by Mark Greaney
So the fact that she made a third trip down the George Washington Memorial Parkway to the offices of Hendley Associates indicated the importance of the intelligence product being generated by the sub rosa private outfit run by former South Carolina senator Gerry Hendley.
Today’s meeting was not with the entire Campus operational staff. Instead, only Mary Pat, Gerry Hendley, and Jack Ryan sat in the conference room. Sam was still in New York, monitoring Sharps Partners. And there would be no after-action report today as they had done to explain their activities in Vietnam, so Clark, Chavez, and Caruso remained at their desks.
Ryan imparted the knowledge they had gleaned on the operation, without going into details of shootouts and breaking and entering. He was careful to avoid any more detail about the events of Las Vegas than was necessary.
Ryan explained how a Sharps agent copied the proprietary software, certainly to give to the North Koreans.
—
Mary Pat listened carefully. When Jack’s presentation was finished, she seemed to consider how much she would tell the men around her, but apparently she decided on partial disclosure. “Your information is helpful. We have our own intelligence source that picked up something that fits in with what you are telling me.”
Jack knew better than to ask “What source?”
Mary Pat said, “The Chongju refinery is expecting a shipment of material in the next few days. The source did not know what was coming in, only that the shipment would be very large.”
Jack said, “Froth flotation cells certainly fit that description. The ones at Valley Floor are each probably the size of an SUV. They’ve got a dozen or more, so if Chongju is expecting a shipment of those, you can bet it would be big.”
Mary Pat said, “If Chongju is expecting a shipment of flotation cells in the next week, they’d be on the water right now.”
Ryan and the other Hendley men assumed there wasn’t much the United States could do about it if they were on the water. There was no law stopping the shipment of mining equipment.
—
Mary Pat returned to Liberty Crossing and immediately put in a call to CIA. Within minutes she had a team of men and women, all financial forensic specialists, trying to find any trace of either a sale or a shipment of froth flotation cells.
This was trickier than it might seem. While froth flotation cells were not exactly a common commodity bought and sold around the world, different versions of the units were used in many different kinds of industries. Additionally, it wasn’t a sanctioned material, so the commerce of the items, as for most industrial products, was not necessarily recorded.
But the team was good, and they found four recent movements of the exact material in the first three hours of research. A Canadian company had just sold nine cells of the size and capability of that supported by the software. A Brazilian mine had gone out of business in the past year and all of its cells had been purchased some months earlier. An Australian firm had custom-built twelve cells just in the past month. And a Malaysian processing facility had upgraded to new tanks and sold its old cells off.
The economic forensic team began with the Canadian transaction. Quickly it was confirmed that the goods were still in Vancouver, and were to be shipped to Brazil, to another rare earth refinery. The company, its owners, and their known affiliations were double- and triple-checked, as the CIA looked for any evidence of a straw-man purchase for the North Koreans. But ultimately they decided the transaction was legitimate.
Next they looked at the defunct Brazilian processing plant. A deep scrub of the company and the sale showed them the cells were sold from one company entity to another, certainly to avoid losing the capital in bankruptcy proceedings. The analysts asked a CIA officer in São Paulo to fly up to Belo Horizonte immediately to go “eyeball” the goods at the warehouse where the records said they were now being stored, but this appeared to be a dead end as well.
Ditto the Australian sale. Its custom-built froth flotation cells were on their way to the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant rare earth facility near Kuantan, Malaysia. This was one of the larger and more modern facilities in the world, and they processed much of Australia’s rare earths. Even though the facility was just a few years old, it was not terribly surprising that they would upgrade their cells, because new developments in the field had heralded new technology, and LAMP was cutting-edge.
This left one more transaction. Where did the old cells from LAMP go?
The analytical team saw a red flag very quickly. The machinery had been sold four months earlier to a company that existed only on paper. That company went up in smoke, but before it went out of business it transferred its capital to a holding group registered in Singapore.
This turned out to be a dead end, at least in the short term, but the analysts knew their higher-ups were hell-bent on getting quick answers. They turned their attention to the location of the physical material. Lynas was an Australian company, so a conversation between CIA director Jay Canfield and his counterpart, the director of Australian intelligence, led to a conference call between CIA analysts and Australian businessmen, which led to Malaysian shipping clerks in Kota Bharu, a port on Malaysia’s eastern shore. They confirmed a dozen large crates had been shipped in several trucks from Kuantan, warehoused in Kota Bharu, and then placed in four forty-five-foot high-cube shipping containers and placed on board a ship just fourteen days earlier.
That ship sailed to Manila, where the cargo was offloaded and driven away by private vehicles.
This looked like yet another dead end, but the analysts did not give up. They knew a CIA source—none of them were read in on Acrid Herald—had revealed the equipment was due to arrive in the next few days, so they began working the equation from the other direction, looking at shipping heading to North Korea. An Indonesian-flagged cargo ship, the San Fernando Chieftain, had begun a voyage in Marseille that would terminate in North Korea. On its way it made several ports of call, and one of those ports was Manila, just six days earlier.
