traitors. I’ve seen video of their interrogation methods. It’s not pretty. But, of course I’m sure you know that.”
“I don’t believe you,” Pak said. “
“Bad gamble,” said Fisher.
And it was. This was no bluff. The CIA’s biggest contribution to Fisher’s mission was one of its most prized agents, an executive secretary in the comptroller’s office at the State Security Department. While none of the information she’d passed to Langley had been of strategic value, it had given the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate an invaluable glimpse into the administrative side of North Korea’s security services, allowing it to build from the inside out profiles of more than a dozen RDEI agents: where they went, how they traveled, and through which banks and front companies money was moved. It had been a jigsaw puzzle of daunting complexity, but it had paid off. Fisher’s threat to Pak was a case in point.
What Fisher did not tell Pak was that while he was unconscious another program on another SD card had plucked from the laptop’s hard drive every piece of data within a certain range of file extensions, the passwords and log-ins to a half dozen SSD intranet portals, including Pak’s office e-mail account. Once the program had completed its search, Fisher had loaded the contents onto his iPhone for encrypted burst transmission back to Third Echelon, where Grimsdottir and Redding, working at tandem workstations, were sorting through the data.
“That’s not possible,” Pak said. “You’ll miss something.”
Fisher smiled. “I doubt it. I happen to work with a woman who’s frighteningly good at what she does, and right now you’re her only project. Did I mention she was kind enough to open a private account at
Pak’s eyes shifted, and Fisher saw for the first time a hint of fear.
“Make no mistake,” Fisher continued, “when we’re done with you, you’ll be the greatest traitor your country has ever seen. Or, option two: You agree to help us.” Fisher spread his hands and gave Pak a friendly grin. “It’s your call.”
“How do I know I can trust—”
“You don’t. There’re only two things you can count on right now: one, that we can and will burn you; and two, whatever else happens, the first hint I get that you’re double-dealing us, I’ll put a bullet in your head. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
Pak closed his eyes, took a deep breath, let it out. “I’ll take it.”
39
“Slow down,” Fisher ordered Pak. “You don’t want to get a speeding ticket.”
Pak eased up on the gas pedal, and the car — a 1990 Mercedes 300 Diesel that Fisher assumed was another RDEI perk — slowed to below 50 kph. The tires beat out a steady rhythm on the highway’s expansion joints, lulling Fisher toward drowsiness. He shook it off and focused.
Knowing he was losing ground to exhaustion, Fisher had taken out some insurance against the inevitability of Pak trying to make a move: Tightened around the base of each of Pak’s ring fingers was a wire-thin flexicuff. The other ends were secured around the steering wheel’s lower half. He had enough length to operate the Mercedes but nothing else.
They’d been traveling for forty minutes. In the side mirror Fisher could see the lights of Pyongyang in the distance, but out here, just six miles outside the city, it was pitch-dark, save what little moonlight filtered through the low cloud cover. It was as though they’d passed through a curtain on the capital’s eastern outskirts, from lighted skyscrapers and streetlamps to blackness.
With one eye trained on the iPhone’s screen, which currently displayed a hybrid satellite/road map of North Korea, and one eye tuned toward Pak, Fisher ordered him to turn left off the two-lane highway onto a narrow gravel road that took them into a stretch of rolling hills covered by evergreen trees. Fisher watched the latitude and longitude coordinates at the edge of the iPhone’s screen scroll until finally they stopped and started flashing.
“Stop here,” Fisher ordered.
Pak pulled to the side of the road and shut off the engine. Fisher took the car keys.
“I’m taking a little walk,” he told Pak. “If you can manage to gnaw your fingers off before I get back, you’re free to go.”
“You’re a funny man,” Pak grumbled.
“So I’ve been told.”
Fisher climbed out, clicked on his penlight, then started up the hillside until he reached the tree line, where he stopped and reoriented himself to the iPhone’s screen, and kept going, following a game trail higher into the trees. After sixty seconds he stopped, checked his position, then turned left, took four paces, and knelt down. He broomed the pine needles away with his hands. Lying there half buried in the dirt was a wood handled gardener’s trowel. Fisher started digging. It took only a minute to unearth a black Gore-Tex rucksack. He smiled to himself.
Fisher hadn’t asked, and Lambert hadn’t offered an explanation, but just before leaving Washington he’d given Fisher a set of latitude and longitude coordinates. “If you have to go to ground.”
He didn’t have to look inside the bag to know it contained his full mission equipment loadout: tac suit, goggles, SC-20 rifle and pistol, OPSAT, his Fairbairn-Sykes dagger — all of it would be there.
Fisher didn’t need an explanation of how the bag found its way here; he had a solid hunch: Against every operational tradecraft rule in the book, Tom Richards had instructed their spy in the SSD’s comptroller’s office to take a drive in the country.
He picked up the bag and started back down the path.
Twenty minutes later, back on the main highway, Fisher’s Bluetooth headset vibrated; he tapped the connect button.
“Sam, it’s Grim. Will and I are almost done sorting through the dump from Pak’s laptop. About two months before Carmen Hayes went missing, Pak was assigned a new password and log-in to an SSD intranet portal. The portal address has changed, but the e-mail account associated with it hasn’t. There’s a backlog of e-mail that shows spikes at times that correspond with some interesting events — namely the mortar bombardment in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz president’s resignation, Omurbai’s reappearance, Calvin Stewart’s transfer to the Site 17 platform… that sort of stuff. All related to Manas.”
“Anything worthwhile?”
“The e-mails are encoded — some kind of digital one-time pad setup, which means only Pak and whoever he was exchanging e-mails with had the decryption algorithm, and it probably changed frequently. I’ve got enough messages with enough repeated phrases and references to start piecing it together from the back end, but it’s going to take time.
“But here’s what you need to know. First of all: Is Pak within earshot?”
“Yes.”
“Then just listen; don’t let on. All of the e-mails Pak sent through this portal go to a single routing station about ten miles east of Pyongyang. I’ve been tracking you, and I think he’s taking you on a wild-goose hunt. You’re about five miles southeast of the routing station and heading away from it.”
“I see.”
“And he’s taking you straight into a military restriction zone.”
“Huh.”
“I’m looking at the sat pics right now. If you keep going down the road you’re on, you’ll run smack into a checkpoint, and within a half mile of you there’s a dozen antiaircraft sites, bunkers, infantry barracks, and radar sites. According to Langley, that whole area is a retreat for North Korean Workers’ Party bigwigs. It’s one of the most heavily guarded sites in the whole country.”
“Good to know.”
“What’re you going to do?”
