The DCI’s face disappeared and was replaced with a computer-generated Mercator projection of the earth. The camera zoomed in until it was focused on Central Asia, then paused. A clock graphic in the right-hand corner appeared and, beside it, the notation, DAY 1. A red dot appeared in the center of Kyrgyzstan, then expanded, doubling in size. The clock changed to DAY 5. The red dot expanded again, doubling again, and then again, and again, until the whole of Kyrgyzstan was covered, and the clock read DAY 11.
Fisher and the others continued to watch as Manas spread beyond the borders of Kyrgyzstan, north into Kazakhstan, east into China, south into Tajikistan, then India . . .
Thirty seconds later, half the globe had turned red, and the area was still increasing in size.
The clock read DAY 26.
Grimsdottir pushed through the door ten minutes later and stopped short as she saw the three of them sitting around the table. “Did I miss a memo?” she asked.
Lambert shook his head. “The Insomniacs’ Club.”
“Sign me up,” she said, then poured her own cup of coffee, sat down, and powered up her laptop. Lambert briefed her on their discussion so far. She paused a few moments to take it all in, then said to Fisher, “Sam, you’re sure that Stewart died at Site Seventeen?”
Fisher nodded. “Either there or in the water a few minutes later.”
“Then we’ve got a mystery on our hands. I just heard from the comm center. Stewart’s beacon is still active, and it’s transmitting from Pyongyang, North Korea.”
36
PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA
FISHER had gotten up at dawn and taken the Metro train to the Rungnado station, where he got off, stopped at a street kiosk to buy some green tea, then walked to a park and found a bench overlooking the Taedong River, which ran through the center of the North Korean capital. Beyond the river’s opposite bank, Pyongyang’s skyscrapers and gray cinder-block Soviet-style buildings spread across the horizon.
The sun was bright, glistening off the dew-covered grass. A hundred yards away, a group of thirty or so teenage boys and girls were practicing hapkido under the watchful eyes of North Korean People’s Army officers. They barked orders, and the students answered “Ye!” Whether the teenagers were bothered by the rigorous early morning training, Fisher couldn’t tell. Each teenager wore the same expression: thin-set mouths and narrowed eyes. Their collective breathing, which itself seemed to have a disciplined rhythm to it, steamed in the chilled, early morning air.
One of the officers barked another order, and the group bent at the waist, en masse, and picked up their rifles, old World War II-era Soviet Mosin-Nagant carbines, and began a drill routine.
The future of North Korea, Fisher thought. And, if Omurbai’s Manas plan succeeded, perhaps the future of the world. Since Lambert had suggested the scenario, Fisher had been trying to wrap his head around the idea of North Korea as the world’s only oil superpower. It was a frightening thought.
From the corner of his eye Fisher saw his escorts, a pair of plainclothes State Security Department officers, which he’d dubbed Flim and Flam, enter the park’s west entrance and take up station at the railing along the river’s edge.
Good morning, boys, Fisher thought. Like clockwork.
Since his arrival two days earlier, the SSD had thoroughly, if not imaginatively, watched his every movement. The pair that had just walked into the park was the day shift; the night shift came on at six p.m.
So far, every prediction he’d received about North Korean’s security agencies had been proved true.
FIVE days earlier and just two hours after Grimsdottir’s revelation about Stewart’s still-active beacon (which, Fisher suspected, Stewart had planted on Chin-Hwa Pak during the chaos aboard the Site 17 platform), he, Lambert, and Grimsdottir had been ordered to report to Camp Perry, the CIA’s legendary training facility outside Williamsburg, Virginia. Waiting for them in the main conference room was Langley’s DDO, or deputy directorate of operations, Tom Richards. Fisher knew Richards from the Iranian crisis the year before.
“I’ll get to the point,” Richards said. “We don’t have any field people in North Korea, which puts us in a pickle.”