The entire team began working on digging into the cargo on board, and within a short time they learned four forty-five-foot high-cube shipping containers from Malaysia, categorized only as machinery, had been placed on the manifest in the port of Manila. And the San Fernando Chieftain was now just thirty hours from arriving in the territorial waters of North Korea.
The economic forensics team delivered their findings up the chain, and they moved on to something else the next day, wholly unaware of the importance of the matter, or the full scope of their contribution.
—
When Mary Pat Foley received the news, she realized she had all the information she needed, but that in itself solved nothing. Finding evidence that a ship heading to North Korea contained particular items, if those items were not bound by sanction restrictions, did nothing to stop the items from reaching North Korea.
Still, Mary Pat decided, the President needed to know that evidence led to the fact that North Korea needed but one more piece of the puzzle to begin production on their cash cow, and that puzzle piece seemed to be just one day away.
She called Arnie Van Damm herself and asked for an immediate slot to see the President. Arnie said he would be in and out of meetings all day preparing for his official visit to Mexico, but he worked her in immediately without protest.
Mary Pat Foley rolled onto the White House grounds fifty minutes later, and she was led into the Oval as she had been hundreds of times. She found the President on the sofa, laughing at something the distinguished-looking man sitting in front of him had just said.
Ryan stood and introduced Foley to Horatio Styles, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. He explained that Styles was up in Washington just for two days, and then he’d be returning with the President on Air Force One for his official visit.
After the introductions, the ambassador left the Oval Office on his way back to the Department of
State. As soon as he was gone Ryan said, “Hell of a guy. He served all over the world as a Marine officer, but he fell in love with Latin America. He retired a colonel, then got his Ph.D. in Latin American studies from Columbia. He’s probably the most capable non-career State Department employee serving as an ambassador. If he spreads his wings a little he’s got the makings of a hell of a secretary of state.”
“Yes, sir,” Mary Pat said, and the President sat back down.
“Okay, you’re not here to listen to me brag about my brilliant ambassadorship nominations. What’s up?”
She told him about the shipload of equipment heading to Chongju, and the fact it was likely the last major component necessary before the refinery became operational.
Ryan listened carefully. His first question did not surprise her in the least. “This comes from our new source at the mine?”
“Partially, yes.” Mary Pat didn’t mention that the President’s own son had provided crucial bits of intel.
—
Jack looked long and hard at his director of national intelligence, trying to read her thoughts. He noted the ambiguity in her answer, and he was used to it. His people shielded him from things. He didn’t much like it, but he understood it.
His mind switched from Mary Pat to the issue at hand. The UN Sanctions Committee refused to vote on increasing the economic sanctions against North Korea that Ryan knew were crucial to choking off the Hermit Kingdom’s access to the hard currency it was using to obtain nuclear missile technology. Ryan had been thinking about what steps he was prepared to take unilaterally. He’d not yet come to a conclusion, but he’d now run out of time to mull it over.
He had to act.
“Mary Pat, from what we’ve learned in the past month, the evidence is clear, and it all points to the fact this Chongju facility is serving as a funding vehicle for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. I am going to go to the National Security Council and authorize a Presidential Directive stating the Chongju mineral mine and processing facility in North Korea represents a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, and I will direct that our military, intelligence, and diplomatic efforts be engaged in keeping that facility from going into full production.”
He added, “I’m not going to attack it, that would just send North Korean artillery and missiles raining down on Seoul, but I am damn well going to do everything short of that.”
Mary Pat had rarely seen her President more resolute. “Yes, sir. Please be aware, though, that if you want the Navy to interdict that ship, they will have to do it within twenty-four hours, or it will be in North Korean waters.”
Ryan nodded. “I understand. I’m going to call Burgess right now and tell him about the directive. By the time he gets forces in position to stop that boat, the paper will be signed.” Ryan rubbed his nose under his eyeglasses. “We’ll take heat for it, but it needs to happen.”
—
Mary Pat left the Oval minutes later. She had work to do. Perhaps less than the National Security Council, because they had just hours to draw up a Presidential Directive for POTUS to sign. But once this was done, Mary Pat knew the gloves were off. A Presidential Directive carried the full force and effect of law, and with it in place she and her counterparts in the Defense Department and the State Department would be directed to do whatever they could to see that the Chongju mine earned no more money for the North Korean nuclear weapons program.
And even though the battle would be fought in a coordinated fashion by the combined power of the entire United States government, the director of national intelligence was keenly aware that at the very tip of the spear in this endeavor was a young man in North Korea who was as alone as anyone could possibly be.
