by Mark Dawson
“For our sake, I hope not.”
They walked towards Kim’s state-issued car.
Kim reached inside and took out the best photograph of the imposter from the airport. “Who is he?”
“We do not know, Comrade-Major.”
“We have had this photograph for hours! Why is it taking so long?”
“We are checking. The Computer and Records Directorate is giving it priority.” He paused. “What do we do while we wait for them?”
“McEwan said that he was arranging a delivery of luxury cars. Thankfully, that was not a lie. There is an authorisation at the Ministry of Trade for such a delivery, I have checked. The cargo originated in Dandong and crossed the border yesterday evening. It is due to arrive in the capital tonight. We must assume that anyone involved with it is complicit.”
“Where is the cargo now?”
“That is what we must find out.”
Yun paused, a little awkwardly. “Do we mention this to the Lieutenant-Colonel?”
Kim had already considered that. He had a hundred men at his disposal: one hundred good men, excellently trained, diligent and loyal to the Fatherland. That might be enough to see off this threat but the chances of success would increase with more men. That was his problem: if he wanted help, he would have to speak to his superior to get it, and that would mean admitting that mistakes had been made under his supervision.
He would wait. There was no need to panic. They could find this man without causing undue alarm. “I think we can manage this ourselves, Captain. Do you agree?”
Yun seemed relieved at that. The consequences of failure would extend to him, too. “I do, Comrade-Major,” he said.
Neither man needed to speak the obvious: they were already in a situation of the utmost gravity. If they could find the imposter themselves, then so be it. They could keep it between themselves and no-one else need know. But if they failed, and something happened, and it was discovered that they had not requested assistance; then that would be the end of them both.
* * *
11.
SU-YUNG’S BROTHER, Kun, picked them up once they were a safe distance from Puhung station. It was not the Volvo this time; that car had just been torched with the body of Peter McEwan shut inside the trunk. This car was an old Ford, exported from the South during one of the irregular détentes that occasionally thawed relations between the warring neighbours. Kun took them to a house on the edge of the city. Inside Pyongyang, housing was restricted to one-room “pigeon coops,” but there was a little more space the further out you travelled. This accommodation was simple, utilitarian, and monochromatic, built from cement block and limestone. It was a single-storey row of one-room homes, stuck together like the little boxes that make up the chambers of a harmonica. The occasional door frame was painted a jarring turquoise, but everything else was whitewashed or grey. The only real colour was the stark red lettering of the huge propaganda sign directly opposite, its boldly vivid message standing out amid all the grey: WE WILL DO AS THE PARTY TELLS US.
Kun did not get out of the car with them.
“Where is he going?” Milton asked his sister.
“The freight is expected tonight. He will make sure it arrives as it should.”
Milton watched as the Volvo drove away into the jaded neighbourhood and then followed Su-Yung inside. The entrance led directly into a small kitchen that doubled as a furnace room. A large bucket that was a quarter-full of coal sat next to the hearth. The fire it produced was used both to cook and to heat the home. A sliding door separated the kitchen from the main room where two sleeping mats had been unrolled.
“We will stay here,” she told him.
“Is this where you live?”
“No––not here. I have an apartment in the city, much smaller than this. This belongs to a friend of our cause. He is visiting his family in Chongjin tonight. We will not be disturbed. You must be hungry––would you like something to eat?”
Milton said that he would and Su-Yung disappeared into the kitchen. The electricity was off and so the room was lit by a single paraffin lamp. He looked around: the sleeping mats were made of a thin vinyl that did not promise a particularly comfortable night’s sleep, a little heat radiated upwards from an underfloor system that was, he guessed, powered by the furnace, and a few cardboard boxes held clothes and a few cheap objects. It was austere.
He sat on the floor and measured himself: the dream had passed properly now, although he still felt a little weak. That was not unusual. Each episode drained him so completely that it often took a day or two for him to recover fully, and it seemed to be getting worse. He worried that it would affect what he had to do tomorrow––he would need a surgeon’s steady hand to achieve his aim––but then he did his best to put the concern aside; worrying about it now would serve no purpose, save rob him of the sleep he knew he needed.
Su-Yung returned with a bowl of broth with a long-handled spoon and a steaming tea cup that gave off a rich, acrid tang. “Sul lang tang,” she announced, handing Milton the bowl.
“What’s that?”
“Beef soup. It is a traditional Korean dish. The tea is nokcha. Green tea. For years we have imported it from the Chinese but my countrymen have recently been successful in cultivating the tea plants themselves. A better achievement than all of the Dear Leader’s work with nuclear bombs, if you ask me.”
They drank the tea quietly, watching the darkness of the night through the open window, the ghostly shape of the city’s few skyscrapers forming a dim, irregular skyline in the distance. Milton found that he was developing a fondness for the quietly dignified girl. She, too, was taking a big risk; a much bigger risk, indeed, since she would not be leaving the country once the objective was achieved. Milton knew that there would be loose ends that would eventually lead the authorities back to her: CCTV footage, witness statements, those conspirators who found their tongues loosened in the basement of the building where the secret police carried out their interrogations. When that happened, the results would not be good for her or her brother.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “You and Kun?”
