Devil's Fork (6 page)

“
Wow,” Matt said,
“Mind-blowing. But why does the mission have this
codename?”

“
Because whenever we deal
with North Korea or any purely totalitarian country, we end up
seeing a lot of paradoxes, or situations where the end result is a
contradiction.”

“
Like what?”

“
Well let’s take a basic
one. The North Korean regime is afraid that it will lose power. To
prevent this, it starts to develop nuclear weapons. The
international community becomes worried and places heavy sanctions,
causing hardship. Because of the hardship within its country, the
North Korean regime loses some power, since you are less powerful
when your people are unhappy. So they set out to become more
powerful by making themselves less powerful, a contradiction. A
paradox.”

“
I think I see what you’re
saying.” Matt said while staring through the wall in front of
them.

“
Here’s another one. The
Soviet Union and China wanted to extend their sphere of influence
in East Asia. So they had their ally North Korea invade South
Korea. But because of an attack on its ally, the United States
fought the Korean War and pushed the North Koreans back – initially
all the way to the Chinese border, but eventually back to the
38
^th
parallel. Now to maintain support for its ally, the United
States has a large permanent military presence in South Korea and
especially on the border, a presence we didn’t have before. Because
of our heavy presence in the region, the Soviet and Chinese sphere
of influence became weaker. So to increase their sphere of
influence, they decreased their sphere of influence, a paradox-like
situation.”

“
That’s interesting. I
never thought paradoxes applied to the real world.” Matt
mused.

“
You can find a paradox
everywhere. But especially in totalitarian governments. I am sure
we will find more at the end of this mission. So I decided to
codename it Devil’s Fork. We’ll see what Tom finds at that secret
base.”

Sara was originally not fond of paradoxes.
It made her mind think in circles, which after a few times around
was unpleasant. Growing up in the Midwest, she had lived with a
view of the world as generally straightforward. But she was always
curious. Her search to better understand the world isolated her as
a child. She had a different set of interests than others around
her. So she spent her free time reading and thinking. That all
changed when she went to college. She found others curious like
her. She made friends and started dating. But she also learned that
the world was more complex than she originally understood. In fact
it was far more complex. She majored in history and saw that the
story of human civilization was rooted in deception, fear, ulterior
motives, and especially unintended consequences. In fact the study
of history at times seemed to her to be the study of unintended
consequences leading to further unintended consequences. She felt
that maybe we should stop trying to predict the future. Mankind was
walking through a large dark house, occasionally feeling something
and yelling out that it understood how the house was laid out.

She took interest in
totalitarian regimes in college. She was fascinated that they were
riddled with contradictions, some of which she later classified as
paradoxes. Starting with the obvious fact that nobody who was about
to be born, with his or her mind a
tabula
rasa
, who was given the choice of which
country to be born in, would ever choose a totalitarian state. Yet
over the last half-century, almost half of the world, if not more,
lived in a totalitarian or a control state. That was a paradox – it
just did not seem to be possible. The other obvious one to her was
that totalitarian regimes always presented themselves as coming to
power for the
people
– with their “people’s army” and “people’s courts.” Yet the
actual people in the country seemed to suffer tremendously. These
regimes alleged that “people” had come to power to improve their
lives. But these “people’s” regimes destroyed lives. Sara ended up
writing a senior thesis in college called
Totalitarianism’s use of contradictions for
power
. After college she came to the CIA to
be able to continue to explore the mechanics of the world first
hand. She remembered when she just started, she was explaining her
thesis to Tom and he mentioned that he believed Power was the
original drug humans discovered. He said its ability to soothe and
give a sense of security to its holder mixed with its addictive
nature was harvested long before any such plant was discovered. She
had never thought about it that way.

By now Matt had pulled up the Defense
Message System and was getting ready to send a message to the
Admiral in charge of Pacific Command.

“
What should I send them?”
He asked.

“
I don’t think we should
send too much information. Say we are planning to insert one of our
operatives into North Korea’s northeast coast for a 6-hour mission.
This mission will occur in two days. Say the Director has requested
the
USS Virginia
and its SDV to be made ready along with the
USS George Washington.
Mark this as top secret. I think that’s enough. Anderson will
tell PACOM and American Forces Korea the rest when he calls
them.”

Matt typed in the message. They read it over
a few times.

“
Alright. I’m sending it.”
Matt said as he clicked his mouse.

Right as he clicked, his computer seemed to
freeze with the message still on his screen. Sara and Matt looked
at each other then looked back at the screen. Suddenly a window
appeared with a Mandarin Chinese character. It went away quickly
and then the message was sent.

“
Huh?” Matt said,
inflecting his voice more than usual.

“
What was that?” Sara
half-yelled.

MONDAY

Wuhan, China

NATPAC picked up his phone the moment it
rang.

“
Yes
Lieutenant?”

A voice on the other end said something.

“
They are inserting an
operative? North Korea?
Northeast
Coast
?”

He listened more.

“
Look into it. Do whatever
you can to figure it out more precisely.” He slammed the phone down
and lit a cigarette.

NATPAC was a Major in China’s People’s
Liberation Army. He did not look the part in any way. Frail and
thin-boned, he looked like someone for whom performing a pushup
equated to torture. The dark hair on his head looked tired and was
dying, given his smoking and drinking habits. But NATPAC wielded a
different muscle than his body, and it was one of the most powerful
forces in China. He led the Chinese Army’s electronic espionage
group. They were the government’s hackers. The lieutenant he had
spoken to was one of China’s top computer scientists and hackers.
He could do a handful of pushups.

