by Van Torrey
*
Once Wheatley thought they had a specific person-of-interest who had been previously identified as a radical Islamist, he briefed Hunter in the Oval Office. “Ms. President, Ibrahim al-Faisal had been on the CIA’s terrorist watch list for some time. As far as ICE was concerned he is a resident alien with a valid visa from Yemen and had a legitimate job teaching Islamic Studies at a small liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest. He also taught at one of the many mosques in the area and was known as a firebrand teacher who was devoted to fundamentalist Islamic principles. Although nothing he was doing was even technically illegal, his public rhetoric was enough to raise eyebrows even in the uber-liberal Pacific Northwest. Eventually his fundamentalist preaching had brought him up on the FBI’s watch-list of Muslims who were capable, at least theoretically, of stirring up feelings among his followers that could lead to potential violence. Recently he had surfaced in the Portland area after taking a leave-of-absence from his teaching job, and the NSA was still monitoring his electronic communications.”
“Sounds like he might the real deal, Director. Keep me in the loop on this one.”
*
“Ms. President, I think we are beginning to get a few early breaks on the situation in Vancouver,” remarked Director Clayton Wheatley, as he spoke to President Rachel Hunter and her security advisors in the Oval Office. “Our friends at the NSA have been able to pinpoint the locations of the members of an Islamist group led by Ibrahim al-Faisal who are trying desperately to locate the Koreans, and by extension, possibly the bomb itself...if there is a bomb.”
“What do you mean, if there is a bomb?” asked Rachel Hunter.
“Please understand, Ms. President, we are all moving ahead under the presumption there is such a device stored somewhere on the North American Continent, but we have very little evidence of this, except some conjecture that the hearsay pronouncements of Fhang to General Kim are accurate. I’ll feel a whole lot better when we have something more solid to go on. Right now, we don’t even know where the Koreans, and, presumably, the device itself, are.”
After a period of awkward silence, CIA Director Mitchell spoke out. “I say we smoke them out!”
“Who?” asked Wheatley.
“The Korean nuclear cell,” Mitchell responded, “And we’ll use General Kim as the bait.”
“Bait?” replied Rachel Hunter.
Marilyn Mitchell stood and turned to address the group. “Ms. President, and colleagues, I have been putting a good deal of thought into this. It is clear that we have to take the initiative to advance the ball here or we could lose the advantage and the opportunity to deal a blow to the North Korean conspiracy, blunt their planned attack, and, if we’re lucky at the same time, expose whoever else is looking for Gamma. Admittedly, there is a fair amount of risk to being proactive here, but the risks of doing nothing and simply waiting for something to happen and possibly reacting to it after the fact are even greater. We’ve got to take a chance and smoke them out.”
Rachel Hunter knew Marilyn Mitchell well enough to know she wouldn’t be proposing something without having a plan and encouraged her to continue. “We’re listening, Director,” she said.
“I suggest we do exactly what any of us would do if we were in a strange international city and were looking for someone of our ethnicity but didn’t know where to find them. That would be to go to my nation’s embassy or consulate in the city in question and make it known I am Mr., Ms., Doctor, or Professor So-and-So looking for Mr. So-and-So with whom I have missed a recent connection at the airport. Displaying some impressive credentials, say something like a letter of introduction from a private business or prominent professional person of a common ethnicity, by the requestor should elevate this inquiry above the routine and give the request higher visibility to many others beyond the Consul himself. These people receive these consular appointments because they are well connected with their fellow countrymen in a specific place, and they can be counted on tap into the pulse of their business and social contacts. Perfectly innocent and of little suspicion, wouldn’t you say?”
The CIA Director continued, “Making it even more likely to get attention would be for the requestor to make it known that the original meeting was to be of an extremely sensitive financial subject and it was imperative that the two be reunited shortly. Further, if the Consul, such as it would be in this case, as there is no Korean Embassy in Vancouver, could be of substantive help, the requestor would be prepared to extend a generous gratuity to the Consul for the use of his good offices in arranging the connection.”
