DIRECTOR’S OFFICE
CIA
LANGLEY
Calibrisi returned from the State Department, where Secretary of State Mijailovic was in a virtual shit storm of putting out fires—all of them somehow related to North Korea.
The documents from Yong-sik had been distributed within the highest levels of the U.S. government. The fact that Iran had delivered ICBMs to Pyongyang was front and center. That Iran was skirting agreements to end its nuclear program was a secondary issue, a large issue, and yet it paled in comparison to Kim and the fact that he was preparing to strike a city in the United States imminently with nuclear weapons.
What had been a planned coffee between Mijailovic and Calibrisi had been interrupted by Jenna Hartford. An hour’s trip to Foggy Bottom turned into four. The picture the Yong-sik documents painted was alarming. Not only did the North Koreans possess the capability to hit the United States with nuclear-tipped ICBMs, there now existed a rationale for why they actually might: Kim Jong-un was dying.
What intrigued Calibrisi the most was the fact that Yong-sik had included Kim’s health reports. It wasn’t part of the exchange. Yong-sik was warning them. There could be no other explanation. Kim was about to die. He was living his final days. That those final days coincided with an underground nuclear weapons test and a sharp increase in activity at two of North Korea’s key missile bases made it clear. Yong-sik was warning them. He was asking for help.
Or was he? Was he warning the West or was he daring the West? Was it a ploy like so many of the other ploys by Kim—a ploy to get money? What if the health records were a fabrication?
Calibrisi opened a drawer in his desk and removed a small device. It was a blood pressure monitor. He wrapped it around his wrist and turned it on. As he felt it tightening around his wrist, he stared out the window. He was used to feeling anxious. He’d been a highly placed CIA agent, had worked in counterterrorism at the FBI, and now was in charge of the world’s preeminent spy agency. He was used to the feeling of the unknown, the feeling of worry for people he put at risk. But today he felt different. It was an altogether worse feeling and it gave him a rapid heartbeat and a sharp, acid-like pit in his stomach.
It was because of Jenna, he knew. Her design had pushed America into something hideously dangerous. It was information that never would’ve been discovered in time by Langley’s agents, yet even so, Calibrisi wished for a simpler time. He wished in a way they hadn’t discovered it at all. But they had—and it was impossible to ignore. Indeed, the operation—if they could figure out the right response—could end up saving millions of American lives.
Calibrisi had agreed to bring Jenna in at Derek Chalmers’s request, and now he had misgivings. The operation to poison Yong-sik was brilliant, but part of Calibrisi wished they’d simply stuck with the original plan: kill Yong-sik. Yes, they’d extracted valuable information—even critical information—but what if it wasn’t even true?
It had to be true. The information was damning. There was nothing exculpatory about it. North Korea was moving into attack scenario. For whatever reason, Kim believed striking the United States made sense. Even though much of the information was already known to the U.S., Kim’s health status was not. Yong-sik didn’t have to include it. Without Jenna’s creative operation, they would not have known Kim was about to die.
“Why did you do it?” Calibrisi whispered.
A simple needle prick to Dewey’s chest made it all so meaningless. Why didn’t they just kill the son of a bitch?
British intelligence was renowned for its complex, elegant operations, but Calibrisi felt as if he was untethered, out over the tips of his skis, flying down a sheer cliff of ice with no idea what lay below.
But of course, it was Dewey that was behind it all. He was the cause of the pit in his stomach. Dewey was going to die. Calibrisi never counted him out before, but there was no way he could walk into Pyongyang without being seen. Even if he could get there, he needed an antidote that may or may not still exist. They couldn’t reach Talmadge, the only man who knew if the two vials had survived the trip to Pyongyang, and if so, where the second one was.
His worry about Dewey mixed with his reflections on Kim. If the documents were true, if North Korea was moving closer and closer to a nuclear strike on the U.S., there was only one way to stop it. America would have to strike first. A preemptive nuclear strike.
The two thoughts collided and he understood that even if by some miracle Dewey made it and found the antidote, he would die anyway. He would be one of the millions the United States might have to annihilate in order to prevent the annihilation of Los Angeles, or Houston, or Phoenix, or some other American city.
Why didn’t you just kill Yong-sik?
Calibrisi picked up his cell and called Jenna.
“Can you come down here?”
“Be right there,” she said.
Calibrisi looked at his watch. He stood up and packed some papers into his briefcase and then put his cell phone to his ear. He dialed Polk.
“Bill, you need to come with me,” he said. “Meet you on the roof.”
Calibrisi hung up and pocketed the phone as Jenna approached the door and stepped inside. He looked at her with a blank expression.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“The White House. We’re briefing the president.”
As Jenna and Calibrisi walked down the corridor, a tall man with a mop of frizzy, curly blond hair came out of one of the elevators. It was Lloyd Edgington.
“Hector,” said Edgington.
“I don’t have time, Lloyd.”
“We found the connection,” said Edgington. “A cargo ship from Iran pulled into the Port of Nampo last night.”
“Nampo?”
“On the Yellow Sea, south of Pyongyang. DIA captured still photos of the ship being offloaded. Missiles.”
Calibrisi shook his head in exasperation.
“Send a flash to the War Council,” said Calibrisi, turning and moving to the stairs that would take him to the rooftop helipad.