Su-Yung paused, looking for the right words. “My country is sick, Mr Milton. It has been sick for many years. People are starving while the Kims and their cronies spend lavishly on themselves. These cars that are being brought into the country, for example––whole families could be fed for months with the proceeds of just one of them. Years. Something must be done.”
“But why you?”
Su-Yung stared into her tea. “Why not me?” She paused, giving thought to what to say next. “My father was from the South. He was captured during the war and held here as a prisoner. When the fighting ended, many of the prisoners were exchanged but the North did not return all of the men that it had taken. My father was one of the unlucky ones.” She paused to take a sip of her tea. “North Korean society is very carefully arranged. Everyone has songbun––in your country, you might refer to it as reputation or standing. In Korea, it is something that stays with a family for ever. It is hereditary. It is why my brother is a janitor and I work in a factory. We will never be able to aspire to anything better. Neither of us could join the Party, even if we wanted to. Our families are always last in line for food. I have a daughter, she is eleven years old and a wonderful pianist. The music she plays––” She stopped for a moment, wistful. “It is beautiful, Mr Milton, but it makes no difference how good she is. She will never be able to go to music college to study. How is that fair? She is punished for the so-called sins of her grandfather.”
“What happened to him?”
“They put him to work in an iron-ore mine. He was a quiet man, who never spoke out of turn. He did not drink for fear that the alcohol would lower his guard and he would say something that he would regret. If your songbun is low, you are not given the benefit of the doubt if someone makes an accusation against you. One day, while he was in the mine, he had a disagreement with his foreman. The area in which the
y were working was unsafe––miners die all the time here––and he refused to lead his men any further until it was properly reinforced. The foreman reported this to the Party. He said that he was disobedient and insubordinate and that he had spoken sarcastically of the Great Leader. I do not believe that this could possibly have been true, but in matters such as these, truth is not important. Two nights later, an army truck appeared outside our little home and my father was taken away. We think they took him to one of the work camps in the north of the country but we cannot be sure. It is possible that they shot him. We never saw him again.” The line of Su-Yung’s jaw set hard as she clenched her teeth and, for a moment, a fire that Milton had not seen before flashed in her eyes. “That, Mr Milton, is why I am doing what I am doing. Someone has to take a stand against these people and, as I say, it might as well be me.” She finished the cup of tea and, as she replaced the cup in the saucer, her cheery demeanour had returned. “Now,” she said, pointing at the bowl of soup. “You must eat. It is unlikely you will have another opportunity to fill your stomach until much later.”
Milton ate. The soup was delicious, substantial and spiced with just the right amount of chilli. He finished the plate quickly and did not object when Su-Yung offered him a second helping. When he was finished with that, and the plates had been cleared away, Su-Yung sat down again and handed him another new set of papers. This passport was English, with a sheaf of documents wedged between the covers.
“You are now Mr Michael Callow. You are forty-two years old and a successful businessman. You deal in the buying and selling of crude petroleum and you have been in the DPRK for a week negotiating the terms of a contract to supply ten thousand barrels to the Unggi refinery. You have decided to stay an additional few days to watch the Parade.”
“And you?”
“Tourists are not allowed outside their hotels without a minder. If necessary, I will be yours.”
Milton opened the passport and studied the photograph. Callow had blond hair.
“Ah yes,” Su-Yung said with a smile. “I am sorry about that. You will need this.” She handed Milton a bottle of hair dye and pointed to the back of the room. “There is a small bathroom over there.”
* * *
12.
THE TRANSPORTER was a big eighteen-wheeler, with a fully hydraulic trailer that could accommodate eight cars. The driver, a taciturn Chinese from the border town of Dandong City, had no idea that the expensive load he had driven into the North was not solely for the enjoyment of the country’s elite. The cars had been give a cursory search by the customs officials as he waited to cross into the country, and if––in the admittedly unlikely event––they had discovered the real purpose of the consignment then it would have been very unlikely that he would ever have left the country again.
He had driven on, ten hours straight. Commercial satellite navigation was pointless in North Korea and so he had relied upon a dated road atlas to navigate the route to Pyongyang. His destination was a goods yard to the west of the city and he had arrived, more or less on time, on the day of Milton’s own arrival. A man at the yard had signed the paperwork to acknowledge that the delivery had been made and then, with extravagant care, the cars had been unloaded one after the other. It was approaching midnight when the driver was finished, the task made more difficult by the brownout that extinguished the overhead floodlights halfway through the task. The driver had got back into his cab and set back off towards the border. Like most of his friends, he hated the North. They all thought that it was a backwards country, a little hole governed by the latest madman in a family full of madmen, altogether more trouble than it was worth. The sooner he set off, the sooner he would be home. He planned to get halfway to the border where he would sleep in his cab at the side of the road.
Kun picked up Su-Yung and Milton at five in the morning and drove them to the yard. He unlocked the wire mesh gate for them and then disappeared; Su-Yung explained that he was going to arrange new transport for them for when the operation had been completed.
