CHAPTER 15
WEDNESDAY
Chongjin, North Korea
Officer 2135 reached for the door to leave his apartment for work. Suddenly he heard a beep. It sounded like a ping that was just barely audible. 2135 had been trained to listen for it. His phone released this sound when something was not right.
He turned around and walked into his bedroom. He moved the small table and opened the cubby door in the floor. His phone sat in its usual spot, in the plastic bag. He took it out.
Before deployment, Command had given a special set of instructions on how to use the phone. He was required to check it once per day for either new instructions or information. He was required to send a message once per month to confirm that he has not been arrested. He could send mission updates as he deemed necessary. But if his phone made one beep, it meant that Command had a message for him that he needed to look at immediately. It was supposed to warn of danger. The ping was set to a barely audible level so it would not be heard by anyone else in the cramped apartment building.
He opened his phone and looked at his messages. One marked urgent had been sent by Command.
2135: Urgent. We believe you have been compromised. Leave country immediately. Once in China, proceed to Shanghai.
Officer 2135 did not hesitate. A knock could start on his door any moment. He pocketed his phone. He moved swiftly to his kitchen. He opened a cabinet on the bottom which contained a small backpack. He kept several thousand dollars in cash in it. He took the backpack and walked into his living room where he threw in several documents, cartons of cigarettes, and food rations.
After his hasty packing, he stood by his front door and looked around at his small apartment. He had spent many years here, planning how to accomplish his tasks. He never thought it would end so suddenly.
He quickly moved to his windows and looked outside. The street below was desolate. He walked back to the door to his apartment. As he turned the knob, he prepared himself for the possibility that secret police would be right there. He opened the door suddenly and looked into the hallway. It was empty.
I might just be able to get out of here.
He marched down the hall without looking back. When he came to the stairs he stopped and looked down the stairwell for any movement. He listened for any sounds but heard nothing.
2135 started descending, skipping a few steps on each flight down. Today the stairs seemed to take the form of a never-ending spiral. He listened intently as he came down flight after flight. He was waiting to hear the sound of loud voices or running coming from the first floor. But none came.
After reaching the bottom of what seemed like the Penrose Stairs, 2135 marched to the building’s entrance. He looked through the small window. The street was still empty. He turned around and walked to a door under the staircase. It led to the utility room where he kept his bicycle. He went inside and emerged with his bicycle within a minute. He walked to the entrance to take a look outside again. When your life was on the line, there was no such thing as checking too many times.
When he stepped outside, he got on his bike and started riding it in the shortest route to the edge of the city. Now that he was moving away from his apartment, he would be more difficult to find. If he were stopped by any regular soldiers, he could always pay them off. It did not take much. One of the advantages of living in such a famished country was that if you offered someone only ten US dollars, you could corrupt even the most determined soldier. 2135 sometimes thought about the strange situation. The regime wanted to keep tight control over the country by making outside goods difficult to get. There was no trade and the country could not grow enough food for itself because the right farming equipment could not be imported. This led to widespread hunger, which made people more corruptible by bribes. This resulted in the regime having a weaker grip on the country, as people were now willing to do anything for food or money to buy food, including potentially betraying the regime. So the regime took action to make itself more powerful resulting in it becoming less powerful. That’s such a strange contradiction, he sometimes thought.
2135 pedaled at a swift pace and after a few turns, was now out of sight of his block. He thought about his plan. The border to either China or Russia was about 100 kilometers away. If his bicycle could last at least a third of the way, that would mean he could be at the border within a few days. Once in China, it would not take him long to get to Shanghai. Then he thought about the message again. Up until now he only had time to react to it, not to process it properly. Command for some reason believed that he was compromised. At this point, it did not matter whether he actually was compromised or not, because by this afternoon his colleagues at work would report that he had not showed up. The police would start investigating. So now, he was finished here, he thought. But why did Command think he was compromised? He had always followed protocol carefully. He did not think any of his contacts suspected anything.
