The John Milton Series Boxset 1

by Mark Dawson

  He lead the way back to the basement. Kun Jong-nam’s arms were secured with straps that had been fastened to the chair. The man’s face was livid with the reds and purples of incipient bruises, a lurid reminder of what they had already done to him in the short time he had been in custody. Worse was to come, but Kim felt no flickering of conscience, no regret. The man had brought it upon himself. This was the price of disloyalty, and it was to be paid in full.

  When beatings with rubber hoses and bamboo poles and did not succeed, or when time was pressing, as now, they fell back on narcotic shortcuts. The doctor approached with his syringe, selected a plump vein on the man’s wrist, pushed the needle into it and then depressed the plunger. The pentothal disappeared into his arm; the effects were evident within seconds. The doctor pushed back the man’s eyelid and shone a torch into his eye. “He’s ready now.”

  Kim knelt down beside the chair. “Kun, can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” His voice was slurred, as if he had enjoyed one too many glasses of munbaeju.

  “My name is Major Kim Shin-Jo. I work with the Ministry of State Security. Do you understand what that means?”

  A slurred response: “Yes.”

  “My colleague tells me that you have been involved with bringing a foreigner into our country. An Englishman. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need your help, Kun. It is very important that I find this Englishman quickly. Do you know where I can find him?”

  The man’s face crumpled with the effort of denying the drug. “No,” he forced out.

  “Kun––think very carefully. It will be better for you and your family if you tell me the truth. You understand that this is very serious indeed? You have a sister, I believe? If something happens, she will be shot. You know this?”

  “Yes.”

  “So where can I find the Englishman?”

  “I––don’t––know.”

  “Is your sister with him?”

  “No.” He stammered it, working too hard against the drug, and Kim knew he was lying.

  He stepped back and nodded to the doctor.

  “I have given him a heavy dose,” the man said. “Any more would be dangerous.”

  “This is not the time for qualms,” he snapped. “Do I need to find a replacement?”

  “No, Comrade-Major.”

  “Then do it.”

  Another syringe was emptied into the man’s vein. His eyes rolled into his head and he grinned, stupidly, before his features slackened and fell loose. His head hung limply between his shoulders.

  Kim crouched close so that his mouth was next to the man’s ear. “Kun. You must speak honestly. The Englishman you helped into the country––what is he intending to do?”

  There was another moment of struggle that played out vividly across the man’s helpless face.

  “Kun. You must tell me. What is he planning to do? Is it the Parade?”

  His voice was subdued. “No.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “The––” He fought against the completion of the sentence. “The––”

  “Damn it, Kun, what is it?”

  “I––don’t––know.”

  Kim stood suddenly, wheeling away from the pathetic spectacle.

  “Comrade-Major?” Yun said.

  “The same again.”

  “But the doctor––”

  “I don’t care what he said. This fool is dead whatever happens. If we do not find out what he knows, we will be dead too. See that it is done.”

  * * *

  14.

  SU-YUNG TOOK her foot off the brake and crawled ahead. Milton was in the back of the van, watching through the window as they made their way downtown. A line of sickly looking trees had been planted to separate the road from the pavement and, behind them was a terrace of utilitarian buildings, constructed from poured concrete, blocky and depressingly ugly. It reminded Milton of the worst aspects of the Soviet outposts he had visited. Trams and trolley-busses rattled along the inside lane, trucks and the few private cars overtaking them.

  Su-Yung spoke without taking her eyes from the road. “How much do you know about what is happening today?”

  “Just that there is a parade.”

  “It is not just any parade, Mr Milton. It is the centenary of our esteemed Great Leader’s birthday.” She made no effort to hide her sarcasm. “The event is being broadcast all around the country. The Workers’ Party are even handing out celebratory food rations. Cooking oil, I believe.” She snorted derisively.

  “How many people will be here?”

  “Many thousands. It will be an excellent diversion. The regime will focus its attention on Kumsusan Palace. It is unlikely we will be seen before––well, before you have done what you came here to do.”

  She drove carefully, slowing when the road narrowed and the sidewalks widened where the meagre shopping district started. There were large state-run stores on either side, but none of them had anything in their windows. Cast-iron flagpoles were placed at every junction, red flags whipping in the light breeze. The roads were swept clean but everything was so sterile: there were no advertisements of any sort, no graffiti, no life.

  There were signs of construction all about, most of it stalled after the foreign money that had been funding it had all dried up. Ahead of them, the road terminated at the huge plaza that surrounded the Palace where the Parade was to be held. On their right was the Grand People’s Study House, the building that passed for the city’s main library. On the left, the Ryugyong, the unfinished hotel that was to have been the world’s tallest. Ahead of that, across the broad space of the Square and perhaps a thousand yards distant, the concrete tower occupied by the military and the secret police.

  The Ryugyong was enormous, a giant skeleton of a building that towered over the glittery squalor of Pyongyang like a wireframe spaceship. Su-Yung turned off the road and descended a ramp into the vast maw of its underground car park. The garage was deserted.

