Devil's Fork (33 page)

“
So it would have moved on
and dropped heroin off at other countries around the world after it
left Australia?”
Sara asked.

“
Exactly. One wonders how
many North Korean drug ships have made global trips like this
already,”
Mr. Park said.

Tom jumped in, “Mr. Park, when your analysts
briefed me, they said that one of your deep cover officers had
spotted some strange European-Middle Easterners at the port near
here. Your officer also spotted men in radioactive suits. I’m
guessing that the explanation now is that those men he spotted were
international drug smugglers and those radioactive suits were
really the protective suits sitting next to the meth lab.”

“
That would make sense
now,”
Mr. Park replied.
“This is the facility where Room 39 makes all of their drugs.
They then ship it out of the port nearby in Chongjin. They probably
sometimes send it out on ships managed by officials from Room 39,
as in the case of Pong Su. Because they have so much of these
drugs, they probably also send some off with smuggling
groups.”

“
How many people work for
Room 39”
Sara asked.

“
In terms of the officials
managing it and running the various companies and operations, it’s
hundreds of people. But if you include all of the workers that you
would see in a drug factory like this, it would be in the
thousands,”
Mr. Park replied.

By now Tom had found a door on the outer
wall of the warehouse. It looked large and heavy unlike the office
doors he had seen earlier. Tom tried to press on the handle but it
was locked. He kicked it several times but it did not open. He
aimed at the lock with his M4 and shot it three times. Now he
grabbed the handle and was able to open the door. Tom quickly put
on his night vision goggles and turned off his flashlight. He
wanted to first make sure the room did not have anyone in it. He
entered it quickly with his rifle pointed. He soon saw that there
was nobody inside, but he saw something strange instead. He flipped
up his night vision goggles and turned on his helmet light. What he
illuminated would shock anyone who saw it.

“
Wow,”
someone in the Command Room said.

In front of Tom was a large table. On it was
more cash than Tom had ever seen in his life. US dollars were piled
at least three feet high and covered the entire table. Tom walked
up closer. He saw that most of the bills were hundred dollar bills.
He looked around the rest of the room. There were more bills piled
up along the sides of the room.

“
Tom, take a few of those.
We can give it to the Secret Service for analysis,”
Anderson said. Tom took a stack of bills from the
table and put it in his utility bag. Tom remembered that the US
Secret Service was responsible for tracking financial crimes, in
addition to protecting the President. Tom wondered if the bills he
was packing were counterfeit or real. As Tom was packing the bills,
he spotted a desk on the other side of the room. He walked to it
and grabbed one of the papers on it. He could not read it, but the
tables and numbers on it indicated what it was.

“
This looks like a bank
statement,” Tom said.

After a pause while Tom
held the page closer to his helmet camera, Mr. Park said,
“I can’t read it. It’s written in
Chinese.”

“
Tom, pack those papers
too,”
Anderson said. Tom put all the papers
in his bag. He walked out of the room back into the main warehouse.
He continued walking farther back into the facility.

“
Mr. Park, the one
lingering question is why did Officer 1414 give this location in
his message? He also said we were mistaken in the way we thought
about North Korea’s nuclear weapons. He clearly thought there was
some connection between nuclear weapons and this facility. What
could he have meant?”
Anderson finally
asked what had been on Tom’s mind for some time.

After a pause, Mr. Park
said,
“This is what I have been thinking
about since we read that first ‘heroin’ sign. I am not sure what
Officer 1414 was thinking. I really don’t know why he sent us
here.”

“
Tom, are there any other
side doors like the one to that money room?”
Sara asked. Tom smiled as he heard her mind firing away. Tom
spotted another door further back.

“
Roger. Going to it.” He
walked past several of the long assembly line tables until he
reached another door on the outer wall. He tried the handle for
this door. It actually turned. Tom readied his M4 with his right
hand and pushed open the door. He moved in cautiously but saw
nobody inside the room. He was in a larger room. It was almost
thirty feet on each side, he estimated. This room was packed with
cardboard boxes in various shapes and sizes. As he shined his light
on them, he could read labels on the boxes. He was looking at boxes
of TVs, computers, cell phones, video game consoles, vodka,
whiskey, wine, cognac, DVDs, candy, potato chips, and various other
items. The room was packed full.

“
This is probably stuff
that Room 39 imports with the cash it makes from drug sales,” Tom
said.

“
Roger,”
Anderson replied.

As Tom was looking around, he noticed
something else in the room. At the far side of the room was a large
circular hemisphere that stuck out of the wall. Tom approached it.
As he got closer he could make out some of the details. It was made
out of a shiny dark metal and had what looked like a steering wheel
on it. It looked like a large submarine hatch on a wall. He stopped
a few feet from it. It was a door.

“
I wonder what they keep in
here,” he said into his radio.

“
It must be more valuable
than the drugs in the rest of the warehouse or the money in that
other room,”
Anderson replied.
“Can you try to open it?”

Tom reached for the steering wheel. He
started turning it. It required effort, but he was able to rotate
it. As he rotated it, he could feel the door unseal.

“
I think I unlocked it,”
Tom said.

He grabbed a handle on the door and began
pulling. The massive disk swung out of the wall. Tom could feel the
warm air from the other side of the door.

“
Tom, before you go in,
give us a moment to get the Director on the phone.”

Tom waited outside the door. He could not
make out much beyond the threshold. What he was about to see was
probably vital information for the agency, he thought. Anderson
told him before the mission that the Director might update the
President as the mission was progressing.

“
We are ready. Go
ahead.”

