A Northern Thunder (11 page)

“I’m just meeting a source. She called last week and asked to meet. No danger.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Do you have to go far?”

“No—Alexandria.”

“So, supper on time?”

“Believe it or not, I think so.” He made a point years ago to never say “yes.” As soon as he did, he was guaranteed to be late.

Tom strapped on his Glock 40 caliber in a shoulder holster, hiding it with his jean jacket, and plopped on a dark blue baseball cap bearing the name “C&C Construction Co.”

Agent Pope left his small house before the kids woke up. A neighbor walking out to his car at the same time stopped and looked twice at the Pope house. For a moment, he thought a thief might be leaving the scene of a crime, because no one who lived there dressed like that.

“Hey, Mike.”

“Oh, hey, Tom.”

Tom made a point of waving, knowing his clothes would catch his neighbor’s attention. He chuckled again, realizing the outfit he chose to disguise his true occupation stuck out like a sore thumb in his neighborhood.

A short time after parking his white, government-issue Chevrolet at a parking lot near the Arlington subway station and hopping the Metro, Tom stopped into the Starbucks near the town center. As he ordered a cup of coffee, Tom realized his clothing was probably too plain for Alexandria. King Street was jammed with monogrammed, white-shirted young Turks in their khaki pants. The occasional tourist couple walked the street in shorts, overloaded with shopping bags. Several young girls, carrying backpacks and sitting in the coffee shop talking into their coffee cups, glanced at Tom. That was a bad sign. He was trying not to be conspicuous. At a quarter to ten, it was too late to run back and change into the khakis and golf shirt combo his wife called his “grass-cutting clothes.”

He had only met the female source twice before, but Tom learned quickly of her reliability. On the first “meet,” she had given him information that shocked the CIA. Very few reliable contacts passed along accurate information from or about North Korea.

She must work in New York, at the DPRK’s U.N. representative’s office
, Tom thought.
But how does she get away? And, more importantly, why?
Tom, one of a very few FBI agents who had a high level source of information in another government, and the only one within
that
government, didn’t want to ask too many questions. He was never sure why she had picked him, but it worked out well—not only was her information valuable, but because of it, he had already moved up several notches in the FBI hierarchy.

She must have come to me because of the liaison trip to Moscow in ’95
, he often thought. Tom had been part of a small American team invited to Moscow to establish an anti-terrorist liaison with Russian intelligence. They all thought it ironic that after the Soviets ran out of money in 1989, fewer airplanes were hijacked, fewer bombs went off in London and Northern Ireland, and fewer Americans were killed and injured around the world. Now Russia wanted to work with the U.S. Even Moscow had its terrorists and wanted to join the worldwide effort to share information. Eventually, al Queda money replaced Soviet money, and the cycle of terrorism started all over again.

On the liaison trip, Tom had met several hundred people from several embassies in Moscow. It was his only international exposure—at least the only exposure he could think of.

But now, Tom had to watch his own source. CIA types made it clear they wanted her name because they wanted to establish a direct relationship with her. If he shared “Joan” with the Agency, he knew her death as an informant was practically guaranteed.

Someone even followed him the second time he tried to meet her. Imagine, the CIA following an FBI agent. He was steamed about it for months, but Tom would protect his source at all costs.

He looked again at his Timex, gulped down his coffee, and headed out the door. The hot coffee had burned his throat, but on an unusually cool and windy summer day for Washington, it didn’t really matter.

The plan was simple. He would stop, greet her, and then join her for a walk down King Street as if they were a couple, casually talking. He’d appear to be a construction worker taking a break. They would never meet for longer than this.

The wind gusted up just as he crossed the final street in front of the bricked city square. As he pulled down his beaten old hat, Tom saw a short woman in a black raincoat cross the street parallel to his path. He stopped, turned, and gave her a hug.

“Hello, it’s good to see you,” she said with a smile. Her perfect English disguised her North Korean heritage well.

“You, as well,” said Tom. “How’s the family?” He had no idea if she had one, and he didn’t want to. She had her reasons for playing informant, but what she was doing was dangerous stuff, and he couldn’t risk getting too close.

At least it wasn’t money
, he thought. Tom respected her in that regard. She never mentioned money. In fact, she never asked for anything. But something had caused her to betray her government—perhaps the cruel, self-destructive nature inherent to North Korea. The DPRK was destroying its own land and killing its own children. Anyone given the chance to travel outside the country, to the West, quickly realized that.

And she was bright and savvy—courageous, too. Maybe it was because of Tom’s respect for her courage that he assigned her the FBI identifier “Joan,” as in Joan of Arc.

“Everyone’s fine. And how’s your family?”

“Oh, very good. Cathy and young George are doing great.” She knew there was no Cathy or George.

They started walking down King Street toward the river, keeping up the small talk. Tom stopped on the curve, waiting for traffic to cross, and very carefully glanced around. No one stood out. He felt comfortable, knowing that the CIA, KGB, DPRK, and even the FBI were not on their trail, at least today.

This was a relationship of respect, and in a strange way, a friendship, too.

Never get too close
, he reminded himself.

Then, she got to the point.

“A month ago,” Joan said, “a Dr. Harbinger died of a sudden heart attack on a Delta flight into San Francisco. Within a week after that, a professor at MIT died—struck by a car. He was thirty-five, but died of a heart attack
before
the car hit him.”

Joan had said enough. Two seemingly unrelated events suddenly became related. Tom wanted to ask more, such as who else, when, where, how, and most importantly, why? But, he knew better. She told him everything she knew, or at least everything she was willing to say.