  “Here we are,” she said. “The Chinese were paying for this, but then they decided that they did not need it, after all. Then the Germans were interested until Kim frightened them away. It will never be finished now. You have a word for it in English.” She paused, searching her vocabulary. “Hubris––that is it. It is a monument to the hubris of the Kims. No-one comes here any longer. We will not be disturbed.”

  Su-Yung headed for the rear corner of the car park and reversed next to an open doorway where a rough service staircase headed up. She killed the engine. Milton pulled the handle on the sliding side door and pulled it back on its rusty runners. He leaned inside and collected the rifle. He left the other weapons that he had taken from the car––the gas-operated M-4 carbine, the 9mm, the grenades––in the back to be collected on the way out. The M82 was wrapped in an oily blanket.

  Su-Yung went over to check the staircase. She signalled that the way was clear.

  Milton followed. The stairwell had not yet been finished with a handrail and it was unguarded on the left-hand side, the drop lengthening as they ascended further and further until it was hundreds of feet deep. Open walls offered views into the guts of the building: they passed through what was intended to be the cavernous reception, then the dining floor, huge open spaces with their expanses of aging concrete and rusting iron railings presenting something of the post-apocalyptic. Scaffolding wound its way up the inside of the vast heart of the pyramid, hundreds of feet of it. They climbed for five minutes, eventually reaching the eighteenth floor. Su-Yung stepped onto the landing. A corridor led in both directions, left and right. Everything was unfinished: the concrete had been trowelled smooth but there were no carpets, no panelling on the walls; there were empty piles of canvas cement sacks; doors were just open spaces; wiring spilled out of the walls; a line of bare light bulbs stretched away down the corridor with no power to light them; a wheelbarrow was turned onto its side and a cement mixer stood silently. It was ghostly. Their footsteps di
sturbed a grey cement dust, so fine that Milton could feel it tickling the back of his throat with every breath.

  Su-Yung led the way to a series of rooms that were intended to be an executive suite. There was a large bathroom with plumbing for a toilet, shower and bath, a bedroom and a huge sitting room on two levels. None of the finishes had been applied and there was no furniture of any sort. It was just a large concrete box, ugly and unloved. The windows had not been glazed, the big floor-to-ceiling apertures spread with plastic sheeting. The sunlight was muted, stained blue as it passed through the translucent material.

  Milton unwrapped the rifle and carried it with him to the window. It had no sill, a thin groove all the way around the aperture where the pane of glass would eventually be fitted. The two plastic sheets met in the middle, like makeshift curtains. Milton dropped to one knee and carefully loosened the ties that held the sheets together. He lowered himself until he was prone, relaxing the muscles of his legs and torso so that he was completely flat to the surface. He rested his left elbow on the concrete and carefully brought the rifle around. He unfolded a bipod and screwed it into its housing, pushing it forwards so that the forestock just dipped out of the window. He breathed in, a good, long breath. He held it for five seconds and then breathed out. He waited for the moment of calm to descend, that familiar moment where he almost felt out of his own body. It was a gift, and it had always served him well. It came from deep inside him, a place where stress––and the dream––had never been able to reach. They had made jokes about it in the sandpit, the way he would just zone out, reducing everything to a simple trinity: target, sniper, gun.

  He breathed in, held it again, and then breathed out.

  He opened the sheeting a little, put the binoculars to his eyes and peered out. He was facing due north. He estimated that he was four hundred feet above street level. This was the tallest building in Pyongyang and his line of sight was clear and unobstructed. Spread out ahead of him was the broad plaza that fronted the Kumsusan Palace. The Palace was a sprawling complex of buildings, decorated in the oriental style and of immense scale. A gigantic fifty-foot banner depicting a stylised version of the North Korean flag was fixed to the roof of the Palace and, below that, two huge portraits of Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung had been hung. A thousand yards away, across the Square and behind the Palace, was the new office block that he had seen from the street. It had been built ten years ago when Chinese money was still flowing into the country and there were plans for businesses to move in. Times had changed and it had still not been rented. In an attempt to preserve some kind of dignity, the North had filled it with government offices.

  The National Defence Commission.

  The Ministry of People’s Armed Forces.

  The State Security Department.

  He guessed it was three hundred feet tall. Tall enough, anyway, from his position.

  Milton focussed the binoculars and examined the building. The interior was honeycombed with cubicles, individual monitors glowing at every desk. For a country with such an unreliable electricity supply, an exception had clearly been made for this particular building. Milton knew the reason why: this was also the Headquarters of the Reconnaissance General Bureau. The organisation was divided into six bureaus: Operations; Reconnaissance; Foreign Intelligence; Inter-Korean Dialogue; Technical; and Rear Services. Technical was the organisation responsible for signals intelligence, electronic warfare and informations warfare.

  Western analysts described its work as cyber-terrorism.

  It was beginning to make a serious nuisance of itself.

  Milton checked his watch: thirteen minutes to seven. He settled, relaxing his muscles against the cold solidity of the concrete floor. In moments, the cold had passed through his clothes and had begun to seep into his body. He concentrated on ignoring it. His pelvis began to ache, a reminder of a wounding from his first tour in Iraq, but he instructed his brain to set it aside. It was a ghost wound, years old, irrelevant.

