Sea Of Fire (2003)

by Clancy, Tom - Op Center 10

  “North Korea gets whatever nuclear material they need from China,” Herbert said. “Why would they be interested in unprocessed waste material?”

  “That’s the go-for-broke question,” Hood said.

  “South Korea doesn’t need to go buccaneering for it either,” Herbert said. “We supply them. So Hwan wouldn’t have been watching to see what the enemy does either.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “That suggests a third party,” Herbert said.

  “Which is where we run into problems,” Hood said. “I’ve got Colonel Hwan’s dossier on the computer. It’s pretty thin stuff. He’s a career man, no family, completely off the Western radar.”

  “Does he attend seminars, go to retreats, travel in a private capacity?” Herbert asked.

  “We don’t have that information,” Hood said. “As I said, he’s not even a blip to our intelligence allies.”

  “That worries me.”

  “Why?” Hood asked. “It could be he isn’t a heavyweight.”

  “It could,” Herbert agreed. “More often than not, though, those are the real professionals, the ones who manage to stay hidden and anonymous. Let me think for a second.”

  While Hood waited for Herbert, he scanned the dossier. They did not even have a picture of the man. That seemed to support Herbert’s interpretation. A low-watt intelligence officer would not mind being photographed. Hood came from the worlds of politics and finance. Voters were wooed according to complex demographics. Banking and investments were done with precision. Crisis management was different. It unnerved him to consider how often the only barricade between security and disaster was seat-of-the-pants thinking by men like Bob Herbert. In the same breath he thanked God that he had men like Bob Herbert around him.

  “Okay,” Herbert said. “Did Hwan go to school?”

  “You mean college?”

  “Yes,” Herbert said.

  Hood scanned the dossier. “He did. Hwan studied in Moscow and then in London. Why?”

  “Nearly seventy-five percent of the people who are recruited for intelligence service jobs studied abroad,” Herbert told him. “Other cultures and colloquial languages are familiar to them. If Colonel Hwan studied in London, he probably speaks English.”

  “How does that help us?” Hood asked.

  “We can talk to him,” Herbert informed Hood. “What time is it in North Korea?”

  “Just after ten P.M.,” Hood said.

  “Spies collect information during the day and disseminate it at night,” Herbert said. “Hwan probably gets up early to read intelligence reports that came in during the night.”

  “Why does that matter?” Hood asked.

  “He’ll probably be at home now, sleeping,” Herbert said. “Can you get me that number?”

  “I’m sure Matt can dig it from a computer system somewhere,” Hood said. “Why?”

  “Because sometimes a classic, low-tech approach is the best one,” Herbert replied.

  “I’m not following you,” Hood admitted.

  “How did I behave when you called me just now?” Herbert asked.

  “You were cranky. Disoriented,” Hood said.

  “Exactly,” Herbert said. “It’s the old POW gambit. You drag a guy from his cell or cot during the middle of the night. His guard is down. His head is fuzzy. You don’t even have to beat him. You hammer him with questions. A man who is scared and tired will respond to force. His mouth will engage before his brain can prevent it.”

  “So you call Colonel Hwan and wake him up,” Hood said. “He’s not a prisoner of war. He’s probably not going to be very scared in his own home. What makes you think he’ll tell you anything?”

  “Because I’m a professional, too,” Herbert replied.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Celebes Sea Friday, 11:09 P.M.

  Lowell Coffey was belowdecks in the captain’s cabin. The attorney was lying on the small bed with his arms at his side and his eyes shut. Though it was black outside, the shade was pulled over the porthole. Coffey did not want to open his eyes and see the swaying of the stars. It was bad enough that he had to feel the constant movement of the corvette, hear the waves brushing the hull. He had come down here a half hour before, after Jelbart and Loh had both decided to remain at the site. There was no point of going to Darwin or Singapore until they had some idea where their next stop would be. They could not do that until they located the vessel that had deposited the empty concrete block. It bothered him that the naval might of two nations had to wait for some slippery civilian ship to turn up on someone’s radar. He felt as useful as Scylla and Charybdis after Odysseus had sailed through the Strait of Messina.