“
Roger.” Tom stepped past
the threshold. He came to a landing. He was at the top of another
staircase, except he could now see a large room open before him. To
his right an industrial set of metal stairs descended about 20 feet
from the landing to the floor below. The room looked like another
warehouse within the larger warehouse. To his left was an open-air
elevator made out of large metal beams. Tom guessed it was for
heavy loads.

The space below was completely empty except
for several objects on the floor. Tom could not see what they
were.

“
Yankee Main, do you see
the objects below?”

Tom waited several seconds but no response
came. That was odd, he thought.

“
Yankee Main, come in,
over.”

He waited again. No response came. Tom
turned around and looked at the door. He did not realize at first,
but now he saw that the walls were made of thick concrete and had
layers of either steel or iron. Tom wondered if his signal to the
booster became too weak. He stepped back outside the door.

“
Yankee Main, come in,
over.”

“
Yankee Actual. We lost
you for a few seconds. Over.”

“
I think this room behind
the vault door is a bunker. My signal is not getting through.
Over.”

“
What’s in the
bunker?”

“
It’s another warehouse.
The door opens to a landing at the top of a staircase. I can see
several objects on the floor of the warehouse, but otherwise it’s
completely empty.”

Now Sara’s voice came
through.
“Tom, can you go in there and see
what those objects are. Take a few pictures with your helmet
camera. Once you get back out to where you are now, they will be
sent to use automatically and we will be able to see what’s
inside.”

Tom knew this was why he liked having Sara
on his missions. “Roger that.”

Tom ran back through the doorway. Once on
the landing he immediately went to the stairs. He climbed down the
metal stairs as fast as he could, even though the steps were
shaking. Soon he was on the floor of the room. He ran towards the
objects he had spotted. As he came closer he could see the two
objects better. They were the size of refrigerators and each had a
sheet covering it. They looked almost like cars in a garage with a
cover on. He slowed down once he got within several feet. He knew
what he had to do. He grabbed a piece of each sheet in his hands
and pulled them off.

Tom stared for a moment, trying to
comprehend what sat in front of him. There were two platforms. Each
held what looked like a giant ten-foot football that had fins
sticking out of the back. Tom realized he was looking at two bombs.
Tom walked up to one. He knew that there was a nuclear weapons
expert sitting in the Command Room. He had probably been waiting
patiently to see something he could provide insight on. Tom reached
for his helmet camera and started pressing the button on the side
to take pictures. He took picture after picture of each bomb and
then came closer and took several more. He looked around the room.
There was nothing else. These were the only two objects in the
entire space. There was not even a desk or a chair anywhere. It was
barren.

Tom quickly turned around and ran back to
the stairs. As he climbed the squeaky steps, he imagined what he
had seen. He wondered if these were nuclear weapons or just
conventional bombs. If these were nuclear bombs, what were they
doing sitting by themselves? There was no equipment around and
certainly no research facility in this building.

Soon Tom was at the top of the steps again.
He ran back out of the vaulted doorway. He could hear the Command
Room come back on the radio.

“
OK, Tom, we are getting
your pictures now,”
said Anderson
calmly.

Tom waited for a few moments, and as he
heard silence, he just let out what he saw.

“
There are two bombs down
there. I took pictures of them. But there is nothing else. Just two
bombs sitting by themselves.” Tom heard several gasps in the room.
He guessed that nuclear weapons analyst probably felt a mixture of
excitement and terror upon seeing the helmet camera images and
hearing what Tom said. Tom heard his voice immediately.

“
These look like older
munitions. The metal casing looks like the material bombs were made
from in the ‘60s. I do not see anything that would indicate a
guidance system or any computer technology on board. This looks
like a dumb bomb.”

“
But is it a nuclear
bomb?”
Anderson asked.

“
Yes. Tom, you just saw
two nuclear bombs.”

There was a pause.

“
But where’s the research
facility? Tom do you see any research equipment?”
Anderson asked.

“
No. This room is
completely empty, except for those bombs. I did not see any nuclear
research space in the warehouse either. These are the only side
rooms here besides the offices in front.”

“
I wonder how they
produced these. Does anyone have any ideas? Does this mean Officer
1414 should have sent the message ‘red jewels’?”

The nuclear analyst’s voice
came back,
“John, I don’t think they made
these. These are old Soviet or Chinese designs from the early years
of the Cold War. At the end of the Cold War we were worried that a
few of their bombs would slip through the cracks and end up in the
wrong hands. That was always the ultimate fear. Now it seems that
it came true.”

Sara had put several more
pieces of the puzzle together.
“So these
weapons are in this facility, which also stores the drugs that Room
39 makes to sell internationally. These are old bombs made by
another country. Does this mean that the North Korean regime is
just buying bombs on the black market from the cash made from drug
sales?”

“
Not ‘just’ buying on the
black market,”
the nuclear analyst
replied.
“You don’t ‘just’ buy nuclear
weapons on the black market. Every country around the world takes a
lot of care to make sure its nuclear weapons are safe and secure.
The North Koreans must have moved in when the Soviet Union
collapsed and bought these. Or maybe they paid off a Chinese
general to get them. I don’t know how they bought it but it was not
easy.”

Anderson jumped in,
“But, Sara, you’re right that this means Room 39
must be funding the purchase of nuclear weapons. They must not be
doing research. I don’t know which is more startling: that they
can’t produce nuclear bombs themselves, or that they somehow bought
these from others. They are a threat because they have nuclear
weapons. But they may be less of a threat because they cannot
produce them.”