Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation, page 23
Janson moved briskly across the room and entered Yun Jin-ho’s six-digit pass code from memory. The electronic lock clicked.
Janson opened the door. And stepped forward into Kim Jong-un’s War Room.
FORTY-TWO
At the Shangri-La China World Hotel in Beijing, Kincaid closed the door to their luxury suite and told Gregory Wyckoff to relax and have a seat. But when she turned and entered the room the boy was already sprawled out atop the exquisite red-and-gold comforter on the king-size bed, fast asleep.
Poor kid, she thought. Kincaid knew what it was like to be running for days. And she could certainly sympathize with anyone who was being chased by Sin Bae. Had it not been for Park Kwan spotting his gun on the floor of the coatroom in T-Lound, Kincaid would have already been counted as one of his victims.
Like Lynell Yi, she thought, the kid’s girlfriend. From what Kincaid knew about their relationship, Gregory and Lynell had been closer than close, a young couple experiencing the world together as though they owned it. And when you were that much in love, that’s exactly what life felt like.
That was how Kincaid felt when she was with Janson.
I should have heard from him by now, right?
Not necessarily. If something had happened to him in North Korea, she would have learned about it. At least that was what she kept telling herself.
Kincaid sat in the room’s soft leather chair and planted her elbows on the oversize mahogany writing desk. She stared at the phone. She needed to reach out to Senator Wyckoff and his wife, to let them know their son was safe. But she’d lost her own phone and, as gorgeous and modern as it was, she didn’t trust the hotel to provide her with a secure line. Especially in China.
She also wanted to call Park Kwan. He and Kang Jung would be worried about her. Surely they’d connected the incident outside Tiananmen Square with her missing their rendezvous. But she wanted to get in touch with them to make sure that they were safe and to let them know that she and Wyckoff were alive and as well as could be expected. Still, she harbored little doubt that both their phones were hot. By calling them, she could be giving away her and Wyckoff’s location, and putting Park Kwan and Kang Jung in further danger. No, she couldn’t do that. Park Kwan was a cop, a smart cop, and she had to trust him to take care of himself and Kang Jung.
Instead she phoned the Embraer 650, which as far as she knew was still sitting on the tarmac at Incheon International.
“CatsPaw. Kayla speaking.”
Kincaid made a face and mimicked the words silently. CatsPaw. Kayla speaking.
“Hell-o?” Kayla said.
“Hey, Kayla, it’s Kincaid.”
“Oh, Jessie,” she said, “it’s so good to hear from you. Are you and Paul all right?”
Kincaid swallowed the bitterness in her throat. “Janson and I are fine. Listen, I need a favor. I need you to contact our client via a secure line. The number is in the file.”
“OK, sure. What’s the message?”
“Tell the client we have the package and we’re going to deliver it to Washington safe and sound as soon as possible. Details to follow.”
“Got it,” Kayla said. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Tell the pilots we need the Embraer in Beijing right away. The IATA code for the airport is PEK. Terminal three. Have the jet prepared for a flight to DC. File a zero-one flight plan.”
“A zero-one?”
“They’ll know what I mean. Be ready to depart PEK six hours from now.”
Once Kincaid hung up the phone, a weary voice tapped her on the shoulder.
“I don’t have to return to Seoul, do I?”
Kincaid spun in her chair. Gregory Wyckoff was sitting up on the king-size bed. Dark, puffy flesh engulfed his eyes.
“No,” Kincaid said with a slight smile. “I wouldn’t send you back there. I know you’re innocent.”
Wyckoff bowed his head. “Thank you.”
Kincaid folded her hands in her lap. “Do you feel up to talking about all this?”
“If I’m leaving Beijing in six hours, I suppose we’d better.”
“OK,” she said, leaning forward. “Why don’t you start with Lynell?”
Wyckoff cleared his throat and began speaking softly.
“A few days ago—Christ, I’ve really lost track of time.”
“It’s all right.”