  There was a rap at the narrow metal door.

  “Come in,” Coffey blurted. The attorney sat up slowly on the edge of the bed. Even so, he had to stop and prop himself on an elbow as his stomach remained horizontal.

  A young sailor entered carrying a large radio handset. “Sir, there’s a call for you.”

  “Thank you,” Coffey said weakly as he extended his free hand.

  The young seaman gave him the unit, then left and shut the door. Coffey lay back down.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Lowell, it’s Paul.”

  “Hey, Paul,” Coffey said weakly.

  “Wow,” Hood said. “It sounds like I’m waking everyone today.”

  “No, you didn’t wake me,” Coffey said. “I’m just trying not to make any excessive moves. That includes my vocal chords.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Whatever the opposite of water baby is, that’s me.”

  “I see,” Hood said.

  “What’s been happening?” Coffey asked.

  “Your ships are being watched,” Hood said.

  That opened Coffey’s eyes. The attorney rolled onto his side. He ignored the complaints from his belly. “How? By whom?”

  “By a Chinese satellite,” Hood told the attorney. “It’s apparently being time-shared by the North Koreans. We have an idea who may be running the actual surveillance, though we don’t know who may have ordered it. Bob is looking into that now.”

  “You know, it could be nothing at all,” Coffey said. “It may be a planned reconnaissance. I’m sure the North Koreans routinely watch the military activities of other nations in this region.”

  “They do, but military traffic is uncommon in that sector,” Hood said. “This is not someplace they would have targeted without a reason.”

  “That reason being we may have been seen or heard or ratted out,” Coffey suggested.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Hood replied. “We don’t know yet how it happened. What’s the latest over there?”

  “Jelbart and Loh are still trying to find the ship that made the drop-off here,” Coffey replied. “The only thing we’re sure of is that it did not leave the way it was supposed to.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The ships that come here are required to file an itinerary with the International Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” Coffey told him. “FNO Loh called Paya Lebar Airbase and asked for an air force F5 Tiger II flyover of the route. The jet didn’t find any ship there. Jelbart informed the INRC and asked for their help. They were useless.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Roughly half the ships are spot-checked on their way to this site, when they are carrying nuclear materials,” Coffey told him. “They are boarded and checked for radiation leaks, security, general seaworthiness. The ships are not checked after they leave the site.”

  “So no one knows if they have even made the drop,” Hood said.

  “Correct.”

  “That’s insane,” Hood said.

  “I agree. So do Warrant Officer Jelbart and FNO Loh,” Coffey said. “The problem is that maintaining a fleet is expensive. The INRC is financed by grants from the United Nations, environmental groups, and dues paid by nations that use the waste fields. That gives them about fifteen million dollars a y
ear to oversee all international nuclear shipments, not just waste product.”

  “That’s all?” Hood said.

  “Yes, and that doesn’t take into account whatever kick-backs are being handed out,” Coffey added.

  “That’s a helluva low priority we give the security of nuclear material,” Hood said with disgust.

  “That’s true, Paul. But to be honest, people who want to smuggle nuclear material are going to do so whether the INRC increases its activities or not,” Coffey said.

  “That does not mean we have to make it easy for them,” Hood pointed out. “We wouldn’t even have known about this incident except for the attack by the sampan.”

  “Not everything is as well-ordered as law and finance,” Coffey said.

  “Funny you should say that,” Hood said. “I’ve been thinking about the nature of our business, and it should be more structured. We live in a high-tech world. We can watch someone key in a cell phone number from outer space. Losing ships and radioactive waste are inexcusable.”