At the bottom of King Street, near the river, she stopped, turned, quickly gave him a hug, and left. Before Tom knew it, she had disappeared into a crowd of tourists.

Tom caught the subway back to Arlington and drove home, where he changed before going in to FBI headquarters. He felt comfortable back in his blue charcoal-striped suit and black loafers. As he walked out the door wearing his unofficial Bureau uniform, Debra smiled and relaxed.

“See you for supper,” she reminded him.

On the third floor, Tom passed through security to the door marked “Anti-Terrorist Unit.” Several agents looked up, curious. He had marked the day off for a visit to the dentist, but they all knew better. He wouldn’t miss a day of work even if he had a mouthful of toothaches and cavities. They all suspected he was meeting his contact. Tom was getting a reputation for being in the mix of things.

“I need everything on a Dr. Harbinger in San Francisco, who died of a heart attack on a Delta flight last month. And I need to know what we can find out about an MIT professor struck by a car and killed a week later.”

Everyone in the room stood up at attention. This had something to do with his North Korean source. A surge of excitement flashed through the room.

“Also, I need to talk to Bob Mentor at the Agency as soon as possible.”

“Chief, he always asks me, ‘What’s it about?’” Tom’s assistant had been with him for several years now and knew that his boss appreciated his ability to anticipate problems.

“Tell him I talked to Joan.”

“He’ll be over here before lunch,” said the assistant.

Tom thought,
DPRK operatives killing American scientists in the United States. What’s going on? Why would they be that brazen?

T
he red light on the seat belt sign blinked again as the Gulf Stream made its final bank over Washington, lining up with the main runway into Andrews.

Will glanced down at his watch and pushed the indigo illumination button. The dial showed ten minutes after one. Scott was apparently half-asleep until the seat belt chime sounded. An experienced traveler, he took advantage of short opportunities to catch naps on the road.

“What’s the plan, Mr. Scott?” said Will.

“We go straight to the Pentagon. They’re waiting for us.”

“Who’s ‘they?’” Will’s suspicions were growing.

“Believe it or not, Colonel, even
I
don’t know. . . Of course, Krowl will be there.”

Will thought it interesting.
He said
“
Krowl,” not “Admiral,” not “Admiral Krowl,” and not something more respectful. Scott might share my impressions.

The jet came in straight, landed in a third of the runway, and quickly taxied to a large, oversized hangar that dwarfed the others nearby. Will knew of the larger hangar. Its sides were all well lit—he could see the layers of concertina, razor-sharp barbwire that covered the tops of the fences. He could also see the airmen patrolling the fence border, and the M-16 rifles strapped over their shoulders.

“Air Force One hangar,” Scott mumbled.

The Gulf Stream taxied like a racecar away from the large hangar, down a line of smaller hangars to one at the end with doors open and subdued lighting inside. The weather was perfectly clear and the moon was full.
What a terrible night for a strategic operation
, Scott thought. Bad weather and dark skies, not the glow of a full moon, were the friends of special operations.

The aircraft taxied into the hangar. The pilot drove it into the large opening as if parking his car in a garage, following a center yellow line that marked his clearance. When the brakes squealed and the aircraft pulled to a stop, Will noticed a black government executive car parked well within the shadows of the hangar. The government license plate and several antennas would make the automobile stand out elsewhere, but in Washington, it was one of many.

“Colonel, thanks for flying with us.” The blonde co-pilot smiled again at Will as she stood at the doorway. Her hand pressed against a small button, and as she held it down, Will heard the hum of the motorized stairway extending to the floor of the hangar.

“CIA Air—not bad service. Do you fly from Vienna to Washington often?”

“Not your Vienna.” She smiled.

Scott led the way down the stairs, walking the short distance across the hangar to the black automobile. The driver, a heavy middle-aged man in a plain dark suit, held the rear door open. Both men hopped into the back as the driver took Will’s small bag. In the middle of the rear seat were two neatly placed newspapers—a
Washington Post
atop a
USA Today
. The small lamp in the rear of the car, with a small, goose-necked, bendable base, allowed the passenger in the back to adjust the lamp for reading.

Nice touch.
Will knew that such small trappings were like addictive elixirs, keeping men and women enthralled with government service, desiring lives as generals or secretaries of defense or White House staffers.

There wasn’t much conversation in the car. The driver had learned years ago that driving for the CIA meant very little, or no, small talk, and Scott and Will were either too tired or too distracted anyway.

Before long, Will looked up to see the lit Washington Monument, and off in the distance, the lights glowing off the capital. As they crossed the bridge into Virginia, he spied more lights on the low profile of the Pentagon.

Odd
, he thought.
The Pentagon is so low compared to the other buildings.
No nation needed their military to have too high of a profile. The Pentagon was once the Department of War. Whoever thought of the name change was a good PR man.

“Have you been to the Pentagon before, Colonel?”

“Only once,” Will answered. He had been there briefly, well before the events of that infamous September.

“We’ve made arrangements for you to stay at Fort Meyer after the initial briefing.” The small army base, tucked behind Arlington Cemetery, allowed for security but was also close to the Pentagon. Will knew Fort Meyer well because it was a neighbor to the Marines’ Henderson Hall. Both Fort Meyer and Henderson Hall were on the natural bluff overlooking the Potomac River basin. The Navy Annex, a drab gray building that appeared from the air to be a large Lego puzzle piece, was also a neighbor of Henderson Hall. Fort Meyer on one side and the Navy Annex on the other formed two legs of a triangle, with Arlington Cemetery as the base. For decades, the Annex was the home of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, until he was moved to the Pentagon on the Secretary of the Navy’s floor.