Devil's Fork (32 page)

I’m inside the
base
.

On either side of the corridor stretching
out in front of him, Tom saw doors and windows. They looked like a
series of offices. The Command Room saw it too.

“
Can you go up to one of
those windows and just peek inside the office for a second?”
Tom smiled as he imagined Anderson was probably
standing one foot away from the large screen, trying to see
everything and saying whatever was on his mind.

“
Roger,” Tom replied. He
walked up to the first window on the right and stared through it.
It looked like a normal office. There was a desk, some papers,
binders, notebooks, pens, and even an old computer, one with a
thick monitor.

“
It just looks like an
office,” Tom said.

“
Can you step inside and
just see if there’s anything interesting in there?”

Tom was surprised. “Wouldn’t it just be
better to go straight in the warehouse and start looking around?
What are we going to see in an office?”

“
Well let’s just see if
anything is in this office. Just look for twenty seconds and then
walk over to that warehouse space.”

“
Roger.”

Tom reached for the handle on the door that
led to the office he was looking into. This handle was not locked.
He pushed the door open and then went inside. From the inside it
appeared to be a normal office as well. The one thing that bothered
Tom was a stuffy smell he could sense immediately. He walked up to
the desk. He grabbed one of the pieces of paper and looked at it.
It was written in Korean as he expected so he did not know if he
was staring at a poem or instructions to build a nuclear bomb. He
saw that there was a “39” at the top in larger font. It looked like
a heading.

“
I obviously can’t read any
of this.” Tom said into his radio.

“
I’m putting the main
microphone in the room back on.”
After a
quick pause Anderson was back, but sounded farther away.
“Tom, hold that piece of paper closer up to the
helmet camera. Mr. Park is going to try to read it.”

Tom held the page about a foot away from the
camera on his head. Soon he heard Mr. Park’s voice.

“
This looks like some kind
of document referencing a ship that was being chartered. A cargo
ship of some kind.”

Anderson quickly
said,
“That’s unsettling. But it doesn’t
have anything to do with nuclear technology?”

“
No,”
Mr. Park said definitively.

Tom asked the one question that was itching
his mind, “What do you think that 39 means at the top?”

“
Could it be the 39th ship
they were hiring?”
This time Sara
spoke.

“
I don’t know,” Tom said.
“I’m looking at all of these pieces of paper and each one has a 39
at the top or somewhere on it. The notebooks all have a 39 on the
front too. Even the computer has a sticker on it that says 39. Mr.
Park, does 39 mean anything?” As Tom looked around, he saw a 39 on
everything.

Tom heard Mr. Park’s voice
slowly respond to him.
“It could.”
Then he paused.
“I think
it would be a good idea to go take a look at that
warehouse.”
Tom thought Mr. Park sounded
like he had understood something, but was not sure. Tom put the
piece of paper down. He walked out of the office and shut the door
behind him. He turned right and started walking towards the large
entrance to a massive open, dark space. He walked slowly past the
other offices. He tried to see what was past the threshold ahead.
He could not make it out, but as he came closer, it looked like
aisles of shelves.

When he arrived at the entrance to the
warehouse he stopped. He listened again for any sound. Again he
heard absolute silence. He tried to gauge the size of the
underground warehouse stretching out in front of him. It looked
like an airplane hanger.

“
This warehouse looks to be
around 3 football fields long and about two football fields wide”
Tom said after looking around.

Anderson’s voice came
on,
“Got it. Wow. Do you want to take a
look at those shelves ahead of you? What’s that stuff sitting on
them?”

“
Roger.”

Tom walked ten feet to the aisle in front of
him. It stood about seven feet tall and seemed to have about seven
shelves. It was difficult to make it out even with the night
vision, so Tom flipped up the goggles and turned on a small
flashlight on his helmet. He shined it on the shelves.

All the voices in the
Command Room burst out.
“Oh my God. Is
that - what kind of base is this?”

Tom started at it in silence. In front of
him on all of the shelves were bags. They looked like bricks,
filled with a white powder. They were stacked up on each shelf. Tom
saw that there was a sign above the shelf.

“
That sign says
‘heroin,’”
Mr. Park said back in the
Command Room. Tom looked down the aisle of shelves to his right. He
saw bag after bag of white powder, or heroin as it was now
identified.

“
What is this place? Is
there anything else here?”
Anderson
said.

Tom started walking down the aisle. He
looked at the shelves of heroin, making sure his helmet camera had
a good view. When he got to the end of the aisle, Tom realized that
he had just walked by millions of dollars worth of heroin. At the
end of the aisle, he could see the warehouse better. He saw that
there were many rows of these shelves. At roughly the center of the
warehouse, there was more open space.

“
Tom, can you walk through
another one of these aisles?”
Anderson
asked.

“
Roger”

Tom walked past a few and then turned into
the fifth or sixth aisle. He aimed his head at the shelves as he
walked through it, again so the Command Room had a good view.

“
Is that -?”
Sara began.
“I think
that’s –.“
Tom grabbed one of the bags off
the shelf. Instead of a white powder, he saw what looked like a
pile of crystals.”

Mr. Park declared,
“This sign says Methamphetamine.”

“
Crystal Meth? They aren’t
kidding around.”
Anderson replied. Tom
continued walking down the aisle.

“
This entire row looks like
it’s shelves of meth,” Tom said as he reached he middle of the
aisle. He sped up to get to the end of the aisle. It was a long
walk however.

“
Is all this here meth
too?”
Sara asked.

