by Chris Ryan
In 1976, the RAF took over the Spadeadam site, and the following year they converted it into the world's first Electronic Warfare Tactics Range. Electronic warfare – Ben didn't really know what that meant, although he felt pretty sure Annie would be able to fill him in. But everywhere he looked, he found insinuations of cover-ups and secret operations going on within the boundaries of the Spadeadam site. Nothing concrete. Nothing official. Just rumours.
Ben wasn't sure if he thought it all made sense, or if he was even more confused than before. He switched off his PDA and lay there in the darkness, trying to piece together everything he had just read. There didn't seem to be much doubt about the fact that secret, classified government projects had been undertaken there in the past – the discovery of the hidden missile silo made that pretty clear. But all that was a long time ago. Cover-ups? Conspiracies? Surely that sort of thing didn't go on now. Did it?
With those thoughts spinning round in his brain, sleep gradually overcame Ben. It was a turbulent sleep, broken and full of ominous visions of missiles and concrete bunkers, of faceless gunmen and slaughtered birds, and above all the troubled, piercing green eyes of the old man whose words Ben could not seem to get out of his head.
'Strange things happening at Spadeadam . . .' His voice seemed to echo in the darkness. 'Strange things happening at Spadeadam . . .'
Strange things indeed.
Ben awoke with a start.
He felt no sleepiness, just a sudden clarity. His dreams had been a jumble, but now something made perfect sense to him. When he had told the old man about the hen harrier, it had not seemed to surprise him at all. 'Makes perfect sense,' he had told Ben.
And suddenly, it did.
It was still dark outside – a glance at his watch told him that it was just past four o'clock – and Ben's first thought was for the old man. Was he still out there in the unwelcoming night, or had he crept back to the hostel before it had closed for the night to try and take advantage of its warmth and shelter? Somehow, he felt he knew the answer. He crept out of bed, sneaked illicitly into Annie's dormitory, and woke her up.
For a minute she didn't seem to know where she was, but she soon regained her bearings. 'What time is it?' she whispered hoarsely to Ben.
'Four o'clock, but you have to get up. I need to talk to you about something.'
'At four o'clock in the morning?'
'Yeah. Get your stuff ready – I'll meet you downstairs.'
The reception area was empty as Ben waited for her; finally she came down the stone steps carrying her rucksack, her face a thundercloud. Ben spoke before she could say a thing. 'We've got to go to Spadeadam.'
She looked at him like he was mad. 'What are you talking about, Ben?'
So Ben told her about the old man and how he had seen him wandering off into the night. 'We met in the common room last night and he kept talking about Spadeadam and Blue Streak. It's a—'
'I know what Blue Streak is, Ben. Don't tell me you've started to buy all those stupid conspiracy theories.'
'Listen,' Ben urged. 'It all makes sense. If you're doing something you want to keep secret, the last thing you want is random people walking around where they can stumble upon it, right?'
'I suppose so,' Annie replied reluctantly.
'Why have we come to the area?' Ben pressed.
'For the bird-watching.'
'Do you think they get many bird-watchers here?'
'Yeah, quite a few, I suppose.'
'Exactly. So what's the best way to stop bird-watchers coming to Spadeadam?'
The two cousins looked at each other, their faces serious.
'Are you trying to tell me,' Annie asked slowly, 'that someone is shooting rare birds around here to stop bird-watchers trespassing into Spadeadam and discovering their . . . their . . . secret plans? Ben, Spadeadam is a serious place, an important facility. They train our soldiers well so that they don't lose their lives . . .'
When she put it like that, Ben realized how farfetched it sounded; but the pieces of the jigsaw still fitted, and somehow he knew he was right. 'Can you think of another explanation?' he asked.
Annie was shaking her head. 'Nobody would do something as sick as that,' she told him.
Instantly, Ben thought back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 'Believe me,' he murmured, 'I've seen them do worse. Anyway' – he decided to try a different tack – 'what about the old man? He's not all there. I bet you any money you like he's gone to Spadeadam. I bet he's just wandering around there, getting freezing cold. We've got to try and find him, make sure he's all right.'
