by Mark Greaney
“Comrade General? Comrade Li Hyon-chol here. How may I serve you?”
—
General Ri arrived home in his armored car a little later than usual, but his wife made no mention of it. She already had dinner on the table and the two children were washed and in their chairs. Ri paused in the driveway to give a wave to his driver, and his wife thought this was odd, but she made no mention of this, either.
He entered the house and she reached to help him take off his tunic, but he said he had been feeling cold this afternoon and would keep it on. When she tried to take his briefcase he said he had some papers in it he would need to look at during dinner.
She smiled and bowed, and then the two of them came to the dinner table.
He placed the briefcase below the table and he kissed his boy and he kissed his girl, and he listened to them both tell him about their day at school. They had gone to see a new painting of the Dae Wonsu at the national art museum, and it was even more magnificent than their teacher had promised.
Ri smiled and nodded, and then he sat down, glancing at his watch as he did so.
Every night before dinner they did what virtually every family did, they sang a song to their Dear Leader. Normally his wife chose the song, and she assumed, even though Tae-jin was acting strangely, tonight would be no different. “Dinner is getting cold, so how about a short song?” Smiling at the kids, she said, “I know you remember ‘Don’t Walk on the Cold Snow, Dear Leader.’ Don’t you?”
The children smiled and clapped. It was a favorite of theirs.
But Ri shook his head. “Not tonight. Tonight let us hold hands, and sit together, and think of our family. Of ourselves. Not the Dae Wonsu. Not tonight.”
The children cocked their heads, and his wife looked at him with confusion.
A knock came at the front door. Ri’s wife stood to answer it, but he told her to sit back down.
“But it’s the door,” she said.
Ri smiled at her, then he smiled at his children.
And at that moment the door burst in on its hinges, splintering the door frame. Armed soldiers in green, guns high and voices loud, charged into the home.
The children tried to leap to their feet, but Ri held them by their forearms. His wife cried out in shock and fear but remained in her chair.
Quickly, Lieutenant General Ri’s left hand released his daughter’s forearm and he put his hand under the table. He closed his eyes, pulled hard at something hanging from the handle of his briefcase, and one second later the entire home exploded outward as two kilos of Semtex plastic explosive detonated.
The dogs of Chongjin would go hungry again tonight.
—
Director Hwang Min-ho sat in a makeshift office on the second floor of the Chongju rare earth mineral production facility, and he stared at the envelope in his hands. A courier from Pyongyang had just arrived and delivered the envelope, telling Hwang it was a letter from General Ri.
This was curious. Ri could have simply picked up the phone and called. Hwang opened the sealed packaging, and then a sealed inner envelope, and he unfolded the single sheet inside. He was surprised to find it was a handwritten message from the general.
Comrade Director Hwang:
We have accomplished much in the past year. Our shared inspiration for the endeavor propelled us forward, but motivation alone would not have brought us to the cusp of success where we now find ourselves. Our plan was sound and our execution more than could have been expected of anyone—we can be proud that we came this close given the considerable obstacles in our path.
I regret I will not be in position to provide continued support to the development of the mine at Chongju. When my replacement is appointed, I hope you will find him to be superior as a partner in the endeavor.
I wish you good fortune.
Ri
Hwang did not understand. Ri could not simply choose to stop his operation to bring Chongju on line. With a slight tremor in his hand he picked up the phone and dialed Ri’s direct office line in Pyongyang. While it rang he checked his watch. It was mid-morning; the general should have been at his desk.
A male secretary answered. Hwang said who he was and asked to be put through directly to the general.
“I am sorry, Comrade Director. General Ri died last night in a gas explosion in his home.”
Hwang did not speak for some time. Finally he asked, “And his family?”
“They all perished, unfortunately.”
Hwang nodded to himself, thanked the man, hung up the phone, and put his head down on the desk.
The bastard had killed himself, this Hwang did not doubt for an instant. Hwang knew nothing about the attempt on the life of the President of the United States other than what had been announced on state-sponsored television, and they’d mentioned nothing about America’s claim that North Korea had been involved, so he did not know why the head of the RGB decided he’d blow himself and his family to bits. But he spent little time considering Ri’s motivations. Instead, his focus immediately turned to his own precarious situation.
Hwang thought of his options, and quickly determined that there were none. Ri had been correct in his letter. They had accomplished much in the past year, and they had come close to success. But now that Ri was gone, there was no chance Hwang could mine, process, ship, and market rare earth minerals. He needed the active engagement of the RGB to work with Óscar Roblas overseas through all phases of the product cycle.
The mining director had worked tirelessly over the past year, and even with the recent setback of the confiscation of the froth flotation tanks by the Americans, he’d still been able to see a way forward. But now, in this instance, he knew it was over, and with this realization came the deep sadness of hopelessness.
He would die for his failure, and he was thinking of this, but more than anything he thought of his children. They’d done nothing wrong, they had celebrated and honored the Dae Wonsu with every fiber of their being, and soon the Dae Wonsu would nevertheless order them put to death.
They would die for their father’s failure.
It seemed so utterly unfair.
