CIA
Jenna stood still, her eyes transfixed on the phone in her hand. She felt her heart racing and then a strange sensation, a cold shiver that ran through her head and body.
She picked up the phone on her desk.
“I need Dave Morris,” said Jenna. “It’s urgent.”
“Hold, please.”
Jenna’s office was small, with a desk, a credenza, and three chairs—one where she sat, and two in front of the desk, pressed against the glass wall that looked out into the horseshoe-shaped suite of senior staff offices. Jenna’s desk had several neat stacks of papers and files, along with the phone console. Behind her were bookshelves. They were largely empty. The only personal item was a framed photo of Charles, an old photo of him on a beach in Marbella, where they had gone on their honeymoon.
“Hi, Jenna,” said Morris. “Any news?”
“Yong-sik has been poisoned, but Dewey somehow pricked himself. He—” She paused, trying to keep her emotions under control. “He’s spiked a fever.”
There was a long silence.
“Oh no,” said Morris. “Jenna, I made it clear—”
“I know, but it happened. First if all, did you save any? Can we dispatch a jet with another antidote?”
“The poison was custom,” said Morris. “The antidote is created with the poison. The only way to create a new antidote would be if we had more poison.”
“And do we have more poison?”
“No. I explained that. I can try and re-create the strain, but even then the odds of achieving the precise compound needed to create an effective antidote … my God, Jenna, it’s small. Too small. There’s timing, temperature, and a million other factors.”
“So the only way Dewey lives is if he goes to Pyongyang and gets the antidote before Yong-sik? There’s no chance—Yong-sik will get there first.”
“Can you call the agent who planted it?” said Morris. “He could move the antidote.”
“And if Yong-sik sends what we ask, he dies?”
“It’s better than Dewey dying.”
“It’s moot,” said Jenna, thinking aloud. “We can only reach Talmadge by mail. We wouldn’t have the time.”
“Wait,” said Morris. “I just realized. We may have sent two antidotes.”
“Two? Why? Why didn’t you tell me—”
“We sometimes do,” said Morris, “if there’s a break in the custody chain. In case of breakage in transit. Hold on.”
Jenna shut her eyes, shaking her head back and forth, waiting for what seemed like an eternity. Morris came back on the line.
“Harvey sent two,” said Morris.
Jenna breathed a sigh of relief, then realized it meant practically nothing if Dewey couldn’t get to it.
“The problem is,” continued Morris, “we send two because they do often break in transit. What will the agent do if both survive?”
“Hide it,” she said, “at least that’s what he’s trained to do.”
Across the bullpen, she could see into Hector Calibrisi’s office. She couldn’t tell if he was in there, but she moved to the door and walked quickly around the edge of the bullpen. She looked inside, seeing no one.
“Do you know where he is?” said Jenna.
“He went to the State Department,” said Lindsay. “Is everything okay?”
“No.”
Jenna ran back to her office. She found her old cell phone, the one from MI6, and dialed. This time, it started ringing almost immediately. It rang for half a minute then went to an automated voice mail message. Jenna dialed again. This time, it only rang once before Fields picked up.
“Jenna,” said Fields. “It didn’t take you long, did it?”
“I need your help, Jayson,” she said.
“And I told you, I’m midstream. I can’t.”
“Please,” said Jenna softly. “It’s a guy just like you. He would do the same thing. He’s in trouble. Please, Jayson.”
Jenna’s voice was filled with desperation and emotion.
Fields let out an exasperated groan.
“Fine,” he said. “Where is he?”
“At the Grand Hyatt.”
* * *
Yong-sik was carried to the elevators, his eyes closed, his clothing drenched in perspiration. One of the soldiers inserted a white card in the elevator console and the elevator descended without stopping until it reached the basement, where a black limousine was idling, the back door open. Yong-sik was carried to the limousine and set down on the backseat. Three soldiers climbed in with him and the limo screeched forward, moving quickly through the parking garage and shooting from the hotel.
