Trigger Mortis

by Anthony Horowitz

  ‘Let me tell you where you are and how you came to fall into my hands, Mr Bond,’ Sin began. ‘This is one of many quite similar depots that I have in America. This one belonged once to a silk manufacturer who had emigrated from London. He had this house built to remind himself of his origins. As to your arrest, I will admit that you were unlucky. There is a camera inside the office beside the front gate and there is a relay to my office on the first floor. I was working at my desk and happened to see Miss Lane on my monitor. I recognised her at once from the Schloss Bronsart. It is my habit never to forget a face and it seemed a very strange coincidence that a so-called journalist at a race track should suddenly turn up, pretending to have had some sort of mechanical breakdown, here. I gave orders for her to be apprehended at once and, after inflicting a certain amount of pain on her, she informed me that you were also inside the compound. The rest you know.’

  ‘I don’t need to listen to this,’ Jeopardy muttered. ‘Why don’t you just take me back to my cell?’

  Sin turned to her slowly. ‘You will do what I tell you to, Miss Lane,’ he said in his matter-of-fact way. ‘You are here for no reason other than that it pleases me. But if you interrupt me again, I will indeed have you taken back to your cell. And when you are there, I will instruct my guards to do anything they wish with you. So I would advise you to keep your infantile remarks to yourself.’ Jeopardy opened her mouth to speak, thought again and said nothing. Sin turned his attention back to Bond. ‘Shall we get the basics out of the way?’ he continued. ‘I have a feeling you will have been in this position before. We only have a certain amount of time together so I shall explain the house rules, as it were, and then we will eat.’

  ‘You have less time than you think,’ Bond cut in. ‘Our people will be looking for us, both the British and the Americans. They know we’re here. If they don’t hear from us very soon they will most certainly come knocking at your door.’

  ‘That may well be true – and I thank you for drawing it to my attention. My door will always be open to them, but I rather doubt that they will find you on the other side.’

  There was a second door leading into the room and as if on cue it opened to admit a Korean man, dressed as a waiter, carrying a silver tray with two cocktail glasses.

  ‘I am told that your favourite alcoholic drink is a martini cocktail,’ Sin explained. ‘Three measures of Gordon’s, a little vermouth, a twist of lemon, the whole thing to be shaken not stirred. It sounds to me a ridiculous amount of effort for what is, after all, no more than an inebriant, but as you are my guest I have endeavoured to satisfy you. Miss Lane will drink the same, I am sure.’

  Bond took the drink and sipped it. It was ice cold but unpleasant to taste, completely overpowered by too large a measure of vermouth. He said nothing but stored away the information that Sin lacked the expertise even to make a decent martini cocktail.

  ‘You will see that I know everything about you, Mr Bond, 007 of the British Secret Service. You have a licence to kill. Does that mean you came here to kill me, I wonder? Or is it SMERSH that is your true target? They were very pleased that you and I had crossed paths. They have a very high opinion of you, you might like to know. Colonel Gaspanov asks me to send you his very warmest good wishes.’

  ‘Tell the colonel I look forward to catching up with him.’

  ‘That is unlikely to happen. Your cigarettes are made by Morlands of Grosvenor Street. I was unable to procure any given the short space of time but you are welcome to smoke if you wish.’ Sin nodded and one of the guards placed a packet of Viceroys and a book of matches on the table. Bond took one and lit it. He noticed he had been supplied with just two matches: one for now, one perhaps for later. ‘We have made an elaborate ritual out of eating, which is what animals simply do with their head in a trough,’ Sin went on. ‘But these extraneous habits, drinking and smoking, I find completely incomprehensible. Still, I would not wish to deprive you of your last pleasures. At the same time, we must get down to business.

