by Tom Clancy
Yao was less concerned about what was going on in California and more concerned about where he was heading next. He would fly out the next morning, and he couldn’t go into this with any doubt in his mind he could pull it off.
43
Veronika Martel returned to her nineteenth-floor hotel room at the Palazzo on the Las Vegas Strip, threw her purse on her bed, and sat down at her open laptop. She clicked open a program; then she slipped a connector into the base of her mobile phone and the other end into the laptop. She hit a key, and instantly the contents of the phone, or at least the contents of the phone that were the application files stolen from NewCorp’s servers, began to upload to a cloud file-sharing service. There they would be picked up by Edward Riley and forwarded on to whoever at New World Metals LLC was going to give them to the North Koreans.
She didn’t know how that end of the chain worked, and she didn’t care. All she knew was her job, and the fact she had done her job perfectly today.
It had not been an easy task. It had been an ordeal to spend the last two weeks working in an industry she knew little about while simultaneously feigning rapt fascination with Ralph Baggett, the slovenly IT director at Valley Floor. This certainly didn’t make the top ten worst assignments she had faced in her career, but she would have much rather spent her time doing most anything other than this.
Nevertheless, she’d done it. She’d not gleaned the password to the server from Baggett as she had planned, but she had been able to download the files from his terminal, after he’d put in the password himself and left the machine unattended, and that was just as good.
The fact she’d pulled it off with a minimal amount of heavy petting and no actual sex with Baggett was a bonus for her, but she had been prepared to go to whatever lengths were necessary to achieve her goal.
And now, with her operation complete, Veronika had only to return to Valley Floor mine tomorrow for her last day of her two-week stint and then endure an evening bon voyage party with several people she’d been working with in Hydrometallurgy Quality Control, as well as Baggett, who’d managed to get himself invited along.
Veronika thought it idiotic that these people she’d worked with for only two weeks were throwing a going-away party for her. In France she could have worked in an office ten years and not even known the first names of her colleagues, but this was America, and it was the American way to be silly like this.
If she had her choice she’d fly home tonight and never see any of them again.
No. Actually, this was not true. There was someone she wouldn’t mind seeing again.
Veronika found it ironic that on the day she had executed her mission, she found the actual execution of the mission to be the second most interesting thing that had happened to her.
On that note, Veronika lifted her phone to make a call. Now that she had downloaded the NewCorp files, it was time for her to call Riley and report a contact.
Among the first things an intelligence officer learns as part of his or her training in both OPSEC and PERSEC is to report all contacts with strangers up the chain of command. An idle conversation about the weather with an unfamiliar person at the taxi queue might be relevant to someone with knowledge of the larger scheme of the operation, no matter how random it feels to the operator on the ground.
Meeting the son of the U.S. President while in the act of obtaining access to the plant application server could not possibly have any sort of relevance to her New World Metals operation, but letting her boss know was SOP. Operational security on any mission dictated that an agent in the field notify his or her control officer at the first sight of anything out of the ordinary, and if anything ever qualified as out of the ordinary it would be exactly this situation.
But as she prepared to dial Riley’s New York mobile number, Veronika stopped herself.
Wait. Could this be useful?
She put the phone down and thought for a moment, and when she was finished thinking she chastised herself for taking all afternoon to come to the obvious conclusion. She’d been in the corporate intel world so long she’d forgotten how to see past her small, narrow, and mundane marching orders and take a look at the larger picture.
The larger opportunity in front of her.
No, now was not the time to dutifully consider Sharps Global Intelligence Partners’ best practices.
Now was the time to look out for herself.
The U.S. President’s son. Yes, Veronika thought. I can use this.
Veronika had lived like a rudderless ship for the past few years working in corporate intel, but the one thing that guided her was the hope—she wondered if it was fantasy—that someday she would get back to French intelligence. She’d left on bad terms three years earlier, and she’d wanted back in almost from the start.
Her old colleagues had told her to forget about it. She wasn’t ever getting back in the good graces of the executives at DGSE.
Then today happened. Today she bumped Jack Ryan, Jr. There was no question that, if exploited carefully and slowly, he could prove to be an incredible access point for French intelligence. They could learn details about the American President that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to obtain.
And they could only do it through Veronika. They’d have to take her back.
Of course, Martel would need to start a relationship with the handsome and eligible young bachelor, but that problem looked like it was sorting itself out nicely. Jack had proven to be just like so many other men in this world. He would close the distance between the two of them without her having to lift a finger.
Yes. She would begin a relationship with Ryan, she would contact DGSE, and she would tell them she was coming home with a prize.
French intelligence would welcome her back with open arms.
She wasn’t going to breathe a word of this to Riley, of course. Instead, she would mention her going-away party to Ryan the next day when he came to her department, and she would spend the evening ignoring Baggett and cultivating Ryan as an asset.