'Ben,' Annie told him patiently. 'You can't just go wandering into RAF Spadeadam. Do you have any idea what they do there?'
'Yeah.' Ben shrugged, trying to sound as if he knew what he was talking about. 'It's an electronic warfare tactics range.'
'And do you know what that means?'
'Er . . . no,' he admitted. 'Not really.'
Annie sighed. 'Electronic warfare,' she explained, her voice taking on an almost school-teacherly tone, 'or EW, is manipulating the electromagnetic spectrum to defeat or evade the enemy.'
'Right,' Ben replied. 'And in English?'
'Jamming radars, stealth technology, scrambling your enemy's signals and using your own electronic weapons to destroy them. My dad says it's the future of warfare. At Spadeadam, they simulate the effects of electronic warfare so that pilots can learn how to deal with it. They have dummy targets for aircraft to practise on under EW conditions.'
She must have realized that Ben was still looking at her a bit blankly, because when she spoke again it was much more slowly and clearly. 'Planes fly over Spadeadam and blow things up, Ben,' she stated.' A lot. And the army's EW research, a lot of which goes on at Spadeadam, really is top secret.'
Ben fell silent. He knew Annie had a fair point – trespassing on an RAF base was a dangerous business – but he just couldn't shake off his conviction that something untoward was happening there. He thought back to his experiences in Australia – all had not been as it seemed at the US base there. Maybe that was why he was not so convinced as Annie that everything was as it should be in Spadeadam. 'You're right,' he said quietly. 'We're going to have to be careful.'
'We're not going to have to be careful, Ben, because we're not going.'
Ben shrugged. 'Speak for yourself,' he said. He picked up the rucksack that was on the floor beside him and made for the door.
'Wait!' Annie told him. Ben smiled slightly to himself. He knew, despite her arguments, that Annie would not be able to resist a bit of intrigue. He turned to look at her. 'My dad's an air commodore,' she appealed to him. 'Can you imagine the trouble I'll be in if we're caught?'
'Then we'd better make sure we don't get caught, hadn't we?'
Annie's face was still filled with doubt. Ben had one last suggestion to try.
'Tell you what,' he said. 'I've got my digital camera here. We'll sneak into Spadeadam and see if we can find anyone shooting birds. If we do, I'll take a picture of them and we can show it to someone who can put a stop to it. But if we don't find anything by sunset, we'll leave and I'll never mention it again.'
For a moment Annie didn't reply and Ben could see that she was grappling with her conscience. Then she took a deep, slow breath. 'Do you promise, Ben?'
Ben nodded his head firmly. 'I promise.'
She closed her eyes. 'All right,' she said. 'When do we leave?'
Ben glanced back towards the exit.
'No time like the present,' he observed, as he opened the door and stepped out into the early morning.
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Chapter Six
Pyongyang, North Korea
It was the rainy season in North Korea, and the season was living up to its name. Torrential rain fell through the humid air, so heavy that it blurred the bright red light of the twenty-five-metre-high torch on the top of the imposing Juche Tower. Lee Chin-Hwa gazed out at the hazy sight from the back of his Mercedes l
imousine – a luxury given only to party bureaucrats or those favoured by the regime. Few ordinary North Koreans had cars. If they wanted to see the splendour of the Juche Tower – built to commemorate the seventieth birthday of Kim Il Sung, the former Communist leader and father of the current leader, Kim Jong Il – they would have to walk. But nobody would be walking there at the moment. Not in this rain, and not at this time of the morning.
It was five o'clock and still dark. Lee Chin-Hwa had been awoken by a telephone call as he slept in the small apartment that he shared with his elderly mother on the outskirts of Pyongyang.
'Lee Chin-Hwa?' the harsh voice at the other end of the phone had asked.
'That's right,' he had replied groggily.
'There is a car waiting for you outside. You are required to attend the government offices.' There was a click as the phone was put down.