  “Only in hindsight,” Coffey said. “When I was in college, I interned with a criminal lawyer. I used to go to prisons with him to interview clients. Once we had perpetrators locked up, it was easy to kick ourselves in the ass and realize what we should have done to save lives. These people we’re dealing with now, the smugglers and terrorists, are full-time sociopaths. How do you compete with that? How do you stop someone from putting botulism in an ATM deposit and poisoning the money supply? How do you prevent someone from filling a glass water bottle with acid and carrying it into a jetliner?”

  “I don’t know,” Hood admitted. “But we have to figure it out. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of lives!”

  “The numbers aren’t the issue, Paul,” Coffey said. “I’ve watched hostage negotiators work. To them, a single captive is their entire world. Anyway, the problem is not how we apportion resources. The problem is us. We still have the equivalent of a moral gag reflex.”

  “And that is?”

  “We’re civilized,” Coffey said sadly. “Hell, I’m so civilized I can’t even be at sea without feeling my guts in my throat. Our quarry does not have that disadvantage.”

  “You may be right about that, about everything,” Hood said. “But I know this. If we want to stay civilized, we’re going to have to find a way of identifying who’s with us and who’s against us.”

  “Ideally, yes,” Coffey said. “The question is how.”

  “That’s something Op-Center is going to have to look at a lot more carefully, Lowell,” Hood said. “We need more comprehensive human intelligence and preventative interference.”

  “You mean profiling and spying on your neighbor,” Coffey said. “We become the sociopaths we behold.”

  “I’ll trust our civilized nature to keep that from happening,” Hood said.

  “If nothing else, that puts you on the high road,” Coffey said. “Right now all that seems to get you is a better vantage point from which to watch all the fighting and destruction.”

  “I hate to say this, but you’re sounding like Bob now,” Hood noted.

  “Frustration will do that,” Coffey said.

  “Only if you let it,” Hood said. “Meanwhile, I’ll let you know when I hear from Bob.”

  “Okay,” Coffey said. “You know, maybe it’s just the nausea talking. I’ll try to hold tighter to my optimism.”

  “Thanks. We can use some of that,” Hood said.

  The attorney clicked off the phone. For a moment he felt like he did when he used to listen to a closing argument on behalf of a defendant he knew was guilty. He felt virtuous in theory but crafty in practice.

  Coffey sat, this time more slowly. He felt a little better now, proving that seasickness was to some degree a state of mind. As long as he did not pay it attention, he was fine.

  Too bad all our problems don’t go away when we ignore them, Coffey thought.

  He rose cautiously and opened the door. The seaman was waiting outside. Coffey gave him the phone and thanked him. Then the attorney followed him to the bridge. He walked closer to port side so that when the vessel rolled, he could simply lay a shoulder against the wall and slide forward.

  The more he thought about it, the more Coffey realized what his problem was.

  He had joined the National Crisis Management Center to help keep it honest, as it were. To keep it from becoming unaccountable, in case the leadership ever moved in the direction of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Despite his own protests and resistance, however, Coffey knew that Hood was right. More needed to be done to protect lawful people and nations. And that protection had to come from places like Op-Center. Bob Herbert had once described it as the cowcatcher that guarded the rushing locomotive. Op-Center was uniquely equipped to position itself between progress and disaster. It had men like Darrell McCaskey, Mike Rodgers, and Bob Herbert to share experience in police work, the military, and intelligence. There were technical geniuses like Matt Stoll and the seasoned staff psychologist Liz Gordon. It had communications experts, political professionals, and an authority on satellite reconnaissance. Coffey knew international law. And Paul Hood was a skillful manager who knew how to synthesize all these talents.

  If Hood were looking for order, Coffey was holding too tightly to it. Not all the answers were found in law books. Sometimes they were found in people. And he knew that this was a team of good people.

  Hood was right when he said he would trust in their civilized qualities to keep abuses from happening. That thought made Coffey proud, and that pride was what had lifted his spirits.

  The challenge was great. But there was one thing more important than that. Something they could not afford to forget.