She smiled to herself, satisfied to be finishing one job and overlapping into a job that had the potential to reap incredible rewards.
44
Adam flew from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and from there to Shanghai on an Airbus A330 flown by China Eastern. He sat in the back of coach and spent his time listening to Korean-language audio files on his mobile phone.
He erased the files two hours before touchdown in China so there would be no record of his study of the language anywhere on his person.
Shortly after landing, Adam entered the immigrations area of Shanghai Pudong International Airport, waited his turn, and then stepped up to the immigration control officer sitting behind a desk. The man took Adam’s U.S. passport—it claimed his name was Shan Xin—and then looked through it. He stopped on the Chinese visa, affixed to one of the pages.
In Mandarin he asked, “You are Chinese?”
“Yes. I left China eighteen years ago to go to school in U.S.”
“You haven’t been back here?”
“No, sir.”
“Married an American?” The immigration officer didn’t know this, but he assumed as much.
“That is correct. I am home to visit family.”
“Where is your Chinese passport?”
“I lost it long ago. The embassy said I could travel on my U.S. passport and obtain a new Chinese passport while I am here if I provide my birth records. All that information is here with my mother.”
The officer eyed Yao carefully, then began thumbing through his passport slowly. He checked the few stamps that were there, and then he put the passport under a tabletop magnifier and examined the binding.
If Adam hadn’t known what was going on he would have been nervous, but he was aware they always did this at Chinese immigration control. The man was looking for evidence a page or pages had been
removed with a razor in an attempt to get rid of entrance stamps. Foreigners traveling to China are not admitted if they have any Nepal entrance stamps.
The control officer found nothing amiss, and four minutes after stepping up to the desk, Adam Yao took his passport back, hefted his luggage off the floor, and began walking toward the arrivals area of the airport. He was now, according to his legend, Shan Xin, a Chinese national.
—
Three hours after arriving in Shanghai, Adam Yao entered a plain building in Shanghai’s Kunshan suburb. Inside he took an elevator to the second floor and then knocked on an unmarked metal door. He saw the peephole darken for a moment, and then an intercom next to the door crackled.
In Mandarin, he heard: “Name?”
“Shan Xin. I have an appointment with Mr. Hu.”
The door clicked open. Two men looked at his passport and then they frisked him carefully, removing his wallet, his mobile phone, and even a watch. One of them said, “Listening devices. Everyone must be searched.”
Adam had brought nothing incriminating into China, so he remained relaxed, and soon they led him into an office where a dour-looking older man sat behind a desk. This was Hu; Adam knew because he had videoconferenced with the man from Virginia via Skype in order to get the job. At the time, Hu had explained the job would be at one of the gangster miner operations in Mongolia, and he’d stressed that he needed Adam—or Shan Xin, as he knew him—to come to Shanghai as soon as possible for further vetting and processing.
As in the Skype teleconference, in person Hu was all business. He questioned Adam on his background, and on his knowledge of the computer system used to operate the hydraulic cone crushers. Adam could tell from the outset this wasn’t some sort of security check to confirm Yao’s identity. Instead, Hu was just making sure that Shan Xin possessed the qualifications for the job. Adam had passed all this in their Skype interview two weeks earlier, but it was clear to Yao that Hu was a careful man.
Perhaps not careful enough to recognize a CIA plant, but more than careful enough not to hire an unqualified employee.
Finally the older Chinese man was satisfied, and he pulled out some paperwork. “As we are not state-owned, we have a more informal approach.”
Adam thought Hu’s understatement was funny. Not only was the company not state-owned, it was wholly illegal. He kept his face blank.
“You will work on an eight-week contract, and you can be let go at any time.”
“Yes.”
“After eight weeks you can get one week off, or you can keep working if you want.”
Adam wanted to look eager. “I came here to work. Not for vacation.”
Hu looked him over and then nodded. He said, “You will tell no one that you have been in America. Ever. Certainly you will keep quiet that you have an American passport. I will keep it here. It is procedure.”
Yao knew why, but he pretended like he didn’t. “The people at the mine don’t like Americans?”
Hu lit a cigarette and leaned back. He spoke matter-of-factly. “This processing plant you are going to is not in Mongolia like we said. I wasn’t allowed to mention it before you came here, and when I tell you where you will be working you will understand why.”
Yao was a good actor, and reveled in the portrayal of a man genuinely confused. “I don’t understand. Where will I be working?”
“Later today you and forty-three other men and women will travel in a bus to the airport and you will board a plane to Pyongyang. The mine is in the north of the DPRK, not very far from the border with China.”
Yao’s eyes went wide. Before he spoke, Hu said, “It is all arranged at the highest levels of their state-owned mining corporation. Once you are in the air to Pyongyang, a North Korean government official will give you the documentation you need to get into the country.”
