Devil's Fork (9 page)

Tom stared at the screen.

Why do they talk that way?

The martial arts demonstrations coming out
of North Korean or Chinese militaries always amused him. Kicking
and punching was useful in a small percent of hand-to-hand combat
situations. The vast majority of fights end up with both fighters
on the ground immediately. On the ground someone who knew Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu had a complete advantage. A Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
practitioner knew multiple chokes and submission locks to which a
kicker or puncher had no idea how to respond. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
was a form of grappling or wrestling developed in Brazil originally
from a form of Judo brought in by a Japanese immigrant. In the SEAL
teams, Tom had learned Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to a level that gave him
a distinct advantage in any potential hand-to-hand combat
situation. He had practiced the Triangle choke so many times he
thought he could perform it blindfolded. The Triangle was the
classic move – if one was on his back and the opponent was on top,
trying to punch or attack in some way, one could wrap a thigh
around the neck and lock that leg’s foot with the other leg’s knee.
At the same time one pulls in on attacker’s arm and locks it with
the attackers head in the legs. The attacker ends up looking like
he is raising his hand in school, with someone’s legs wrapped
around his raised arm and neck. The triangle, named from the shape
one’s legs made, constricts the carotid artery carrying blood to
the brain. It makes the attacker pass out in less than a
minute.

As Tom was stepping into the warm shower, he
thought about what that video out of North Korea really showed. It
showed a pure fanaticism. What drove people to that point? History
had examples of fanaticism at this level: during World War II, both
the SS and the Japanese soldiers demonstrated a similar fanatical
indoctrination. Each ended up fighting to the death at a heavy cost
to the allies. Could these North Koreans really believe in their
regime in the same way? Tom knew he could not question their
sincerity. He had to assume that once he entered that land of
darkness, he would be in the midst of true believers.

Tom wondered if that copy
of
Heart of Darkness
had arrived yet. He had memorized passages from it while in
college. One piece stuck out in his mind at this moment:

“
They howled, and leaped,
and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the
thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote
kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.”

There is only one thing worse than nobody
believing in a cause, and that is everyone believing in it.

CHAPTER 10

TUESDAY

Langley, Virginia

Sara did not sleep well the night before. In
her office, the pervading smell of coffee seemed to attach itself
to everything in the room. She had turned into a state where her
mind could not get over the message that she sent the previous day
with Matt. She thought about it over and over, almost like a
computer that catches a virus and starts performing the same task
in a loop. She worried that Matt’s computer did have a virus and
that someone could have figured out what they were doing with Tom.
Matt had combed through his computer afterwards and said he could
not find any malware installed, but that did not satisfy her.
Something felt wrong.

In the world of traditional
espionage, Sara knew you could never be completely sure whether you
were the one carrying out the mission, or whether a mission was
being carried out on you. It was confusing, but examples sometimes
helped to make the concept clear. Double agents typically created
these situations. In one of the most famous cases, the allies in
World War II made the Germans believe that German agents had
conducted a successful operation to determine where the allies were
planning to land in Normandy. During Operation Fortitude, the
allies placed inflatable objects that looked like tanks, trucks,
and artillery guns onto English fields on the coast close to
Calais. German agents in London confirmed that the allies planned
to invade Calais. The Germans had believed that they conducted a
successful intelligence mission and prepared themselves for an
invasion in Calais. However, the
real
mission was performed on
them
, as the German
agents in London were double agents. They were really working for
the British, and their mission was to make the Germans believe that
they had discovered where the landings would be. This fear of
“being on the wrong side” of the mission pervaded many intelligence
agencies. The description of spy operations during the Cold War as
chess emanated from the endless quest to outmaneuver an
unsuspecting enemy. During the Cold War, analysts were constantly
asking themselves whether assets recruited were genuine, or whether
they were double agents who were feeding you information to make
you conduct an operation right into the hands of the opposing side.
This Cold War game created a paranoia that could be felt in CIA
headquarters. It was a place where one’s job was to be paranoid all
day.

Sara knew that double agents were not the
only source of this paranoia. Anytime the enemy found a way to get
information from you, they could turn your mission around so that
you were on that wrong side. And that paranoia was boiling inside
Sara today. She had heard about Chinese military hacking groups.
They were government-sponsored groups whose purpose was to hack the
western world and get anything—classified information, asset names,
technology blueprints, and commercial information. She had been to
sessions where she along with the other analysts had learned the
basics about them. But she was not responsible for rooting them
out. There were other analysts in the CIA who did that – people who
understood computer science, unlike her. Even within SAD, Matt
understood computer science at a level where he should have been
able to check whether they were being hacked, and he had said he
could not find anything on their systems. But why did a Mandarin
symbol appear when they sent that message to PACOM? Sara could not
stop thinking that if the North Koreans found out what was about to
happen, the mission would quickly turn around and be on Tom.

Sara got up and started walking to
Anderson’s office down the well-lit hall. Her mind fixated on this
issue so that she did not look around her or even hear any phones
ringing. She might as well have been walking through an empty,
silent room. When she arrived at Anderson’s corner office, she gave
it two knocks and walked in.

“
Sara” Anderson said,
pleased to see her “I just got off the phone with PACOM and they
are ready. They say the
Virginia
is in place. I told you I was on the phone earlier
with the Helicopter pilots over in Yongsan and they say they are
ready too. So it looks like we are set for tomorrow.”

