Devil's Fork (35 page)

“
Did you radio for
reinforcements? Before you came in here?”
Tom asked.

“
No, my radio does not
work. None of our radios really work. Look, here.”
Sara saw the man pull out his radio and hand it to
Tom. Tom was looking at it. It did not make any sound or respond as
if it were on.

Anderson spoke quickly, “Tom, don’t let him
know you have us on the radio. He might behave differently if he
believes you are alone with him.” Anderson’s arms were crossed.

On the screen Sara could see Tom walk up
closer to the soldier and start patting him down. He did not find
any weapons. He stepped back. Now Mr. Park took control. He spoke
with confidence, as if he had seen this before.

“
Tom, ask him why he wants
to defect.”

Tom asked. The man replied in a slow
voice.

“
I do not want to live in
this country anymore. The leaders here only care about themselves.
Ordinary people like me are completely unimportant. I have been
living my whole life in fear.”

Mr. Park had an immediate follow up. “Ask
him about his family.”

After Tom asked, Kim
replied,
“My father died last week. He was
all that I had. I no longer have any ties to this country. My
father was a general. He told me a lot about this country that many
of the highest ranks in the military do not even know.”
Sara could not believe that Kim was still talking
to Tom as if they were the only two listening. He still did not
realize an entire room of people were listening to him.

Mr. Park told Tom, “Ask him to say something
that he knows. Ask him what this place is and to tell you about it.
Ask him for a couple more secrets. I’ll be able to tell if he’s
lying.”

Sara knew why they were going through this
exercise. She remembered reading that over one thousand people
defect from North Korea each year. These people come from all walks
of life. Some worked for the government, some were in the military,
and many were ordinary people. The problem was that sometimes the
government sent in spies this way. They would “defect,” be granted
South Korean citizenship, and would then live in South Korea,
recruiting assets and hunting down other defectors. She knew the
South Korean NIS took careful precautions to counter this.
Interviews where the defector was asked about sensitive information
was the primary technique. Someone sent over to spy would be
hesitant to actually give away any sensitive information, whereas
real defectors would be more than happy to share everything they
knew. The spy might try to leave out important facts or outright
lie, and the NIS knew how to catch them doing this. She looked over
at Mr. Park. He stared at the screen without blinking.

Captain Kim paused when Tom
asked for information about the base. But he soon started
talking.
“This facility belongs to Room
39. Room 39 is the group tasked with generating cash for the
leaders. It makes hundreds of millions of US dollars per year. It
is the largest drug making and drug smuggling organization in the
world. It sells drugs all over Asia and also to Europe and America.
Some of this cash is brought back here to North Korea but some is
also laundered through restaurants and several other legitimate
businesses Room 39 operates. There are four main ways the cash is
used. First, it is used to purchase all of the luxuries and food
that our leaders want. Second, it is used to provide luxuries for
those who are loyal in the upper ranks of the military and the
government. Those people might be rewarded with a refrigerator
manufactured in Europe or a cell phone made in South Korea. This
keeps them in line. Third, some of it is sitting in foreign banks
so that if the leaders need to flee, they will have plenty of cash
to live well abroad. And last and most important, they have used
the cash to purchase several nuclear weapons, which you probably
saw in the other room.”

“
How did they buy those
nukes?”
Tom interrupted.
“Where did they get them?”

“
That I don’t know. Even
my father was not told.”

Tom seemed to take the role
of interrogator from Mr. Park,
“So your
leaders bought those bombs. But where do they do nuclear research?
How close are your leaders to making their own weapons? Can they
build their own nuclear bombs?”

Captain Kim slowly shook
his head.
“No. My father told me that we
are not even close to building a nuclear weapon. Do you really
think that we live without even working radios and without
electricity, but we can somehow perform advanced research in
nuclear physics? It’s a strange contradiction. Our leaders want to
make sure that they maintain their power. So they allow students
here to only study some basic math and history. Students spend most
of their time learning about the leaders and their philosophy.
Because of this, we have a very uneducated populace in this
country. Because of this, we don’t have many people who are even
close to understanding nuclear physics, forget trying to build a
nuclear bomb. Because of that, it will be a very long time before
we actually develop a nuclear weapon. So our leaders have become
weaker. Do you see? They tried to become more powerful by not
allowing anyone to learn anything from the outside world, but it
ended up in them losing power because they can’t build nuclear
weapons. That’s some kind of contradiction.”

“
That’s a
paradox
,” Sara almost
shouted.

Tom asked,
“But we always see images on TV of your nuclear
research facilities. We see scientists walking around in protective
suits. What is that?”

Kim smiled,
“You really think you can believe what our
leaders say? They will gladly tell you that we have nuclear
weapons. They will gladly send your media a film of ‘nuclear
scientists’ working. But it is all staged. All actors. It’s like
when tourists come from your country and we show them stores that
are fake but set up to look real.”

Mark tapped Sara. She turned around. He was
looking at her wide-eyed and started whispering. “Sara, that’s the
Totalitarian Uncertainty Principle you came up with. They say they
can produce nuclear weapons. We went in and observed that they
cannot produce nuclear weapons. What they say does not match what
we see.” She had not even realized it. Of course, she thought, if
they say they can make nuclear weapons, we should have expected to
see something completely different when we went in. She almost
forgot that totalitarian regimes will say anything at all. They
will say anything to scare the rest of the world and protect their
power.

Kim went on,
“Of course we have a few scientists. Our leaders
send them abroad to study. But they only want to let people study
abroad for a short time, to prevent them from defecting. I was only
allowed to spend three months in China to study Mandarin. So we
have a few scientists with some knowledge, and they are trying to
do nuclear research. But I don’t think they can build a bomb. Our
leaders realized this a long time ago. So they thought it would be
easier to buy a few bombs, which in itself is difficult to do. I
don’t know how or where they were able to do it.”

