by Tom Clancy
They found what they were looking for after ninety minutes. Cargo holds one through four all contained eighty-pound sacks of unrefined sugar with the markings of a Cuban agricultural entity. Hold seven contained the same thing. But holds five and six, just fore of the center of the ship, contained stacks of forty-foot containers. When the Marines broke open the doors of the locked containers, they saw they were piled high with various machine parts. The equipment looked like plumbing and air-conditioning equipment, and parts of an old boiler. It was all used and rusted and broken, certainly not equipment one would ship around the world. But after a half-hour of pulling out big hunks of metal equipment, the Marines came upon large aluminum tubes in fiberglass casing. There were no markings on the cases, but the tubes were some six and a half feet in diameter, and eighteen feet in length. The Marines found only two before the ship was brought into port in Inchon, but when inspected fully, a half-dozen precision aluminum tubes were found, along with sophisticated plastic crating containing precision-crafted O-rings and coupling bolts.
The young Marines had suspected it from the beginning, but the experts in South Korea confirmed the find. These were the hollow stages of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and they corresponded in diameter to the Taepodong-2, North Korea’s still-unsuccessful longest-range nuclear-delivery vehicle.
Determining where all this equipment came from was the next order of business for the intelligence organizations of the West.
17
French intelligence operative Veronika Martel climbed out of a taxi on the corner of 88th and Columbus and began walking east in the rain. Her black umbrella protected her from the downpour, but it also helped her blend in with the other pedestrians, many of whom were under black umbrellas themselves.
Martel had no real reason to run a surveillance detection route here on the Upper West Side of New York City. It wasn’t like she was in Tripoli or Bucharest or Dubrovnik; she wasn’t even on the job at the moment. But SDRs were part of Martel’s life. She’d learned to leave nothing to chance, to expect every opportunity to turn into a potential for danger, to concern herself with the minutiae of her tradecraft to keep herself safe.
The reasons for her concerns about everyone and everything all boiled down to a simple explanation: Veronika Martel did not trust the world.
Even though her SDR took her north, south, east, and west through the rainy mid-morning streets of one of the most congested metropolises on earth, she arrived at the offices of Sharps Global Intelligence Partners at ten a.m. Exactly on time. After a quick security check by a guard who met her in the ground-floor lobby of the building, the two of them took the elevator up five stories and the door opened on the marble foyer of the executive office of the nation’s most successful corporate intelligence concern.
A guard force of six men manned the lobby; they all wore business suits and earpieces and salt-and-pepper hair over physiques that were still hardened from physical activity, making the men appear at once both distinguished and dangerous. Martel knew these guards were all ex-military, just like the force at her satellite office in Belgium, and just like the guard forces at all twenty-six sat offices around the globe. The men were polite and professional, but they all leered at her. Martel had come to expect this from men, and as always, it only stood to make her both uncomfortable and annoyed.
She didn’t come to New York often and she had not seen Wayne Sharps since the day he hired her three years earlier; she was virtually always in the field and she liked it that way, but she’d been summoned by the director of her company and she knew the value of showing her face around the home office once in a while to remind the execs who she was.
She felt like she knew the reason behind her summons. The operation in Ho Chi Minh City two weeks earlier had been an odd one. The North Koreans’ presence at the safe house, the Australians and their trepidation about what they had gotten themselves into, the American asset refusing to hand over the package. And the blood on the document, indicating it had been taken by force.
Veronika knew she had done everything correctly. Just as instructed. Nothing more, nothing less. She wasn’t in any trouble. She thought they were just bringing her in for consultations, to make certain she was comfortable with everything, or at least comfortable enough to keep her mouth shut and her head down.
And Veronika had no problem with that at all.
She was escorted into Wayne Sharps’s office by a secretary who Martel thought too young and attractive to have earned her position through merit alone, and once inside, she took in the view. The fifth-story corner office had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out to Columbus Avenue and 77th, presenting a stellar vista of the American Museum of Natural History across the street. Sharps himself sat behind his large desk with his feet up. He was on the phone, speaking Arabic—and speaking it well, Martel noted.
She sat down on a modern sectional sofa in a sunken seating area across the large office. Tea and coffee were placed in front of her, but she instead just looked at the sofa. Duke Sharps was known as particularly lecherous, and Veronika wondered how many women the sixty-year-old man had taken right here in his office.
She pushed the thought out of her mind. If he tried anything on her she’d send him headfirst out the window and down into Columbus Avenue traffic.
Finally he hung up the phone and spun the chair around, a little too dramatically, as far as Veronika was concerned. He crossed the room as she stood from the sofa. He was burly but not unattractive, though his face had leathered noticeably in the three years since she’d last seen him in person.
“My dear Ms. Martel,” he said with a wide grin.
“Lovely to see you, Mr. Sharps.”
“It’s Duke to you,” he said.