  ‘I am going to tell you the story of my life, Mr Bond. It is a unique story, quite remarkable in its own way. I am sure it will be of interest to you and I will admit it gives me some satisfaction in relating it. I also know that I can confide in you for the simple reason that, as I have already indicated, in a short while you will be dead. This was inevitable from the moment we met and you would have done better to have stayed away. Knowing you to be a man of considerable resource, I am sure that even now you are considering what action, what countermeasures to take. I should therefore warn you that the four guards in this room will be watching your every movement, every second that you are here. Their attention is focused on you one hundred per cent. If you so much as twitch a little finger in a manner that causes them concern, they will react. Do I make myself understood?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ Bond replied. His face revealed nothing but at the same time he folded away a tiny note of hope. Once again, Sin had said more than he had perhaps intended, revealing a weakness that might just possibly be used against him.

  ‘Good. Your drink is satisfactory? Then let me begin.

  ‘I imagine you do not know very much of the country that gave birth to me, Mr Bond. To the world, Korea is a faraway place of great strategic significance but of little interest in itself. When I was born, in 1927, it was occupied by the Japanese, a brutal race who treated us as little more than animals, stealing our food, crushing our traditions and trampling our heritage underfoot. We were finally liberated from them on the fifteenth of August 1945, a day I will never forget. The entire country celebrated. It was the first time in my life that I had seen our own flags waved in the street and at last we thought our identity would be returned to us. This optimism was short-lived. First of all, the country had been quite arbitrarily divided into two with a line crossing the thirty-eighth parallel and this would soon have disastrous consequences. After rigged elections, and with the support of the Americans, a new president – Syngman Rhee – was voted into office and quickly proved himself to be ruthless and dictatorial. Strikes and demonstrations, assassinations and acts of terror quickly followed. Even large cities became prone to attacks by communist guerrillas. The police and government were incompetent and corrupt. We had nowhere to turn.

  ‘I should explain that I was fortunate in that I was exempted from much of the suffering of my country. My parents were wealthy. My father was what was called a yangban, which is to say that he was well-connected, part of an elite family. He was a Confucian scholar and a senior official in local government. His mother, my grandmother, had attended upon the Empress Myeongseong – Queen Min as she was known – and had lived for a time at Changdeokgung Palace during the dying days of the Chosŏn dynasty. This fact is central to my narrative. As for myself, I had been sent to a first-class liberal arts college and then to Seoul National University where I studied business and law. I was also fluent in the English language before I was twenty.

  ‘My life changed for ever on Sunday the twenty-fifth of June 1950. I recall that I was walking to my home in Seoul without a care in the world when I heard a siren break through the air. I hurried into the house to find my mother and two sisters listening to an announcement on the wireless. The North Korean communist army, comprising 135,000 men, supported by Russian-made T-34 tanks and artillery units, had crossed the thirty-eighth parallel at four o’clock that morning. They were on their way south and there was nothing we could do to stop them.’

  Sin broke off as the waiter returned with the dinner, a simple plate of steak, rice and salad. Bond felt the guards’ eyes boring into him as he picked up his knife. He was determined to eat. Apart from a sandwich and a glass of water brought to his cell at lunchtime, he’d had nothing in the past twenty-four hours and he would need his strength for whatever lay ahead. Sin had been served the same. ‘I hope you don’t mind if we talk and eat at the same time, Mr Bond.’

  ‘You’re the one doing the talking.’

  ‘Indeed so.’ He turned to
Jeopardy. ‘Do you have everything you need, Miss Lane?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ She didn’t look up.

  The waiter poured two glasses of wine for Bond and Jeopardy, placed the bottle on the table – another weapon? No, the guards were still too damned attentive – and left. Sin returned to his narrative.

  ‘My father decided we should leave at once. He knew that the North Koreans would enter the city in less than a week – in fact it took them just three days – and as a government official he might well be taken out and shot. He was a very dignified, very quiet man and none of us would have dreamed of arguing with him. In Confucian teaching, the bond between the father and his children is a sacred one. He instructed us to take very little with us. He placed his valuables, including some artworks and my mother’s jewellery, in a secret compartment beneath the ondol floor in the dining room. There was a system of flues there that carried the heat from the kitchen and I had never seen it opened before. Nor, for that matter, would I ever see it again. My mother, my two sisters and I carried one small package each. We locked the front door and, without saying a word, set off into the night.

