The Arctic Event by James H. Cobb Read Free Book Online

group on the Berkeley campus, a group promoting, loudly, the national unification of Korea and the withdrawal of the United States military from the peninsula. It was also an identified front organization for North Korean espionage in the United States.
    Randi’s cab drew up in the long line of vehicles feeding through the tollbooth access to the airport expressway. Perhaps a dozen cars ahead, she spotted the taxi carrying Sun Chok and his security escort. All was still on track.
    Sun Chok had been placed under intensive covert surveillance. He was tailed, his apartment was searched and bugged, and his telephone and Internet traffic was closely monitored. In short order it was confirmed that he was indeed spying for the North Korean government.
    The evidence was adequate for an arrest warrant, but an alternative had been decided upon. Franklin Sun Chok’s betrayal would be put to good use.
    Randi glanced at her wristwatch and frowned. If this traffic didn’t break soon, both she and the Koreans would be in trouble. Then she told herself not to be silly. The next flight to Pyongyang wouldn’t be going anywhere until its VIP passengers were aboard.
    No doubt to the delight of his North Korean controllers, Franklin Sun Chok was given a promotion at the Lawrence Livermore facility, complete with a handsome pay raise, a private office, an executive assistant, and a deeper access to the laboratories’ secrets. In reality, he was being encapsulated in a technological fantasyland of the Central Intelligence Agency’s creation.
    For over a year, Sun Chok was fed a carefully metered diet of solid, valid, low-grade information: research breakthroughs that were destined to be openly published in science journals in months to come, and minor military secrets that would be secret only until the next round of congressional budgetary hearings.
    As eager and as innocent as a baby bird gobbling an offered worm, he had relayed this information to his contacts, building their confidence in him as a valid resource.
    When U.S. intelligence assets monitoring North Korea’s internal R & D programs began to see this fed information being put to use, they knew that the Sun Chok line was being trusted. It was time to drive home the dagger.
    Beijing Capital Airport looked little different from any other modernistic airline terminal anywhere else in the world. Drawing up at the departure entries, Randi caught only a glimpse of the Koreans as they entered the terminal, but that was as she wished it. If she couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see her.
    Barring the usual large number of assault rifle–carrying People’s Armed Police, airport security was actually lighter than at an American airport. Randi was permitted access to the concourses after only a single pass of her shoulder bag through an X-ray machine. She had nothing to be concerned about here. She carried neither weapons nor any James Bondian gadgetry. None were needed for this tasking.
    With the hook solidly set in the North Korean jaw, Franklin Sun Chok was “cleared” to an even higher security level and assigned work on a major new project involving the national antiballistic missile defense network. Information began to cross Sun Chok’s desk that hinted tantalizingly at possible countermeasures to the system.
    On the evening before Sun Chok left on his annual vacation from the laboratory, he remained late in his office, “cleaning up his desk.” As CIA observers looked on cybernetically, Sun Chok accessed and downloaded a long series of secure data files on the antiballistic missile network.
    Unknown to him, each of his illicit computer accesses was diverted to a carefully doctored alternate file set, prepared just for this moment. Then, instead of heading for Las Vegas as he had told his coworkers, Sun Chok had driven north, for the Canadian border.
    Clearing security, Randi strode through the luggage-burdened crowds. She was less apparent here, for Capital Airport handled