Wyckoff intertwined his fingers atop his head and closed his eyes to collect his thoughts. When he opened them, he said, “Lynell came home—and by home I mean our apartment in Seoul—one night and seemed all bent out of shape, as though she was preoccupied with something. I knew she’d been going through a particularly tense time at work.”
“She was working as a translator,” Kincaid said to help move him along.
“Right. She was a contractor, hired just six months ago, specifically for the four-party talks. She worked out of an office at the US embassy, but the actual talks are being held at the Joint Security Area in the demilitarized zone. That was where she’d been that day.”
“Go on.”
“She worked directly for the US envoy. For the past half year they’ve been negotiating a host of issues, from the UN sanctions to the North’s nuclear program. The chief US negotiator had been complaining recently that as soon as they make a few steps toward progress, the North begins moving the goalposts and acting erratically.”
“How so?”
“Well, for instance, the North is currently holding three US citizens on vague charges of espionage. Each of the individuals was in the country on a tourist visa, and they were, in fact, tourists. The US would make some concessions, offer to ease some restrictions, and the North would agree to release the—for lack of a better word—hostages. But then the next day, joint US-ROK military exercises that were scheduled nine months in advance would take place, and the North would suddenly go nuclear, no pun intended. They’d renege on the agreement and all parties would have to return to Go without collecting their two hundred dollars.”
“I assume that’s a Monopoly reference?”
“Sorry, yeah. What I’m trying to say is that things have been getting intense recently, from what Lynell had been telling me. So when she came home upset, I thought maybe she’d made a mistake, ya know. In the translation. I figured she got reamed out, maybe by the chief US negotiator, maybe by Ambassador Young, who could be a real dick. But after a couple of hours, I realized it was much more than that. Something was definitely wrong; something weighty was on her mind.”
“Did you press her on it?”
“I asked, but Lynell wouldn’t tell me anything at our apartment. At first I figured she simply didn’t want to talk about it. I was resolved to try again in the morning. If she wouldn’t give by then, I’d wait until she came home from the Joint Security Area the next day to see whether the mood had passed, or something was continuing to trouble her.”
Kincaid nodded but said nothing.
“At around eight that night I went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When I came out, there was a sheet of paper on the coffee table. There was a message scrawled in Lynell’s handwriting; it just read, ‘Not in here. O/s.’”
“O/s?”
“‘O/s’ was her shorthand for ‘outside.’ So I went outside and she started talking right away. She said she inadvertently overheard something Ambassador Young was saying. She said she only heard bits and pieces.” As he spoke, Wyckoff looked past Kincaid as though staring through the wall into the room next door. “The ambassador had been speaking to someone Lynell never met before. Someone from the South Korean delegation. A younger man, she said, maybe thirty or thirty-five years old. She heard Young use words like ‘provocation,’ ‘incursion,’ and ‘ground war.’ Then she heard them discussing troop numbers from the United States.” Wyckoff shook his head sadly. “That was essentially it. That and the name of some operation. The operation was called Diophantus.”
“How long had she listened?”
“Not long,” Wyckoff said. “No more than thirty or forty seconds. But when she spun around to leave she walked straight into Ambassador Young’s chief aide.”
“Jonathan?”
“Jonathan Day. He’s Young’s lackey. He had a thing for Lynell awhile back and she rejected him. He’d been giving her angry glares ever since.” Wyckoff looked Kincaid in the eyes. “She started to move past him, and he grabbed her by the arm, accused her of eavesdropping. He actually used the words ‘espionage’ and ‘treason.’ Lynell pulled away, but she was sure Jonathan was going to report what he’d seen to the ambassador.”
Kincaid prodded him to go on.
“Neither of us was very concerned for her job. ‘Let them sack me,’ she said. But we were concerned about what might happen to her if they discovered what she overheard. She was afraid that they’d subject her to a polygraph. That’s why she’d been so reluctant to tell me at first. Because they’d ask her if she’d told anyone else. And she didn’t want to have to give them my name.”