  ‘Our destination was the village of Chu Gok Ri where my grandparents had lived. My grandmother was now alone, my grandfather having died two years before. We took a bus as far as the River Han, then crossed the main bridge on foot. We were lucky to do so. One day later, our own army would blow it up without any warning, killing hundreds of our own people at the same time. And I should mention that there were many other stories of dreadful, hideous errors. American planes – we called them “shriekers” – had attacked our own forces, mistaking them for the enemy. Already it was apparent that this was not war in any modern sense. It was a mess. The American military in Korea were untrained, ill-disciplined and ignorant. Many of the soldiers had not even received basic training. It might interest you to know, and it has a great bearing on my tale, that they were unable to distinguish between the communists of North Korea whom they were supposed to be fighting and the terrified refugees of South Korea whom they were there to protect. The Korean word for “Korean” is Hanguk-saram and so they called us gooks. It did not matter where we came from. We were all gooks to them.’

  Sin lifted his glass and took a sip of water. Unlike Bond, he had not been served wine. His own food lay, getting cold, in front of him.

  ‘By the time we reached Chu Gok Ri, the flow out of Seoul had become a flood and the main highway was a seething mass of humanity with vehicles and possessions abandoned everywhere. We saw a few planes pass overhead and also some trains, carrying Republic of Korea soldiers north to the fighting, but we felt safe out of the city. My grandmother had a beautiful house with a traditional tiled roof, surrounded by persimmon trees. I remember her as a wonderfully poised and smiling woman, impossibly old, although she must have been only in her mid-seventies. She had enough space for all of us although my sisters – Li-Na and Su-Min – had to share a room and I had a mattress on a sort of platform, tucked into the eaves. We stayed with her for almost a month.

  ‘Inevitably, the troubles followed us. More and more refugees poured into the village and, having nowhere to stay, they slept in the streets even though it was pouring with rain. The ground soon turned to mud and the night brought clouds of mosquitoes. Every day we saw new families arrive, the men bent double under their chige – wooden A-frames loaded down with all the possessions they had been able to carry. Some of the women had brought their cooking pots even though it broke their backs to do so. There were children carrying their little brothers and sisters. And at the same time the war was getting closer, too. We could hear explosions on the other side of the valley and at night there were flashes in the sky and the whole air smelled of petrol. Then American soldiers arrived. They came in trucks and jeeps and set up a camp just outside the village. They lounged around, playing cards, and some of the children went up to them to try and get chocolate or chewing gum. But my father was afraid. He had heard rumours of civilian deaths. Apparently an order had gone out that if anyone was found to be in groups of ten or more, they could be taken for enemy infiltrators and shot. The American commanders were afraid of communists disguising themselves as civilians. Most people, both from the north and the south, wore the same, traditional white clothes. That would be enough to identify you as the enemy. And there were other rumours regarding the American soldiers, many of whom were young and had never been with a woman before. My mother cut off my sisters’ hair to make them less attractive and forced them to stay close to the house. I still remember the fear in her eyes. To her, the soldiers were as dangerous as snakes.’

  Bond was listening in silence. He already had an idea where this story was going and it struck him how strangely emotionless Sin was in the telling. His voice was soft and monotonous. He was not looking for sympathy or understanding. It was as if all this had happened to someone else.