Fifteen minutes later, Yong-sik’s jet was moving down the runway, skirting above the blue water of the South China Sea. North Korea’s top military commander was clinging to life. His temperature was 104 degrees. His body was wracked by convulsions.
An hour into the flight, Yong-sik regained consciousness as his temperature abated. Then he remembered the man at the hotel. He looked out the window and realized that nothing would ever be the same, that in the next twenty-four hours he would either die or commit treason.
“You have lost everything,” he whispered to himself. “All for a game of blackjack you didn’t even get to play.”
* * *
Jenna entered Polk’s office on the second floor of CIA headquarters. It was one of three offices Polk kept inside the sprawling facility that housed the Agency. As head of the Directorate of Operations, he had responsibility for both Special Activities Division and Special Operations Group, the two prime pieces of the Directorate of Operations. The other offices were in the basement, inside the two separate suites. This was where Polk went for more formal meetings with military leadership, senators and key congressional staff, and high-ranking visitors from foreign intelligence services. Polk also used the space to come and do paperwork—and to think.
Polk was seated in a white leather chair when she entered. He didn’t need to ask. He could see the urgency on Jenna’s face.
“What happened?”
“Dewey’s been poisoned.”
Polk was a short man. He was bald and wore glasses with tortoiseshell rims. He wore a yellow Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, gray flannels, a green-and-silver-striped rep tie, and cordovan loafers. A product of Groton and Trinity, Polk would have looked at home in the faculty lounge at any number of New England boarding schools—but appearances were deceiving. It was Polk who ran the CIA’s vaunted kill teams, the individual charged with executing covert missions across the globe.
Polk had never warmed to Dewey. He was against Calibrisi bringing him in-house and he hated the lack of predictability that came with everything Dewey did. But he understood full well the value of Dewey’s involvement. Calibrisi was close to Dewey on a personal level. Polk was unmarried and had few personal attachments to people. Yet, something connected Polk to Dewey in a way even he refused to admit. Dewey somehow took operations to places they were never meant to go—places Polk originally joined the CIA to find. Trouble always seemed to find Dewey but in that trouble oftentimes lay the seeds of darker truths the Agency’s analysts could never see.
* * *
Jenna explained the situation, including the fact that Dewey was now on a plane bound for Osan Base in South Korea, near the border with the enemy, and that a second antidote existed—and may or may not have survived the long trip to Pyongyang.
“What will Talmadge do with it, if it survived?” asked Polk.
“He would’ve hidden it inside his apartment.”
“That’s a start. What are you thinking?”
“The only scenario I see is infiltrating the border and hijacking a vehicle,” said Jenna. “There’s no other way. He can’t enter under some sort of tourist visa. He’s barely alive right now. It needs to be something where he can move on his own. He’ll stand out like a sore thumb. By the time they finish interrogating him, even with a decent cover, he’ll be dead.”
Polk nodded. “I agree.”
Jenna sat down in one of the two leather chairs in front of Polk’s desk.
“I don’t know what to do.”
Polk stood up and walked to a filing cabinet. He opened a drawer and sifted through various files until he found what he was looking for. He removed a red-bordered manila folder with the words “EYES ONLY” printed diagonally across the cover. The tab said “Operation Achilles.”
“Driving won’t work,” said Polk. “There’s not enough time. Look at this. We never used it. It was designed twenty years ago, a contingency plan for taking out Kim’s father.”
Jenna took the file and started reading. Polk sat in his desk chair, looking through a stack of papers with a pen in his hand, occasionally writing something down or signing his name, then flipping the page, all the while watching as Jenna pored through the file.
When she was done, she looked up at Polk.
“It’s brilliant,” she said. “Did you do this?”
Polk had a blank expression on his face.
“No,” said Polk. “We had another architect back then, that is, another architect on your level, Jenna.”
Jenna blushed.
“My level, that’s ridiculous.…”
Polk smiled. He took a piece of paper and scrawled a phone number down.
“Call Mark Prestipino. He’s in charge of Osan. Tell him I told you to call. Also, tell him this is a Category Four Directive.”