He lifted his head off the desk slowly. No. Hwang had not failed. General Ri had failed, and then he had taken the coward’s way out. Why should Hwang’s children pay for that?
Hwang’s eyes fixed in determination. He would not just sit here and wait to suffer the consequences of failure for someone else.
The fifty-four-year-old director snatched up his phone and called his own secretary.
“Put me through to the Agricultural Bank of China, Singapore branch. Vice President Chang Lan.”
While he waited for the connection to be made, he thought over his new plan. Chang Lan was Chinese, and when he’d last visited Pyongyang, Hwang had been notified by a member of his staff that the man had been asking pointed questions about the private lives of certain North Korean government officials. Hwang’s employee wondered if he should notify internal security about the man’s actions, but Hwang had ordered him to keep his mouth shut. Chang Lan’s bank was important to the Chongju mining operation, and the last thing Hwang needed was paranoid state security minders harassing an executive of an important financial institution because he’d solicited a little idle gossip.
Hwang didn’t think the man was a member of Chinese intelligence, but he surely had connections back in Beijing that could connect him with their Ministry of State Security. And although Chang Lan was no friend, he was a colleague, and he might be able to put Hwang in contact with others in China who could help him do the only thing that would save Hwang and his family now.
Defect.
—
The director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service knew where he could find the director of national intelligence. The last three times Brian Calhoun called the office of Mary Pat Foley, he’d been
told she’d gone downstairs to the Acrid Herald command center. This time he called the third-floor office suite directly, and she took the call in a private room off the main room full of computers and communications gear.
“Hi, Brian. I guess you caught me skulking around behind the scenes in Acrid Herald again.”
Calhoun replied, “Your title gives you the right and the duty to skulk around any part of that building you like. I’m glad I reached you, though. We just got some time-critical intel.”
“Tell me.”
“As part of the wider investigation into the foreign accounts used by North Korea, we’ve been monitoring activities at a branch of a Chinese bank in Singapore. The CIA station there has a joint program with NSA to intercept communications of some of the bank’s key officials. It’s a new program that hasn’t paid dividends to date, but I think we just hit the jackpot.”
“Go on.”
“North Korean mining director Hwang Min-ho has contacted an exec at this bank, apparently someone he’s had a long-standing relationship with. He is expressing a desire to defect to China.”
“My God! Why?”
“We don’t know for sure. We didn’t hear Hwang directly, and the banker did not say. He only relayed the fact Hwang wanted to get out of North Korea with his family as soon as possible. He says he has no way to get to China himself, but he will be meeting with Chinese mining officials in Pyongyang next week.”
Mary Pat began furiously scratching notes on a pad. She said, “The failure to get Chongju up and running must have him looking over his shoulder.”
Calhoun agreed. “He thinks he’s going to get the firing squad. I can’t think of any other reason he’d want to bolt like this.”
“Any idea why he’s reaching out to China specifically?”
“He knows them, nothing more. What he doesn’t know is this banker acquaintance of his in Singapore doesn’t want to get involved. He hasn’t communicated with the Chinese yet. We found out when he, I’m speaking of the banker, called a colleague in Beijing and asked for advice. The colleague told him he needed to take it directly to the MSS, to not use the phone or the Chinese embassy in Singapore, so the man will be flying home on Saturday.”
“Hwang thinks the Chinese will just come get him?”
Calhoun said, “Not sure what he thinks, but as soon as the Chinese know about Hwang and his desire to defect, the ball will be in their court. I’m wondering if we can somehow take advantage of this three-day window before they find out.”
Mary Pat had an idea, and although she knew it was thin, she also knew the greatest intelligence coups often began with an opportunity that, at first blush, seemed impossible to capitalize on. She said, “I want you over here at the Acrid Herald command center as soon as possible. We’re going to put a plan together to get Avalanche involved in this.”
“I’m on my way.”
70
Adam Yao had genuine concerns he would be sent home from North Korea, and the fact that this concerned him almost—almost—made him laugh. For the past three days he had been ordered to produce no powder in his cone crusher. The ore he had prepared for the froth flotation tanks sat in rail cars alongside the refinery, protected from the rain with plastic sheeting. There was no room to store more powder, so Director Hwang had ordered Adam’s portion of the refinery shuttered to save electricity. Some other departments were still up and running—geology, maintenance, metallurgy—but no one needed any more crushed rock, so Adam had no job to do.
Adam had seen Hwang twice during his time here, once walking through the facility and once walking with his family from his SUV to the hotel. He thought it strange the man had brought his family with him here, but not overly so. He was the director, after all, he could do whatever he wanted. Both times he saw the little man, he appeared positively distressed. It had pleased Adam because it probably meant he was having difficulties getting his operation up and running, but it also created problems for Adam, because since he’d not been at his computer terminal he had not been able to communicate with Acrid Herald control for the past three days.
He had tried to use this downtime to get some more intel from Dr. Powers; he saw her each and every morning during his jog, sometimes just for a minute, sometimes for much longer. She was as stressed as Director Hwang, but for the opposite reason. She informed Adam, still in stilted Chinese, that there would be a new shipment of flotation tanks, though she did not know when. Each day she had revealed more about her desire to get the hell out of here and never look back, and the fact the tanks had not yet arrived had brought her to the edge of despair. She wanted to get production started on the plant so she could go home.
