White Gold

by David Barker

  Feinberg knocked on the door and entered, holding that infernal roll tab again.

  “Sir, there’s a lot of chatter on the Terror Formers’ wapp about some big new mission.”

  “I thought those conversations were encrypted. That’s why all the terrorists use them, isn’t it?”

  “Impossible to crack, yes. But my roll tab is a member of the wapp group.”

  “Anything more concrete to go on this time?”

  “Even in their encrypted messages they’re being cautious. But given where the messages are most frequent and references to local time, I would say it’s probably close to China or Japan.”

  “Not again.” The Director opened the drawer in his desk, looked at the new whisky bottle but resisted the temptation. He saw that Feinberg had noticed, closed the drawer and looked away, refusing to make eye contact. “Wait. One of the reports I was just reading… where is it? Ah yes. Sat Division is picking up an enormous amount of activity in North Korea right now. Seems like the whole army is on manoeuvres. The South Koreans are pulling their hair out, demanding an explanation. The Japanese have put their missile defence system on full alert. And the Chinese have even issued a denial that anything’s going on.”

  “Can’t be a coincidence. But why have the Terror Formers gone and kicked that hornets’ nest?”

  “I don’t know, Feinberg. But keep monitoring. This is your only priority for the time being. Got it?”

  Sim and Rosie were at home, playing 3D scrabble. The long daylight hours were preventing Rosie from going to bed early. But she was too tired to go out. So, a board game for the third time this week. Sim tried to teach her how to play a strategy game called Where’s My Oil Drum, but she had never been into complicated rules. At school, Rosie had excelled at the arts, and languages in particular. Which meant – much to Sim’s annoyance – that she usually beat him at word games.

  Rosie put down cubes that spelt out BUMP.

  “Triple letter for the B, and a double word score. That makes, nine plus seven, times two, 32.”

  “Alright, clever clogs.” Sim stacked cubes for CRI on top of the B. “Eight points.”

  NAP and Y were added by Rosie around the P. “Twelve points, oh and the Y was on a double letter, so that’s 16.” She took a sip of cranberry juice.

  Sim rotated the board through 90 degrees and put S in front of NAPPY. Three more cubes magnetised themselves to the S to form SCAN. “Thirteen plus six and a single rotation makes 29. I’m in the lead for once.”

  It didn’t last.

  Sim and Rosie strode around the centre of Dornoch in the morning sun, hand-in-hand. Rosie beamed at a few people whose names Sim couldn’t quite remember. They went into a clothes shop and Rosie tried on some maternity trousers.

  “Can you see my tummy in these?”

  Sim shook his head. Add a pair of oversized shoes and Rosie would look more like a clown in the circus than a proudly pregnant woman. But he kept the thought to himself.

  “Hmm, no good.” Rosie went to choose a different pair.

  Afterwards, they went for lunch in their favourite café. Rosie had double helpings of smashed avocado, while Sim had his usual fisherman’s pie and a side order of neeps.

  “Dya think we need a bigger house?” he asked.

  Rosie wrinkled her nose. “What for? The bairn can start in a Moses basket in our room. And we’ll clear out the junk room, paint it up when the little one’s ready for a cot.”

  “What about when our parents come to visit?”

  Rosie shrugged and looked out of the window. “There’s always the Castle Hotel for your mum and dad. They can afford it. Mine live close enough – they probably won’t stay the night.” They finished their meal in silence, exchanging an occasional smile.

  A smudge of grey above Struie hill was all that was left of the daylight as Sim rode his motorbike to the Sat Division monitoring station at Wilkhaven lighthouse. The new guard opened the barrier for him. Sim wondered when the guard would stop being thought of as new. After all, Rusty Jimmy had retired a couple of years ago. As he parked his bike, Sim looked up into the evening sky. Cyan was merging with sapphire and cobalt towards the east. There, to the right of the lighthouse tower, was the silver crescent moon. A sickle blade slicing away at his heart, reminding him of terrible events and the vow he’d made to his dead son.

