“Your uncle wants to talk to you.”
“What time is it?”
“Going on ten o’clock.”
Ferguson groaned and slipped out of bed. “My uncle, huh?” At least his knee felt better. “Where’s he live?”
“Washington.”
He grabbed his Glock and a flash-bang grenade and walked to the door, flipping on the TV as he went. Ferguson had chosen the hotel because it had eyepieces in each room’s door; Ferguson had replaced his with a wireless video camera whose wide-angle lens allowed it to view the entire hallway.
The image on the TV screen showed that there was a man and a woman outside, both dressed in suits, both Western, more than likely American. They didn’t have guns showing, and they didn’t have backup down the hallway, unless they were hiding in the stairway. No headsets, no radios.
The man leaned against the door, apparently in a misguided attempt to peer through the spyglass.
“My uncle hasn’t lived in Washington in twenty years,” said Ferguson. Silently, he slid back the dead bolt and unhooked the chain.
“We’re from the embassy,” said the man, still leaning against the door.
“Which embassy would that be?” asked Ferguson. As he did, he yanked the door open. The man fell inside, helped along by Ferguson, who grabbed his arm and threw him against the bureau. Ferguson kicked the door closed behind him, then knelt on the man’s chest, his pistol pointed at his forehead.
“I’m hoping you’re new,” Ferguson told the CIA officer, who clearly was. “Like maybe you just got off the plane.”
“I’ve been in Korea three months,” managed the man.
“That’s long enough to know better.”
Ferguson quickly searched him; he wasn’t carrying a weapon. His business cards indicated he was Sean Gillespie and a member of the U.S. Commerce Department’s Asian Trade Council, the cover du jour obviously.
“What’s going on in there?” yelled his teammate from the hall, pounding on the door.
“Let her in,” Ferguson said, getting up. “Before I shoot her.”
Gillespie opened the door, and his fellow CIA officer, a thin brunette with thick glasses, came inside, her face flushed. Like Gillespie, she looked about twenty-three going on twelve.
“What is this?” she sputtered, mesmerized by Ferguson’s gun.
“Lock the door and lower your voice,” Ferguson told her. “Then you have about ten seconds to tell me why you’re here blowing my cover.”
The brunette’s cheeks went from red to white.
“Why are you here?” said Ferguson.
“You’re supposed to come right away to the embassy and call home,” said Gillespie. “We were told to bring you.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t say.”
“You’re not on official cover?” asked the brunette.
“Do these boxers look official?” said Ferguson.
~ * ~
O
fficial cover” meant that the officers held positions with the government and had diplomatic passports. It also meant that just about anyone who counted knew they were CIA.
Someone traveling on unofficial cover, like Ferguson, had no visible connection with the Agency or the government. Other officers were supposed to be extremely careful when approaching them, since anyone watching might easily put two and two together and realize the other person was a spy.
Unsure whether the two nuggets had been followed, Ferguson told them to leave without him. They refused; they had their orders after all and insisted on accompanying him to Seoul. After considerable wrangling, he convinced them to meet him on the train to Seoul. Ferguson gave them a head start, then he called The Cube and asked what the hell was going on.
“There you are,” said Corrigan.
“Two bozos from the embassy just woke me up. What’s the story?”
“Oh. Slott needed to talk to you and—”
“So you got Seoul to blow my cover?”
“No.”
“You need to talk to me?”
“Dan does. Listen—”
“I’ll call back.”
Ferguson hung up, looked at his watch. Guns wouldn’t be up for several hours. He decided he’d let him sleep; they weren’t supposed to meet until the afternoon anyway.
Ferguson turned off the phone, gathered his gear in an overnight bag, then left. Outside, he took a cab to a hotel near the science museum, checked in, then strolled downstairs to the coffee shop. When he was sure he wasn’t being followed, he went out on the street and caught another cab at random, waving the first one off, and took it a few blocks to a park they’d scoped out the other day where
he had a good view of the surrounding area.
He dialed into Slott’s number but didn’t get an answer, so he called back over to The Cube.
“Where have you been, Ferg?” asked Corrigan.
“Hello to you, too, Jack. Where’s Slott?”
“Seoul called me—”
“Yeah?”
“They were supposed to meet you on the train, and you didn’t show up. They thought you were dead.”
“Tell them I jumped out the window.”
“Hang on. Slott’s standing right here.”
“Ferg, what’s going on?” said Slott when he came on the line.
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
“You found bomb material.”
“Lauren didn’t tell you?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“The tags were hot. All of them the first day, one the second. We didn’t find the material itself. I have an idea where it might be, though. I’ll go back tonight.”
“No. I don’t want you going anywhere until you hear from me.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I really don’t feel like discussing this with you right now.”
“Well maybe you better,” said Ferguson.
“At the moment, I don’t want to do anything that will jeopardize Thera.”
“How is this going to affect her?”
“I understand you contacted her—”
“No, she contacted me. Look, Dan, if you want to second-guess me, fine, but I’m a little cold right now, so why don’t we do it some other time?”
Ferguson glanced around, making sure no one was near.
“I’m not second-guessing you, Ferg,” snapped Slott.
