Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Finally, in an excited whisper, Duke Sharps said, “ Riley. I can give you Riley on a platter.”

“Necessary . . . but not sufficient.”

“He’s gone off grid. He’s gone off grid, but I will find him.”

“How?”

“He’s trying to do a deal. I heard about it from Roblas.”

“What deal?”

Sharps hesitated, but only for a moment. He was a beaten man. Full cooperation was his only play. “In Thailand. Some processing equipment for the North Koreans. He’s trying to go behind my back to do it, but I heard. Russian cargo planes. It goes down tomorrow. If you hurry you might be able to—”

Clark held up a finger to silence Duke, and then he finger-motioned someone over. A man appeared from the sidewalk-seating entrance of the restaurant. He was young, with dark hair and a trim beard. He wore a dark blue suit and sunglasses.

He pulled out FBI credentials and flashed them.

“Wayne Sharps, I’m Special Agent Caruso, FBI. On your feet.”

Sharps hesitated. Everyone in the restaurant stared.

John Clark just sat there with his legs crossed and a satisfied smile on his face.

“I’m not going to ask you again,” Caruso said. “You stand, or I put you face-first on the floor with a knee in the back of your neck.”

Sharps stood now, and Caruso turned him around and cuffed him.

—

Adam Yao sat on the catwalk of his cone crusher with three of the other technicians. It was six p.m., another full day without power on his floor, but there were candles and flashlights, and the four men had spent nine hours sitting here on their cold and dormant machine, smoking and talking and wondering if the North Koreans were ever going to get their act together and turn the factory back on.

A man walked alone up the dark walkway in the middle of the powder-processing floor. All four cone crusher employees stood and came down from the catwalk when they realized it was Director Hwang. He’d never shown any interest in this part of the facility at all, but now he appeared fascinated by the cone crusher. He walked around it, seeming to inspect it in the dim light.

Yao stood in a line with the three others.

Hwang looked the men over now. In Mandarin he said, “Which one of you works with the computer?”

Adam stepped forward. “Shan Xin, Comrade Director.”

Hwang stared at him a long time. Adam just stared back, hoping like hell Hwang didn’t screw this up.

The director said, “I have questions about the software we need to buy to update the machinery. Are you the man I need to ask about this?”

“Yes, Comrade Director.”

“Then follow me.”

Adam followed the man back into an administrative section of the building. He’d never been here, and he was surprised when, after climbing up a staircase, he saw Dr. Helen Powers coming out of a room with her lab coat on. She nodded to Hwang and looked at Adam with surprise, but she said nothing.

They stepped into an office and Hwang closed the door. He looked nervous, like his demeanor before had been a put-on and now he was letting true feelings show.

“Have we met before?” he asked. It was a weird thing to say, but Adam knew the man just wanted to establish that Adam was, in fact, with Chinese intelligence.

“No, Comrade Director, but I believe we have a mutual friend. Chang Lan.”

Hwang blew out a sigh of relief, but afterward he appeared no less worried. He shook Adam’s hand.

“I had no idea you were here, inside the operation, the entire time.”

Adam kept his conversation in Mandarin. Hwang seemed to speak it well enough. “I understand you have your family with you.”

“Yes,” the director answered quickly. “Can we go tonight?”

“Better we do it early in the morning. When you leave for work. We can take your car.”

“And we will go to the border? Do you have a way across?”

Adam wasn’t sure what to say. He decided to stick to as much truth as he could think of. “We will travel by air. I am to take you and your family to a location near Sonchon, and we will be picked up.”

Hwang said, “But we must leave now. You do not have the time you think you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Chinese technicians will be leaving tonight.”

“What?”

“The processing facility will go dormant and the workers are being sent home.”

“Why? What has changed?”

Hwang blinked in surprise. “You don’t know?”

Now Adam said, “I don’t know what ?”

“General Ri of the RGB killed himself yesterday.”

Oh, shit, Adam thought. He knew he needed to look like he was in charge, so he just nodded, then asked, “What did Ri have to do with Chongju?”

Hwang said, “Ri was the only chance we had to make the refinery work. We will never get the froth flotation tanks now. My only hope is to escape with my family to China.”

Adam thought it over for just a moment, because he realized every second was important now. “Okay. If they decide the refinery won’t work, they might have you shot. We’d better go tonight.”

“With my family,” Hwang added.

“Yes. It is arranged. We can accommodate all three of them.”

“Five.”

“Five?”

“My parents are coming.”

Adam shook his head. He kept speaking in Mandarin, though it was a challenge. “Your what ? Parents? Hell, no. I can’t take everybody.”

“It’s no problem, I have them staying at a vacation cottage near the water. Just twenty minutes’ drive from Chongju.”

“We can’t bring your parents.”

“Then I cannot leave.”

Adam found himself wanting to punch a wall. After thinking it over a minute more, he said, “Okay. We take your car to the hotel. Pick up your family, go to the cottage, grab your parents, and head for the extraction.”

“What about your other agent?”

“What other agent?”

“Dr. Powers. The Australian.”

“She isn’t an agent. She just gave you the note.”

“My aide saw her do it. They will think she was involved.” Hwang looked away.

Adam said, “Internal security will kill her, won’t they?”

“Oh, yes. Of course they will.”

“Goddamn it.” Adam mumbled it in English.

“What?”

“It’s English. It means ‘The more, the merrier.’”

72

Five minutes later Hwang went back to his office and explained to his staff that he would drive himself back to the hotel and then go visit his parents. They assumed the director’s parents were home in Pyongyang, and he did nothing to dispel their assumption.

While the director was taking care of this and other matters, Yao was in the geology lab with Helen Powers. They were alone, which was a good thing for them both, because Adam decided he would speak English.

He didn’t think she would think much of her chances if he told her he was a Chinese spy. She put together on her own who he worked for the moment he dropped his accent fully. “Dr. Powers. Do you really want to get out of here?”

“I . . . you are American?”

“You tell anyone and I will be killed. You will be suspected, at best, and stood up against a wall right next to me, at worst. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Why the blazes would I tell anyone? You think I like these people? They are mad bastards.”

“Hwang and I are leaving, and if you stay, you will be in danger.”

“Let me get my purse.”

—

Adam drove behind the wheel of a silver Pyeonghwa Pronto, Hwang’s seven-passenger SUV. Hwang sat next to him in the front, and in the middle row sat his wife and two small children. They were all confused, but they were quiet, because they were obedient, and Hwang told them everything was fine.