Wyckoff shrugged, his stare floating toward the ceiling. He was clearly trying to keep the emotion out of his voice. “But she loved me,” he said. “She never kept anything from me. And Lynell had always said I was the smartest person she knew. Even though I knew that was bullshit, it meant a lot to me given her own education and family background.”
“Did she know you’d use the information?”
“She knew that I’d dig deeper,” Wyckoff said, once more with that far-off look in his eyes. “And I did.”
Kincaid canted her head.
“I’m kind of good with computers,” he said.
“From what I understand, that’s the understatement of the millennium.”
For the first time since she met him, Wyckoff managed a tired smile.
“OK,” he admitted. “I’m a hacker. Or what you might call a hacktivist.”
“You moved on the information right away?”
“I didn’t waste any time. I immediately got myself to a secure computer and entered the State Department’s email system. Months earlier I had socially engineered a young female aide in order to gain access. I didn’t want to risk breaking into the system using Lynell’s account. But as it turned out, the backdoor I’d installed using malware months before was still open.”
“What did you do once you were in?”
“First thing I did was run a search for ‘Diophantus.’ I made a mental list of every email user who had typed the word into a message. There weren’t many names. But the names that did appear were all huge political players. Ambassador Young, of course. The director of National Security, Sanford Hildreth. The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Douglas Albright. A deputy director of the CIA’s Clandestine Service named Ella Quon. A chief systems engineer named Eric Matsumura. And someone I’d never even heard of—neither had Lynell. His title was listed as undersecretary of state but I couldn’t find his name anywhere else in the database or even on the web.”
Kincaid realized she’d been chewing on the pad of her thumb. She pulled it out of her mouth and said, “Let me guess. His name was Edward Clarke.”
Wyckoff nodded. “Yeah, who is he? How did you know?”
“He’s the director of Consular Operations.”
“Cons Ops?” Wyckoff scoffed. “I thought Consular Operations was just a myth. You mean to tell me it really exists? The State Department runs its own black ops?”
Kincaid nodded.
Wyckoff’s mouth dropped open; his tired eyes grew wide. “Are you…Are you serious?”
“Believe me,” Kincaid said. “Consular Operations is my former employer.”
Wyckoff shook his head sadly. “Every day I wake up, I realize I know less and less about my government.”
FORTY-THREE
According to Yun Jin-ho, Janson had ten, fifteen minutes, tops, before the Guard’s Command ascertained that their sentries were down and ordered reinforcements to move in to intercept the intruder and reestablish control over the premises.
Janson promised himself he wouldn’t waste a second of that precious time. He marched straight to the center of the War Room, the design for which had apparently been stolen from the bridge of Star Trek’s original Enterprise.
He sat in the captain’s chair and worked the attached keyboard with his fingers as quickly as he could. Yun Jin-ho had told him precisely where to look. After navigating past several screens on the sizable monitor in front of him, Janson pulled up a file designated “15-4-1912” (Kim Il-sung’s birth date) and clicked “Enter.” At the prompt Janson entered Yun Jin-ho’s fourteen-digit pass code from memory.
In the glow of the monitor, Janson’s eyes slowly widened. A deep chill ran up his spine. He shivered, felt the fine hairs on his arms rise like a synchronized army.
No, he thought. This can’t be.
* * *
“ONCE WE LEARNED who the players were, Lynell and I decided it was too dangerous to return to our apartment. So we registered at the Sophia Guesthouse, a hanok in central Seoul.”
“I paid the hanok a visit when we first arrived in the city,” Kincaid said.
“We’d talked about switching off, with one of us sleeping and the other keeping awake and alert. In the end, we were both too exhausted. We had spent the past few hours planning how to get the hell out of South Korea and where to go—and the last half hour arguing like hell over all of it.”
