The president said, “All right, gentlemen, let’s get to business. General Radford is monitoring the progress of our spec-ops team on Matsu Shan. If we need to speak with him, or if something develops that we must know, we’ll use the SRO’s secure communications network.” He pointed to a flying-saucer-like device sitting in the middle of the table. Paige moved a potato chip bag away from it.
“As you all know,” the president continued, after a slow, deliberate intake of breath, “the SEALs ran into stronger-than-anticipated resistance on Matsu Shan. While the success of the mission and their safe extraction are paramount, I’m more worried about our discovery that the North Koreans have transported nuclear warheads from storage to their missile launch site at Hamhung and to a railhead at Najin.”
The president slowly looked around the table at the conferees, his eyes taking them in one at a time. His look conveyed how serious the actions were that the North Koreans had taken. It was clear to all that the president was more than worried; he was frightened by the uncertainty of what they faced.
“Jesus Christ,” was Ellsworth’s response, the only one from around the table.
The commander in chief motioned to Paige. “Holland.”
“We’ve had a Humint asset in place in Pyongyang for some time. Until the overthrow of Kim Jong-il, this asset fed us information about North Korea on a regular basis. Now, just when we desperately need more information, our asset has either gone to ground or been discovered. We tend to think the former rather than the latter, because if the NKs had uncovered him, they’d have said so, probably paraded him on TV.”
Ellsworth and his boss, Jack Webster, exchanged surprised looks. Friedman saw their exchange and interjected, “What you just heard is above Purple. No one outside this group is cleared for it. I want to add that we had no warning whatsoever from this asset of the coup in Pyongyang. Nor of the weapons transfer.”
“In any event,” Paige went on, “absent Humint from Pyongyang, Defense, and the SRO have worked hard to connect the unsealing of the nuclear storage facility in the Kangnam Mountains to the crisis we face and how those events relate to the meeting on Matsu Shan between Marshal Jin and this so-called mystery man we haven’t yet identified. We believe there’s a strong connection between the three events but don’t know what it is.”
Paige picked at his blue Oxford shirt, which was patched with sweat. “I must caution that while everything points to the transport of weapons to Najin, we just don’t know enough to be confident that they were moved. Nevertheless, we think it prudent to assume they’re up there.”
SecDef Dale Gordon, a former civil rights attorney and Wall Street banker friend of the president, said, “Holland, what’s the time frame between the unsealing of the storage facility and the discovery that the warheads may have been moved to Najin? And where in the chain of events does the Matsu Shan caper fit in?”
“We and the SRO confirmed that the NKs moved them out of storage a week ago and trucked them to Hamhung. There was a seventy-two-hour period when we lost track of them. As you know, Mr. Secretary, nuclear weapons — sensing technology isn’t foolproof. We eventually found the warheads — at least the truck they’d been in — on its way to Najin, where it’s only a short hop across the border to Russia. The transporting of the warheads to Najin coincided with the meeting at Matsu Shan.”
They all digested this, after which Ellsworth said, “General Holland, how big are these warheads? I mean, how powerful? Anybody know?”
“We think in the twenty- to fifty-kiloton range.”
“In other words, as big as the Hiroshima bomb but maybe bigger.”
“There’s just no way to know,” Paige said. “We’ve tracked these warheads for years but haven’t been able to assess their potential yield with any degree of accuracy. Given what we know of the regime’s production facilities, it’s safe to assume a number somewhere in the middle.”
“They’re Pakistani knockoffs, right?” said Webster.
“More than knockoffs,” Gordon interjected. “They’re Pakistani nuclear weapons with NK labels on them. The Pakis went over there and built the goddamn things for them using NK bomb fuel.”
The president cleared his throat. “So we come back to the main question: If we assume the weapons are at the border, what’s Jin going to do with them? Why move them to the border with Russia at all? Clearly they don’t have a dispute with the Russians that would justify their presence in Najin. Any ideas?”
“He’s trying to hide them, move them onto Russian soil so we can’t touch them,” Ellsworth said. “So they won’t have to give up their ace in the hole.”
Gordon said, “But to do that they’d have to have the approval and cooperation of the Russians. And as far as we know, they haven’t moved them over the border, not yet, anyway.”