One question had been
bothering Sara for a few minutes now. “Tom, can you ask him about
the nuclear tests we always read about?
Sara constantly heard about underground nuclear tests that
North Korea was conducting. She did not understand how they could
be performing those if they effectively had no nuclear research
program.

After Tom asked, Captain
Kim replied.
“Well I think once in a while
they take one of the bombs they bought and detonate them
underground. They know that your navy is nearby testing for
radiation. They will detonate these nuclear bombs, say they have
conducted a successful nuclear test, and your navy will measure an
increase in radiation levels. That is what is powerful. They can
get you to start telling yourselves that we have nuclear
weapons.”

Tom interrupted
again,
“So your leaders spend what,
hundreds of millions of dollars on a nuclear bomb, just to detonate
it? They are fine with seeing that much money blow up
underground?”
Sara enjoyed hearing Tom’s
tone with this soldier.

Kim replied quickly,
“Isn’t it worth it? If you were our leaders and
you worried everyday, if you could not sleep, if you were
constantly wondering if America and Europe would invade your
country and hang you, what do you think? Wouldn’t it be worth it to
spend a couple hundred million dollars to scare the West into
keeping back? Especially if the money was so easily made? I also
think some of the nuclear tests were not nuclear at all. Some of
the tests were just large explosions designed to make you believe
we are conducting nuclear tests.”
Kim
pointed his hand at the shelves of drugs as he replied.

Then Kim said something that made Sara feel
queasy. She wasn’t sure if it was what he said, or the fact that he
smiled while saying it.

“
Sun Tzu: All warfare is
based on deception.”

In this moment, Sara
realized the aptness of the name
Devil’s
Fork
for this mission. She had always
thought of a devil’s fork as an object that could be conceived but
at the same time could not. It could be drawn, but then again it
really could not. It perplexed anyone to watch the two legs of the
fork turn into three. In a similar light, she mused about what the
screen before her revealed. Was North Korea a nuclear state? It
was, but it was not. Was this a powerful nation, to be feared? It
was, but it was not. Like the fork, she sat perplexed as she saw a
threat turn benign and turn into a threat again. She saw that this
country could be understood, but it could not.

Finally Anderson started speaking. “Tom,
It’s going to be sunrise in a few hours. You need to get moving.
Put a few explosives in the main warehouse. Then start grabbing
documents from those offices.”

Tom turned to Captain Kim
and said,
“OK, I’ll take you. But you have
to help me set explosive charges in this warehouse. I also need to
take as many documents as I can fit into my bag. You will help me.
Always stay in my sight. Got it?”

Kim’s eyes became
wide,
“you are going to blow this place
up? But there are nuclear weapons in there.”

Tom coolly replied,
“That bunker is sealed. We need to place charges
here to destroy this warehouse. Let’s go.”

Sara saw on the screen that Tom walked up to
the AK rifles on the ground near the bodies of the other soldiers.
He took out the ammunition and emptied the cases out. She was glad
to see Tom be careful.

On the screen, Tom and Captain Kim walked to
the middle of one of the long tables. They started setting one
explosive charge. Sara felt some tension leave as she saw Kim
helping Tom. Next to her, she saw Anderson mute the microphone and
turn to her.

“
I’m not sure that I trust
Captain Kim yet. We also have an added complication. We have to
figure out how to get Kim out of North Korea with Tom. Tom came in
with his diving gear and with an SDV. Kim can’t get out that way.
Can you start thinking through this, Sara?”

“
There is a village a few
miles south that has some boats. They can go there and take one,”
Sara said.

“
That sounds too risky,”
Anderson replied.

“
Or maybe Kim can take some
of that cash in the other room and go to the Chinese border. He is
not that far. We can help him from there. Actually, why can’t
the
Virginia
send
a small inflatable boat to shore undetected and get them both out
that way?”

“
It would be very easy for
them to get captured in those scenarios,” Anderson said while
shaking his head. “Keep thinking. In a few hours we have to do
something.” He unmuted the microphone in the room.

Meanwhile Mr. Park stood still next to
Anderson, looking at the screen without moving. He was not smiling.
His arms were crossed. He said, “Tom, ask him to tell us something
top secret or sensitive that we would not be able to figure out
from looking at this base.”

By now Tom and Kim were
walking towards one of the glass meth labs to set a charge on it.
After Tom asked Mr. Park’s question, Captain Kim replied,
“One thing that’s top secret is that the nuclear
tests are conducted as much for internal reasons as for external
reasons. While the drugs generate cash to keep the upper ranks in
line, the nuclear tests are meant to scare them into line. My
father always said that the leadership is not as stable as it
looks. There are generals that have plotted coups. There are
high-ranking officials who do not support the current leaders. The
nuclear tests, especially the recent ones, were meant to
demonstrate the strength of the current leaders. To some extent,
these tests rallied many of the people and ordinary soldiers to
support the current leadership. It created awe for the leaders.
This helped consolidate power. It’s no different with the recent
tensions that the leaders created with the West. You’ve seen it on
your TV, right? Our leaders have been announcing that they are
readying the troops for war. Tanks, planes, artillery are all on
standby, ready for immediate combat. You think that’s just to scare
you? They do this to scare their own people. The leaders do it to
tighten their grip on the military. You think they want to create
high tension? You think they like seeing TV footage of your stealth
bombers flying a few miles away from the border? You think they
enjoy the threat of war? They don’t. The commanders in the military
are terrified when this happens. But that’s the point. The leaders
know they have to do it to consolidate their own power, to prove
their strength. I never understood how you Americans could not see
right through that.”