Mission Critical

Hanley leaned forward in his chair and put his thick arms on the table. “I know you don’t like your assignment, Suzanne. I am aware you’d much rather be on the seventh floor making executive decisions, or on Capitol Hill influencing legislation, or at some embassy as chief of station. Not here with me, handling hard assets on the sharp end of the spear. I know you don’t believe the risks in these initiatives are worth the potential reward. But you’re here for a reason. My confidence in you to put a lid on all this remains, even though you have reservations about the sub rosa project I’ve put you in charge of. I’m not reassigning you, so get that out of your head. You’re stuck with me for now, because you’re the right person to run Poison Apple.” He added, “You might just want to consider making the best of it.”

She looked down at the table. “Yes, sir.”

“Now,” Hanley said. “We have to send a description of Zoya out to local law enforcement. But do not release a photo.”

“Why no photo?”

“I’m not ready to burn Anthem just yet. We don’t know what happened.”

Brewer didn’t like it. If she saw Anthem on the street on her way home to her house this morning, her first inclination would be to run her over and end this debacle. But she said, “I’ll give the description to FBI. They’ll get it to local authorities. We’ll find her.”

Hanley nodded. “That’s not all we need to do. We need to find the mole.”

“That’s not Operations’s role.”

“True. Not officially. But Operations is paying the price for a leak in the building. We had two ops burned hard tonight. Add that to the list of compromises over the past few months. First thing tomorrow we’re going to come up with a new strategy to figure out who is wrecking these Agency operations.”

“But . . . how?”

“We do it off book. There are a finite number of people who’ve had access to all the intelligence that has been leaked. We ID all of them, and then go to work on each one.”

“Waterboarding?” Brewer joked.

But Matt Hanley did not smile. “If it comes to that,” he said, and Suzanne Brewer silently cursed the day Hanley had manipulated her into working for him.

CHAPTER 7

FOUR YEARS EARLIER

The sail of the submarine broke the black surface of the Sea of Japan twenty-five minutes behind schedule. It was after four a.m. now, which meant the infiltration would have to be expedited if it was to be completed under cover of darkness.

Japanese shore defense radar operators saw no trace of the small sail on their screens. North Korea’s Yono-class miniature subs were only twenty meters long, and they were exceedingly stealthy, which was exactly the reason this vessel had been chosen, even though it was designed for coastal operations and not the water it had just crossed.

The Yono was armed with torpedoes and capable of delivering up to six special forces troops or other personnel on intelligence missions, but there were drawbacks to the vessel. Submerged, the sub only made an average of 10 kilometers an hour, which meant the 445 kilometers of open ocean between the North Korean port of Wonsan and this stretch of Japanese coastline had taken two full days of arduous travel.

This submarine and its crew of four had been given the mission of delivering three passengers to the Japanese mainland, and as it now bobbed in the water five kilometers from shore, four dark silhouettes climbed out of the sail hatch and onto the deck. One man quickly inflated a small black boat with a compressor, an outboard motor appeared from the sail and was placed at the stern of the boat, and in seconds the four were churning through the night towards twinkling lights in the distance.

They carried no weapons; in fact, they brought with them nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

As they approached the sandy beach they saw a flash of light, and the sailor piloting the boat adjusted his course to point the bow at the signal.

This was Ishikawa Prefecture, in the center of the mainland on Japan’s west coast, and one of the closest points to North Korean waters. There were cities and towns all over this part of the mainland, but this small stretch was particularly rural, known for white sandy beaches and forests of black pine trees dotted with campgrounds popular with weekenders from as far away as Osaka and Tokyo.

Forty minutes after setting out from the submarine, three of the four climbed out of the raft and into the low water, then began walking through the gentle surf.

They saw movement in front of them: three other dark silhouettes stepping off the sand and into the water. The trio of new arrivals from the submarine continued walking, and soon all six converged in ankle-high seafoam. They bowed to one another without speaking or breaking stride, and then the three from the shore pushed on towards the dinghy and the three from the submarine headed ashore.

The dinghy returned to the submarine while the new arrivals walked to a road ahead, barely visible as thick clouds drifted in front of the fingernail moon above.

Two of the three were men, sent on this mission as a small but well-trained protection detail for the woman between them. Kim Dong-Woo and Nam Jun-Ho were security officers of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the intelligence directorate of North Korea, and in addition to speaking English fluently, they also had nearly three decades of military and intelligence experience between them.

The woman was Won Jang-Mi, and she was the oldest in the group at thirty-six. This mission was all about her, and that meant Kim and Nam’s job was to keep her alive, even take a bullet for her if it came to it, because Won Jang-Mi was a leading North Korean scientist, and she was a well-trained intelligence asset, which meant she was precious to the government of the DPRK.

Won had served as a deputy department head at the Pyongyang Biological Technology Research Institute, a dual-use organization that claimed to develop pesticides and herbicides for the North Korean agricultural community but in truth served as the center of the Hermit Kingdom’s robust chemical and biological weapons program.

Her specialty was pneumonic plague and hemorrhagic fever, and tonight was the beginning of the mission North Korean intelligence had been grooming her for for seven years when they started teaching her Western languages and South Korean customs, while at the same time fortifying her programming in the divine supremacy of the Dear Leader of North Korea and the assuredness that the West was scheming to destroy her nation.

Won was a true believer; she planned on following all orders from North Korean intelligence to the letter, and she was certain her actions would help save her tiny nation from the threats it faced from the rest of the world.

Minutes after stepping onto dry land the three moved through the Oshima Beach Resort, a simple campground and cabin complex in the trees, within sight of the coast. There were a few tents set up, presumably with campers sleeping inside, but the three of them walked directly to cabin number four.