Devil's Fork (36 page)

Tom did not respond. He was
now busy setting an explosive on one of the supporting columns in
warehouse. But Sara sat frozen in her seat. She was staring into
space. She thought about the non-stop media coverage she had seen
recently about the tensions on the peninsula. She wondered if it
could really be this backwards. She kept thinking about one phrase
Kim said.
You think that’s just to scare
you? They do this to scare their own people.
Sara thought about how many people were terrified of a
potential war. Could that threat really have been for North Korea’s
internal goals? Were they really so weak that they needed to
construct tension to empower themselves, she wondered?

Suddenly, Sara felt a
tapping on her shoulder again. It was Mark. She leaned her head
back to hear what he had to say. He whispered, “That’s the
Totalitarian Uncertainty Principle again. They
say
that they want war, but we
observe
that they
actually don’t. The regime
says
they have a united country, but we
observe
that it is
actually divided.”

Sara watched the screen and saw Tom and Kim
walking towards the shelves of drugs. They walked past several
aisles and then turned into one of the center aisles. The bags here
contained white powder. They walked towards the middle and started
setting the charge. Tom’s voice came on the loudspeakers.

“
How is it that your
country gets all the materials to make these drugs,
Kim?”

Kim replied,
“The farms are owned and controlled by the
government. They tell the farmers what to plant. So they order many
of them to grow the poppy plant. The farmers grow it and the
government collects and sends the harvest here. It’s pretty simple
right?”

By now they were finished setting the last
explosive charge. Anderson said to Tom, “OK. Before you go, can you
run into those offices and get some documents. Priority is if you
find any storage devices like a flash drive or a disk. Grab all of
those.” Tom ran into the offices. Sara saw on the screen what
looked like a massive hand shoveling everything into a utility bag.
She watched Tom go from office to office emptying the desks.

Within a few minutes Tom
and Captain Kim were standing in front of the main staircase. The
main part is done, Sara thought to herself. Looking back, she could
not believe that Tom had made it past all of the patrols, got
through the team guarding the base, made it inside, and figured out
everything that they wanted to know. Now he just needs to get back,
she thought. She tried to think how to get them both back to
the
Virginia.
Then
Tom started talking to Kim again.

“
What happened to the guys
who were guarding the entrance?”
Tom asked
Kim.

“
I actually don’t know.
They were all gone when I got here with my men and the door was
open. We just went inside. I thought you would know where they all
went.”

Sara stared at Kim’s face on the screen. She
thought he seemed to be telling the truth. The fear they had, which
Tom was checking, was that Captain Kim had found those guards Tom
had tied up and let them loose. He probably just ran into the base
without finding the soldiers she thought. Tom had made the soldiers
think that they were being watched and so they were probably lying
quietly. The radios in North Korea did not seem to work so if a
commanding officer could not reach them he probably wrote it off.
The men probably had a scheduled time when they were supposed to be
relieved and were not expected to communicate with anyone.

“
Kim, I’m letting you know
that I am trusting you,”
Tom
continued.
“But I just want to warn you as
well. If we step outside the door upstairs and there is an ambush
waiting, I will shoot you immediately. When we are outside, if you
try to run away or yell or anything, I will shoot you immediately.
But I am going to trust that you will leave with me. Do you have
any questions, or is there anything else you want to tell
me?”

Kim replied
immediately.
“No, there is no ambush
outside. I will follow your rules. I’m ready to go.”
Kim stood still with his arms at his sides as he
spoke.

Sara believed Kim. She had attended CIA
training sessions where a psychologist would teach a practical
concept. In one of the training sessions, the psychologist spoke
about how to see if someone was lying. Sara remembered one big sign
to watch for was if the person touched his face, hair, or clothes
while talking. Another sign was excessive blinking. One other sign
was how the person answers the question. If someone is asked a
question and the correct answer is “yes” and the person wants to
lie, he or she might directly start explaining an answer in the
negative. But the liar will rarely say “no”. Saying “no” feels
painful and avoiding it reduces the anxiety of lying. Sara felt
comfortable that Kim was not lying because he said “no” and did not
move while talking. He seemed to be telling the truth.

Captain Kim walked up the stairs, followed
by Tom. At the top of the stairs they stopped just before the door.
They were looking outside. Everyone in the Command Room squinted at
the screen, trying to pick out anything strange past the door. Sara
could not see anything unusual. Tom’s voice came back on. Again he
was addressing Kim.

“
We are going to run into
those woods straight ahead. You run out the door first. I will be a
few seconds behind you. Go.”

Sara watched as Kim started running to the
woods. Ten seconds later Tom started running. The crowd in the
Command Room held its breath. But nothing happened. There was no
shooting and there were no signs of anybody else around. Within
seconds Tom made it to the woods where Kim was waiting. Great, Sara
thought, now they just have to make it to shore.

I need to think how to get them out.

CHAPTER 50

THURSDAY

Wuhan, China

NATPAC rolled over for the last time on his
couch. He knew he was not going to fall asleep. His mind just would
not shut off for the night. He was thinking through everything. How
long would it take SLOTHMAN to actually start pulling information
from the CIA’s computers? How long until the NIS analyst would be
extracted to North Korea? How long until those KPA units would
catch that American and figure out what he was doing? Did the
Americans find out about his project with the North Koreans? Did
anyone know he was involved? The last question was what worried him
most. He started to put together his decision trees and he realized
that the reason everything else was scary was that they potentially
led to him being discovered.

