Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

“I talked to your control officers on the fifth floor. I’ve read pretty much every report you’ve filed for the last nine months. You are doing a hell of a job.”

“Thank you, sir.” Adam couldn’t help it. His mind was spinning, trying to figure out what this was all about. A promotion? That would have surprised him. He had not been at his new assignment for long at all. Unless someone above him he didn’t know had moved on, it didn’t seem likely they’d pull Adam out of NOC work to move him back to Langley. And unless he was being promoted to station chief, a half-dozen steps above his level now, then Brian Calhoun wouldn’t be involved in the promotion.

That meant, to Adam, that Calhoun must be here because of a new operation. A good NOC, no matter how deep he is in his cover and no matter what it is he is doing, knew he could be moved at any time. But again, Adam thought to himself, the damn head of the service shouldn’t be the guy doling out the op orders.

“Your work in Singapore is going nicely, so far. And what you did in Hong Kong was nothing short of magnificent.”

“Thank you very much,” Adam said.

“But we rushed you back home like this because we have a new opportunity, and we think you might be just the man for the job.”

“A new operation?”

“Potentially, yes.”

“Okay,” Adam said, a hint of confusion bleeding through into his voice.

Calhoun cocked his head. “Something wrong?”

Adam smiled apologetically and said, “You can understand my confusion, sir. Normally my control officer, or maybe a section head, would brief me. I find it more than surprising that someone like yourself is talking to me about a new assignment.”

Now it was Calhoun’s turn to smile. “Yao, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

As if on cue, the same side door opened and Mary Pat Foley, the director of national intelligence, entered the room. Adam rose to his feet quickly, and Calhoun did the same.

Yao never saw top-level IC execs without three or four attendants and subordinates. It was confusing to him to see both Calhoun and Foley unaccompanied.

“Good morning, Adam.”

“Madame Director.”

“I heard you flew in from Singapore.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And then we rushed you here without a shower?”

Adam reddened with embarrassment. “Is it that obvious?”

Mary Pat smiled without responding, then she, Calhoun, and Yao sat at the conference table. “How far did we get?” she asked Calhoun.

“He’s still in the ‘what the hell is going on?’ phase.”

Foley laughed. “Unfortunately, Adam, some government servants spend their entire career in that phase. Not you, though. I’ll explain everything. First, I assume Brian already gave you the whole obligatory ‘we love your work’ spiel?”

“Uh . . . yes, ma’am.”

“Then I will cut to the chase. Adam, what do you know about the mining sector in China?”

Adam raised his eyebrows, surprised by the question for a few reasons, but at least, as far as the topic was concerned, he found himself on firm ground. “Quite a bit. When I was working undercover in Hong Kong as a corporate investigations consultant I had a lot of issues with two of China’s six state-owned mining concerns. Chinalco and Minmetals. They were stealing technology from Western firms, and I worked to bring these transgressions to light.”

“And what about rare earth element mining in particular?”

He was still off kilter because he was in an ODNI conference room with the top intelligence official in the U.S. government, but now he was more intrigued by this mysterious operation than he was by the manner it was being presented to him. “That’s huge over in China. They are the player in the industry, controlling over ninety percent of the world’s extraction and supply.”

“Go on,” Mary Pat said.

Adam smiled. If this was a test, he was about to nail it. “There are seventeen rare earth minerals, and they all occur together, so while a rare earth deposit might have a higher relative proportion of one of the minerals as opposed to another, a rare earth mine extracts all of the minerals together as ore, and then sends it off to be processed.

“Rare earths are divided into two categories: light and heavy.

“China extracts the majority of the world’s rare earth minerals for a number of reasons: Low labor costs and negligible environment standards for a process that is very hard on the environment allow them to price the goods cheaply. But the main reason for China’s supply-side dominance is the discovery of massive mineral deposits. They simply have more of the stuff than anyone else. Having said that, they also use more of it than anyone else. China ran into trouble due to its explosive growth. Its manufacturing sector began using more of the rare earths just as its demand for other commodities increased, and this left less available to export, increasing the cost of the commodity.

“Australia has been increasing its mining in the past few years, as has the U.S., but they are whistling in the wind in this industry.”

“Why do you say that?”

“China will always be at a competitive advantage with the West. They have absurdly low labor costs, their mines operate on government land without paying for the privilege, there are virtually no environmental regs for them there. We have some rare earth mining in the West, but we pay a lot more to get the commodity out of the ground and processed than the Chinese ever will.”

Calhoun slapped Yao on his back, startling him. He looked to Mary Pat. “I told you Yao would know his stuff.”

Adam clarified, “I know a good bit about the Chinese rare earth operations, the major players and the regions where they mine the ore. And I understand the technique of the mining and the ore processing in a general sense, but I sure couldn’t operate a gas scrubber at a rare earth mine or anything like that.”

Mary Pat said, “We don’t need you with a pick down in a shaft, but we were hoping you would already possess some knowledge about the industry.”

“That I do,” Adam said. He was humble about a lot of things, but he had been sitting in China, Hong Kong and then Singapore for the past few years totally engrossed in the Chinese economy. He had all the confidence in the world about his deep knowledge of it.

Mary Pat then asked, “And what about the illegal rare earth mining industry in China?”

“Sure,” he said, a little less confidently. “Gangster mines. Illegal private corporations run by Chinese organized crime have big REM mines in Inner Mongolia as well as other places. They are successful because local and regional governments benefit from them. The gangsters pay bribes and such.” He chuckled. “And if you think the government-run mines fall short of environmental standards, the gangster miners are a whole lot worse.”

Foley turned to Calhoun and nodded. Adam realized he’d passed some sort of a test, but he wasn’t sure what that had earned him. Calhoun leaned forward on his elbows. “We have one hell of a problem, and we have one hell of an opportunity.”

“You want to put me into a Chinese mine?” Adam knew the Chinese government had tried to kill him once, in Hong Kong. They got close, so close it was clear an intelligence breach had occurred that gave them information about Yao and his actions. He wasn’t crazy about working in China, and he felt awkward about the fact it looked like he’d have to remind these two in front of him of his unique situation.

But Calhoun shook his head and said, “No. We’d need you to go into China for a very short time to establish your cover, but we are confident we have a way to make that happen. Your ultimate destination would, instead, be somewhere else.”