“What about the Chinese government?”
“To the government here, you never left China.”
Adam raised no complaints, and he signed all the papers using the name Shan Xin.
Hu finished the meeting with a warning. “We already have sent over one hundred fifty workers to the mining operation in North Korea. They are paid well, so they do not complain, but they report difficult conditions.”
“I understand.”
“Remember, you will be working in a facility under guard at all times. Don’t do anything to raise any suspicion with the authorities in North Korea. Do your work. Don’t ask questions, don’t look around, don’t complain, and don’t give them any reason to mistrust you. You do this and you will make a lot of money. If you don’t do this . . . there is nothing anyone here can do for you.”
Adam nodded calmly, as if blowing off the warning. But the truth was different. He felt an unmistakable feeling of dread about where he was going.
—
The flight from Shanghai to Pyongyang was in an Airbus A319 flown by Deer Jet, a Chinese charter company based in Beijing. On board the aircraft Adam met a few of the others heading to Chongju. Most if not all seemed bewildered by the fact they were heading into North Korea.
It was clear all these men and women were educated professionals. They didn’t look like miners any more than Adam did. He knew that in order to staff the processing facility Hu and his gangster mining company needed to recruit qualified systems engineers, computer technicians, and other high-tech industry professionals, and few if any of these people would have experience with the criminal underworld. Adam hoped to use this to his advantage. He’d fit in better where he was going if he behaved just like the rest of them. A little wide-eyed about the whole thing, but dedicated to his one specific role.
They landed at seven in the evening and deplaned within minutes. Adam had the feeling this was the only aircraft flying into the airport at the moment, because the terminal was empty except for two long rows of young soldiers in green parade dress uniforms, who virtually lined the walkway from the gate to the immigration control area.
Adam walked between the soldiers, following in the middle of the pack of tired Chinese, doing his best to keep his head down. He stole a couple of furtive glances, though, and he saw the soldiers were both male and female, they seemed to have programmed scowls on their faces, and they held their locally made Kalashnikov-style rifles across their chests at the ready. Adam could plainly see the weapons’ fire selectors were switched off the standard safe setting and set to fire semiautomatically at the press of the trigger.
Christ, the American thought.
His trip through immigration control was like none he’d ever experienced in his life. The Chinese technicians were each sent to their own table in a large open area in the middle of the terminal. Here, five armed and scowling immigration officers stood at the ready. Adam was led to his table, and in the poor Mandarin spoken by a female soldier standing behind him he was told to put his bag up on the table and unzip it. He did so, and two officers began taking everything out and going through it. He then was ordered to hand over his wallet, his employment contract, and his passport to a white-haired man. While this man looked through every page of his documents, a fourth official began frisking Adam from head to toe. He was ordered to strip down to his underwear—this he did in the view of not only the female North Korean officers but also the female Chinese technicians, who were stripping down themselves.
Every shred of their clothing was inspected, and then each person was wanded with a handheld metal detector.
All in all, Adam spent more than twenty minutes in his underwear. He was a fit and confident young man, but standing in front of two young females with guns in their hands and “Fuck you” stares on their faces was as uncomfortable an experience as he’d ever felt.
Right in the middle of the lengthy process Yao heard a disturbance at another table. A man raised his voice, speaking in Korean.
“What is this? What did I find here? What d
o you have to say for yourself?”
Adam turned to the action. A thirtyish female Chinese woman Adam had met on the flight over stood in her bra and panties, looking at what an immigration officer held out in his hand. She didn’t understand his words, so she waited for a translation. A North Korean minder who spoke Chinese came over and looked at the alleged contraband, then turned to the woman. “This is a Korean dictionary. Why do you have this?”
In Chinese the woman replied with genuine confusion. “Why? Are you kidding? I don’t speak Korean. I bought it in the airport. I thought it would be helpful to know a few words.”
“Helpful to your espionage?”
“What? Of course not.”
The woman was led away by the arm, still in her underwear and openly weeping. Her luggage remained open and unattended on the table, with her clothes scattered across the table and the floor.
Adam did not say a word. He hoped like hell she’d be expelled for this; he couldn’t imagine a better outcome for the lady. In fact, he didn’t know if he should feel sorry for her or envy her.
North Korea sucked already.
He chastised himself for this thought. Silently, he said, What the hell did you expect, Adam?
—
After the lengthy immigration process and the loss of one of their number, Adam and the forty-two remaining Chinese technicians were put on a bus and taken through the dark and nearly empty streets of Pyongyang to the Yanggakdo International Hotel.
Adam knew all about this place. The rumors were there was only one floor in operation: the twenty-sixth. The rest of the place was closed and shuttered because, despite the impression the North Koreans wanted to make with the massive business-class hotel, there were so few foreign businessmen in the city they needed only a couple dozen rooms at any one time.