Decker took off his backpack and sat down beside him.
“We’ll go topside once we’re out in the river and away from the dock,” Seiden added. “No point tempting fate. Or the KPA watchers. You’ll get a good look at our neighbors in the Hermit Kingdom soon enough. Let’s just chat for a bit, shall we? So, tell me. How’s Becca?”
Decker shrugged. “She’s still in a medically-induced coma. The doctors say she’s recovering but… you know. It’s going to take months.”
Seiden slipped an arm around Decker, squeezed him tight. “When I heard,” he said, leaning closer, “I just couldn’t believe it. After all this time. El Aqrab.” He said the name in his ear like an incantation.
Putt, putt, putt—the boat engine stuttered along.
“Turns out you were right,” Decker said. “Turns out you couldn’t believe it. It was Ali Hammel.”
Seiden sighed. “I still dream about him, you know. To this day. I still wake up sometimes as if I’m in that apartment in Tel Aviv once again. That man and those children. Wrapped up. Burned that way.” He paused, caught himself. “And how about you, my friend? Still seeing Emily? No more pies?”
“No,” Decker said. “No more pies.” He shifted to his feet. “You know what it’s like, Ben. You have children. It’s one thing when you risk your own life for the job. You’re prepared for that. But when they come after your family. Your children. How are they, anyway? Your daughters, I mean. And Dara?”
“Fine,” Seiden answered. “They’re all fine, although they’re not children anymore. Ruth is twenty now, at university in Jerusalem. Rachael’s eighteen. It seems like only yesterday that they were Becca’s age. If you want my advice, take advantage of this tragedy, John, and spend as much time with your daughter as possible. Soon enough, she won’t want to be seen with you. In two or three years. Trust me. I know. You need to appreciate every minute with them when they’re young.” Seiden stood up beside Decker. He was so tall that he had to duck down to avoid hitting his head. “Come on,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Let’s get some air. It stinks of fish in here.”
The boat had swung out into the belly of the river. A cold wind tore at his face as Decker stepped from the cabin. A hundred yards or so away, a cruiser emerged from a blanket of mist. A North Korean naval ship. Decker felt a chill for a moment. He zipped up his jacket. A group of men in their fifties, wearing bulky blue uniforms and impossibly large hats, were smoking, leaning on the cruiser’s rails, chatting. Seiden waved at them and they waved back.
“Take a picture,” he said. “You’re a tourist, remember?”
Decker snapped off a few shots.
They passed by another fishing boat. The cabin door was open and Decker could see a skinny shirtless man squatting over a washbowl within, scrubbing his face. Even from this distance, you could count his ribs, he was so thin.
The boat cruised past an abandoned-looking factory, a park, and then a school, in front of which a group of children were playing an intense game of soccer. They were approaching Sinuiju’s main port, it appeared, if you could call it that, where a number of North Korean-flagged ships lay empty, run-down. One small boat had just tied up at the jetty and a group of laborers was busy unloading the cargo. Many buildings sported propaganda posters. Decker could make out one in particular, bright orange and red, which declared the new supreme leader, Kim Johng-un, the Sun of the 21st Century.
Their fishing boat was running so close to the bank now that Decker could clearly see the weathered features of the people moving about on the shore. Children laughed and played and splashed in the shallows. Men fished with cane poles. People cruised through the park on beat-up old bicycles. All under the watchful eyes of armed guards in military uniforms, perched high on the riverbanks, patrolling the border. They all look so skinny, thought Decker. With hardly any flesh on their bones. He took pictures and waved at them but not a single person acknowledged their presence, or the presence of any of the other tourist boats skimming along, their decks bristling with sightseers, pointing and staring.
“So, are you ready?” said Seiden. He too was staring out at the shore.
“Ready?”
“To tell me why you’re here. Why you called me.”
Decker took a deep breath. “What I’m about to tell you, I haven’t told anyone else. I want your word, Ben, that you won’t pass this on. Not yet, anyway.”
“Go on.”
“Your word.”
“You have it.”
“It all began when I stumbled across a breach at Westlake Defense Systems,” said Decker. Slowly but surely, as the boat drifted along the broad muddy river, Decker told Seiden about the raid on H2O2’s loft in Philadelphia, the bombing in Georgetown, the assault on the safe house in Brooklyn.
“But if Ali Hammel and his cell were all killed in that raid,” Seiden said, “if El Aqrab died on La Palma, why are you here?”
“I’m mounting a mission. Tonight.”
“Tonight? What kind of mission?” asked Seiden suspiciously.
“A very small mission. Only me. Although I could use some logistical support. What do you know about the Korean People’s Army cyber forces?”
Seiden continued to stare at the river. “They operate out of a host of hotels throughout the entire region,” he said. “Though mostly here in Dandong. Some in Sunyang down the coast. Why do you ask?” He looked back at Decker.
“What else?”
Seiden shrugged. “The KPA Joint Chiefs Cyber Warfare Unit 121 has over six hundred hackers. They’re by far the largest and best-trained cyber force, specializing in disabling South Korea’s military command and control and communications networks. The Enemy Secret Department Cyber Psychological Warfare Unit 204 has a hundred. The Central Party’s Investigations Department Unit 35, though smaller, is also a highly capable team.” Seiden turned from the rail. He smiled at Decker and said, “And Unit 110 operates out of four floors of the Shanghai Hotel right here in downtown Dandong. We’ve spotted them installing new fiber optic cables and computer systems there recently. They’re the guys responsible for the attacks back in July of ’09, after the North Koreans tested that nuclear device near Kimchaek. Similar to the PLA’s Unit 61398 in Shanghai. Over a period of less than five days, they initiated DDoS attacks by zombie PCs in a botnet against a host of South Korean and American targets, as many as a million requests per second, eventually bringing down Treasury, Secret Service, FTC and DOT servers. In total, North Korea has almost one thousand cyber agents acting in cells throughout China. They generally choose candidates at the elementary-school level and groom them specifically to become hackers, train them in programming and hardware in middle school and high school, and then send them on to the Command Automation University in Pyongyang. There are about seven hundred students there now. Some even infiltrate Japan to learn the latest computer skills there. The worst part about it is that while they train them to become experts at disrupting South Korean and American systems, we have no way to fight back. They barely have an Internet infrastructure in North Korea. Unlike us, they have nothing to take down.”
Decker looked at the Korean side of the river. He could see what appeared to be a Ferris wheel through the trees. The baskets were wooden and narrow with steep roofs, painted red, blue and green. Even from this distance they appeared shabby, the paint peeling in places. A mist blew in off the river and the Ferris wheel faded away.
Seiden put a hand on Decker’s shoulder. “I know that most of my peers consider me well past my prime, but even I know that you would never be asking for help — my help, John, using Mossad resources — unless yours were off limits,” he said. “Which means that either you’ve gone rogue or you don’t trust your own people. Which is it? If I’m going to be sticking my neck out for you, I think it only fair I should know.”