Ferguson, realizing he was feeling a little cranky himself, remembered he’d forgotten to take his morning dose of thyroid-replacement medicine. He reached into his pocket for the small pillbox he carried, and slipped out the three small pills.
Amazing how such a small amount of chemical could have so much control over a person.
Ferguson recounted what had happened, essentially repeating everything he had told Lauren before going to sleep a few hours earlier.
“The tag that went red the second night was the one next to the entrance to the low-level waste area,” added Ferguson. “I want to get a look at it. I’ll bring a gamma meter in, look around, take some soil samples, plant some more tags.”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? How long do you want me to wait?”
“Until I decide what I want you to do.”
Ferguson put his head back on the bench and looked at the thick layer of clouds overhead. He exhaled slowly.
As supervisors went, Slott was generally reasonable; Ferguson couldn’t remember being second-guessed, let alone being jerked around like this.
“This is a bad decision, Dan,” said Ferguson finally. “You’re not thinking this through.”
“Why is this a bad decision?” snapped Slott.
“Because they could move the material.”
“I’m not debating this with you.”
“Does Seoul know about all this?”
“Not yet.”
“You telling them?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“I don’t think we should get them involved. They sent a couple of rookie bozos down to Daejeon and blew my cover. I don’t think they can be trusted.”
“That’s not really up to you, is it?” snapped Slott, instantly defensive.
“You sure they don’t know about this already?”
“Good-bye, Ferg.” Slott cut the line.
~ * ~
19
P’YŎNGYANG AIRPORT
A gust of wind rushed into the plane as the steward folded the 737’s forward passenger door back. Thera, standing directly behind Dr. Norkelus, hunched her shoulders together under her parka to ward off the cold, watching as a boarding ladder was rolled across the concrete toward the airplane. The metal stairway, a throwback to the 1950s, groaned and shook ominously as Norkelus stepped onto it.
“Come along,” Norkelus said to Thera under his breath. “Let’s look professional.”
Two men in heavy military overcoats stood at the bottom of the steps, their right hands welded beneath the visors of their caps in salute.
Norkelus, who did not speak Korean, addressed them in English. The men apparently didn’t understand what he was saying, for they responded by gesturing in the direction of one of the two large buses that were parked nearby. A short woman in an oversized parka stepped from the bus and began walking slowly toward them, taking tiny steps, her head bowed as if she were a beaten dog.
By now a good portion of the inspection team had come out of the plane and formed a small knot behind Norkelus. Most stared at the nearby three-story terminal building, where a large photo of North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-Il, returned their gaze.
P’yŏngyang Airport was the country’s main international airport, but it typically saw no more than four flights in any given week. No other aircraft were parked on the expansive concrete pad in front of the terminal. A half-dozen old Russian airliners, turboprops mostly, and all showing signs of serious neglect, stood in a row by the taxiway closer to the runway, or the place might not have seemed like an airport at all.
“You will board bus, please,” said the translator, looking at her shoes as she spoke.
“I am Dr. Norkelus,” said the director. “Please tell our hosts we are happy to be here.”
“You will please now board bus,” said the woman.
Norkelus, slightly confused, began shepherding his people toward the bus. Two of the techies stayed behind to supervise the unloading of the equipment. This bothered the two military men, and it took quite a while for Norkelus to explain through the translator that the protocols called for the equipment to remain in the team’s custody and care. The words regulations and our orders seemed to impress them finally, and they stopped complaining. But then came a fresh problem: Some of the gear was too bulky to fit in the bottom luggage compartments of the bus. A pair of military vehicles were finally called to transport the boxes.
During this entire time, the bulk of the inspection team remained on the bus. Thera, whom Norkelus wanted to “chronicle the events of the trip,” was among the handful of exceptions. She stood a few feet from the inspection team leader, shivering in the cold. Finally, with the gear loaded and the military leaders satisfied, Norkelus boarded the bus, and the inspection team rolled out... to the terminal building, all of two hundred feet away.
The inspectors were led to a set of tables in one of the large downstairs rooms. Even though they were traveling under special UN-issued passports guaranteeing them diplomatic immunity, the North Koreans insisted on detailed checks of the baggage and personal items being brought into the country. Norkelus decided this wasn’t worth a fight, and the team members queued up with their bags.
Thera took her red suitcase and rolled it behind Julie Svenson, listening as the scientist complained. Submitting to a search set the wrong tone, Julie said. It would make the Koreans think they were in charge.
“Wrong, wrong message,” said the scientist as she hoisted her bag up and then banged it onto the table. “They’ll think they can boss us around.”
One of the engineers nearby had an American Tourister bag with its red, white, and blue logo on the ID tag. The North Koreans pointed at the logo and began questioning the man closely. In a country still officially at war with the U.S.—and with a museum dedicated to America’s “war crimes”— even such a seemingly innocuous commercial symbol aroused suspicion. The fact that the engineer was from South Africa hardly seemed to matter.
Thera’s stomach began churning as the customs official rifled through Julie’s bag. She saw herself being hauled away, dragged out the large glass doors behind them, and shot on the stained cement.
“OK, Miss,” said the young man, pushing Julie’s bag to the side and tu
rning to Thera. His light tan shirt had ballooned up from his waistline, and he was sweating, despite the fact that the terminal was rather cool. “We check. OK?”