“Well, once he arrives in St. Maarten, won’t he have to claim the bag and run it through customs?”
“Ah, a good question. You see, Renaldo, why I tell you I am so pleased with this man? He leaves nothing to chance.” Turning back to Cardona, he explained: “There is a service here that allows a check-through, as well as a connecting boarding pass, both of which Renaldo will arrange for a small fee. We’ll take care of everything.”
Cardona responded with a satisfied look.
“Good,” Adina said in a way that made it clear the subject was closed to any further discussion.
Cardona closed the suitcase and followed Adina and Renaldo from the bedroom back to the deck, where Hicham had just returned.
“Well,” Adina said, “this is quite a glorious setting, is it not?” He did not await a response. “And you will also enjoy our yacht. Your comrade here has already had the pleasure,” he said, giving Cardona a fraternal clap on the arm. “Your turn will be for a fine luncheon onboard.”
“Thank you so much,” the Moroccan replied with obvious satisfaction.
“It’s settled,” Adina said as he held out his hand and led them to four chairs arranged in a circle around the small table on the deck. “First it is time for you to tell us what you two have learned about the technology inside the depths of Fort Oscar.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sandor rejoined his team early the next morning. They met in a conference room adjacent to a private hangar at Reagan International Airport in Washington, where they were presented passports, visas, credit cards, and dossiers containing background information on their identities as Canadian businessmen. Then they were flown by charter to Toronto, where they would connect with the Air Canada flight that would take them nonstop to Beijing.
“Canadian,” Craig Raabe mused on the ride from D.C. “I don’t have to fake some silly accent, do I Zimmermann? Sound like a Canuck or something?”
Kurt Zimmermann grunted.
“Hey, you’re the language expert.” He turned to Sandor. “What if they start grilling us about hockey? I hate hockey, don’t know diddly about it. They’ll see right through me.”
Sandor responded with a sage nod. “Yes, I’d say it’s your lack of hockey knowledge that’s putting us at risk here, Craig. Tell you what, we have twenty hours or so on the flight to Beijing. I’ll spend the entire time regaling you with the history of the NHL.”
Bergenn laughed. “Just make sure you’re sitting at least three rows away from me.”
At Pearson International Airport in Toronto their first-class check-in went without a hitch. Their bags held no weaponry and no electronics. Only Raabe’s suitcase was fitted with plastic explosives and they were undetectable, or so Craig was assured at Langley. He knew the real test of that would come at airport security in Beijing and then Pyongyang. Meanwhile, the other three carried no contraband, not wanting to risk an arrest before they even made their way inside the DPRK. As Sandor reminded them, they would be unarmed and very much on their own.
Sandor also told them that it was important, right from the start, that they assume the identities they’d been given. “Four businessmen on a trip like this don’t move like a Special Forces advance unit.” Once they received their boarding passes, he said, “Do your own thing, we’ll meet back at the bar in the First Class Club in an hour or so.”
Sandor spent the time seated in a comfortable armchair in the lounge, going over the information that Byrnes had furnished, for his eyes only, to be destroyed before he boarded the flight to Beijing. There were several aspects of the mission he had been told that his men had not. The DD had left it up to him to decide when and how much of the data to share.
Sandor put the file on his lap and stared out the window. Given the level of danger he and his men were facing, he wanted to be sure his mission would not be complicated by any information leaks.
As he knew only too well, when people in government start talking, the discussions are quickly picked up by the media. That meant the secret of Jaber’s defection was not likely to stay secret very long, which would have a wide range of consequences.
One aspect of those consequences was particularly troubling.
If Jaber was telling the truth — that he had defected for fear of his own safety — those who believed they had already murdered him would not take kindly to the news that Jaber was still alive, especially since he was now cooperating with the Americans. It would be no leap of faith for his enemies to assume Jaber was sharing any intelligence he had about the scheme being hatched with the North Koreans.
Carrying the thought forward, Sandor knew that the only edge he had in his incursion into Pyongyang was surprise. If the North Koreans learned that the CIA had information about these plans, the danger of their mission would increase by an exponential factor.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and called Sternlich. “Bill it’s me.”
“How do I know it’s you? Recite the code.”
“Not funny. This is likely the last time I’ll be able to call you in the next few days. I need you to check something for me.”
“I’m listening.”
Sandor believed the best place to gauge whether a breach had already occurred was among the denizens of the fourth estate. If the channels of confidential communications had been penetrated, the media would be the first to know. Sandor trusted Sternlich as much as he could trust anyone, and time was short, so he elected a frontal approach. “Bill, I have to ask you something, but the entire discussion, even the topic we discuss, ends with this conversation.”
“I understand,” Sternlich said.
Sandor hesitated. “You remember our discussion about Ahmad Jaber yesterday?”
“Of course.”
“I never asked if you’d heard anything about him.”
“I haven’t, but I can check around if you want.”
“I do want you to. But tread lightly, Bill.”
“I will.”
“I need to know what the rumor mill is churning out about him. Anything at all you can dig up in the next twenty-four hours. Then I need you to text me ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on my international cell number at this time tomorrow. If it’s yes, I’ll know I need to get back to you.”
“All right.”
“And Bill, there’s one more thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s extremely serious.”
“I’m listening,” Sternlich assured him in a grave voice.
“I forgot to cancel my newspaper delivery,” Sandor said, then started laughing.
Sternlich took a moment to name the anatomical part of a horse his friend most closely resembled, then hung up.
Sandor went to the men’s room. In one of the toilet stalls he tore up the contents of the file Byrnes had given him and flushed them away. Then he broke his cell phone in two, removed the battery, and gouged the internal transistor board with his pen. When he left, he deposited each piece in a different trash bin, then made his way to the bar and ordered a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The wife of Ahmad Jaber did not learn of the destruction of her home until several days after it happened, when the Iranian minister of communications finally gave Al Jazeera permission to release the story. She was sitting in the living room of her sister’s home in Tabriz, watching the evening news, when the report was aired.
An overwhelming sense of disbelief quickly turned to shock as the sketchy details were recounted. She stared at the screen as video footage displayed the wreckage of her demolished house from several angles. The reporter on the scene offered the government-sanctioned view — that the blast was caused by a faulty gas line. She sat motionless, gazing at the television, realizing that she had been waiting for something like this, expecting something like this, ever since her husband sent her away a week ago.