The pickle to which Richards was referring was Fisher himself. Lambert had already pitched Third Echelon’s plan directly to the president, who had approved it and ordered the CIA to act in a support role.
Accomplished as he was at covert operations, Fisher’s expertise was of a more military nature, and despite his recent graduation from CROSSCUT, his bona fides as a field intelligence operative were nonexistent. For Fisher’s part, his head was already in North Korea. A covert operation was a covert operation; the nuts and bolts of how Third Echelon and the CIA’s DO did their jobs might be different, but the mind-set was the same: Get in, do the job, and get out, leaving as few footprints as possible.
“Sam, you’ll be completely on your own.”
Fisher nodded. “I know.”
“You get caught there, you’re done. You’ll either end up with a bullet in your head or living out the rest of your life in a windowless underground cell. The North Koreans don’t do prisoner exchanges, and they don’t PNG people,” Richards said, referring to persona non grata, the official process of expelling suspected spies from First World countries. “North Korea is true Indian country. In a lot of ways they’re worse than the Soviets ever were.”
Fisher smiled at Richards; there was no warmth in it. “Gosh golly, Tom, are you trying to scare me?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Consider your job done.”
“Just want to make sure you’ve got your head right for this.”
“I do.”
“Okay.” Richards shrugged and said, “I’m going to turn you over to a familiar face. You’ve got just two days to prep; they’ll get you as ready as they can.” Richards turned to Lambert. “Irv, if you and Ms. Grimsdottir will follow me, I’ll show you what we’ve got for you.”
Thirty seconds after they filed out, a door on the opposite side of the conference room opened, and a man walked in. Fisher did in fact recognize the face: Frederick, one of the watchers who’d dogged him during his final CROSSCUT field exam.
“Hi, Sam. Heard they were tossing you to the sharks already.”
“So it seems.”
“Well, let’s see what we can do about bite-proofing you.”
AND, despite the narrow time line he’d had to work with, Frederick did just that, spending eighteen hours a day taking him through his paces, from the details of his cover, to communication protocols, to what he could expect from the myriad North Korean counterintelligence agencies.
Though predictably Frederick admitted nothing, it was immediately clear to Fisher that the man had had a lot of time in Pyongyang, and as the U.S. had no official diplomatic presence there, it meant he’d survived “naked”—without cover or backup—and come home to tell about it.
On the final day, just hours before Fisher was to enter the pipeline, Frederick proclaimed him as ready as he would ever be and sealed it with a handshake. “If you remember only one thing,” Frederick said, “it’s this: Always assume. Assume you’re being watched; assume they know exactly who and what you are; assume they’re going to pluck you off the street any second.”
Fisher smiled. “Fred, if this is your version of a pep talk, it needs a little work.”
“It’s my keep-you-alive talk. I tell you to assume these things for two reasons: one, because it’ll all be true; and two, they’re going to be assuming the same thing about you: that you need to be watched; that you’re an enemy agent; that you’re probably doing something that deserves arrest.”
“And if they do?” Fisher asked.
“Arrest you?”
Fisher nodded.
“Then God help you. My advice . . .” Frederick paused. “If it were me going back there . . . I’d go to ground before I let them get their hands on me. If you know they’re coming for you, run.”
NOW, sitting on the bench, watching the two SSD officers watching him, Fisher realized he agreed with Fred’s advice. However steep the odds against success, he’d go to ground the second they made a move for him.
After ten more minutes of watching the soldier-students, Fisher stood up, tossed his Styrofoam cup in a nearby trash barrel, and set off down the sidewalk. He didn’t look back, and he didn’t need to. Before he got a hundred yards, either Flim or Flam would be digging his cup out of the garbage for later examination.
FISHER’S cover was that of a photographer from the German newspaper Stern, a choice that was based partially on Fisher’s fluency in German but also because of Stern’s often anti-American slant and for decrying what it called the United States’ “Bully Administration.” Moreover, Stern had for the last few years been courting the youth of North Korea, who were starving for a connection with their European counterparts. North Korea’s leaders had decided Stern might be a safe way to satisfy that craving and perhaps make political inroads with European countries that oftentimes adopted a contrarian outlook to cultural affairs: If America thinks you’re bad, maybe you’re worth a second look to us.
