Sara got up and started walking to Anderson’s office down the well-lit hall. Her mind fixated on this issue so that she did not look around her or even hear any phones ringing. She might as well have been walking through an empty, silent room. When she arrived at Anderson’s corner office, she gave it two knocks and walked in.
“Sara” Anderson said, pleased to see her “I just got off the phone with PACOM and they are ready. They say the Virginia is in place. I told you I was on the phone earlier with the Helicopter pilots over in Yongsan and they say they are ready too. So it looks like we are set for tomorrow.”
Sara liked to hear the word “phone” because phones, and particularly the secured phones the CIA used with the military were much harder to hack and listen to than messages sent by a computer.
“That’s great.” Sara’s voice sounded too monotonous. “I also spoke to Tom and he said he tried out the ADS we gave him and he feels comfortable with it.”
“I knew he would. I might make it standard issue here,” he said smiling.
Sara was growing more uncomfortable as she felt the conversation was veering off on a track on which she did not want to be.
“John, I just wanted to talk to you again about this hacking issue.”
“Well remember, we are not sure if we have a hacking issue. All the checks we ran said it was nothing. Matt ran a scan and found nothing that led him to believe that his system was compromised. You said you spoke to our team that deals with Chinese hackers and they could not find anything in that computer.”
“Yes, but I still have that eerie feeling. There is no reason a Chinese character should appear when we send a secured message to the military.”
“We have language translation software that uses those characters. Maybe it was on for some reason. You never know what programs are running on a computer.”
“These hackers are sophisticated though. I feel like they could have slipped something in our systems so that we would not be able to detect it.”
“What kind of thing would that be?”
“I don’t know… I don’t know computer science or how to program or anything. But I feel that they would be able to find some way to do that.”
“If they are sophisticated, they probably would not be careless enough to have their program bring up a Chinese letter so that we could all see it.”
“I don’t know. Maybe they made a mistake. I really have no idea, but I just feel really uncomfortable that we are about to send Tom into one of the most hostile countries, alone, and that the North Koreans might have been tipped off by the Chinese that he’s coming.”
“I was actually going to tell you that when I spoke to the Admiral over in Pacific Command today, I asked him if he saw any change in naval activity around the Korean peninsula.”
“What did he say?”
“He has not seen any change. Neither from the Chinese navy nor the North Korean navy. If you can call it a navy.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He said Chinese ships have not changed their course and are not even sailing in the direction of the peninsula. The North Korean gunboats that operate in the area have not been acting strangely. Don’t you think that if the North Koreans found out, they would have sent more boats near the coast where we will be operating?”
“Unless they don’t want us to know that they know,” Sara replied. This was the feeling of the mission turning around on you.
“Yes but I think if they knew we were on the verge of inserting someone on their shore, they would be doing something rather than playing games.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said looking down. She felt slightly better, but still could not shake that eerie feeling.
“Anyway, let’s talk about that base. Any more thoughts on what could be there? Or any new thoughts on that phrase, ‘error in how we think about jewels’?”
Sara was caught off guard, “I–I’m not sure. I don’t understand it because with nuclear weapons, you either are developing them, building them, or doing nothing. There is no other option. All three of those options fall under one of the codewords that Mr. Park gave 1414.”
“What do you think about the possibility that they are developing weapons more advanced than nuclear bombs? Eric told me they could be developing pure fusion bombs or anti-matter bombs? Eric said those are possible, but the science is advanced, still ahead of our research.”
“I just don’t understand how we can be mocking this country’s navy in one sentence, and then a few sentences later be speculating that they are developing weapons more advanced than ours. How can that be? And plus, wouldn’t that fall under the ‘red jewels’ code?”
Anderson sat back and looked deep into her eyes as he thought about the contradiction. Sara continued,
“It’s a paradox — how can a country that is so backwards where they can’t even generate enough electricity for themselves, where journalists go on tours and come back with videos showing that people there have no idea what is going on in the outside world — how can that country be anywhere close to having nuclear weapons. Or in a situation where we are talking about them having anti-matter weapons. What are anti-matter weapons?”
“’I’m not sure. I think anti-matter creates a massive explosion when it touches regular matter. But I see what you’re saying. OK, I guess we aren’t going to get to the answer through analysis. We really just have to keep waiting for Tom to get there.”
“I’ll go check our systems to make sure everything is ready for tomorrow. I’ll also take a look at the latest satellite images.” Sara’s mind was back into the mission. She had not thought about the Mandarin character for a full minute or two.
“Sara, you should also go home early tonight. Tom is getting on the helicopter at 8PM Seoul time tomorrow, which is 7AM tomorrow morning for us. We’ll need to be here early. I want everyone well rested.”
“OK got it. Thanks John. Oh by the way — why are Mr. Park and his team still here and in that conference room?” Sara pointed down the hall to a room where the team from South Korea looked busy working on something. She assumed they could not have been working on this mission, because they did not come out and speak to anyone. Nobody except Anderson had interacted with Mr. Park since the briefing. Sara usually did not like being so forward, but at this point, the fact that Mr. Park was staying around was becoming obvious.
“Oh, they’re going to be watching the mission with us in the command room tomorrow. They are also working on something of their own in the meantime.” Anderson knew he was being vague, but also looked at her as though he was not prepared to elaborate any more.
CHAPTER 11
Jiyeon did not have much time at the office. She needed to put her files away, fire off a few emails, and especially touch up her makeup before dinner. Who was this man, she thought as she got ready. Because North Korea was just past walking distance from Seoul and because of its aggressive nature, the NIS and South Korean military invested heavily in subverting them. They were always preparing for conflict. People went about their lives and tried not to think of their northern neighbors too often. But a certain fear seeped through. Living next to such a dangerous country, one always felt on guard. Some visitors explained it as a tightness in the stomach. But once you lived in Seoul long enough, you got used to it. And then here comes this man from America, she thought, and not only is he coming to this tense environment, he is going to basically swim into North Korea and try to sneak into a military base. To her it sounded like suicide, and it was not a mission they would easily let their illegals take for that reason. But this American, he behaved like it was another day at the office, she thought. He almost did not seem to care. How could he look like that when he was about to go there? She wanted him to care. What drove him? He seemed pretty serious, but what was it that made such a person care about something? What was he thinking about? She wanted answers to all of these questions at dinner.