Chin-Hwa had always been interested in physics, ever since his schooldays when he had trudged dutifully every morning to the faceless concrete school near his parents' apartment block. His teachers, however, had been more interested in indoctrinating their pupils according to the regime's instructions. So instead of learning about atoms at school, he had learned about revolutionary history. And instead of learning about space, he had learned about the blessed life of Kim Il Sung. Only at home could he study the science that so excited him.
Chin-Hwa's father Ki-Woon had fought in the Korean War, during which time he had come into contact with some American soldiers. Through them he had learned a phrase which amused him, and which he used to repeat in his comic-sounding American accent every time he found Chin-Hwa reading one of his prized and illegal scientific textbooks: 'You can't keep a good man down!'
Ki-Woon had been a talented physicist himself. When Chin-Hwa was fifteen years old, however, his father had been instructed by the government to join those scientists involved in developing North Korea's nuclear programme. But Ki-Woon was a principled man: he was of the firm belief that science should be used for the good of mankind, not for its destruction.
He knew what he was doing. And he knew what the outcome would be.
It was just before midnight when the knock on the door came. Chin-Hwa shared a bedroom with his parents. He saw his father sit up promptly and exchange a meaningful glance with his mother, whose face was fixed in a mask of undisguised terror. He hugged her tightly, only untwining his arms when there was another, slightly louder knock. Then he climbed out of bed, pulled on his threadbare clothes, and hugged his son. 'It is up to you to look after your mother now,' he whispered in his ear.
Chin-Hwa and his mother followed timidly as Ki-Woon walked out into the main room of the apartment and opened the door.
Standing in the dimly lit corridor were three men. They were not wearing military uniform, but something about their demeanour made it clear that they were here on official business. One of them – clearly the leader of their little gang – spoke. 'Lee Ki-Woon?'
Chin-Hwa's father nodded.
'You have to come with us.'
'On what business?'
The man smiled nastily. 'On the business of His Excellency the President, on suspicion of treason.'
A sob escaped the lips of Chin-Hwa's mother as, head held high, her husband started walking through the doorway.
'Wait!' the man said, holding up the palm of his hand. 'Your son too. He must come.'
A horrible silence descended, and Chin-Hwa felt a chill run through his body. And then he heard it: the scream of his mother. 'Not my son! Please, not my son! He has nothing to do with this. He is innocent.'
The men at the door looked suddenly panicked. 'Shut her up,' their leader told Ki-Woon harshly. 'Shut the woman up now!'
Ki-Woon glanced back at his family. 'There is nothing I can do,' he said. 'If you take her son away from her, she will scream like that until the end of her days.' He raised an eyebrow at the group as his wife's wails continued. 'Of course, if she carries on screaming just for the next few minutes, she will attract attention. People will come to see what is the matter, and you three will be revealed for the government informers that you are. Things will go badly for you then, I think.'
The men looked nervously at each other.
'I will come with you,' Ki-Woon continued quietly. 'But if you insist on bringing my son, I swear I will fight you with every bone in my body. You will have to kill me here and now, in front of all the neighbours who will surely be at our door very soon.'
The man stared at Ki-Woon; Ki-Woon returned his gaze without letting the fear that he must surely have been feeling show on his face.
'Grab him,' the man said finally, and his two accomplices stepped inside the flat and each took an arm.
Ki-Woon did not struggle. He just turned his head round to look at his son. 'Remember what I told you, Chin-Hwa,' he said.
Seconds later, he was gone. Chin-Hwa never saw him again.
That was seventeen years ago. Barely a day passed when Chin-Hwa did not wonder what had happened to his father. He knew he would never find out, although he could make a pretty good guess. In the north of the country were the notorious prison camps where hundreds of thousands of political dissidents were sent. Torture was commonplace in such places. The lucky ones died soon after they arrived.
Ki-Woon's son had obeyed his father's instructions, taking care of his mother as she slipped into an old age full of sorrow. His interest in science had not abated, but he had made a conscious decision to avoid studying nuclear physics. The government's passion for becoming a nuclear power was well known, and he had no desire to be forced into helping them. When the regime was finally overthrown – as surely it must be someday soon – he wanted his skills to be of use, and so he had studied electronics and computing in his spare time, while making a living fixing the antiquated wiring systems of the cheaply built apartment blocks around the capital.
