Full Force and Effect

31

Lieutenant General Ri was not one to micromanage his operations. At present he had more than one hundred different schemes and plans in motion around the globe, and they were most all being run effectively — some more effectively than others — by his subordinates.

Counterfeiting operations, drug-smuggling operations, weapons transfers to Syria and Iraq and East Africa, and weapons purchases from Iran and Pakistan. Kidnappings in Japan and in South Korea.

And Fire Axe, the assassination of the President of the United States, in Mexico.

He couldn’t involve himself any more in Fire Axe, for the sake of deniability, but of all the other operations, the New World Metals operation was different, and therefore it required his full attention and scrutiny. As far as Ri was concerned, the Dae Wonsu himself had gone so far as to threaten him with violent death if he did not attain the ICBM, he had two years left to do so, and Ri saw no possible way this would happen without the success of New World Metals and the Chongju mine.

So he kept an eye on every last aspect of the mission. Even though Ri and his RGB did not hire Duke Sharps directly, the North Korean lieutenant general knew all about the American man and his part in the plan. He knew the importance of the procedural vote in the United Nations, and he had been watching Sharps work via reports he received from Óscar Roblas.

Ri felt Sharps was doing an excellent job with his coercion operation, and under any other circumstances he would have simply allowed his American proxy force in New York City to continue on, but he knew how utterly important the success of Sharps and his operation was to Ri’s own personal fortune.

And two days earlier something had happened in Prague which further affected the equation. A team of RGB men had been looking for a low-ranking consular affairs officer who had helped them with some documentation they had needed to get foreign expertise into Chongju. Ri had not been micromanaging this situation, but he was, of course, aware of the “underground railroad” of scientists coming in to work at Chongju from nations that would not have permitted their travel. Ri had not even been aware the Czech consular official had disappeared, but, according to the report he read this morning, the man turned up back at his apartment in Prague, along with two Americans. The North Koreans moved in, a rush decision to eliminate the consular official was made because he was in the process of revealing aspects of the North Korean operation, and according to the surviving agents, the Americans had been ready to repel force with force of their own.

Four North Koreans, three from Ri’s own RGB, had died in a gunfight.

Lieutenant General Ri had been deeply distressed by this incident because he did not know who the Americans were, what they knew about his operation or his plans, or what they would do next. He immediately thought of Sharps in New York City and how incredibly crucial a good result in the United Nations would be to New World Metals’ continued transfer of the money he needed.

Ri would not sit back and hope for the best from Duke Sharps. He would send his own operators to monitor the situation and, if necessary, employ stronger measures. He’d sanction his men to kill on the streets of America, if necessary, because the stakes were high enough to warrant it.

That wasn’t Sharps’s game — this Ri had been informed by his U.S.-based RGB staff. The American ex — FBI agent skirted the laws in his home country, but he wouldn’t run crews of armed direct-action forces, so Ri had to look into other avenues for this.

The North Korean permanent mission to the United Nations is on the thirteenth floor of an office building on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 44th Street, a block away from the entrance to the United Nations building. The comings and goings of the personnel associated with the mission are carefully watched by FBI Counterintelligence Division special agents, as well as many other U.S. government entities. General Ri knew he could not easily call his New York office and simply order up agents to fan into the area to protect Duke Sharps and his employees as they worked on Ri’s behalf.

But Ri had other resources at his disposal in the city. There are more than two hundred thousand Koreans or Korean Americans living in New York, and Ri had influence over hundreds of North Korean agents or expatriates residing in the area, and some of these were covert employees of the Reconnaissance General Bureau. There were even direct-action agents in the city, there for the purpose of targeting North Korean dissidents or South Korean troublemakers. After a meeting and a phone call in his Pyongyang office, Ri had secured the use of a unit of twelve highly trained North Korean sleepers in Manhattan and notified their control of his desire that they watch over Sharps and report back.

Within twenty-four hours of his order, the North Koreans in Manhattan had begun shadowing Sharps Global Intelligence Partners employees while they worked their operations within the city. They were tasked with making sure the Americans succeeded in their efforts to affect the procedural vote, and they had been given the green light to use any measures and resources necessary to see that the mission was a success.