Clayton Wheatley was the first to comment on Director Mitchell’s suggestion. “As you mentioned, Director, this is not without risk. Gamma would presumably have to show himself at the consulate and reveal himself. The bad guys could be looking for him and have the place staked out. The proposed meeting place would have to be public, and how could we be sure that word sent out by the Consul was received by the right people? Lots of details need to be thought out to protect Gamma here. If he is compromised or if we lose him, the whole op goes dark, and we are worse off than when we started. Plus, we lose the only reliable intel we have in the DPRK. This is very high stakes, Director.”
Alexander Randolph had been listening quietly throughout the meeting, but now he spoke up. “I don’t think I need to remind you, Ms. President, that if this thing gets out of control and a mess goes public, particularly if it made known that a rogue nuke is involved, this could substantially damage our relations with the Canadians.”
“Believe me, I am aware, Mr. Secretary. I have struggled with the idea of briefing them in on this, but I just don’t have enough confidence in Pierre’s leadership. He has some very radical ideas and has a lot of opposition in Parliament. He’s not very popular in many precincts and might want to seize control of this tricky situation to his political advantage. My decision is to keep it contained in this room. If there is no more discussion, I would like to give Director Mitchell the go-ahead to go forward with this plan. A thumbs up and fingers crossed, Director. I know we can count on the team here to give you anything you need.”
“Ma’am,” said Philip Johnson quietly, “we’ll need a name of this operation going forward and a signature, mostly for our internal use. It’s a formality, but important,” he said almost apologetically.
“Of course,’ replied Rachel Hunter positively. “Any suggestions?”
“Well ma’am,” replied Marilyn Mitchell, “since I suggested this, maybe my name ought to be on it. How about “Operation Hard Candy,” after my favorite sweets.”
“Hard Candy, it is. Hope it doesn’t give us indigestion,” replied the President with a grim smile.
CHAPTER 33
SETTING THE TRAP
“Man is the only kind of varmint (that) sets his own trap, baits it, and then steps in it.”
John Steinbeck
*
After a series of senior staff meetings to work out the details of “Operation Hard Candy”, Marilyn Mitchell had her go-to special assignments operator, Max Jenkins, fly to Seattle and take one of the CIA vehicles stored there to Vancouver, B.C., to brief Chance Lyon and John Olyphant on the next - and most dangerous - part of the plan involving Gamma. Since Jenkins was entering Canada under the cover of a private citizen, he would be able to use one of his fake passports and other identity papers, but his usual assemblage of firearms and other tools of the trade of his covert special operations work for the CIA would have to be left behind. If weapons would be needed later, they would have to be supplied by Lyon and Olyphant from the stash at the safe house.
Olyphant met Max Jenkins in a busy shopping center parking lot and showed him the way to the CIA safe house on the outskirts of Vancouver, convenient to the freeway system, so important for ease of access and egress in case of an emergency. Chance Lyon had sent the rookie CIA agent, Peggy, to fetch them all some take-out and within an hour the five of them, including Gamma, were eating excellent Mongolian
Beef and Sweet and Sour Chicken.
Gamma, had been introduced to Max Jenkins many months ago as “Mr. Hill” by his handler’s alias, Doug “Roberts”. He immediately recognized Max and, with considerable confusion, reacted by saying “haven’t we met before...perhaps in Pakistan,...Mr. Hill?”
“Yes, indeed, Mr. Kim, we meet again. Actually, the name is Jenkins, but just call me Max. I’m still the same guy, I just changed my name.”
“Yes, I’m aware of the situation. I just was reintroduced to Mr. Roberts as Mr. Chambers. I have to say I find this all a little strange.”
“Oh, it may get quite a bit stranger before this is all over, Mr. Kim.”
“This isn’t the first time we’ve worked together either, Lieutenant,” remarked Max Jenkins, using Chance’s former Navy rank.
“Really? You’ll have to remind me,” Chance answered cautiously.
“Well, in a peripheral way, perhaps. I was at Bagram airfield just before you took off on that SEAL rescue mission in Pakistan that extricated your father and some other operators.”
“Okay, yeah, Max. I assume you were there as part of a goodwill tour on behalf of Rachel Hunter. She was either DCI or DNI at the time, as I recall.”
Max chuckled and replied, “Yes, well, CIA did have a rogue Chief-of-Station in Kabul that was mucking up things for his personal advantage, and I was sent over for some fact-finding and re-indoctrination. Unfortunately, some health issues intervened preventing him from completing his retraining, and we had to terminate my mission.”