Every couple of months he had saved up enough to spend an hour on the heavily filtered workstations at Pyongyang's only Internet cafés – no doubt the authorities had known that he was looking at sites informing him of the latest advances in the world of electronics. But they left him alone – theirs was a Cold-War mentality and they were interested only in bombs.
A year ago, however, it had all changed.
He had arrived home at lunch time to find his mother sitting frightened in the one armchair they possessed. A man he did not recognize, smartly dressed in a khaki military suit with shiny shoes, stood nearby.
'Who are you?' Chin-Hwa demanded of him.
'Lee Chin-Hwa?' the man asked, ignoring the question.
'That's right.'
'Ah, good. I was just telling your mother that I have brought you a gift.' He handed him a small white envelope. Chin-Hwa's eyes narrowed and he looked inside. Banknotes. At a guess, Chin-Hwa would have said there were 3,000 won there – more than he earned in a month. 'Come with me,' the man instructed. 'I would like to show you something.'
Chin-Hwa knew he couldn't refuse.
The official – Chin-Hwa would never find out his name – escorted him to a waiting chauffeured Mercedes. In silence they drove to an area on the outskirts of the city where there was a large athletics field. A crowd had gathered, but there were no sportsmen. Sickened, Chin-Hwa knew what they were here to witness.
'Get out,' the official told him.
Together they joined the waiting crowd.
After a couple of minutes, a white minibus drove up. It stopped in front of the crowd and six armed soldiers jumped out. They opened up the back and bundled out five people, their eyes blindfolded and their hands tied behind their back. The people were lined up. One of them fell to his knees through fear, and was roughly pulled to his feet, then five of the armed soldiers formed a line a few metres from them. The sixth soldier started to shout commands.
'Ready your weapons!'
'Aim at the enemy!'
'Fire!'
The rifles cracked and the prisoners fell as one to the ground; Chin-Hwa,
nauseated, averted his eyes.
'Fire!'
A second shot, just to be sure.
'Cease firing!'
The soldier turned to the crowd. 'You have witnessed,' he shouted, 'how these miserable fools have ended up. Traitors who betray the nation and its people end up like this.'
The official turned to Chin-Hwa. 'Miserable fools,' he whispered, echoing the soldier's words. 'They knew what would happen to them.'
Chin-Hwa didn't reply. He was too busy trying not to be sick.
'Your mother is frail,' the official continued. 'It would be a pity if she were to end up like those miserable fools, would it not?'
Chin-Hwa froze for a moment. He turned to the official. 'What do you mean?'
The official just raised an eyebrow and gave a knowing look towards the dead bodies only a few metres away from them. 'Of course,' he said, 'it's up to you. If you make the right decision, she could enjoy a long and happy old age. You'll even get one of those white envelopes every month to make her more comfortable.'
Chin-Hwa closed his eyes and took a deep breath. 'All right,' he said. 'You win. What is it that you want from me?'
The official smiled. 'Well,' he said, ushering Chin-Hwa back to the waiting car, 'that is rather complicated.'
And so it had all started
Every week since then, and sometimes twice a week, the reluctant scientist had been escorted by the same black limousine in which he now sat on that rainy morning, to the government building of the Supreme People's Assembly. What he had learned there he never told anyone, even his mother. It was not just because he had been forbidden to do so; it was because he was ashamed. Ashamed of being a part of what was going on. Ashamed that, unlike his father before him, he was unable to refuse to use his scientific knowledge for purposes such as this.
As the limousine drove him closer to the government buildings, Chin-Hwa remembered that day seventeen years ago when his father had been taken from them. Ki-Woon had told him to look after his mother. Well, in a way that was what he was doing. He wondered if his father would have accepted that as an excuse for being involved in the government's terrible plans. He wondered what his father would have done.