  The challenge was far from hopeless.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Over the Pacific Ocean Saturday, 2:22 A.M.

  Surprise was a wonderful but dangerous thing.

  Whether giving or receiving, surprise was short-lived, explosive, and directed. Wielded deftly, it was an intelligence operative’s greatest tool. It was also valuable as “incoming.” Knowing there might be danger behind a door or around a corner or even at the other end of a telephone kept an agent sharp. Being unready for it could be lethal. Bob Herbert had learned that in Beirut. Since then, he had no trouble ramping up to high alert.

  That zero-to-sixty acceleration was one of the qualities Bob Herbert cherished most about intelligence work. He did not have to know what time it was. He did not necessarily have to know where he was. All Herbert needed to know was who or what the target was. Once he had that goal, exhaustion, discomfort, and even lust slipped away. If he had not gotten into the intelligence game, Bob Herbert felt that he would have made a helluva chess grand master.

  Matt Stoll got the colonel’s home phone number for Herbert. Stoll did not even have to slip into the North Korean People’s Army classified phone directory. The number was attached to an intelligence research file included with the North Korea Advisory Group Report to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999.

  “I’ve learned to search our own government databases before going to others,” Stoll said.

  If the number didn’t work, Stoll said he would take the next, longer step to get it.

  Herbert would have preferred verification up front. But he also wanted to get this done as quickly as possible. He had suffered through a traditional bomb attack. If the Beirut terrorists had possessed nuclear material, he and thousands of others would not be alive today.

  While he waited, Herbert booted his wheelchair computer. He plugged the phone into a jack with two cables. He jacked one back into the aircraft comm system and the other into his computer. He activated the transcription interface, a program that would simultaneously create a typed recording of their conversation. Herbert also practiced speaking in as deep a monotone as possible. Herbert was not sure of the nationality of the individual who had spoken to Hwan. He wanted his voice to be as geographically neutral as possible. Accents w
ere less about the spin given to vowels and consonants than about cadence and pitch. The deeper and flatter a voice, the less identifiable it would be.

  Herbert’s headset was still jacked into the aircraft’s secure phone line. He input Colonel Hwan’s number. The phone beeped several times before someone answered.

  “Hwan,” said a man with a high, nasal voice. There was a long moment before the man spoke. That meant he had lifted the receiver, then had to get into position to use it. Probably because he was in bed.

  “We need more coverage,” Herbert said. His voice was like a bow being drawn across a bass cello. And his goal was to keep the conversation in the third person singular. Herbert needed names.

  “I’m in bed,” Hwan said.

  “We need it now,” Herbert replied.

  “You cannot have it now,” Hwan replied. “And who is this? You are not Marcus.”

  “Marcus took ill. You know how it is here.”

  Hwan said nothing.

  “He’s been working too many hours, like everyone else on this damn project,” Herbert added.

  Again, Hwan did not bite. Perhaps the North Korean did not know what the project was.

  “I’m Marcus’s backup, Alexander Court,” Herbert said. Court was the author of a novel Herbert had seen lying in the crew bay. He liked the sound of the name. Good pseudonym. “What about it, Colonel? Can we count on your help just one more time?”

  “Alexander, remind Mr. Hawke that I agreed to give him one look,” Hwan said. “I cannot afford to do more at this time. Don’t make me go to his superior, Mr. Court.”

  “Maybe you should go to the boss,” Herbert pressed. “Hawke has been making all our lives miserable.”

  “I suggest you complain to him yourself,” Hwan said.

  “He would never take my calls,” Herbert said. He was pushing Hwan, trying to get a name.

  “I doubt he would take mine either, even if I knew how to reach him,” Hwan said. “Good night, Mr. Court.”

  “Colonel Hwan, will you reconsider if the boss himself calls?” Herbert asked.

  “It would depend on what he has to offer,” Hwan said. “If he is willing to part with one of his Sisters, I might consider it.” He said that with a laugh.