And so Fisher, speaking nearly flawless German and hailing from a country that had little love for the current American administration, received only a cursory questioning upon his arrival at Pyongyang’s airport. Even so, his passport had been collected at the hotel, and he’d been assigned an SSD shadow detail. How long it would last, he didn’t know, but Frederick had felt confident the two-day rule would likely be in effect: If after two days the SSD decided you weren’t there to topple the government or foment antisocial behavior, they would scale back the surveillance—or at least the overt surveillance.
FISHER spent the rest of the morning touring the city’s landmarks: the Arch of Triumph, a grander replica of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe; Mangyongdae Hill, Kim Il-sung’s birthplace; Juche Tower; the Korean Workers’ Party Monument; and Namsan Hill, also known as the Grand People’s Study House. These would be expected stops of any tourist and certainly the kinds of photo opportunities a Stern photographer wouldn’t forgo, Frederick had told him.
By late afternoon Fisher was back at his hotel—the Yanggakdo—having an early supper. Ten minutes before Flim and Flam were to be relieved by the night shift team, Flip and Flop, Fisher had retired to the hotel’s bar overlooking the Taedong to enjoy a cup of coffee, as he had each night since arriving.
Right on time, at six o’clock, Flim and Flam, who were seated inside near a window, stood up and disappeared. Fisher watched and waited. Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen. Usually by now either Flip or Flop would have made an appearance, either walking to the railing and watching the river for a few minutes or actually taking a table and enjoying a meal while Fisher finished his coffee.
After thirty minutes, Fisher realized no one was coming. He called for the waitress, signed his tab, then went through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk, where he turned left and started walking. He strolled along the shop fronts for the next hour, stopping occasionally to price gifts, ducking into and out of doorways, hailing taxis, then riding only a block before getting out. Satisfied that Frederick’s prediction about the two-day rule had been accurate and that he was no longer under close surveillance, he walked back to the hotel and took the elevator to his room.
Inside, he picked up the phone and asked for an outside line. The number he dialed, though prefaced by Germany’s country code, 49, and Berlin’s city code, 30, in fact took him to an NSA monitoring and intercept station in Misawa, Japan.
Grimsdottir answered in German on the third ring: “Stern, how can I help you?”
“Extension forty-two nineteen,” Fisher replied in German.
“Wait, please.” Ten seconds later, Lambert, who’d undergone his own crash course in German, picked up the line. “Kaufmann! How is Pyongyang?”
“Fine. The weather is what you’d expect,” Fisher replied. “Did some tourist sites today; tomorrow I hope to get some street interviews.”
“Outstanding! Keep us posted.”
Fisher hung up.
The conversation was scripted, and it told Lambert three things: one, Fisher had encountered no complications; two, the SSD was behaving as expected and surveillance had been scaled back; and three, tomorrow he was going after the RDEI agent, Chin-Hwa Pak.
37
FISHER stepped backward into the alley, ducked behind a garbage can, and watched, breath held, as the jeep rolled past him at a walking pace. Sitting in the back of the open vehicle were three soldiers, one on either side shining flashlights along the sidewalks and a third standing behind a mounted .50-caliber machine gun. They passed Fisher’s alley, then rolled to a stop at the next intersection, brakes squealing softly in the darkness. In the distance, toward Kyonghung Street, he could hear disco music.
After a few seconds the jeep rolled forward and turned left out of sight. Fisher let out his breath. He ran both hands through his sweat-dampened hair, then checked his watch: two a.m. He’d been moving for two hours. He was within a quarter mile of his destination.