It’s Duke to everyone, she thought to herself.
“Veronika,” she replied, because she felt she had to, not because she liked the familiarity. She was European, after all, and normal Europeans rarely addressed business colleagues by their given names.
Moreover, Veronika Martel was not normal. She preferred keeping everyone at arm’s length.
They sat down, and Sharps poured coffee for Veronika without asking, even though she would have preferred tea. He asked her about her trip over, about the office back in Belgium she was based out of, and about a job she had done in Paris recently involving a city administrator and a problem with his daughter.
It was a small-time operation. Nothing that would be brought to Duke’s attention, since, at any one time, his company employed hundreds of operatives on dozens and dozens of missions. To Veronika it seemed as if he had just been brushing up on her file while she rode the elevator to his office.
After the small talk, Sharps got down to business. “Veronika, I read the reports. You were stellar on that job in Vietnam. You are one of my bright lights here in the corporation. I expect you to go far.”
She smiled dryly. She didn’t tell him about the blood on the passport. She didn’t have a clue if he already knew about it, but she wouldn’t bring it up, because she was, in fact, a bright light. She was an operative who did her job and kept her mouth shut.
She thought he would next show some contrition for the complications of the mission.
But instead Sharps said, “I was lucky to steal you away from DGSE.”
Veronika paused to regroup, then she responded with typical coyness. “You weren’t lucky. You were wealthy. That stole me away. Plus the fact that I’d been fired from DGSE and had few other options.”
He hesitated with a slightly open mouth, trying to decide how to take her comment. Apparently he took it as a joke, because he laughed boisterously. “Despite your problems in France, you didn’t come cheap, that’s for damn certain. But you are worth every last cent.”
“I do try to create value for myself.”
He nodded aggressively and repositioned himself on the sofa. Surpris
ed by the movement, Veronika thought he was going to try and slide closer to her, but instead he just crossed his legs. She was uncertain if her surprised look had scared him off at the last second.
After a moment he said, “I have a new assignment for you. I expect it to last a few weeks in duration, though it might run over just a tad.”
“That is fine.”
“It’s a continuation of what you did in Vietnam.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll give you the background you didn’t have when you started this op. The North Koreans have discovered a huge deposit of rare earth minerals. I guess I should say the Chinese have discovered it, but that lunatic Choi has kicked out the Chinese, and now North Korea will continue operations on their own.”
Veronika said, “A nation that can’t feed their people or keep their lights on is entering into the high-tech mining sector alone?”
“If they really could do it alone they wouldn’t need us. No. They are not alone. Our client isn’t North Korea. That would be illegal, of course. Our client is New World Metals LLC. A completely aboveboard mining consortium from Mexico via a dozen shell companies. They have a wholly legitimate contract to partner in the mining concern as a third party.”
Veronika was bored, and she let Sharps know. “My assignment?”
“You are going to California.”
She sat up straighter on the sofa. That sounded nice. A hell of a lot better than Vietnam, anyway.
“The North Koreans don’t trust the Chinese to process the ore once they dig it out of the mountains. This presents a serious problem, because the processing of rare earth materials is particularly complicated, and special equipment and know-how is required. New World Metals has purchased the computers for the processing equipment from Europe and they will fly them into North Korea via Bulgaria, but without proprietary software they are useless. They have asked us to send someone to Valley Floor, a NewCorp rare earth mine in California, and obtain the proprietary software they are using on the computers in their processing plant there.”
California, to Veronika Martel, meant Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco or Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. Wayne Sharps seemed to be describing a strip mine somewhere far away from these locations. Still, she was a dutiful employee.
“Okay, Duke. What specifically do you need me to do?”
“We need the software, every last bit of it. You will get it.”
“Of course.”
He moved again on the sofa, and this time there was no question—he was coming closer.
She stood up quickly.
He just smiled. It was clear to Veronika that he had expected her reaction and it didn’t bother him at all. She took him for a man much more thrilled by the chase than the kill, and she knew she had just thrilled him greatly.
He did not miss a beat, continuing as if nothing had happened. He stood up as well. “Your contact will be Edward Riley. Know him?”
She raised an eyebrow. “The scandal in Italy?”
“Right. That’s in his past. He’s a good man. A Brit, but we won’t hold it against him. He’s running the entire New World Metals operation from stem to stern. We are positioning you as a quality-assurance officer from the Canadian company that manufactures some of the processing equipment. You will be there to run some diagnostics on the machines and to survey the operation. This will put you in contact with the software we need.”
“Fine,” she said.
Duke smiled at her. “It was nice to see you. Until we meet again.”
He shook her hand, then held it. He hesitated, and she knew what was coming. Some sort of verbal attempt to hit on her, since his physical approach had failed. She expected it to be overt and charmless.
She was right.
“Your coldness only enhances your sex appeal. Has anyone ever said that?”