NATPAC was a username – he had put up every
protection possible to safeguard his real identity. He was in the
business of stealing the information and identities of others. He
had a particular taste for intelligence from American government
agencies and companies. But he was to be known only as NATPAC.

The call he received this evening threw him
into a frenzy. His hand shook as he smoked his cigarette. He stood
up, walked in a small circle, sat back down, and stood up
again.

Do they know?

His skin crawled as he
imagined that America might now get involved in his affair. Could
it be a coincidence that a spy is being dropped near –
the facility
?

He quietly despised America. Through all of
history, China had always been the world’s greatest superpower. The
things China invented alone demonstrated its greatness.

“
We invented the compass,
gunpowder, paper, and printing,” he often thought to himself. It
was a joke that the West was proud that Gutenberg invented the
printing press in the mid 1400s. China had actually invented
moveable type printing in the mid 1000s. Throw in a few more of
China’s key inventions: the fork, the noodle, paper currency,
crossbow and gas cylinder and it becomes obvious China invented
everything the West loved most, he thought. And somehow they became
the Superpowers. America, with its loud and uneducated populace was
somehow ruling the world and directing everyone in it. From birth,
he was taught to remember China’s old glory and to despise America.
Today, he could not even think about America without feeling
sick.

He looked out of his window. Wuhan looked
like a mix between clean traditional Chinese architecture, bleak
communist industrial landscape, and a commercial land of neon signs
luring people into shops. As he observed the cityscape, he hoped
that his fifteen-man team could figure out the rest of this puzzle.
He needed to know what the Americans knew and where they were going
to insert this so-called operative. Maybe this is a blessing, he
thought. We can catch an American spy and get everything out of
him. We will hack into his mind with our torture techniques – after
all that is what torture is, hacking. Maybe we’ll get the CIA’s
deepest secrets. He gave a sigh thinking about his team. They can
figure it out, he thought. The men in the other room were some of
the greatest intellects in this country. The computer was an
extension of their minds.

NATPAC pulled out a bottle
of Kaoliang from his cabinet. Kaoliang, a Chinese liquor made from
fermented sorghum, was his drink of choice. For most westerners,
even heavy drinkers, the first time they tried Kaoliang typically
was also their last. But NATPAC drank it often.. Its rough,
gag-inducing taste made him feel strong. He once heard Americans
who tasted Kaoliang call it
Cow
Dung
instead of
Kaoliang
. How obnoxious, he
thought.

He did not move away from the window. He
stood in the dark. He did not like turning on the lights because
they hurt his eyes.

One day, we’ll be the only superpower
again.

But he might not be there
to enjoy the future if America had figured out his secret, he
thought. His fragile heart started racing – or at least it
started
trying
to
race.

“
We need to do something.
We can’t let them find our secret,” he thought.

He put down his Kaoliang and picked up his
phone. He made the phone call he had to make.

CHAPTER 8

TUESDAY

Chongjin, North Korea

Officer 2135 made sure his face did not look
too eager as he approached the port. He needed to look uninterested
in his surroundings. Anyone curious about anything in this country,
he thought, was suspected of something. He was walking past several
industrial concrete apartment blocks. The streets were empty – cars
were a luxury almost nobody had. In fact cars signified authority.
2135 preferred to walk. Other forms of exercise were hard to come
by.

As the manager of the railway terminal in
town, he had some freedom during his day. He could leave in the
middle of the day and say he needed to check something in his
apartment or run some other errand. It had taken him some time to
rise to the position of manager at the terminal. Fifteen years ago
he never would have expected that he would be working as he was now
in North Korea.

After the man in the suit
said the NIS had a way to place someone right
into
North Korean society, including
with a family history and ideological background, 2135 could not
stop wondering how they did this. How is it possible to infiltrate
the most closed society in the world? He had thought about
potential methods before going off to training, but could not come
up with a technique to infiltrate North Korean society. He wanted
to ask as soon as he arrived at the compound, but held himself
back.

Finally during one of his many one-on-one
training sessions he asked the NIS instructor what was on his
mind.

“
Can you tell me how we
place illegals over there?”
He had
asked.

“
The process follows one
general theme, but it varies case by case. For you we’ve already
figured out what we are going to do.”
The
NIS instructor had begun.
“We usually try
to find a child who was real. This child had to have been living
with a family and family history in the country. However, this
child has to have died many years ago. We then give our illegals
the identity.”

“
So how will it work for
me?”

“
One of our officers found
a family of four – father, mother, daughter, son, who died twelve
years ago when their home caught fire. The son was ten years old.
We have all of his information such as birth record and school
information. We also have figured out everything about his extended
family. He had an aunt and uncle who lived in a different town who
we assume this family occasionally saw before dying. You will go
into North Korea with this boy’s identity. You will find his aunt
and uncle and tell them that you had actually survived the accident
and had been living as an orphan. We will give you some specific
details you can mention to prove your identity, so to speak. Once
they have accepted you, they can vouch for you as your family. The
catch is that they will not be lying when they do vouch for you.
They will likely help you find a job, and you can start working and
developing your network of assets. This is how your legend will
begin. Once you are inside, you will settle down and you will only
start developing your network a few years later.”