He’d left his room just before midnight and taken the elevator to the parking garage, where’d he’d tucked himself in the shadows behind a concrete pillar and waited for the garage attendant shift change. When the replacement showed up, both men stepped into the adjoining security room, leaving the barrier arm unguarded. He’d watched this changeover process six times since he’d arrived at the hotel and never more than thirty seconds passed before the two attendants emerged from the security room.
When he’d heard the door click shut, he stepped out from behind the pillar and walked, shoeless, up the ramp, then ducked down and crab-walked below the security room’s single window, then around the barrier’s post. He stood up, glanced left then right and, seeing nothing, walked straight across the street and around the corner.
Pyongyang’s nightlife was scarce and confined to only a few pockets of bars and dance clubs around the city, so most of Fisher’s journey was done on vacant streets and empty sidewalks, which had turned out to be both a blessing and a curse: the former because he felt more in his natural element; the latter because he would quickly draw attention if spotted. A Caucasian, walking alone on the streets at three in the morning . . . The police would snatch him up without so much as a question and deposit him at the nearest SSD office for questioning. Of course, the same curse that applied to him would apply to any watchers on his tail. Unless they were very, very good, they would be easy to spot. The playing field was even. Or at least he hoped so. TWENTY minutes later he was lying in the undergrowth bordering the governor’s residence, studying the street through a pair of miniature binoculars. As bad luck would have it, Pak’s four-story apartment building, which sat on the opposite side of the street and fifty yards to Fisher’s right, was located in a Pyongyang neighborhood reserved for established North Korean politicians, military officers, and civil servants. Fisher was now in one of the most protected single square miles of the capital. From where he lay he could see the mayor’s residence, three semiprivate banks reserved for party luminaries, an antiaircraft battery, an ammunition depot, and the barracks for the seventy-seventh Infantry Regiment, all illuminated by floodlights and guarded by somber, rifle-toting soldiers, both roving and stationary.
There was an upside, however. As well-guarded as the area was, most of the protection was focused on private residences. Pak’s building, two blocks from the barracks, sat on a relatively dark and quiet street surrounded by dogwood trees and lilac hedges. Whether Pak was at home Fisher didn’t know; all he knew was Stewart’s beacon was there, probably still attached to the clothing Pak was wearing aboard the platform.
Fisher checked his watch again.
Patience, Sam.
HE forced himself to lie still for another hour, watching the comings and goings of the guards, looking for that one defect, that one gap in coverage he could exploit. And, as he’d expected, when he finally spotte
d his opening, it came not from flawed logistics or training but from individual idiosyncrasy. One soldier, a boy in his late teens, was a chain-smoker, and he clearly lacked the self-discipline to wait for scheduled breaks.
On every third patrol around the block that encompassed the governor’s and mayor’s residences, as well as Pak’s apartment, the boy would stop, duck behind a tree, and greedily smoke a cigarette before completing his round. It gave Fisher an extra two minutes to do what he needed to do.
Fisher watched the soldier stroll past his hiding spot, then turn the corner and start back toward the mayor’s residence. Then, like clockwork, he stopped, furtively glanced around, then stepped behind a tree and lit up.
Fisher rose to his knees and padded, hunched over, across the street, moving diagonally away from the smoking soldier until he was behind the screen of lilac hedges that bracketed the covered walkway that led to the door to Pak’s building. Fisher slipped along the wall to where the walkway and front wall met, then turned around and pressed his back into the corner. Now he would see if his daily exercise routine, which included seven hundred single-leg squats for just such occasions as this one, would pay off.
He took a deep breath, planted the rubber sole of his left shoe against the wall, and pushed hard. He leaned to the left, shifting his weight, and pressed his shoulder into the wall. Next he braced his right foot against the adjoining wall, coiled his leg, and pushed again, lifting himself off the ground. He was now in what’s called the chimneying position. Used by mountaineers and rock climbers to navigate right-angle outcroppings and vertical rock chutes, chimneying took patience, stamina, and brute strength, but it came as close to defying gravity as one could without the aid of pitons and carabiners.