A wall of water formed in front of Wyckoff’s already glazed eyes. “I woke up when I heard a crash. Lynell had knocked over a lamp. It was the first thing I saw. At first, I didn’t think much of it. I couldn’t really see anything, just shapes and forms.” He rubbed the heel of his palms against his temples. “Then my eyes adjusted and I saw Lynell in the corner of the room. It looked as though she were being lifted off the ground by some invisible force. She was still kicking her feet. It was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen. Like something out of a horror movie.”
Wyckoff was breaking down.
“Take it easy,” Kincaid said, reaching out, placing a hand on his knee. “If you need some time, I’d understand. Would you like a glass of water? Some tissues?”
Wyckoff waved her offer away with his hands. “The guy who was holding her, as soon as he saw me lift my head, he spun his body around so that his back was facing me. I jumped up from the mat and ran at him. He smashed his elbow into my nose, and I hit the floor like a stone. I thought my nose was busted; I felt so much blood spilling out of me.”
Wyckoff stood. Paced over to the curtained sliding glass door and turned back. “When I finally managed to pick myself off the floor, the guy was still holding Lynell up by the throat but she wasn’t kicking anymore. She wasn’t doing anything; her body was entirely limp. I knew right away she was dead.” He paused to wipe away his tears and clear his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was little more than a rasp. “So I spun around and opened the door. Just as I did, I heard her body drop to the floor. But I didn’t look back. I ran as fast and as hard as I could across the courtyard. Lynell’s killer started running after me. I heard his feet slapping against the pavement. He was so fast. I was sure he was going to catch me.”
“What did you do?” Kincaid said gently.
“I remembered seeing a fire escape on our way to the hanok. I headed straight for that building. I turned down the alley, pulled myself up on a pipe, and reached for the ladder. I ran up the fire escape as quick as I could until I heard him coming again. I froze in place somewhere between the second and third floors. I figured that was my only chance. Sure enough, he slowed down, checked the alley. He even looked up, seemed to look right at me. But it was so dark, he didn’t notice me. I waited for him to grab hold of the pipe to pull himself up. But he didn’t. Instead he ran out of the alley and kept going. As soon as he did, I climbed up to the roof. It was freezing up there, but I stayed until morning.”
Kincaid’s eyes narrowed. “You said it was pitch black in the hanok. Yet you recognized him today at Tiananmen Square, didn’t you?”
Wyckoff nodded. “I only saw a flash of his face before he turned around. There was just a hint of moonlight seeping in through the shades. But it was all I needed. I have…” He paused for several seconds, gazing up at the ceiling as though he was contemplating the nature of the universe, then said, “I have a photographic memory.”
“A photographic memory? Really? That wasn’t in your dossier.”
He smiled sadly. “No, it wouldn’t be. It’s not something I boast about. My dad calls me a slacker as it is. If he knew I had a photographic memory, he’d expect me to become a brain surgeon or run for president. Probably both. No one really knows about my photographic memory. In school, I didn’t want to risk being labeled a freak. Only Lynell knows.” He paused again, a fresh wave of tears spilling over his lower lashes down his cheeks. “Knew,” he corrected himself. “Only Lynell knew.”
Kincaid waited for him to calm himself. When he seemed to have control over himself she asked, “How did you learn of Yun Jin-ho?”
Wyckoff lifted his bloodshot eyes in surprise. There were questions in those eyes, but he didn’t ask them.
“When Lynell and I first moved to Seoul, I hacked into the government’s servers, looking for secrets. Specifically, I wanted to find South Korea’s intelligence on the North’s nuclear program. Everyone wants us to believe that North Korea is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. Washington and Seoul want us to believe it to demonstrate that the Kim regime is a threat to the region and to justify suffocating economic sanctions. Pyongyang wants us to believe it because they’re afraid of a future US-ROK invasion aimed at regime change. I think the claims being made by both sides are highly exaggerated, if not complete bullshit. Of course, the only ones suffering as a result of all the lies are the North Korean people. I thought if I could expose the actual intelligence Seoul has on North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, the United Nations would have no choice but to lift their sanctions and allow the North’s economy to collapse or thrive on its own.”