  Sim had barely got settled at his desk when an urgent order came through. Wardle needed him in Birmingham the next day, to act as handler for an undercover agent operating in Asia. Painting the nursery would have to wait.

  Wardle was enjoying the effects of summer weather on the amount of flesh displayed in Cathedral Square. A welcome, if guilty, distraction from the chaos building up on his desk back at the office. Wardle’s assistant came to join him on the park bench. It had been twenty-four hours since North Korea lit up.

  “Unusual choice for a lunchtime meeting, isn’t it, Tom? I thought you were busy preparing the report for the bureaucrats. You know, keeping the department from being closed down. Quite important, that assignment.”

  “Sorry, Sir, but I needed to get you out of the office. Away from unwelcome eyes and ears.”

  “Seems like there are plenty of those around us right now.”

  The young man looked around. “The couple over there exchanging saliva have been going out for three years now. They work a mile apart but meet up every lunchtime for that.” He pointed at their horizontal embrace. “The ice cream seller is Lizzie Hind. She’s been selling here for two years. The tramp asleep on that bench is Roger Smith. Unemployed for five years, homeless for most of that time. I’ve got a pair of eyes at the top of the bell tower checking out passing footfall. I think we’re safe.”

  “Why all this caution? I had my office swept yesterday.”

  “Who’s the mole?” Tom shrugged at his own question. “Until we know that, I say we take full precautions. About everything.”

  “OK, fine. So, what do we need to discuss in such privacy?”

  “We need to be careful with the intel we’re getting from Feinberg’s roll tab.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “What if they know? The Terror Formers. Maybe they’ve realised a roll tab has gone missing, been hacked into. Maybe they’re spreading wild rumours about some mission in North Korea to put us off the scent.”

  “Possible, yes. But Sat Division has confirmed all that activity.”

  “Doesn’t have to be anything to do with the Terror Formers, though. Perfect timing for some legerdemain.”

  “Well yes, I agree. Which is why I’ve already assigned an agent to check out what’s happening on the ground.”

  Tom’s eyes opened a little wider for a moment and then his face went back into poker mode. “That’s great. Who’s the lucky person? Wait, don’t tell me. It’s Jung Li, isn’t it?”

  Wardle took a slurp from his coffee cup.

  “That figures. Good choice, sir. Of course, we need to be cautious about the roll tab for another reason.”

  Wardle screwed up his cup and started walking back to the office.

  Tom caught up. “The mole, sir. It could be Feinberg. Recruited from overseas. Already been sacked by one agency, hasn’t he?”

  “That’s was the Israelis’ loss. And our gain.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, sir. But if we’re going to keep this department open, we can’t afford another cock-up.”

  “You think I don’t know that? I was catching Daesh agents when you were nothing more than a swipe right on your mum’s Tinder app.”

  Tom grabbed his boss’ arm, holding him back for a minute, before they reached the pedestrian crossing. “The snatch mission on the Canary Islands. Very high-level. Very well planned. But they still got away, didn’t they? I reckon they must have been tipped off.”

  Wardle stared down at his assistant’s hand until he was released. “Your concerns are duly noted.” He threw his uneaten sandwich towards the bin. It hit the rim. The wrapping unf
urled itself midair and the contents spilled over the ground. Wardle wondered whether the tramp would notice before the pigeons did. And then he crossed the road without even checking whether the traffic had stopped for him.

  CHAPTER 17

  Pyongyang, North Korea

  Jung Li had been briefed by Wardle and Sim had been assigned as his handler. Jung Li realised it was a crappy job for an agent like Atkins, who had been such a star of the department. At his beck and call, any time of day or night, for the entire duration of the mission. Either Wardle was desperate or he was punishing Atkins for some misdemeanour that had not reached the gossip channels in Overseas Division.

  Jung Li stepped down onto the platform after spending 36 hours on the train from Beijing. It should have been much quicker than that, but the power kept failing on the tracks once they had crossed the border into North Korea. Somebody had whispered something about electricity shortages but wouldn’t be drawn further on the topic. Jung Li saw no solar farms or wind turbines as the train trundled through the countryside. Sights that were so commonplace in other parts of the world. Maybe it was not possible to build them with the ongoing sanctions squeezing imported materials.

