“Go ahead, lay it on me.”
Kissinger exchanged quick greetings with Wethers and Delahunt, then settled in at Tokaido’s work console.
“What’s up with Akira?” he asked Delahunt. “Any update on that kidnapping situation with his cousin?”
“Not really,” Delahunt reported. “The money’s ready and the time’s been set for the exchange, so we’re down to watching the clock. Akira spent the morning checking out the drop site in Panmunjom, but by now he should be back at Camp Bonifas.”
“Sounds like things are falling into place.”
“Well, maybe as far as these defectors and the kidnapping goes, yeah,” Delahunt said, “but we still have this small matter of Kim Jong-il playing hide-and-seek with enough nukes to sprout mushroom clouds all the way from California to Wisconsin.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Changchon Mountain Range, North Korea
Major Jin Choon-Yei was in his office conferring by phone with the tunneling crew when Sergeant Dahn Yun-Bok appeared at the doorway, carrying his instrument kit. Jin waved Dahn into the room and quickly wrapped up his call.
“I have some preliminary findings,” Dahn reported once Jin was off the phone.
“That was quick,” Jin said, checking his watch. “You’ve been here barely an hour.”
“As I said, they are preliminary findings,” Dahn emphasized. “I still need to have some more sophisticated equipment brought in to verify everything, but it looks to me as if we might be able to get away with just building a reinforced collar around the area where the vault lies flush with the rock.”
“Sounds like a big project,” Jin said.
“Not really,” Dahn said. “We’d probably be able to do the work without disrupting any other activity.”
“That would be preferred, of course.”
Jin rose from his desk. Now seemed as good a time as ever to set the trap he’d planned for the MII undercover agent.
“I’d like to go over the specifics a little more,” he told Dahn, “but I have another matter to attend to. It should take only a few minutes, so if you’d like to just wait here…”
Dahn went for the bait.
“I’ll do that,” he said, opening the side pocket of his instrument kit and taking out a calculator as well as a small pad and pen. “I need to take a few notes and make some calculations anyway.”
“Make yourself comfortable, then,” Jin said. He pointed out the coffee machine in the corner of the room as well as a side table stocked with snacks. “And help yourself if you’re hungry.”
“Thank you.”
Jin excused himself, closing the door behind him as he left the office. He already had his keys out and he strode quickly past the room adjacent to his, then unlocked the door to a small conference room. Once inside, he made his way to a long oak credenza and unlocked one of the cabinet doors, pulling out the laptop he’d stashed there a half hour before. In less than thirty seconds he had the machine up and running and was staring at a split screen showing the view from the two minicams concealed in his office.
The major was startled at first, because there was no sign of Dahn on either screen. Jin began to wonder if the other man had left the office right after him, but moments later Dahn appeared, rising up into view from behind Jin’s desk.
“That would have been my first choice, too,” Jin murmured to himself. “That or the phone.”
As if in response to Jin’s ruminations, Dahn next picked up the phone and began tinkering with the handset. From Jin’s perspective it was difficult to see exactly what the undercover agent was doing, but when the sergeant went to his instrument kit and removed a small object the size of a button, there could be no doubt but that he was planting a second bug.
Jin had seen enough. He quickly shut down the computer and tucked it back in the credenza, then exited the conference room. He paused a moment outside his office and called across the chamber to one of his subordinates, raising his voice enough so that Dahn would have no trouble hearing him. It was enough that he’d caught the sergeant in the act of bugging his office; he didn’t want to force a confrontation here in the storage facility. Things would work out better, Jin figured, if they dealt with Dahn elsewhere.
As he’d hoped, by the time Jin had reentered his office, Dahn had moved away from the desk and was busying himself near the coffeemaker.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Jin apologized.
“Don’t worry,” Dahn assured him as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
Jin nonchalantly returned to his desk, making a point not to pay any undue attention to the bugged phone or the area beneath the desk where, he assumed, the MII agent had placed a second listening device.