  MI5 only knew that the meeting was scheduled for today, not when it was due to start.

  He could be waiting here all day.

  * * *

  15.

  KIM LOOKED at his watch: nearly half past eleven. He paced the observation room, the large two-way mirror looking into the interrogation suite where Yun was continuing to supervise their efforts with the traitor. There was nothing else he could do, except what he was engaged in at the moment: futile recriminations, coupled with the more practical step of contacting his deputies at Kumsusan Palace and ordering them to redouble their efforts to find the Englishman.

  The prospect of failure and disgrace was very real now. The Parade was about to start and, whatever Kun said, it had to be the target. A bomb? A sniper? Perhaps there were more of them than just the Englishman. And what could he do? There were already tens of thousands of people there, a crowd so dense that it would be perfect for one man to hide within. Kim certainly couldn’t ask for the Parade to be stopped. He had nothing to suggest that was necessary, nothing except the dull, sickening ache in the pit of his gut.

  The doctor’s drugs had ruined the man’s mind now, flipping him into a deep unconsciousness from which he emerged only now and again, generally babbling incoherently. Yet they persevered, Yun asking the same questions over and over and over again.

  Who is the agent?

  What was smuggled into the country?

  What is his target?

  And still nothing! Kim felt the bitter, selfish anger of a man who sees a bounty turn to ashes in his hands. His promotion, his position in the Ministry, in the Party, his whole life; his foolishness had put everything was at stake. He had chided himself for allowing the man to pass into the country in the first place, but, until now, he had never failed to believe that he would be able to find him and end the threat that he posed. Each answer, each potential source of knowledge, had crumbled between his fingers. He felt trapped.

  Yun suddenly shot to his feet and dashed to the intercom. He thumbed the channel open.

  “Comrade Major, I have it.”

  “What is it?” he practically yelped, his heart catching.

  “He does not know the man’s name, nor does he know what was brought into the country, but he says that he knows what it is that they intend to attack.”

  “What is it, man? Speak!”

  * * *

  16.

  MIDDAY. Milton was in his fifth hour of lying in wait. He had watched the city come alive, watched the crowds file into the huge square half a mile away. Now, it was packed. Thousands of spectators, people who had been bussed into the capital from the surrounding towns and cities, many of them travelling overnight. They were arranged into neat squares, each square holding hundreds of people, and they were dressed in colourful clothes, bright reds and yellows. The members of each square had been given a colourful banner to wave; some had red, others blue or white. When viewed from above, the national flag was depicted.

  The sound of marching bands filled the air, loud even at this distance. Tens of thousands of troops marched alongside the Palace, some carrying colourful standards, others armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. They stepped in formation, their legs held straight and lifted high, their arms synchronised in perfect time. Fifty Russian tanks followed the troops and then came the launchers: FROG-7 artillery rockets, Scuds, Hwasong short-range missiles, then Rodong and Taepodong medium-range missiles. Finally, Milton saw the largest missile of all, borne on a six-wheel launcher. It had been painted in camouflage greens-and-browns and bannered with messages threatening to destroy the United States and its military. It was the Musudan BM-25, the untested missile that they boasted could reach Alaska.

  Large bleachers had been built on the tiered steps of the Palace. They were packed with dignitaries: officials from the Workers’ Party, members of the intelligence services, high-ranking members of the military. Milton adjusted the rifle’s range to ten plus two: one thousand yards plus two minutes of angle. He mov
ed the gun in tiny increments, left to right, staring down the scope at general after general after general.

  Then he stopped.

  A short, rather chubby figure was suspended between the crosshairs. He wore the usual black Mao suit with a small red pin on the lapel. The pin was the emblem of the North Korean Workers’ Party. His face was soft, almost malformed, with small black eyes, fat cheeks and thin, bloodless lips. His skin was unnaturally pallid and his hair was jet black, almost certainly coloured, the sides shorn very close to the scalp. He looked out of place, a spoilt boy in a man’s body. He was looking out over the marching soldiers, his right hand brought up just above the level of his eyebrows in an awkward salute. He nodded every once in a while but he did not smile.

  He looked a little like his father.

  Milton slipped the index finger of his right hand through the guard and felt the trigger nestle between the second and third joints. He applied a tiny amount of pressure and felt it depress against its oiled springs; just a tiny amount more would be enough to send one of the ten big projectiles in the magazine on its way.

  The shot was there for him to take, but his orders were clear.

  Milton was the mailman.

  The cleaner.

  He was the operative who put the orders of others into practice and it was not his place to doubt them.

  He moved the sniper scope up so that it was aimed at the army building five hundred yards beyond the Palace. One thousand yards from his position. He moved it across, methodically, left to right, until he found the room he wanted. A large conference space, a lectern set up at the front before a dozen rows of folding chairs. A projector hung from the ceiling, shining the flag of the DPRK against the white wall that faced it. A table against the furthest wall held pots of tea and coffee. People were slowly assembling. Milton estimated forty, although there were chairs for twice that many and they were still coming.