  Border officials had confiscated his roll tab, assuring him that he would get it back when he left the country, and had let him rent a North Korean basic version that ran off the local network. That would be no use for keeping in touch with Atkins. The Overseas Division agent hefted a smart suit bag over his shoulder and made his way to the taxi rank. No sign of driverless cars here. Plenty of men and women clamouring for a fare.

  The route to Ryugyong hotel went along Changgwang Street. Jung Li watched the masses of people cycling to work, heads bowed under bamboo hats that tried to protect them from the worst of the summer rain. His taxi was almost the only car on the road. Despite these signs of economic hardship, the hotel was still impressive. A modern tall building, like a three-sided arrow head sticking out of the ground. The approach across Potong Bridge made the most of the view of the splendid tower.

  Despite the country’s pariah state, there had been no trouble getting Jung Li’s paperwork sorted to gain entry into Pyongyang and even to walk around the capital city taking photographs of the monuments. So that’s what he did for the rest of the day, despite the hot, muggy weather and frequent showers. He visited the great slab of a building that was the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun. He went to the Arch of Triumph, opposite the old football stadium. The local people did not bat an eyelid at his presence. But when he tried to take a photograph of one of the government buildings, a guard came rushing over. He grabbed the camera off Jung Li and deleted the photo, shouting while he did so. The Babel app translated a warning not to take photographs of sensitive infrastructure.

  Jung Li had seen all these sites before and knew the rules about what could and could not be photographed. But he also knew the local government would be tracking his borrowed phone, maybe even watching him via CCTV. He was trying to look like a businessman visiting the city for the first time.

  Later that evening, he allowed the hotel to book him a table at a restaurant near the Juche Tower. This time he crossed over the Potong Bridge and then the bigger Okryu Bridge that spanned the mighty Taedong river. From the bridge, Jung Li could see the tall granite column lit up brightly against the dark clouds of the evening and at its pinnacle, the red torch flaming into the night. He wondered about the electricity shortages on the trains and about how much power this monument required to be illuminated.

  The meal started with a cold-water noodle broth called Naengmyeon. Jung Li took a very small spoonful and quickly went back for another. He recognised one of the other customers; a female member of staff at the Ryugyong hotel. He doubted that was a coincidence. The next course was translated by his Babel app as Trout soup. Broth followed by soup? Still, the fish was delicious. Which was more than could be said for the wine. Another customer, a man in an olive boiler suit and long leather boots, arrived and sat on the far side of the dining room. Jung Li looked at the mostly empty tables between them and tried to raise a glass in the other man’s direction, but he wasn’t watching.

  After broth and soup, Jung Li needed a toilet break and went off to find the gents. The other man was entering the rest room as Jung Li left. They brushed past each other and the agent felt a folded piece of paper thrust into his hand. He took it without looking at it, tucked it into a pocket and sat down to finish off his meal.

  He wondered about offering his shadow from the hotel a lift back, but thought that might not go down too well. Back in his hotel room, he got ready for bed. He pulled the duvet up over his head and unfolded the paper, illuminating the message with a micro torch hidden under his nail. It gave the name of a guide who would be willing to show him around the rest of the country. He was supposed to report back in to Atkins with an update, but with his roll tab confiscated and with little news to share, Jung Li decided to leave more risky methods of communication for later in the mission.

  After a tasteless breakfast, Jung Li went to the front desk of the hotel and asked about getting a guide to take him to places outside of the capital.

  “Of course, we can help you with that, sir. But you will need to get clearance for your route and destinations.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I have been recommended a particular guide. Would you see if they’re available?” He handed the piece of paper over.

  The receptionist frowned, looked at the name and then smiled. “Not a problem, let me see if she is free.”