52
Dale Herbers of the U.S. Secret Service was a week into his advance in Mexico City before he drove the presidential motorcade route from the airport to the Palacio Nacional. This was by design. He could have run the route earlier in his workup, but he felt his other responsibilities—securing the locations of the various static events of the President’s trip to the city—were better taken care of first, and the motorcade route saved for closer to the actual day of. Things changed on the streets more than they changed in museums, restaurants, government buildings, and other attractions, and Herbers, like most advance-team shift leaders, wanted a game-time feel to the route the President would travel.
The forty-seven-year-old lead special agent and his senior staff of a dozen special agents, as well as several counterparts from various Mexican law enforcement agencies who were working the motorcade, all left Benito Juárez airport just after noon, the exact time of the President’s scheduled arrival in two days. They drove together in a convoy of vehicles on the westerly route toward the Plaza de la Constitución, the massive central square where the palace stood and the President’s motorcade from the airport would terminate.
One of the most important parts of the advance team’s work was identifying the choke points and crowd gathering locations, the places where the motorcade would need to slow down to negotiate turns. Today his role was to assign American and Mexican law enforcement to these key portions of the motorcade, and to identify any other potential threats so as to deal with them now, before the President arrived.
In all the official events SWORDSMAN would attend here in Mexico, even those open to the public, every spectator and participant would be subjected to screening. This meant they would either pass through metal detectors or be wanded. And all bags would, of course, be searched. But it was impossible to secure the route, every window, rooftop, alleyway, every pocket of every civilian on every sidewalk, and every car on every side street.
Motorcades were a mess, but the Secret Service was accustomed to dealing with them. The President would be ushered along the way in “the bubble,” a Secret Service term meaning a protective cocoon of close protection agents, a large counterassault team that rode just behind him, and an array of static Secret Service men on rooftops and barricade positions along the route.
There were more than two hundred agents here in Mexico City for the visit, and virtually every last one of them had a role in the motorcade from the airport. And that was just the first line of defense. Mexican Federal Police would have another six hundred officers involved in roadblocks, motorcycle escorts, traffic control, and crowd overwatch.
And Herbers had one more thing going in his favor.
The Beast.
The presidential limousine was a highly modified and customized Cadillac DTS and had acquired the name “the Beast” because of its size and weight. But bulletproof glass and thick armor plating were just two of the vehicle’s features. Run-flat tires, night-vision equipment, an internal oxygen supply, and secure communications also made up the vehicle’s security measures, and another, identical vehicle always ran in the motorcade so the President would have a backup if his primary broke down.
Herbers had been informed that SWORDSMAN had been asked to stay in the Beast for the duration of the drive by his lead protection agent, Andrea Price O’Day. This wasn’t likely to be an issue; some Presidents liked to get out and glad-hand the crowd, but that wasn’t really Ryan’s style. While Herbers thought him to be a kind and approachable man, Ryan didn’t possess the politician gene of so many of the other people he’d worked around in his twenty-three years on the service. Ryan didn’t go out of his way to meet people unless it was necessary to win an election.
The convoy of advance-team men and women stopped many times along the route, and all of them would then climb out of their vehicles. Herbers would see a group of open windows that bothered him, or a troublesome building with balconies or other potential aggressor overwatch positions, or even just narrow side streets that ran close to his route that he wanted to look over to see if he felt it necessary to block them off.
This was an experienced group, and despite all the stops, they a
ccomplished the first half of the route in good time. But then they traveled through the high-crime neighborhood of Tepito, and this part of the city required extra care.
When Agent Dale Herbers started his workup of the Mexico official visit, he and his staff quickly identified the short stretch of Eje 1 as a location that needed special attention. Every motorcade had to either go down this long, straight six-lane thoroughfare or else navigate the narrow two-lane streets of the Tepito and Centro districts. As much as the Secret Service tried to avoid taking the President on a predictable route, it had been decided that was preferable to taking him through a narrow warren of alleys surrounded by close-in buildings, subjecting the motorcade to twice as many turns and forcing it to travel much more slowly through such a rough district.
No, this stretch of Eje 1, called Vidal Alcocer, was undoubtedly the best route to take.
Which meant every motorcade from the airport used it, and this was a problem.
So now Herbers was here, looking over every block with a critical eye. He walked this vulnerable part of the motorcade route shadowed by four other Secret Service agents and four detectives from Mexico’s Federal District police. They took notes on paper and on tablet computers, as Herbers directed the different organizations in how to prepare for the upcoming motorcade.
On the corner of Vidal Alcocer and José J. Herrera, Herbers noticed a construction site with a long twelve-foot-high wall running north and south along the sidewalk, and next to it a street market running west on Herrera.
A Mexican detective explained how they had planned to barricade the market off from the motorcade route, and Herbers immediately crossed the street and ducked under the orange tarp at the southern edge of the site. The others followed him in.
He and his team spent a few minutes inside, walking around. He was looking for stashed weapons, a sniper’s hide, anything out of the ordinary.