“Right,” said Olyphant, slowly under his breath. Looking at this guy I’m sure terminate was the operative word, he thought.
“You and your partner here have gone private, I see. I’ll bet Blackie, here, didn’t get that eye patch from pink eye. The way I heard it, he got that from directing traffic at night on a dirt road in Iran a couple of years ago.”
“That’s classified, but traffic over there can be a real bitch!” answered Blackie evasively. “Anyway, now I’m just a one-eyed cattle rancher from Arizona up here helping out an old friend,” Olyphant offered, as he seized the last egg roll.
Having had enough of the colorful preliminaries that acknowledged everyone’s bonafides, mostly for the benefit of Peggy, Max Jenkins continued. “Well, I can see that you are definitely a peace-loving guy...until made unpeaceable. Okay, down to business,” he said decisively.
“CIA and FBI have a plan signed off by the White House, and here it is. We have authority to ad-lib from the basic outline of the plan as the situation dictates. The end game here is to use Gamma as bait to flush-out the Koreans, who, presumably, have the nuke stashed away, and to possibly coax the others, whoever they are, to join the fray. If we can drive both groups to ground we can cut-off the head of the Hydra that is chasing the Koreans. At the same time, we infiltrate Gamma into the Korean group so he can determine what they are up to and nip that in the bud before they move the nuke into position to detonate it. We do all that and we’ll have done our job. Unfortunately, this could mean temporarily hanging Gamma out to dry with little support from us until it is time to strike,” Jenkins finished.
“Do we have any rules of engagement on any of these people, or are they all expendable as long as we get control of the nuke...if there is a nuke?” asked Lyon.
“The Koreans and any co-conspirators are all fair game for termination after they have been interrogated by Gamma to his satisfaction. The calculation is Fhang would not value them and simply deny their existence if confronted in the U.N. or elsewhere. Once we have the nuke, that’s all the evidence we need. We can use the plutonium signature in the warhead for proof. As far as the others who may be trying to track down the Koreans and the nuke, the boss would prefer we try to take whoever is leading that bunch alive for the Agency to interview. After they’re finished with him, he’ll probably be sent on a long vacation to Supermax in Colorado to swap war stories with Ted Kaczynski and the boys,” concluded Jenkins.
As the evening progressed, Max Jenkins laid out the proposed plan of action in greater detail to the group. “Gamma’s cover, as “Mr. Lee”, is that he’s an employee of a Swiss banking institution headquartered in Zurich. He and his wife are tourists traveling in Canada. Mr. Lee was supposed to make local contact with another Korean whom he had met in Tokyo’s Haneda airport on a stopover. They were to get together when they both arrived in Vancouver on different flights. But Gamma’s flight was delayed several hours. They missed the contact, possibly because there was a shooting at the airport at the time he and his wife arrived and there was a lot of confusion as a result. So, Gamma will do the logical thing and go to the Korean Consulate and ask for the Consul’s help in getting the word out in the Korean community that he wishes to connect with the gentleman he met at the Tokyo airport. Gamma will make it known that he and his wife had recently visited the DPRK on bank business.”
“So far, so good,” remarked Lyon, “but Gamma has no wife, and how do we know the right people will get this message?”
“As far as the wife is concerned, Peggy will be picking up one of our agents, an ethnic Korean, who will be flying to Vancouver from Toronto tomorrow morning. She is to be called Miss Joon. She has peripheral knowledge of the plan to accompany Gamma as his wife when he is on an undisclosed mission in and around Vancouver. She is staying in a Vancouver hotel and the only operators she will know, other than Gamma, will be Peggy. If she is captured or otherwise compromised, she will know nothing of the plan or about us. As far as she knows, Peggy is only a driver for a car service being used by Mr. Lee. The thinking is that having a wife makes Gamma less of a suspicious character and adds to his cover story.”
“What’s next?” asked Lyon, warming to the intrigue being laid out by Max Jenkins.
