Her plan was to avoid the others until the package arrived, but after a few minutes she decided that as much as she didn’t want to get into a conversation with anyone right now, it was her responsibility to check on the subjects of her work here in Vietnam.
She walked into the living room and found the three security officers standing along the wall behind four men and one woman, who sat on sofas and chairs. These five were all Caucasian; they looked straight at her as she entered the room, their faces illuminated by candlelight. Even in the amber glow Martel saw the apprehension in their eyes.
She felt obligated to make some remarks to calm the group down. In English she said, “Everything is in order. I am waiting for a visitor to arrive, and then we will proceed.”
Before anyone spoke, there was a knock at the front door. The three security men looked up and started toward the entryway, but Martel waved them back into their places and went herself.
She opened the door to find a man in a black motorcycle jacket. He was Asian; she assumed he was North Korean like the others, but she sure as hell was not going to ask.
The man carried a folder in his hand. He held it out and said, “You saw no one?”
She took the folder. “You already asked me this. What is wrong? What happened?”
She looked past him and into the parking circle. Two men sat in the rain on motorcycles. A third bike, presumably belonging to the man in front of her, was parked alongside them.
The North Korean stepped into the entryway and shut the door. “The American had men with him. We were not notified of this.”
“Nor was I. As I said before, it wasn’t my job to identify surveillance.” The man did not seem satisfied with her answer, so she added, “Call New York if you’d like to make a complaint about my performance.”
The North Korean’s nostrils flared. Martel presumed he wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to like this, but she couldn’t care less. She ignored the man’s glare and began looking through the folder. Inside she found five smaller manila folders. Opening them one at a time, she fanned through five complete sets of documents: EU diplomatic passports. Czech diplomatic assignments to Pyongyang. Credit cards bound with rubber bands.
She returned to the living room; the North Korean in the black jacket followed behind. Veronika looked at the photo page of each passport and each visa, and she took her time to match the documents to the five sitting in front of her. They sat quietly, nervously waiting for her to say something, but she did not rush herself.
All the documents looked perfect, except for the last of the passports. The cover appeared to be stained with red ink. Martel ran a thumb over the embossed cover and she realized the color was no stain, as it came off easily.
Looking at her thumb, she saw it was fresh blood.
Mon Dieu, she said to herself. These men had taken these by force from the American agent.
She glanced up at the North Korean. His eyes remained on her — surely he had seen her notice the blood. She thought he was enjoying her discomfort.
“Everything is in order,” Veronika Martel said. The North Korean left without another word, and within moments she heard three motorcycles firing up and driving off.
Martel put the documents on a table and moved a lamp closer. To the entire group she said, “Your flight leaves at nine-thirty a.m., arriving in Pyongyang at eleven thirty-five. I’ll go over your legends with each of you, and then you should try to get a few hours’ sleep. I will wake everyone at six.”
The one other female in the house, a redhead in her forties, stood up from the sofa and approached. Her Australian accent was obvious. “Would you mind it if I spoke to you in private?”
Veronika Martel just shrugged and moved into the kitchen. The woman followed. She was much shorter and a little heavier than Martel, and the lighting here did her no favors. Martel thought the redhead looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. It had been rough for all five of the Australians, she knew, as she had been with them all week.
The French intelligence agent said, “What can I do for you, Dr. Powers?”
The Australian closed the door all the way. She spoke softly. “Look. I… we agreed to come. The money was incredible, obviously, but it seemed like an adventure, you know?”
“What is your question?”
“I left a family behind back in Sydney. Six months’ work, and I’m back home. That’s what was agreed on.”
Martel put a hand out on the counter, strummed her perfect nails on the tiled surface.
Dr. Powers continued, “I… I just want to make sure the terms promised me are honored.”
Martel made no attempt to whisper. “Dr. Powers, my job is to facilitate your clandestine travel safely from Sydney to Pyongyang. Nothing more. Whatever agreement you have with the DPRK, it is between yourself and the DPRK.”
Powers looked to the door to the living room nervously. “I don’t trust them. They watch over us like we are prisoners. They won’t answer my questions. I just thought… you are working with them. Can you help me? Maybe just ask them to be a little more forthcoming about the arrangements in place. Please?”
Martel took her hand from the counter next to her and placed it on the smaller woman’s shoulder. With a little smile she said, “Doctor. I understand.”
The older redhead looked relieved. “I knew you would.”
“I understand that the fact I am female and I have round eyes, to you, means I should be more sympathetic than the North Korean men acting as security here. But nothing could be further from the truth. They have use for you, I do not.” She lowered her hand and headed for the door. “When you get to Pyongyang, I’m sure your concerns will be alleviated.”
Powers all but shouted, “Do you have any idea how ridiculous that statement sounds?”
Martel was unfazed by the redhead’s anger. “I didn’t agree to work for the North Koreans. You did. Your decision is made, and you would do well to make peace with that decision, because they are not going to allow you to change your mind at this juncture.” She returned to the living room without another word.
As she passed out the documents and went over the individual legends for each of the five, she let herself wonder what would happen to these Australians. Working with the North Koreans certainly would be fraught with legitimate concern, but she expected all five of them to fulfill their contract with Pyongyang and to return home much wealthier than when they left. It was, of course, illegal work, and they were being paid with this in mind.
Martel knew very little about what these five would be doing for North Korea, but even so, she wasn’t worried about this operation from any sort of a moral standpoint. It wasn’t as if these people were nuclear scientists or rocket scientists. They were geologists, that was all. No threat to anyone, certainly, even if they were working for the North Koreans. No, this was just some industrial commercial and diplomatic subterfuge, nothing dangerous.
And then she paused for a moment, thinking about the blood on the passport and the annoying American who had no doubt shed it. If the North Koreans were willing to use violence in a foreign nation to secure the travel of these geologists, perhaps the stakes were higher than she thought.
She pushed the misgivings out of her mind, a skill she had developed and honed over her intelligence career.
Right now she just wanted to get these five on the nine-thirty flight tomorrow morning to Pyongyang, to sanitize the safe house, and then to go home.
Nothing else mattered to Veronika Martel.
5
The dented gray sedan carrying the four Campus operators and the body of ex — CIA officer Colin Hazelton pulled into the hangar of the fixed-base operator at the far east end of Tan Son Nhat airport just after one a.m.