Steve Abbott - Devil's Gambit

The two men walked across perfectly tended embassy grounds. “Your men are most enthusiastic in the pursuit of their duties,” Chun observed dryly.

Prentice chuckled and nodded his head, “Yeah, well not much happens around here, but when it does, it can get hairy pretty fast. Most of my boys have been around. It makes ’em a bit more cautious. The boy who frisked you operated out of Kabul. He lost more than a few friends over there.”

Chun rubbed his still-sore back. “That explains much.”

Prentice smiled in spite of himself. They continued up the main steps of the embassy past the door guards. As Prentice returned their salutes, he saw Chun’s right hand twitch. It was a hard thing to give up being a soldier. The Colonel opened the door to his office and directed Chun to one of the leather chairs in front of his desk. Ambassador Cranwell and the station CIA resident turned up seconds later.

Ambassador Cranwell, all sharp creases and a perfect smile, was a sharp contrast to Doug Bishop, the rumpled and sweating CIA resident. Cranwell got down to business, cutting off Bishop’s hasty questions before Bishop had a chance to blurt them out.

“What’s going on here, Frank?”

“Well, sir, it appears that this gentleman here is a highly placed North Korean citizen who wishes to defect to our country.”

Cranwell motioned Bishop to close the door to the hall. He walked around to face Chun directly. “And you sir, are?”

Chun stood. “Chun Seng Kyun, Deputy Director of Supply Section, third. Engineering Section, Ministry of People’s Security, North Korea.” He smiled, “But I am sure that your resident officer of the CIA is more familiar with my activities under the auspices of the Yeun Tae Trading Company.”

Cranwell turned to Bishop, “Can you confirm this man’s identity, Doug?” Bishop still could not believe his ears. An opportunity like this was like winning the lottery. To have one of the most important defectors in thirty years show up on your front doorstep. Hell, he could smell that muggy Washington air already.

“Uh yes, Mister Chun’s activities in this region are well-documented,” he managed to stammer out. “This person does resemble what few photographs we have of Comrade Chun.”

Cranwell absorbed all this in silence.

Chun pointed to his haversack on Prentice’s desk. “Please, I have not come empty handed. I believe this will prove I am who I claim to be.” Chun reached down for his haversack and extracted the tube containing the microfilms of the North Korean nuclear facilities he helped build. He put the tube on Prentice’s desk. “Gentlemen, I give you the complete plans for both the Uranium processing facility at Yongbyon and the Plutonium breeder reactor facility at Packchon.” Chun pulled out another three small, lead cylinders.

Bishop picked up one of the cylinders and examined it.

“These are isotope samples of those facilities for your own independent analysis,” Chun said.

Bishop dropped the tube he was holding as if a snake had bit him. His face drained of all color. “Oh, Christ! It’s operational then, isn’t it?” He pointed at the three cylinders. “I mean, that stuff, is it weapon’s grade?”

Chun’s reply was blunt, “Yes, it is operational, but they have as yet to produce enough material for any type of device.”

Bishop turned to Prentice. “We have to get him and his stuff out of here now.” Bishop was out the door and down the hall to the communications room before Prentice or Cranwell had a chance to answer.

Cranwell, always the diplomat, held out his hand to Chun. “Welcome to America, Mister Chun. It appears all of your papers are in order.”

Major Pieter Boskovitch drew the heavy smoke through his mouth, down deep into his lungs. Tendrils of pleasure snaked from his depths as the synapses of his brain exploded in random bursts, igniting every nerve and fiber with sensation. Waves of color erupted before his eyes on a shore of infinite darkness. He pitched and whirled away from the terror and uncertainties of life; pushed with the help of the hashish and heroin concoction the proprietor, Sergei Smirnoff, served to his Russian patrons; patrons all too eager to escape the drudgeries and fear of the new order.

Pieter smoked, no telltale needle marks to give him away to the dreaded GRU.

Military Intelligence was still a force to be reckoned with, even with the FSS growing in power every day. Another deep drag and more colors snaked across his vision. He would sleep soon, and the dreams were the best part of all.

Through a small peephole in the wall, Sergei watched Boskovitch’s slide into oblivion. His grandparents had been accused of collaboration in the last days of the Second World War, by a self-serving NKVD officer who had a long-held grudge against them. Sergei had avenged their deaths with piano wire; the old man who had caused his family shame died in twisting agony. He slid the cover of his hidden vantage point back into place. The two others who fit the description marked out in Verkatt’s instructions were on the same duty station. They were also lying in a drugged stupor in cells on the next floor down. Sergei’s concoction was a powerful mixture of four percent heroin with the rest hashish. It gave a potent high. Soon, these three men would be receiving a much more powerful high. Sergei reached into his hip pocket and extracted a cloth pouch containing a hypodermic syringe, needles, and four vials of pure medical grade, eight percent liquid heroin solution. Twice the normal purity available to him.

The pouch had been in the attaché case; Verkatt had thought of everything. Sergei drew out the syringe and attached a needle to the end. The needle glinted in the light; the ultimate coercion device. He pierced the top of one of the vials and drew some of the clear liquid into the syringe. With light taps at the side of the cylinder, he depressed the plunger to push any air out. He couldn’t have these addicts dying of an aneurysm. He smiled at his own dark joke.

Pieter was far gone. He didn’t hear Sergei enter the room, wasn’t aware of the burly Georgian as he walked to the side of his cot. Even as the needle slid into the vein on his arm and the carefully measured amount of heroin started on its insidious course through his body, Pieter sensed nothing. Sergei looked down at the prone Major in his rumpled work dress, his glazed eyes rolled back in their sockets. A thin rivulet of drool ran down the side of the Major’s thin face. He hated these men for their weakness, even as he dealt it out to them, but most of all, he hated them for being Russian.

Sergei was Georgian to his core, every bit the “man of steel” Stalin had been. What good was a life if it wasn’t being pushed to the edge? Was it his fault the edge lay on the other side of the law? His father had been a drunk and his mother a whore, they had nothing to teach him. But the Bratva offered an unlimited future. And Sergei progressed quickly from just another boyevik or warrior to a respected and feared kryshas. He was a man who got things done and didn’t mind a bit of blood on his hands. His job done, he left to take care of his other two guests.

Pieter started to come around; coming down was not always a good experience. This time was different. He still felt very mellow. He lifted his watch up and was amazed at how much time had passed: nearly four hours. He did not see the small red dot on the inside of his arm where Sergei had injected him. Pieter struggled off the grimy cot and pulled his work dress straight, anxious to find his comrades. The locked door came as a surprise. The door was made of stout wood with a small covered grille set into the middle of the top of it. It reminded him uncomfortably of a prison door. For the first time, Pieter saw that the rooms Sergei kept in the back of his establishment were more like cells. Even more disconcerting was the silence. Sergei’s place was usually loud at any hour. He beat at the door with his fists.