He sat up and grabbed a cigarette. His hand
still shook as he lit it. He knew what to do. He got up and started
changing. He decided he would do what he usually did when he could
not sleep. He would go into the office.

As he was dressing he started thinking again
through each of the pieces. He was able to reassure himself.
SLOTHMAN would soon get into their servers, he thought. That NIS
analyst was probably almost in North Korea. There was a massive
team stationed in front of the base that one man could never get
past. Besides, he thought, even if the CIA found that facility.
There was no clear link to him. Even if that facility were
destroyed, they could restart production somewhere else. It did not
matter.

He exhaled deeply as he felt some tension
release. He did not even realize he could hold that much air. By
now he was fully dressed. He looked at himself in the mirror. He
imagined the bright future ahead. He imagined his future roles in
the government. Maybe this project could be his stepping stone, he
thought. He could one day be one of the leaders.

If only they could see what I’ve already
accomplished.

He imagined himself sitting in the Central
Committee, steering the country to his vision of Act 3. He now felt
all the tension in his gut leave.

He grabbed his cigarettes from his couch. He
glanced at the bottle of Kaoliang he had sitting in the corner of
the room. He thought he could start celebrating his bright future
today. He opened the bottle and poured some in a glass. He walked
to his window. The city was still dark and asleep. In a few hours
it would start moving again, he thought. He took the shot and
squeezed it down his throat. NATPAC headed out of his apartment
door. He felt a spring in his step. As he headed down his hall, he
said to himself, “I bet everything has been fixed already.”

CHAPTER 51

WEDNESDAY

Langley, Virginia

“
I did it,” Mark said
suddenly from his seat in the back of the room. Sara and Anderson
turned back. Mark leaned back in his seat and had a smile on his
face. Next to him, J.D. was leaning to his side to be able to see
what was on Mark’s laptop.

“
What?” Sara
asked.

“
Do you remember what a
rootkit is?” Mark asked.

“
That’s something you
install so you can completely access someone’s computer, right?”
Sara responded.

“
Exactly,” Mark said. “I
just installed a rootkit on NATPAC’s computer. I’m downloading his
files now.”

“
How deep?” J.D.
asked.

“
Ring 0.” Mark shot
back.

“
Wait, is that the one
where you have complete access?” Sara asked. She strained to
remember the introductory lesson she received earlier in
malware.

“
Yes. It means I have
administrative right on his computer. I can look at
anything.
We
can
look at anything.”

“
How can you read it? Isn’t
it in Mandarin Chinese?”

“
I studied Mandarin when I
was younger. I can read it.”

“
Did you find something
interesting?” Anderson asked.

“
Well, first, do you want
to know who our friend NATPAC really is?” Mark asked with a
smile.

“
Is it someone we would
know?” Anderson asked.

“
The family name is not
uncommon. But it might ring a bell. NATPAC’s real name is Lo
Min.”

Sara and Anderson stared at each other for a
moment. Then it hit Sara.

“
Wait. One of the Chinese
generals has a similar name. I just saw him being covered on the
news. What’s his name again?” Sara searched online and soon had her
answer. “Yes. There’s a Chinese general named Lo Jie. Are they
related?”

“
They are brothers,” Mark
said. “I have all the files here showing it.”

Anderson jumped in, “But China has the one
child policy. Nobody can have a brother there. How can these guys
be brothers?”

Sara knew the answer to this. “In China I
think the elite can get around the one child policy. Also if the
parents divorce, I think they can find a way to have a second
child. So these two can be step brothers.”

“
That’s exactly what they
are,” Mark said. “They both have the same father but different
mothers.”

“
So the step brother of the
general is this hacker,” Anderson said slowly.

“
Wow. I just pulled up a
file he uses to track his finances. Do you want to know how much
our friend NATPAC, or Lo Min, has sitting in his bank
account?”

“
A million dollars?” Sara
asked.

“
Fifty million dollars,”
Mark said. “And here’s something else. He apparently has consulting
arrangements with a Chinese shipping company and several natural
resource companies.”

“
Like mining companies?”
Sara asked.

“
Yes, those Chinese
companies that strike deals around the world with developing
countries to build mines. They are the ones that create camps in
those countries and send their own Chinese workers, rather than
hire the locals. I think some of them are suspected of bribing
developing country government officials.”

This gave Sara an idea. She turned to
Anderson. “John, can you tell Tom to ask Captain Kim about this?
But have him ask it as an open ended question.”

Anderson thought for a moment, and then
turned on his microphone. “Yankee Actual. Can you ask Kim if the
North Koreans were getting any foreign help with their drug
production and smuggling operation?”

The screen ahead showed the same forest
environment that Tom had been running through before. Tom and Kim
were dodging stones, fallen logs, and thorny bushes, but were
moving at a continuous pace. Tom posed the question to Kim. They
slowed down and Kim responded after having thought through the
question. He was speaking quietly. Sara guessed this was to avoid
being heard. But it also seemed as though Kim still was not clued
into the fact that they were watching him. Maybe he thought the
helmet camera Tom was wearing was a flashlight.

“
That’s interesting that
you thought of that. My father told me that they get help from
someone in China.”

Tom asked,
“What do they do? What role do they
play?”

“
They helped us build the
facility and learn how to actually make some of those products.
They also have people that help us ship it out. I think they buy
the ships from South Korean shipyards and just give it to us to
use. The Chinese also have contacts all around the world, which
allows us to smuggle the drugs better. Then they help our leaders
get the cash into Chinese banks. They also help Room 39 operate
restaurants throughout China which are basically fronts for
laundering money.”