Sara liked to hear the word “phone” because
phones, and particularly the secured phones the CIA used with the
military were much harder to hack and listen to than messages sent
by a computer.

“
That’s great.” Sara’s
voice sounded too monotonous. “I also spoke to Tom and he said he
tried out the ADS we gave him and he feels comfortable with
it.”

“
I knew he would. I might
make it standard issue here,” he said smiling.

Sara was growing more uncomfortable as she
felt the conversation was veering off on a track on which she did
not want to be.

“
John, I just wanted to
talk to you again about this hacking issue.”

“
Well remember, we are not
sure if we have a hacking issue. All the checks we ran said it was
nothing. Matt ran a scan and found nothing that led him to believe
that his system was compromised. You said you spoke to our team
that deals with Chinese hackers and they could not find anything in
that computer.”

“
Yes, but I still have that
eerie feeling. There is no reason a Chinese character should appear
when we send a secured message to the military.”

“
We have language
translation software that uses those characters. Maybe it was on
for some reason. You never know what programs are running on a
computer.”

“
These hackers are
sophisticated though. I feel like they could have slipped something
in our systems so that we would not be able to detect
it.”

“
What kind of thing would
that be?”

“
I don’t know…I don’t know
computer science or how to program or anything. But I feel that
they would be able to find some way to do that.”

“
If they are sophisticated,
they probably would not be careless enough to have their program
bring up a Chinese letter so that we could all see it.”

“
I don’t know. Maybe they
made a mistake. I really have no idea, but I just feel really
uncomfortable that we are about to send Tom into one of the most
hostile countries, alone, and that the North Koreans might have
been tipped off by the Chinese that he’s coming.”

“
I was actually going to
tell you that when I spoke to the Admiral over in Pacific Command
today, I asked him if he saw any change in naval activity around
the Korean peninsula.”

“
What did he
say?”

“
He has not seen any
change. Neither from the Chinese navy nor the North Korean navy. If
you can call it a navy.”

“
Really?”

“
Yes. He said Chinese ships
have not changed their course and are not even sailing in the
direction of the peninsula. The North Korean gunboats that operate
in the area have not been acting strangely. Don’t you think that if
the North Koreans found out, they would have sent more boats near
the coast where we will be operating?”

“
Unless they don’t want us
to know that they know,” Sara replied. This was the feeling of the
mission turning around on you.

“
Yes but I think if they
knew we were on the verge of inserting someone on their shore, they
would be doing something rather than playing games.”

“
Yeah, I guess,” she said
looking down. She felt slightly better, but still could not shake
that eerie feeling.

“
Anyway, let’s talk about
that base. Any more thoughts on what could be there? Or any new
thoughts on that phrase, ‘error in how we think about
jewels’?”

Sara was caught off guard, “I – I’m not
sure. I don’t understand it because with nuclear weapons, you
either are developing them, building them, or doing nothing. There
is no other option. All three of those options fall under one of
the codewords that Mr. Park gave 1414.”

“
What do you think about
the possibility that they are developing weapons more advanced than
nuclear bombs? Eric told me they could be developing pure fusion
bombs or anti-matter bombs? Eric said those are possible, but the
science is advanced, still ahead of our research.”

“
I just don’t understand
how we can be mocking this country’s navy in one sentence, and then
a few sentences later be speculating that they are developing
weapons more advanced than ours. How can that be? And plus,
wouldn’t that fall under the ‘red jewels’ code?”

Anderson sat back and looked deep into her
eyes as he thought about the contradiction. Sara continued,

“
It’s a paradox – how can a
country that is so backwards where they can’t even generate enough
electricity for themselves, where journalists go on tours and come
back with videos showing that people there have no idea what is
going on in the outside world – how can that country be anywhere
close to having nuclear weapons. Or in a situation where we are
talking about them having anti-matter weapons. What are anti-matter
weapons?”

“’
I’m not sure. I think
anti-matter creates a massive explosion when it touches regular
matter. But I see what you’re saying. OK, I guess we aren’t going
to get to the answer through analysis. We really just have to keep
waiting for Tom to get there.”

“
I’ll go check our systems
to make sure everything is ready for tomorrow. I’ll also take a
look at the latest satellite images.” Sara’s mind was back into the
mission. She had not thought about the Mandarin character for a
full minute or two.

“
Sara, you should also go
home early tonight. Tom is getting on the helicopter at 8PM Seoul
time tomorrow, which is 7AM tomorrow morning for us. We’ll need to
be here early. I want everyone well rested.”

“
OK got it. Thanks John. Oh
by the way – why are Mr. Park and his team still here and in that
conference room?” Sara pointed down the hall to a room where the
team from South Korea looked busy working on something. She assumed
they could not have been working on this mission, because they did
not come out and speak to anyone. Nobody except Anderson had
interacted with Mr. Park since the briefing. Sara usually did not
like being so forward, but at this point, the fact that Mr. Park
was staying around was becoming obvious.

“
Oh, they’re going to be
watching the mission with us in the command room tomorrow. They are
also working on something of their own in the meantime.” Anderson
knew he was being vague, but also looked at her as though he was
not prepared to elaborate any more.

CHAPTER 11

TUESDAY

NIS Headquarters, Seoul, South Korea