Foxbat

by James Barrington

  Adashev stood up and extended his hand across the desk. ‘I probably won’t be seeing you again, Colonel, so I’ll say goodbye now.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, Yershenko shook it, then turned and left the office.

  The moment the door closed behind him, Adashev made a three-minute phone call to a trusted subordinate.

  Seoul, South Korea

  In a third-floor conference room at the National Intelligence Service headquarters at Naegok-dong, two men in shirtsleeves sat either side of a long table. Between them was a professional-quality reel-to-reel tape recorder hitched to an external amplifier and a pair of small speakers. A cassette player would have been far more convenient, but Bae Chang-Su – the autocratic head of the NIS – had insisted on the best possible audio quality, and that meant using the original tape and the Revox.

  They’d played the recording four times already, and Bae knew they’d soon have to make a decision about what to tell the Americans.

  ‘What did his previous reports contain?’ he asked.

  Kang Jang-Ho was Bae’s direct subordinate and also Yi Min-Ho’s briefing officer, since the infiltration of the NIS agent into North Korea had been sanctioned at the highest level. He now referred to his notes.

  ‘He only made two brief calls, and there was nothing particularly significant in either. Yi contacted us once to confirm that he’d landed, and again after he had established his observation point overlooking the airfield. His only concern was that he’d almost been caught by an army patrol near Ugom, and he had the feeling they were deliberately waiting for him. Their truck had been parked on the road without lights and drove straight towards him as he came into view.’

  ‘Do you give any credence to his suggestion that they knew in advance?’

  ‘No, sir, I don’t. There’s always a heavy military presence in that area, so I think he just ran into a regular patrol that spotted someone suspicious and gave chase. The other possibility is that North Korean radar detected the inflatable heading for the coast, but I think that’s unlikely.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Bae grunted. ‘What’s your assessment of the situation now? Is Yi still alive?’

  ‘Probably not. His last message’ – Kang gestured at the tape recorder – ‘suggests that he’s been captured at the very least.’

  He referred to his notes again. ‘I’ve had the recording analysed by our technical staff. First, it’s definitely Yi’s voice: the voice-print analysis is unambiguous. Second, he’s shouting and there are traces of panic in his voice, as he’s clearly desperate to pass on a message to us. That could mean he was on the run. Third, there are the six shots heard at the beginning of the tape. Because of the volume of these explosions, the technicians believe the weapon was fired close to the Kyocera, meaning they were fired from Yi’s own pistol, at whoever was pursuing him.’ Kang glanced at his superior before continuing.

  ‘And, at the very end you can hear the sound of other, more distant, shots, immediately before Yi’s transmission ends. They must have been fired by his pursuers, and we have to assume that one of the bullets damaged the satellite phone, because the signal disappears immediately afterwards. We tried calling the unit several times over the next hour, but each time the system reported the Kyocera unavailable. It was then, following COMSEC procedures, recorded as destroyed and the number barred. So we believe Yi must have seen something so important that he ignored standard operating procedure by breaking communications silence in an attempt to call us.’

  ‘And what about the message he tried to pass on?’ Bae demanded.

  Kang lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘All he says is that the North Koreans have new aircraft – then he was cut off. We don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but must assume he saw something sufficiently unusual to risk calling us immediately.’

  For a few moments Bae stared at the Revox as if willing it to supply the answer. Then he shifted his gaze back to his subordinate.

  ‘I’m not prepared to risk sending another agent across the border, so I think it’s time to involve the Americans formally. We’ll just report what little we have, and see what they can do with their technical assets. Perhaps one of their satellites will be able to identify whatever aircraft Yi observed at T’ae’tan, and then we’ll have a better idea what we’re up against.’

  Perm, Russia

  There are a lot of bars in the city of Perm, catering for everyone from the habitual drunk to the purely social drinkers who have a need to be seen in the right place, at the right time, and with the right people. The Bar Sputnik fell somewhere between these two extremes. It was located down by the Kama river, identified by an illuminated sign showing a silver ball with four trailing antennae – representing the first-ever Earth-orbiting satellite – and with its tinted windows further darkened by years of tobacco smoke. Most of its clientele were working men, but with a sprinkling of young professionals: administrators, accountants and lawyers in the main.

  Stools topped with faded red leather faced the long wooden bar, booths with fixed wooden tables lining the walls opposite, and a handful of tables and chairs occupied the open space just to the left of the street door.

  At one of these tables, four men sat talking and drinking. One was young, maybe twenty-five years of age, slim, with fair hair and blue eyes. Two of his companions were late middle-aged and, more typical of most of the population in the area, had dark hair, brown eyes, flat, almost Slavic, features and bulky physiques. The fourth man, short, thin and somewhat older, looked almost oriental by comparison.

  To any interested observer, the elderly man would have seemed the dominant personality. His name was Ryu Chang-Ho and he’d arrived in Perm just over two weeks earlier. When he spoke, he was listened to in respectful silence, and was clearly used to conducting life on his own terms.