“Certainly not to my face, Duke.” She pulled her hand back with a smile, turned away, and left his office, aware of his eyes on her every step of the way.
18
President of the United States Jack Ryan would have normally called in his entire National Security Council to discuss a situation as important as the capture of the material for weapons of mass destruction on its way to North Korea, and he had intended to do just that. But when his chief of staff, Arnie Van Damm, contacted both Director of National Intelligence Mary Pat Foley and Director of the CIA Jay Canfield, he’d received requests from both to delay the meeting for a few hours while they worked on something that would be crucial to providing the President with a bigger and better picture of what was going on.
One does not normally tell POTUS “No” when he asks for a meeting, but Van Damm knew Ryan would have no problem allowing his top intelligence community officials more time to do necessary work, so he pushed the meeting back until nine a.m. the next day. The only problem with this from a scheduling standpoint was that the President had to fly to London for a NATO conference on Russia first thing in the morning.
They could have conducted the meeting via video conference, as Air Force One had the secure telecom necessary to keep the President in touch with Washington wherever he flew, but Mary Pat made the last-minute decision to go to Andrews early in the morning and fly along to Europe with her President so she could present her material in person. Mary Pat had known Jack for more than thirty years, and more than any public figure she had ever worked with, she knew how much he enjoyed rolling up his sleeves and putting his hands on the intelligence itself.
She had an objective with today’s meeting, and she knew she’d get a lot further with POTUS if he understood and agreed with all the intelligence she presented, and taking the flights to London and back would be a small price to pay for having his undivided attention for an hour or so.
Ryan agreed to the private conference with Mary Pat in the President’s office on Air Force One. The full National Security Council meeting could wait—for now.
As the plane taxied to the runway, Ryan sat at his desk working on some early-morning paperwork. He heard a knock at the open door next to him, and he looked up to see Arnie Van Damm.
“Aren’t you supposed to strap in for takeoff?” Ryan asked.
“Aren’t you?” Ryan’s desk chair had a seat belt, but it dangled off the side.
He said, “I’ve been doing this so long, I have it down to a science. Right when I hear us go throttle up I buckle up and clear my desk.” He snatched his coffee cup with a smile. “Then I grab my coffee so it doesn’t spill.”
Van Damm entered the room and sat in the chair across from the desk. It, too, had a seat belt. “For a guy who hates flying, I’d say you’ve got the hang of it.”
Ryan just chuckled and looked back down to his papers. He could tell they were still taxiing, and would be for another few minutes. “What’s up?”
Arnie said, “Secret Service wants to talk to you again about Mexico City.”
Ryan shook his head without looking up. “We’ve talked. I’m not canceling. They need to drop it.”
Arnie was the only member of Ryan’s staff who regularly argued with his boss. “I think you should reconsider. We’ve got some outs, don’t worry about that. Lots of problems in Asia and Ukraine that need attention. President Lopez will forgive you if you send regrets.”
Now Ryan did look up. “No, Arnie. I’m going. What’s Secret Service’s specific argument against the trip?”
“Well, I think they want to talk to you to make their case in person.”
“I’m asking you.”
“It’s the Maldonado thing.”
The President waved it away. “That was six months ago.”
“They are concerned that—”
Ryan called out to the hallway next to his office. “Andrea, can you come in here a second?”
His lead protection agent, Andrea Price O’Day, was in the room in two
seconds. “Yes, sir?”
“I’d like to ask you to pistol-whip Arnie for me, but I bet you’ll give me some song and dance about you having rules against that.”
Andrea laughed and looked to Van Damm. “How about I just keep a close eye on him for now? He looks pretty harmless.”
Ryan said, “What’s this about you guys not wanting me to go to Mexico?”
Andrea replied, “That’s not me, Mr. President. I understand our threats and assessment advance division had some concerns.”
Ryan shrugged. “So as far as you’re concerned, I should go?”
“Didn’t say that, either. As far as I’m concerned, you’d never leave the White House. But it’s not my call to make, Mr. President.”
Ryan drummed his fingers on his desk for a moment. Then he said, “I’m going. I don’t duck and cover because some Mexican cartel psycho scumbag in the mountains goes on Twitter and threatens me. The office of the President is too important to show any reaction to a two-bit thug like that.”
Arnie said, “But—”
Ryan cut him off. “If Secret Service wants a meeting, I’ll give it to them, but only out of respect. I have no plans of canceling that trip. Tell them that, maybe they can save us both some time.”
He looked at Andrea. She nodded. As far as she was concerned, the matter was settled. “I’ll be right there with you.”
“Then everything will be fine.” O’Day returned to her seat, and Ryan looked back to Arnie. “We’re about five seconds from throttle up. You’d better fasten your seat belt.” Both men reached for their seat belts just as the massive 747 began to vibrate.