“
Roger, this is still
meth.” Tom walked by and looked at shelves stocked full of these
bags of crystals. He looked up and saw the top shelves piled with
at least ten bags. The other shelves had fewer, but were so full
Tom could barely stick his hand through when he tried to grab
another bag to check it. Tom continued walking and after a few
minutes reached the end of the aisle.

“
Tom, can you see what
that open space in the middle of this warehouse is?”
Sara asked.

“
Roger.” Tom walked past
the other aisles. As he walked past each one he glanced down to see
what was there. At this point, Tom was not surprised.

“
Guys, I don’t know if it’s
coming across clearly on the helmet cam, but each of these aisles
I’m walking past is stocked full of drugs as well.”

“
Roger. We see
it.”

Tom kept walking past what seemed like
endless aisles of drugs. He spotted more bags of powder and
crystals but also tablets. After finally walking past the last
aisle he saw a vast open space in front of him, free of aisles.
Within the vast space, two large glass rooms sat alone. They looked
like large, clear boxes resting on the ground. Tom realized he was
looking at laboratories, enclosed so that the chemicals they were
mixing did not get into the warehouse. He could see right inside.
There were several long rectangular tables. They were outfitted
with Bunsen burners, beakers, trays, tubes and sinks. By the
entrance to the glass rooms, he saw coatracks that hosted several
hanging lab coats. There were tables next to them with masks and
gloves. Tom walked up to the glass rooms. He noticed a pipe coming
out of the top and going straight to the roof of the warehouse.

“
Those are ventilation
shafts coming out of those rooms. Those are meth labs,”
Sara said.

Tom walked up to one of the rooms and stared
inside. The lab looked clean but it also looked used. Test tubes
had residue. The Bunsen burners looked burned around the edges.

“
These look like they are
in active use,” he said on his radio. Tom looked further back into
the warehouse and saw that there was something past the glass labs.
He walked over to take a look. He aimed his helmet light up high to
illuminate more space.

“
That looks like an
assembly line, a production space.”
Sara
said back in the Command Room. In front of Tom there were at least
ten long tables that stretched out at least thirty feet. Stools sat
on either side. It looked like a typical setup in a manufacturing
facility. But as Tom walked closer he saw empty bags stacked up in
piles. They looked like empty versions of the bags holding the
drugs in the shelves he saw earlier. Tom looked at the wall behind
the tables and saw several large elevator doors. He assumed these
went to other entrances in the forest and were probably used to
load and unload the drugs.

“
So this is basically a
big drug-making factory,”
Anderson finally
said.
“We have yet to see any sign of any
nuclear research.”

Tom at this point noticed a desk that sat by
itself against the side wall. It looked like a floor manager’s
desk. He walked towards it. As he got closer, his flashlight
revealed that it had a lot of papers and folders piled up. When Tom
reached it, he grabbed one of the folders at the top of the pile
and looked at it. It also had some writing and then a “39” written
on the front.

By now Anderson had become
curious about this as well.
“So what do
you think this ‘39’ means Mr. Park?”

Tom heard Mr. Park take a
deep breath and then begin.
“What it says
on the folder is ‘Room 39’. This looks like a facility belonging to
Room 39. I can’t believe it.”

Anderson asked the obvious,
“
What is Room 39?”

“
Room 39 is a secret
organization in North Korea. It is a group that attempts to make
money for the regime. It operates various front companies in the
world that do or sell illegal things to make money and then launder
it for the regime. Companies run by Room 39 have been found
engaging in insurance fraud around the world, weapons sales to
terrorist groups or dictators, counterfeiting currency including
the dollar, trafficking women and slaves around the world, and a
variety of other things. They even run a chain of restaurants
throughout Asia. They do all of these activities and make a lot of
money – they have made billions of dollars over the years. We’ve
known about it, but we have never been inside one of their
facilities.”

“
Why is it called ‘Room
39,’”
Anderson asked. By now Tom had opened
a small utility bag he brought and began stuffing it with the
documents on the desk.

“
It is called Room 39
because its headquarters are located on the third floor of the
Workers’ Party building in Pyongyang. They might have called it
that because the set of offices they occupied were numbered 39.
This is effectively the personal investment office for the regime.
They make money, allowing the regime to take that cash and buy the
various luxuries it needs. You always hear stories about how the
regime is one of the largest buyers of Hennessy cognac or that they
buy yachts or expensive watches. This is how they afford these
things. They also use the money to buy luxuries to award
high-ranking officials. The regime basically buys their
loyalty.”

Tom had finished grabbing most of the papers
on the desk and started walking further back into the warehouse. He
finally joined in the conversation.

“
So this is Room 39’s drug
wing? They make heroin and meth and do what? Export it
out?”

“
Yes,”
Mr. Park continued,
“We have been
receiving reports that North Korean embassies around the world were
told that they were to become responsible for selling drugs like
heroin in their respective countries. The North Koreans also work
with other groups to get the drugs sent around the world. Have you
heard of the Pong Su incident?”

Everyone in the conference
room replied, “no,” Mr. Park went on,
“In
2006, a ship called the Pong Su, flying the Tuvalu flag, was
spotted off the coast of Australia. Police followed several men who
landed ashore. They eventually found them in a hotel with 50kg of
heroin. Then when the Australian SAS raided the Pong Su, they found
another 150kg of heroin aboard. The smugglers who came ashore were
not North Korean. They were Southeast Asian. But the leaders on the
ship were North Korean. One was a Workers’ Party official. That
would be like finding a member of your President’s administration
on a ship carrying heroin. It was an unbelievable catch made by the
Australians. The Pong Su was also outfitted with enough fuel and
supplies to travel around the world nonstop.”