He realized that leaving behind his network of assets disgruntled him the most. He had carefully constructed what he thought was a work of art. His assets came from all walks of life and had access to all types of information. He had spent years planning and developing his network. He had sent quite a bit of vital information to Command, most recently that information about the men at port.
Was that what got me compromised?
He still remembered how he had learned in training to recruit assets. It all built upon that first lesson. Most human behavior stemmed from an urge to feel important. That was the foundation for recruiting, but how to target each needed to be determined on a case by case basis. There was one classroom session with a senior NIS instructor at the compound that elucidated this process:
“I will now walk you through the basic ways to recruit people,” the instructor had said. “These methods are used by most intelligence agencies around the world. So you will not need to do anything new or untested. The only difference is you will be using these methods as an illegal. You will be working alone and will have to decide how to implement these methods. Intelligence officers with official cover work in teams and usually have oversight. That’s the main challenge you will have. Are you with me so far?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Now you remember your first lesson, right? What is the strongest urge human beings have?”
“To feel important.”
“And someone feels important when he is doing something for himself. In other words someone only wants to do something because he wants to. We never feel important when we are doing something because someone else ordered us, right? So to make someone feel that he is doing something that will benefit him, you have to always ask what are this person’s interests and what drives him. Does this make sense?”
“Yes. I’m with you.”
“Ideology is the strongest motivator and is the most reliable way to recruit someone. If you find someone in North Korea who secretly hates the regime, he could be a powerful asset. This can come from a variety of things. Maybe his family was killed or maybe he has learned something about the outside word. Whatever the reason is, people are usually willing to risk their lives for strong ideological views. Someone bringing you information who feels he is doing it for a cause he really believes in is acting out of that urge to feel that he is doing something important. So when you find these people, tell them you are a leader of a secret underground organization that is trying to stir up dissent. Tell them that the information they bring you is vital to the organization’s cause. You can use any ideology. If someone believes that the regime has failed to establish true communism, tell him you are from an underground communist group trying to reestablish true Marxism. You can use any ideology that someone is attached to. Never stop thinking about what makes that person feel important, or what his interests are. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Now another motivation is money. If someone is in financial distress, he would probably be willing to help you in exchange for being able to put
food on the table. Money can also be used to recruit people not in financial distress. But this is harder to do in North Korea. Many people love to buy expensive things and show them off to their friends and colleagues. This gives them that sense of importance. In North Korea there are no luxuries available so you will be looking for people in financial distress.”
“Got it.”
“Good. Now comes the most challenging, but safest, way to get information. If a recruited asset gets caught, he could reveal who you are. If you ‘recruit’ someone who thinks you are just a close friend, you can get information without the person knowing he is your asset. And again, use the same theme. Make the person feel important. Talk to him about – him. Shower him with complements about his family and his intellect. Share cigarettes and drinks with him. If he thinks you are a close friend, you could get information out of him that he would not even realize he’s volunteering.”
Using these basic methods 2135 had learned in that classroom session over fifteen years ago, he had created a web of contacts in North Korean society. He was disappointed to leave it behind. He wanted to keep using his techniques to make that web wider.
He remembered that as he was learning about recruiting assets, he had a revelation about espionage terms used in popular culture. During one weekend at the compound he watched several spy films. He noticed that they all used the terms backwards. Intelligence officers were being called agents. At one point he started to laugh as he watched one movie by himself. He had learned in training that people trained by a home country that were sent into a target country to recruit contacts and gather information were officers. He was training to be an intelligence officer. The contacts, or assets, officers recruited typically would not know who they were working for. They had no contact with Command. If the asset needed to learn a skill – such as taking a document properly, eavesdropping without being noticed, or dropping a package, the officer would teach them. These contacts, or assets, were also sometimes called agents. Somehow popular culture had confused it completely. Maybe “agent” had a better ring, 2135 sometimes wondered.
By now, 2135 was at the outskirts of the city and on his way to China. Somehow he had not been careful. Somehow his opponents had figured him out, according to Command. He thought about each of his assets and the information he had gathered over the last fifteen years. He tried to find a hole, or somewhere where he had made a mistake.
How was I compromised?