Adam decided to take a chance today. He told his shift supervisor he needed to run some diagnostics on his machine’s computer and, no, it could not wait another day, because if the machine needed physical repair he had to do it now in the downtime. His shift supervisor talked with the floor manager, and it was agreed that Adam’s entire section would get twenty minutes of generator power so he could use his computer.
The truth was, Adam just wanted the opportunity to check for any messages from the Acrid Herald ops center.
When the lights came up on his floor he was already waiting at his terminal. He fired up his computer, made certain he was alone, and then opened his communications device in his system’s BIOS. He followed his memorized sequence of actions, and soon enough he saw there was, in fact, a message waiting for him. He was certain it would be a worried request for an update because he had not reported in, but instead, when he clicked to open it, he found it to be something altogether different. He read it once all the way through, and then again, more slowly the second time because he just couldn’t believe it.
As he read he felt his heart pounding inside his coveralls.
Under his breath and all but inaudible, but nevertheless in English, he spoke. “Oh . . . my . . . God.”
SECRET
TO: FLASH FOR AVALANCHE
FROM: TIDALWAVE
SUBJECT: POSSIBLE DEFECTION OF HWANG MIN-HO/PERSONNEL
RECOVERY/EXTRACTION
SOURCE: SIGINT SINGAPORE STATION
1: ACCORDING TO SIGINT INTERCEPTS THROUGH STATION SINGAPORE, MINING DIRECTOR HWANG MIN-HO HAS EXPRESSED WISHES TO INTERMEDIARY TO DEFECT TO CHINA. INTERMEDIARY NAME IS CHANG LAN—A CHINESE BANKER AND ACQUAINTANCE OF HWANG. UNKOWN MOTIVATION, BUT ANALYTICAL SOURCES SUSPECT HE IS CONCERNED RE PERSONAL SAFETY AFTER PROBLEMS WITH REFINERY PRODUCTION TIMETABLES. CHINESE GOVT HAS NOT YET RECEIVED REQUEST FROM INTERMEDIARY, BUT WILL WITHIN 48 HRS.
2: REQUEST AVALANCHE MAKE CONTACT WITH DIR. HWANG IN NEXT 24 HOURS UNDER COVER OF CHINESE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER. CONFIRM HIS WISH TO DEFECT. BOLSTER BY INFORMING HIM OF DANGERS OF REMAINING IN PLACE. BRING HIM TO GRID 39 45'58.04"—124 50'50.21" NOTE—HE INFORMS INTERMEDIARY THAT HE HAS HIS FAMILY WITH HIM IN CHONGJU. YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO BRING OUT HIS FAMILY IF ABLE.
3: YOUR ARRIVAL WILL BE MONITORED BY SATELLITE, AND YOUR RECOVERY WILL BE EFFECTED BY AIR.
TIDALWAVE
Yao looked at the date of the message. It was sent yesterday. The forty-eight-hour timetable was just cut in half.
A file had been sent along as well, and he opened it. It was a satellite map of northwestern North Korea to the Chinese border, with his extraction location marked. It was at the end of a long straight dirt road west of the city of Sonchon, just west of where he now sat and near the coast.
Expanding the satellite map as large as possible, he saw at the end of the road something that looked like a poultry farm.
So, Adam said to himself, I’m supposed to go knock on Hwang’s door and say, “I hear you want to defect. Let’s go. Can we take your car?”
Sure, that’s going to happen.
And then what? Extraction via air? Really? What, a helo is just going to come flying straight up the middle of North Fucking
Korea and land at a chicken farm?
—
Yao closed the message and it automatically erased. He was just about to type out a new message when he heard footsteps on the other side of the cone crusher.
A Korean spoke in Mandarin: “Your time is up, Shan. Generator power goes out in one minute.”
Shit. He shut down his machine and walked away as the lights went out. Acrid Herald would see that he received the message, but they wouldn’t hear what he wanted to tell them, that there was no fucking way he was getting Hwang out of North Korea.
—
Adam slept little, but the morning came anyway. He rose from his cot at five-thirty and went outside, and after a short stretch he started his daily jog.
Dr. Powers was there, and they stopped to chat. She seemed sadder and more sullen than ever, but nothing new had happened. She was just becoming more and more depressed that she had no idea when she would be allowed to go home.
Adam had spent the evening thinking over his next move, and he knew now was his one chance to get it right. “I need a small favor from you.”
She nodded. “What is it?”
He looked around to make sure they were alone, and then he placed a folded sheet of paper through the fence wire. She took it.
“Don’t open it,” he said. “Can you give it to Director Hwang? I don’t know if I will see him at the factory today.”
Despite his instructions, she opened it. It was written in Chinese. “I speak Mandarin, but I can’t read it. What does it say?”
Adam was pissed, but this was part of NOC work. Misjudging how someone would react. Last night in bed he’d put it at seventy-five percent that she would do what he asked without question. Clearly now, he’d made the wrong call. He said, “I can’t tell you. It’s about the factory. Concerns we have about the conditions. He will not be mad at you. You can’t even read it.”