Devil's Fork Read Free

in
the chaos of everyone talking, eating, drinking and laughing, she
would spot Tom standing alone with his drink. But he was not
standing there out of shyness like she caught herself doing once in
a while. His eyes would be half-closed and he had an expression
that seemed to say that he owned the building. Others must have
felt it because he was never standing alone for long – people were
always coming up to him asking him questions – his opinion on
something – or asking about his war stories. She always had a
thousand questions she wanted to ask him.
    Just then she saw a large-framed,
dark-haired figure leisurely stroll past her door.
    Tom!
    She ran out of her door with her files and
coffee.
    “ Tom, good you’re
here”
    Tom looked back, smiled at her and then kept
walking to his office as she caught up to him.
    “ How was your weekend
Sara?”
    “ Good. Anderson wants you
in the secure conference room. He wants to start the briefing right
away.”
    “ Let’s go”
    They walked to the end of
the hall. On the interior side of the building was a conference
room specially built to prevent sound leakage. The CIA’s internal
security staff constantly monitored it for electronic surveillance.
Sara remembered learning that the basic way electronic bugs worked
is that they recorded the sounds around them and transmitted the
recordings to a device outside the room. The transmission could
either be continuous, meaning it was sent through a live feed, or
the bug could record for a number of hours and then send the
transmission in one batch. Ultimately an electronic signal needed
to be sent outside of the room. In the secure conference rooms, the
CIA had devices that monitored whether electronic signals were
transmitting out of the room. This conference room was also in the
interior of the building and windowless. Foreign intelligence
services had developed a technology in the 1970’s that sensed the
vibrations a window made from the voices inside and translated
those vibrations into words. This allowed someone sitting in a car
outside to listen to what was being said in the conference room.
Windowless conference rooms were more secure.
    When Sara and Tom walked in, several people
were already sitting inside. Sara thought one was from the
technology group – she recognized him but did not know him. He
introduced himself as Eric.
    “ Are you here for
Anderson’s briefing” She asked
    “ Yes” Eric
replied.
    The other man, who introduced himself as Sam
said he was a lawyer from the White House. Sara noticed that
lawyers snuck around and got into SAD meetings from time to
time.
    Matt Smith was sitting by a laptop at the
head of the conference table. Matt was the group’s IT specialist
and was charged with communications – often with the military.
    There was an ominous map of North Korea on
the screen. As they were getting settled, Anderson walked in with
an older looking South Korean man – one of the people Sara saw in
the other conference room earlier. Anderson was in a dark suit,
white shirt, and dark tie.
    “ I thought I saw you come
in,” Anderson said to Tom.
    “ Yes, sir. Luckily it was
smooth driving over here this morning”
    Anderson introduced the man he came in
with.
    “ Tom, Sara, this is Mr.
Park. He is South Korea’s National Intelligence Service’s director
of their deep cover program in North Korea. He just got in
yesterday. You probably saw his team in the other conference
room.”
    The three shook hands and sat down. Anderson
closed the door and began the briefing immediately.
    “ Well, we have an
interesting situation. Two days ago, one of Mr. Park’s officers who
was operating in Pyongyang was compromised. He took his own life
rather than allowing himself to get captured. However before he
died, he sent back a message. As background, this officer had been
tasked with finding a hidden base where North Korea conducts most
of its nuclear weapons research. We along with the South Korean