  ‘And then the day came when the Americans told us that we had to leave. They had suffered many defeats in the north and the communists were advancing. We were in the middle of what would soon be a battle zone. I remember a jeep that came driving into the village with a fat American in military dress, a driver and a Korean interpreter. Between them they explained that we had two hours to leave our homes, taking only what we could carry. There was a sort of controlled panic throughout the village. My father, who seemed to have lost all his authority during the previous few weeks, told us that we had no choice. We must do as we were told. He went to the back of the house to collect his mother. She had not been well and had taken to her bed but it was unthinkable that she should stay behind. At least, that was what we thought. He was gone for a long time and when he finally came back, his face was grave.

  ‘“She is not coming,” he said, simply. My mother began to argue but he cut her off. “She has made up her mind.” He turned to me. “She wants to see you. Be quick. We have to leave now.”

  ‘Mystified, I made my way to her room. She was sitting in bed, looking for all the world like the dragon queen that I had often seen in temples. There was something in her face that disturbed me. Her eyes were hard and I remembered what my father had said.

  ‘She called me over to her bed and told me to sit down. “I am not coming with you,” she said. From the way she spoke, I knew I was here to listen, not to interrupt. “I am not afraid of the northern soldiers. Why should they want to hurt me? The Americans are worse. They are stupid and violent – but they will soon be gone. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I am too old for all this and I don’t really care if I live or die.

  ‘“I want to give you something. It is important that somebody in the family should have it and because you are my oldest grandchild, I have chosen you.” She drew her hand out from beneath the bed cover and I saw that she was holding a small silk envelope. “Do not tell your father,” she went on. “He will think I have no faith in him and perhaps he is right. He will be angry. But I see in you the same steel that I had when I was a young girl and I know that you will use this wisely, to help your sisters and your family. Do not open it now. Wait until you are somewhere on your own, far from this house.” She pressed the envelope into my hand then fell back, the very life force ebbing out of her. It was as if she had handed me her soul. “Now leave me,” she said. “Go quickly. And trust no one. Everyone who has ever come to this little country of ours has always betrayed it. Nothing changes. Go now!”

  ‘I left her and a short while later I left Chu Gok Ri, stripped of my identity, just part of the straggling line of villagers that included my sisters and my parents, making our way through a narrow valley with rice paddies on one side and pine groves on the other, escorted by American GIs. The weather was already very hot, very close and that evening the clouds broke and we were instantly drenched. In the distance we could hear guns firing and we felt the earth tremble. By the time night came, we were exhausted and hungry but we had no choice but to carry on. And so it was that we came to the bridge at No Gun Ri.’

 
; It was what Bond had been expecting. He had seen an intelligence report on No Gun Ri. There were many Americans – politicians and generals – who were trying to pretend that the place didn’t exist.

  ‘The name comes from old words meaning “forest” and “deer”,’ Sin explained. ‘The bridge had been built by the Japanese. It was a very solid – I would say brutal – construction, comprising two concrete arches supporting a railway which ran overhead. A rough track led from the bridge to a cluster of mud huts, used by local farmers. There were more rice paddies nearby. By now we were too tired to carry on and this is where we stopped and rested, with fireballs crossing the night sky, the dull thud of explosions punctuated by gunfire, and then silence filled with the excited whispers of the cicadas.

  ‘When the sun rose, there were about six hundred of us huddled together below the railway track at the foot of White Horse Mountain with American soldiers, clearly visible in their green uniforms, dug in on the slopes, some of them watching us through binoculars. My mother had brought food and we ate a hurried breakfast, wondering what would happen next. It seemed incredible to me that an ordinary family who, a short while ago, had been living comfortably in a modern city, should have been reduced to little more than peasants. But I knew not to complain. My sisters had said almost nothing since we had left the village. We had followed my father here and we trusted him to get us out. It was his belief that the Americans would send some sort of transport for us and, indeed, just after midday, with the heat growing ever more intense, we heard the sound of planes approaching. I remember thinking how strange that was. There was nowhere for them to land.

  ‘The planes were American. They drew closer until the scream of their engines filled the air. They were very low. Nobody moved. Nobody even thought of running away, not until they opened fire and began to kill us.