They found the cars parked neatly inside a closed warehouse. They were a very fine collection: a Lexus, two Bentleys, two Mercedes, an Audi, a Ferrari and a Porsche. He found himself nodding his approval: Peter McEwan certainly knew his business. He had arranged the better part of two million pounds’ worth of high-performance automotive engineering. He did not know that British intelligence had been monitoring his communications for weeks and, once they realised he was transporting cargo that suited their particular purposes, the operation had been given the green light to proceed.
A consequence of that had been his murder.
“Which car is it?” Su-Yung said.
“The Enzo, I’m afraid,” Milton said.
“The Enzo?”
“The red one,” he said. The Ferrari was a beautiful, gorgeous machine; it was a shame to have to defile it. He opened the door and ran the palm of his hand across the smoothly carpeted floor behind the front seats. He took a knife and positioned it carefully, pushing the tip until it pierced the fabric and then slicing it open. He reached inside and tore the carpet away, revealing a compartment that had been fitted beneath the cabin. It was ten inches wide and reached from the back to the front, extending all the way beneath the seats.
“Here,” he said to Su-Yung. “Give me a hand.”
He reached down and withdrew the items that had been hidden inside the compartment: the rifle, an M-4 carbine, a Sig Sauer 9mm, half a dozen fragmentation grenades, a pair of high-powered Zeiss Classic 60mm binoculars and a miniature tracking device.
The rifle was the most important; he picked it up and examined it carefully. A Barrett M82, recoil-operated, semi-automatic, finished with American walnut stock and a heavy premium barrel. The weapon system that the American snipers preferred; Milton had become accustomed to it during his time with them in the sandpit. The gun had been broken down into pieces and Milton quickly reassembled it, checking that it had not been damaged in transit. It had not. The Group’s quartermaster had arranged the weapon for him to his specific order and he had reacquainted himself with it on the long ranges on Salisbury Plain. It was an impressive piece of machinery, every bit well-crafted as the car in which it had been hidden.
“Is it satisfactory?” Su-Yung asked anxiously.
“Yes.”
Milton opened the magazine and checked the big bullets. Its ten-shot box magazine was chambered for .50 calibre ammunition and it was loaded with Raufoss Mk 211 anti-materiél projectiles, his favourite cartridge for this purpose. Each bullet was almost as long as his hand, jacketed in copper with an armour-piercing tungsten core that carried explosive and incendiary components. The ammunition was designed to take out light armour at distance. There had been some suggestion that it should be banned against human targets, but Milton had no view about that; all he knew was that it was excellent at long range and that it made an almighty mess when it hit something soft.
Su-Yung watched him slot the magazine into the breach. “This operation,” she said, “we would do it ourselves but it would be too difficult. The task you have set yourself is not an easy thing, Mr Milton. The distance will be very great. Perhaps half a mile.”
Milton slotted the sniper scope to the top of the rifle. It had a 30mm tube, external windage and elevation turrets, parallax adjustment and a fast focus eyepiece with a bullet drop compensating reticule. “It won’t be a problem,” Milton replied, raising the rifle and peering into the scope. “With this, it’ll be like they’re just in the next room.”
* * *
13.
“AND YOU have learned nothing from him, Yun? Still nothing?”
The earlier confidence that Kim had tried to invest in his voice was gone. A distant memory. Now his tone was impatient and ragged with fear. He was pacing his office while Yun sat nervously in the chair before his desk. Yun had left the basement only minutes earlier, right after the man that they had collected that morning had slipped again into unconsciousness.
The truck driver had been very helpful; his assistance was about the only thing that had gone in their favour since this whole mess had unfolded. The yard itself had been empty, but he had provided a likeness for the man that he had seen there and this had been cross-checked with the Department’s files on suspected dissidents and traitors. The exercise had turned up three possible matches. Each of these three men had been detained and delivered to the basement where, after a little light persuasion––merely an hors d’oeuvre for what was to follow––it had quickly been determined that, of the three, the man they wanted was the second they had collected: Kun Jong-nam, a janitor from Sunan-guyŏk.
“He is stubborn, Comrade-Major.”
“I don’t care how stubborn he is! We must have what he knows!”
Kim was angry. The interrogation had been unsuccessful. His preferred technique was more considered, a slow escalation that would give the subject plenty of time to consider how much worse things would get for him if he did not divulge the information that the state required. There had been no time for such niceties today. Two of his more brutal privates had tied the man to a chair and beaten him black and blue for fifteen minutes and, when that had not been successful, they had pulled out his fingernails with pliers. Yet, even relying on techniques that Kim found distasteful, they had learned precious little. Kun had revealed that he had been working with his sister, Su-Yung Jong-nam, and that they had collected a Westerner from Moranbong Park. He said that they had pretended to abduct the man, and that, an hour or two later, he had murdered another Westerner––he did not know his name, either––and placed his body in the trunk of the car that they had been using. The car was then torched. Kun said he knew no more than that: he did not know the identity of either Westerner, he did not know the purpose of the shipment of luxury cars, and, more specifically, he did not know what was planned.
Kim could not say if that was the extent of the man’s knowledge but he was in no mood to believe that Yun had tried as hard as he could, pushed as hard as he might, without killing the man. If Kun possessed the information that he sought, he would get it out of him. It did not matter if the man died in the process.