  For the most part, their discussion appeared amicable, though when Ryu made a suggestion, the other three quickly nodded agreement. But then the atmosphere at the table suddenly changed. Ryu leant forward and addressed the young man in a low, determined voice, and for the first time Georgi Lenkov showed signs of dissent.

  He shook his head firmly. ‘I will not do that,’ he replied in Russian. ‘I am not a traitor.’

  Ryu leant even closer. ‘I’m not asking you to do anything that would compromise your country,’ he insisted. ‘All I’m doing is offering you a substantial reward in exchange for your professional services.’

  Lenkov shook his head again. ‘No,’ he said loudly. ‘It’s more than that, and you know it.’

  Some of the other drinkers in the bar had turned at the sound of Lenkov’s raised voice and were now looking towards the four men.

  Ryu registered their interest, and motioned towards the door. ‘We’ll continue this outside,’ he said, then stood up and walked out of the bar, with the other three following.

  They crossed the street to the embankment skirting the south side of the river. Ryu there produced a sheet of paper from his pocket and showed it to Lenkov. There were a number of figures scribbled on it, each prefixed by a US dollar sign, but no indication of what these sums were for.

  ‘That,’ Ryu said, pointing to a figure towards the bottom of the page, ‘is what I’m willing to pay if you agree to join us.’

  Lenkov hesitated for a moment. The amount the man was suggesting equated to about five years’ salary for him but there was, the young Russian had already deduced, far more to this than just cash. For one thing, he had no guarantee of ever receiving the money. It’s one thing to be told what you’re going to be paid, but until the sum appears, it’s all just talk. And even if this odd little man did deliver on his promises, Lenkov could foresee other obstacles to prevent him ever spending it, like getting a bullet in the head once his usefulness was over.

  There were too many risks involved here, so he shook his head again, decision made. ‘No, I won’t do it,’ he said firmly. ‘And I’ll have to report this to my superiors.’

  Ryu�
��s eyes glittered dangerously in the fading daylight. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you won’t do that,’ he hissed.

  ‘I’m not taking any orders from you,’ Lenkov snapped, then turned and strode away.

  The other two men looked at Ryu, awaiting instructions. ‘Follow him,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll go get the car.’

  Fifty yards away, Lenkov glanced behind him. The two other Russians were following him, one on either side of the road, as if ready to anticipate any turn that he made, while Ryu was walking briskly away in the opposite direction. For the first time a feeling of real apprehension crossed the young man’s mind.

  He began walking faster towards the centre of the city and away from the relative darkness of the embankment. But his pursuers merely speeded up as well, easily keeping pace with him.

  Behind him, he heard a car engine start, its headlights shining across his back as the vehicle turned towards him. Perhaps he could thumb a lift, he considered briefly.

  He looked back again but, as the vehicle headed towards him, it passed under a streetlight, and he recognized the sallow features of Ryu Chang-Ho in the driver’s seat.

  It was then Lenkov started running, his feet pounding loudly on the pavement as he desperately sought sanctuary. When the lights of another bar beckoned, he skipped across the road, pushed open the door and rushed inside.

  But even as he strode across the room, he heard the street door slam open behind him, and a rough voice called out ‘Police! Stay where you are.’

  Lenkov turned to see the same two Russians advancing towards him. One of them was holding up a shield that looked remarkably like the double-headed golden eagle of the MVD, the Russian police.

  ‘Those aren’t cops,’ he shouted desperately, as he backed away towards the smoky rear of the bar. But nobody was listening to him, as the sight of two men claiming to be MVD officers was quite sufficient incentive for them to all mind their own business.

  They were on him in a moment, one man pinning him against the polished wood of the bar counter while the other pulled his hands behind his back and snapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.

  Lenkov kept shouting for help as they hustled him towards the door, but nobody in the bar so much as looked at him. Outside, the car waited, Ryu still in the driver’s seat, the engine idling and the rear door already open. The two Russians pushed Lenkov inside, then climbed in after him. The moment the door closed, the car drove away from the kerb.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Lenkov demanded in panic, but none of the three men replied.

  As they began heading out of Perm, Lenkov started yelling at the top of his voice and kicking out at the men imprisoning him.

  ‘Shut him up,’ Ryu instructed briefly. One of the two burly Russians pulled a cosh out of his pocket, as his companion forced the captive’s head forwards.

  The cosh swung down in a short, vicious arc, smashing into the back of his skull. It wasn’t sufficient to knock him out, but after the second blow Lenkov collapsed forward, unconscious, into the footwell.

  Fifteen minutes later Ryu pulled the car to a halt by some thick woodland on the outskirts of the city. ‘Bring him,’ he instructed, and led the way between the trees.

  As they dropped him to the ground, Lenkov was beginning to regain consciousness. The first thing he was aware of was rough hands emptying his pockets, taking his wallet, keys and loose change, and then unstrapping the watch from his wrist. He opened his eyes to see Ryu staring down at him, a semi-automatic pistol in his right hand. The two Russian thugs stood by, watching with disinterest.

  ‘Wait,’ Lenkov said, desperation in his voice. ‘We can talk. I’ll do what you want.’

  Ryu stepped close to him and looked down. ‘The time for talking is over, comrade. You should have taken what we were offering at the time.’