“The next day the two of them go to the Korean Consulate and ask to see the Consul. Mr. Lee will present his impressive credentials, tell his story, and finally, offer the Consul a large gratuity to help facilitate the contact. We’re betting on the Asian political mind coming into play here and pull out all the stops for word to get out in the Korean expat community that a banker who has recently travelled from North Korea is interested in making a connection. We’re also betting that the Koreans who have the nuke will have their ears to the ground and are anxious to be united with a Korean from the DPRK. They will put two and two together when they hear something about a fellow Korean traveling from the DPRK. Within the Korean expat community, the vitally interested people may rise to the bait, and others will dismiss it as being of no interest to them. Ultimately, we hope the Korean consul will know it will be financially lucrative for him to arrange the contact and get the message out to as many Koreans as possible.”
“That’s one side of the equation,” remarked Blackie, “but how do we signal the other guys, whoever they are, that Gamma’s character, “Mr. Lee, the banker”, is in play at a specific time and place?”
“That’s the easy part, maybe,” Max replied slyly. “The NSA eavesdroppers are amping up their efforts to zero-in on increased chatter from anyone on a watch-list in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada. Once we know the time and place for Gamma to meet with the Koreans with the nuke we can make that fact known to the ringleader by planting a text message on his phone. He won’t know where it came from, but we’re guessing he won’t be able to ignore it. If he and his cell phone, and others who have been involved in the chatter, begin to collapse on the airport before the time and place of the scheduled connection, we’ll be able to track them and take them down. If and when we can do that, we separate the wheat from the chaff, take the big guy down and leave the rest to scatter, leaderless, to the wind.”
“That’s all good,” replied Blackie, “but how are we going to recognize the ringleader - assuming he’ll even be there himself? Maybe he’ll just send his crew to try to kidnap Gamma and manage this whole caper from afar.”
“Valid point, I’ll admit,” said Max. “There are a lot of things that have to f
all into place for this to work to perfection. As both of you know - and Peggy will find out - few ops work out perfectly. But let’s keep in mind the top priority of infiltrating Gamma into the Korean nuke conspiracy. If we can nail the other people at the same time that’s a bonus. We won’t sacrifice the former for the latter.”
“But, back to Blackie’s point,” continued Max, “the thinking on the group chasing the Koreans is that if the increased chatter is coming from someone already on a CIA/FBI watch-list, we probably have some photo imagery of him, and we should be able to I.D. him with a combination of cell phone tracking and GPS. If he’s in the USA we can put a tracking device on his car and follow him with that, so we may be able to pinpoint his movements, making spotting him easier.”
“No offense, Max,” said Chance Lyon carefully, “but I’ve been counting the ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ and there seem to be a lot of them. A lot of things have to fall into place here for this to work.”
“Granted, Chance. If this were a combat op I would say there’s too much left to chance - no pun intended,” Max answered good naturedly, “and we wouldn’t go. But the worst thing that can happen here is that Gamma doesn’t make the Korean connection and we go home empty. We have to remember this is more of an intel caper than a combat op. Nobody has to die...yet.”
*
Chance Lyon, ‘Blackie’ Olyphant, and Max Jenkins were warriors, although each approached the fact from slightly different philosophical viewpoints. For Max the challenge was more of a philosophical, ‘Zen’ thing. Slow to trust, and even slower to bond with other humans, Max had graduated from MIT with a degree in nuclear engineering, and following that he received an MBA from Harvard. Counter-intuitively eschewing the private sector after his rigorous years of study, which could have made him a very comfortable living, Max enlisted in the U.S. Army and set his sights on joining the ranks of the hardest special operations unit in the Army, the 1st Special Forces Operations Detachment - Delta (SFOD-Delta), more commonly known as Delta Force. Jenkins served seven years as a Delta Operator rising to the rank of Sergeant Grade E-7 in the process. Two weeks after briefing a NATO intelligence executive group consisting of senior CIA officials and their French and German counterparts about a top-secret hostage rescue mission, and answering each of the official’s questions thoroughly in perfect French and German, as appropriate, he received a message that he was to meet privately with the Deputy Director (Operations) of the CIA who was flying to Fort Bragg that evening. Two weeks later, his Army retirement paperwork having been expedited, Max Jenkins went to work as a “special assignments” assistant for the DDO of the CIA. He was given a black Centurion American Express Card, a Diplomatic Passport, a Sig-Sauer P226 9mm pistol, and a job description that read, cryptically: Performs special assignments for senior managers of the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, reporting directly to the DDO-CIA. Security clearance: Yankee White, Category One. If Max Jenkins was on a job, it was “eyes only” DCI/DDO-CIA and above.