Even most at Langley HQ would be kept away. The op was, instead, run out of an office suite converted into a special operations center at the ODNI’s Liberty Crossing complex.
A portion of Adam’s week had been spent committing to memory all the code words, call signs, radio frequencies, and other information he would need in his weeks in the danger zone. His code name was Avalanche; this moniker had been computer-generated for him, and Adam liked the sound of it, especially because he’d been told a recent code name generated by the computer for a male agent had been Sunflower.
Adam felt bad for Sunflower, whoever he was, and hoped his mission went off without a hitch. Having to call control to request a quick-reaction-force extract for Agent Sunflower didn’t sound like something Adam would much enjoy doing.
He’d take Avalanche any damn day over that. This operation might have been an incredibly difficult and dangerous mission, but, Adam told himself, at least they’d outfitted him with a badass call sign before he left.
While the plan was for Adam Yao to go to Valley Floor to learn the computer system he would be operating in Chongju, he knew he would already need to know his cover legend back-to-front when he got out to California, so he spent the afternoon of his last day here at LX2 digging deeper into his legend. This type of work was familiar to him, learning the life story of a fictional character, and he actually enjoyed the study. He felt like an actor preparing for a role, and although all the lines he would use on the stage would be improvisational, the better he knew his character’s upbringing, circumstances, education, and life experiences, the better able he would be to bring his character to life.
According to his legend, Adam was Shan Xin, a thirty-five-year-old mechanical engineer and Chinese national from Nanchang who moved to the U.S. to go to the University of Chicago, but then overstayed his student visa by fourteen years. The gangster miners in Shanghai would be told that he then took a job in the mining sector, where he became an expert in ore-processing machinery, specifically the computers used to operate a hydraulic cone crusher, a massive grinding device that turned the ore into precisely sized smaller bits so that the rare earth minerals contained within could be removed through a series of treatments and processes, depending on the minerals themselves. The CIA had learned through its access to the Chinese gangster mining operation that the North Koreans already had the huge crushing machines, as well as the hydraulic system to operate them, all thanks to the Chinalco operation that had pulled out a year before, but the Chinese had taken their computers with them when Choi threw them out of his country.
A new computer was on the way from France via Bulgaria, and the CIA had already intercepted it at the warehouse of a shipping agent and implanted the hardware that would allow Adam to use the device as something of a direct-line telephone back to his command and control here at ODNI.
The fact Adam, or Shan Xin, had lived and worked in the U.S. for the past eighteen years would account for both his knowledge of the equipment and the fact no one in the illegal mining company had ever heard of him. As with all undercover work, of course, there was always the chance Adam would run into someone who had been to the places Adam claimed to have visited or knew the people Adam claimed to have known, so it was crucial he got his legend information down cold to pull this off.
Like every good non-official cover officer, Adam was an expert at the ability to fold his own life experiences into his backstory; this always helped with a cover story, because the more truth involved, the less the chance to be caught in a deception.
And he would hide the fact that he spoke Korean. He and his control officers on Acrid Herald were working under the assumption the North Koreans might speak more freely around the Chinese workers than they would if they knew one of their number could understand them. The relationship between the North Korean minders and the illegal Chinese workers was sure to be unforthcoming, and the CIA knew they wanted to hear as much as possible from the Koreans that was not filtered through channels going to the Chinese.
Adam’s Korean wasn’t great, but he was trying to “crash-course” his skill level up a notch with intensive language study on top of all the other work he was doing. This morning he’d worked on his language skills with a native Korean speaker, a translator and trainer at CIA. Additionally, he had listened to recordings in the evening for the past few nights, and this had retuned his brain to the language somewhat, but today they focused on vocabulary specific to the mining industry.
Adam’s study wouldn’t end when he left Virginia for California. Instead, he would travel to Valley Floor with his instructor, Myun, and she would play the role of his wife so they could spend the evenings studying together.
He expected to be in Valley Floor no more than a week and a half, but another ten days of language study might just make the difference between success and failure on the operation.
And it didn’t bother Adam Yao at all that Myun was an attractive woman. Unfortunately for him, she was married, and her husband, a blond-haired, blue-eyed CIA analyst from Boston, had popped in on them in the language lab a couple times. He seemed to Yao to be a nice enough guy, and although he didn’t know the nature of Yao’s operation or where Yao and his wife would be heading, overall he projected an air of support.
It was going to be weird to live in an apartment for a week and a half with a married woman, but Adam knew this wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d done working as a spy.
Normal rules did not apply in this life.
It was late afternoon now; he closed up one briefing book and reached for another. Just as he started to settle into some reading on ore processing, Mary Pat Foley knocked on the glass door to the conference room.
Adam waved her in and stood.
“Sorry to bother you, Adam.”
“Not at all,” Adam said. “It’s nice to see you again.”
She paused for a moment, then said, “Acrid Herald is a go. You leave in the morning.”
“Outstanding.”
She and Yao both sat down.
“They’re working you hard?”
“I’ve got the legend memorized. I’ve got the codes and commo tech down cold. I’ve boned up on the processing of ore and the mechanics of the crushing systems in place there, but I’ll learn the actual computer software in California. I’ll keep working on my language.” He nodded. “I’ll do my part in Acrid Herald.”
Mary Pat said, “And I’ll do mine, and see that others do theirs. I won’t micromanage this op, but I’ll be getting twice-daily updates from your control officers. I recognize the risks. I know I won’t be in the field with you… but—”
“Madame Director, I know you’ve spent a good part of your career in the field. Trust me, the fact you know what it’s like is very much appreciated at a time like this.”
Foley smiled.
Adam gave her a moment to reply, but when he realized she was holding back, he added, “And although I appreciate you coming to see me off, I am wondering if there is something specific you wanted to tell me.”
She looked out the window and over the trees. “I lost a good friend recently. An operative, not too unlike yourself, although much older. He was one hell of a foot soldier during the Cold War and even beyond.”
Adam cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You lost him?”
“Murdered,” she acknowledged. “He was out of the Agency, but he did die in the field. We don’t know for sure, but it’s quite possible North Korean assets killed him.”
“I’m a little curious as to why I didn’t hear anything about this in my workup for the op.”
“He wasn’t on official Agency work. He freelanced for a corporate intelligence firm. There is no known relationship between him and what is going on here. Not yet, anyway.”