  Lenkov lapsed into shocked silence as Ryu cocked his pistol.

  The bullet smashed into the young man’s face, just below his right eye, and he toppled backwards, killed instantly. The sound of the shot was shockingly loud in the silence of the wood, and birds flew out of the trees in panic, their wings beating an ironic applause to the execution, while somewhere deeper in the wood a dog started barking.

  Ryu stepped forward, rolled the body onto its side and removed the handcuffs from the wrists, then the three men walked away without a backwards glance.

  Seventy metres behind them, a middle-aged Russian peered cautiously from behind a tree, a dog lead clutched in his hand. He’d heard, but not seen, the shot being fired, and the sight of the three men walking away had immediately caught his attention. He looped the lead around a branch to stop his trembling dog from following him, then quickly made his way to the edge of the wood. Moments before he got there, he heard a car engine start, so he paused for a few seconds. Then he heard a vehicle moving off, and began to run.

  Some fifty metres in front of him, a grey saloon car was driving away, bouncing over the rutted track as it headed towards the main road, but he couldn’t make out the digits on its number plate. As he walked back into the wood to fetch his dog, almost the first thing he came across was the crumpled body of Georgi Lenkov.

  Letneozerskiy interceptor base, Karelia, Russia

  Yershenko was getting progressively more irritated with the staff at Letneozerskiy. He and his team had been ready to leave for almost two hours, but their aircraft – an Antonov An-28 – still wasn’t ready. The delay, according to their pilot, who seemed almost as frustrated as his passengers, was because of a problem during refuelling.

  One of the tanks wasn’t filling properly, and the ground engineers had elected to carry out a visual inspection of its interior and to check the associated fuel lines for blockages and contamination. That had required specialized equipment and a fibre-optic viewing device, and simply assembling this had taken them over an hour. The process, as far as Yershenko could tell, would then take a further thirty minutes, and only then, assuming they found nothing wrong, would they be able to fill the tank.

  It was nearly three hours after his inspection team had assembled in the squadron office, their bags beside them, that the Antonov was finally towed out of the maintenance hangar and chocked on the hardstanding in front of them.

  ‘At last,’ Yershenko muttered, as he watched the fuel bowser approach.

  Fifteen minutes later, he strapped himself into his seat at the front of the cabin and opened his briefcase. His inspection report was far from finished, and he proposed to use this long flight to continue drafting the final document. And it wouldn’t just be a single hop: the Antonov was a slow aircraft with a very limited range, so would have to land and refuel at least three times before reaching the Ukraine.

  The aircraft levelled at ten thousand feet and the pilot relaxed, trimmed the Antonov for straight and level flight, and then picked up an en-route chart to work out an updated estimate for the next military airfield they’d be landing at to replenish their tanks.

  In the passenger cabin behind him, Yershenko continued with his report while most of his team opened the packs of sandwiches they’d been given on departing Letneozerskiy. The Antonov didn’t run to a galley – even the chemical toilet was very much an afterthought – so any food and drink had to be carried on board.

  Twenty minutes after reaching its cruising altitude, there was a muted thud somewhere near the main radio set. It sounded almost like a bird-strike, so at first the pilot was relatively unconcerned. Just as a precaution, he tried calling the Letneozerskiy radar controller, but found the set was dead.

  Loss of the main radio was an irritation rather than a serious problem, but it still remained a matter of concern. Thirty seconds later concern changed to worry when the pilot realized that the standby radio was also non-functioning. There were emergency procedures for this kind of situation, and obviously they would have to land as soon as possible to get the radios fixed. The pilot consulted his en-route chart, calculating times and distances, then selected cabin broadcast to
tell his passengers what had happened, and explain what he intended to do.

  But the words never formed, for at that instant there was a colossal explosion somewhere in the lower section of the fuselage. The cabin floor erupted upwards, the detonation peeling the aircraft apart, twisting and severing pipes and wires, and scattering seats, boxes, cases and aluminium panels alike. Most of the team had removed their seatbelts and were now catapulted instantly from the falling wreckage. Mercifully for them, most were killed or knocked unconscious by the force of the explosion. The pilot was flung forward through the windscreen and was dead even before he started falling.

  But Yershenko remained conscious all the way down and, in the last moments of his life, understood exactly why there’d been such a delay in refuelling at Letneozerskiy.

  It doesn’t take long to plummet ten thousand feet, and in just over a minute what was left of the An-28 and its human cargo impacted the frozen and unyielding ground at around two hundred miles an hour.

  Back in the air traffic control room at Letneozerskiy, a senior officer advised the station commander that the Antonov had disappeared from the radar screen, with its pilot no longer responding to radio calls. The commanding officer ordered him to initiate a search and rescue operation immediately, then phoned each of the squadron commanders in turn to brief them on the apparent loss of an aircraft.

  However deeply concerned the 524 IAP colonel sounded, he had already begun preparing himself for a long and completely unauthorized journey of his own that would take him first to a private bank in Austria, and eventually to somewhere agreeable in southern Europe, perhaps on the Mediterranean coast of Spain.