Текст книги "1000 Yards"
Автор книги: Mark Dawson
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8
Major Kim Shin-Jo was concerned. Alone in his office at the airport, he placed the picture taken at the airport of Peter McEwan face up on the desk in front of him and then slid it eight inches to the left. In its place, he laid out the picture from McEwan’s file that Captain Yun Jong-Su had emailed him. There were some similarities between the two pictures – hair and eye colouration, the height was similar, both wore glasses – but that was as far as it went. Yun was sure: the Peter McEwan who had arrived at Pyongyang Airport that afternoon was not the same as the man who had visited six times previously.
Whoever this new man was, he was not who he professed to be.
Kim was prey to the usual lurid terrors that would he knew would befall him if he failed the state. The price of failure was well known, and not open to negotiation: total humiliation followed by exile if he was lucky. Execution was possible, depending upon the consequences of the failure. If he had been responsible for allowing an enemy spy into the Fatherland, and if that enemy spy was responsible for some grand, awful statement against the Revolution, perhaps during tomorrow’s grand Parade…
Kim willed himself to remain calm as he picked up the telephone and called his man at the Hotel.
“Comrade-Major, I was about to call you. The Englishman has left the hotel.”
Kim felt a tiny flutter of panic. “What?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Was he followed?”
“Two men on foot and two by car.”
“Why? Did anything happen?”
“He ate his dinner.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was he contacted?”
“Not in his room. He did very little: he had a drink, relaxed on the bed, looked out of the window. Nothing I would consider to be unusual.”
“Radio the men now. He is to be arrested. At once.”
“Yes, Comrade-Major.”
Kim replaced the receiver. He prayed it was not too late.
9
The train stopped at Pongwha Station. Milton checked the platform and saw nothing. As the doors whispered shut and the train pulled away again, Su-Yung tapped him discreetly on the leg. Milton followed the direction of her gaze. Outside, two men in military uniform were questioning the passengers who were queuing to exit the platform. They were throwing out a dragnet for him.
The final stop on the Chŏllima line was Puhung. It was the most impressive station yet: chandeliers were spaced at regular intervals along the high, vaulted ceiling and marble floors seemed to have been polished to an even higher sheen than before. The train pushed up against the buffers and the doors opened. Milton followed Su-Yung as she disembarked and then quickly scanned the platform: there was no sign of the police. Another large mural of Kim Il-Sung looked down on them. They followed the crowd to the exit and waited to board the escalator. The station was over one hundred feet below the surface, and their slow ascent took five minutes. Revolutionary music was piped through an array of tinny speakers. There were no hoardings, no displays, no advertisements for new theatre productions or alcohol or upcoming films; only frescoes of the great victories of the Korean people since the Day of Liberation, in the bold, awkward, cartoon style of Soviet realism.
Milton caught himself as four men, two from the military and two from the police, descended quickly on the opposite escalator. Su-Yung did not turn but Milton noticed as she gave a single, short nod.
Yes, she was saying, this might be challenging yet.
She was right. The exit to the street was guarded by four soldiers. A folding table had been arranged to block the way out and two officials sat at either end, the queue splitting so that they could take half each. The soldiers filling the gaps on either side all carried side-arms. A queue had already formed as people waited their turn to hand over their credentials.
Su-Yung was buffeted towards the official sitting on the left of the table and Milton found himself nudged to the right. He watched the officials run through a practiced routine: they inspected papers and registration cards, comparing the photographs with the faces of their owners. Milton reached into his pocket for his new documents. He inspected them again, idly scanning them in the fashion of someone who finds queuing the most tedious thing imaginable.
If they had discovered his deception, and if they had circulated copies of the photographs that would have been taken of him at the airport…
He reached the front of the queue. The official was stern-faced, with alabaster skin, small dark nuggets for eyes and a sharply hooked nose. He took Milton’s papers and scoured them, looking up to gaze into his face and then back down again.
“You are a long way from Germany, Mr Witzel.”
“Yes,” Milton said, affably.
“What is the purpose of your visit to the DPRK?”
“Just to enjoy your excellent country.”
“I see.” He looked down at the coupon that recorded where he was staying. “And how do you find the Pothonggang?”
“Comfortable.”
“Not to your usual standards, though, I’m sure.”
Was he making a joke? Milton couldn’t tell. “It is very pleasant.”
“You will excuse me for a moment, Mr Witzel. I will speak to the hotel to ensure that what you have told me is true. Please wait to the side.”
The man stepped away from the table, replaced with seamless efficiency by another official, this one crop-haired and severe, who had been waiting outside.
Milton leant against the wall. He swallowed hard. He turned his eyes to the barrier and watched as Su-Yung took her papers and passed out of the entrance to the station. She did not look back and was quickly out of sight. Milton felt his stomach turn again. When he made a plan, he tested everything to destruction but, here, he was not in control of the situation. His cover was only as strong as its weakest link, and if an Alexander Witzel of Germany had not checked into the Pothonggang then he would be exposed. There would be nothing for it but to take his chances and run. The four soldiers looked as if they knew how to handle their weapons; he thought he would be able to disable two of them quickly enough, but the other two would be a problem. As the official took out his mobile telephone and dialled the number of the hotel, Milton was reminded of the odds against him.
He was practically alone against the most ruthless and thorough security service the world had seen since the salad days of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
The man spoke for a moment in Korean. Milton caught the name ‘Witzel,’ and a word he took to mean ‘German,’ but apart from that the language was incomprehensible. He noticed that the official had a holstered pistol fixed to his belt and automatically began to sketch out an alternative plan: the man was of a typically slight Korean build, and it would be a simple matter to put an arm around his neck and draw him in close, using his body as a shield, the other hand liberating him of the firearm. It might increase his odds, if only a little.
The officer smiled at him for the briefest moment. He handed back the passport, the papers tucked into the front cover. “Thank you for your patience, Mr Witzel.”
“Everything is in order?”
“Indeed, yes.”
“What is this about?”
“We fear a man has been kidnapped – a European man – and it would be remiss of us if we did not do everything in our power to try and locate him. Again, my apologies for the inconvenience.”
“It’s not a problem at all,” Milton said. “I hope you find your man.”
Milton passed through the exit and outside. He looked around him and saw Su-Yung appear from the shadows. She nodded, just the single time once again, and set off. Milton fussed with a shoelace that did not need tying so that Su-Yung could have a small head-start, and then followed.
10
The car had been a Volvo, a 1440. Major Kim Shin-Jo recognised the badge despite the damage that the fire had done to it. The car was blackened with ash and soot, the metal buckled in places. They had needed to pry the boot open with a crowbar. Kim and his deputy, Captain Yun Jong-Su, stood at the rear of the car, peering through the acrid black smoke at the body curled up in the narrow space.
“Get him out,” Kim said to the two privates who had found the car.
“Should we not wait for the forensic department?”
“It will serve no purpose. This man is Peter McEwan. He is an English businessman. This” – he indicated the smoking wreck with an irritated flick of his wrist – “has been arranged for our benefit. Our enemies would like us to believe that Mr McEwan went out for a walk after dinner at his hotel this evening, was kidnapped in Monbong Park and then met his fate. None of that is true.” He turned away from the car before either of the baffled privates could ask him what he meant. When he was out of earshot he turned to Yun and said, quietly, “You agree, Captain?”
“You are undoubtedly correct, Comrade-Major. The question is not who this is, but where the person who was pretending to be McEwan is now.”
“And, more to the point, what he intends to do now that he has eluded our surveillance. This was not a simple thing to arrange. There must be more to it than this.”
“You think it is something for the Parade?”
“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 they 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.”