  It took twenty-four hours to get approval for his travel plans. Back along the route taken by the railway line, towards the city of Anju and then veering right towards the mountainous interior of the country. Jung Li was posing as a film producer for a wildlife documentary company. Some remote parts of the North Korean mountains contained species and behaviour no longer seen anywhere else in the world. The authorities had not been keen at first but Jung Li, with the help of his guide, assured them that this was just a scouting mission to select some sites for filming. All of which could be vetted before he came back with camera crews, and of course, with the substantial hard currency fee they would pay for using these venues.

  Jung Li’s guide was called An Sun-Hi and she did not speak much on the drive to Anju and then onwards to the town of Kuwollim. Progress was slow. The jeep’s ancient engine struggled on the hills. And the further they got away from the capital, the more the roads deteriorated. Some parts were almost impassable due to standing water. It was still raining. It didn’t seem to have stopped since Jung Li had arrived in North Korea.

  As they crossed over the bridge into the town, Jung Li could see that it was surrounded on three sides by the broad sweep of a river. Off to the right of the main area of the town there was a large railway station and a modern runway that seemed wholly inappropriate for such a small settlement.

  An Sun-Hi pointed to the runway and station. “That area military. We get in big trouble if we go take a look.”

  “I thought that was the whole point of this trip.”

  “Hah ha ha, funny joke,” she said, glancing up at the coupling around the rear-view mirror and pressing her lips together.

  Later that night, they made love. Jung Li was pleasantly surprised when the guide sneaked into his bedroom and slipped under the covers, naked. But then he wondered if his request for a ‘special’ sort of guide had been misunderstood by his contact back in the capital.

  “They find us together in the middle of the night, it is better we are fucking than discussing plans to spy on army,” she said.

  So, they whispered their plans in each other’s ears, sweating in the dark, between the groans and thrusts. Nobody disturbed them, but at breakfast the next day, Jung Li could have sworn the waiter was smirking at them. Thin walls? Hidden cameras? Living in a country like this certainly made you paranoid, he thought.

  The roads by now were little more than dirt tracks, heavy with mud, winding back and forth between th
e steep green hillsides that crinkled all of the countryside. Jung Li retrieved a pair of spectacles from his rucksack, and flicked on a micro switch hidden beneath the rubber nose bridge. He put on the glasses and waited for the connection to establish itself. While he was doing this, An Sun-Hi pulled off the track and parked the jeep behind some trees. Jung Li pulled some thin, strong rope from the lining of his rucksack and wrapped it around his torso. He took two fat pens out of the bag, putting them in one of his trouser pockets. And pulled something out of each of the heels in his boots, putting them in the other pocket. They started hiking over one of the hills. Near the top, a voice spoke in Jung Li’s ear.

  “J6, J6, this is SA. Do you copy?”

  “Loud and clear, Sim,” said Jung Li. A readout appeared on the lens of his glasses. Connection with Birmingham established.

  “Nice view you have. Anything to report yet?”

  “Negative. We’re approaching the site now.”

  They descended the other side of the peak and were approaching a road when the guide signalled for them to stop. She dropped to the ground, crouching behind a tree trunk. Jung Li copied her. Three soldiers armed with automatic rifles were tramping through the forest. As they passed, a raccoon dog started clambering down the tree that Jung Li was hiding behind. It growled as it saw the agent blocking its path to the ground. One of the soldiers, a little apart from his comrades, turned to see what had made the noise and spotted Jung Li. He shouted to his comrades and raised his rifle.

  A flash of metal left Jung Li’s hand and the soldier dropped to the ground, a throwing star protruding from his throat. The silent attack confused the other soldiers who looked around for the attacker. The agent ran across to the corpse and grabbed the rifle before diving for cover behind a different tree. Bullets spat into its trunk and bits of wood splintered off. An Sun-Hi threw a rock that hit one of the soldiers on the side of the head. He turned to fire at her, giving Jung Li just enough time to poke the barrel of his rifle around the tree trunk and kill the second soldier. One left. Not as brave as the others. But more sensible. He started running down the hill, weaving between the trees. Jung Li raised his rifle and stared down the sights. There was a clearing in the distance that the soldier would have to cross. Jung Li took a deep breath and waited. A squeeze of the trigger, a smell of cordite and the body tumbled forwards to lie in a rare patch of sunlight.