by Mark Dawson
Milton wheeled his suitcase out of the terminal and into the bitter cold. What little warmth he had been able to recover as he had been interrogated was soon a distant memory.
* * *
3.
MAJOR KIM Shin-Jo replaced the receiver of the telephone that linked him with the officers in the airport. He double-clicked on the file that had just been emailed to him and a series of .jpgs were unpacked. He selected one and opened it: a picture of a man filled the screen. He was at the security checkpoint, the x-ray machine visible over his right shoulder. He looked a little over average height for a Westerner––six foot perhaps––and Kim would have estimated his age at somewhere in his late thirties. His hair was black and his eyes were blue. He was wearing jeans and a turtleneck jumper, a jacket folded over his right arm. European. A patient expression. It was just one of dozens of photographs that had been taken. Kim had privates all across the airport: there was the man who scanned the runway, another two in the concourse, another in the exit lounge. They were his eyes and ears.
Kim was Assistant Security Chief at the Pyongyang Suran International Airport, responsible for a team of thirty officers. They were placed within the 7th Department of the 2nd Chief Directorate, the section of the Ministry of State Security responsible for operations against tourists.
Kim was not having a good day. Not good at all. He was on edge, a nervousness that it seemed he shared with the entire Department. The final preparations to ensure the security of the grand Parade were underway, an enormous amount of work that needed to be done and barely enough time to do it all in. The 7th Department was responsible for ensuring that all foreign visitors inside the borders of the DPRK were double and then triple checked. No-one thought it was likely that the imperialists or their puppets from the south would attempt an operation on the centenary of the Great Leader’s birthday, but the dictat from the top was absolutely clear: no chances were to be taken. The eyes of the world would be watching, and national prestige was at stake. Kim had spoken with the Colonel as he came on shift this morning and the man had been absolutely clear. The consequences for failure––any failure, no matter how seemingly insignificant––had been made starkly obvious: there would be a quick trial and then a lifetime spent in the gulag.
Kim had visited the gulag. He had sent enemies of the state there.
The prospect of a one-way trip was more than enough to focus the mind.
Kim printed the picture out, placed it on his desk and studied it again. He clicked across to the database and pulled the man’s file. Peter McEwan. There was something about him that made him nervous but he could not decide what it was. The patient expression, perhaps? He had just been detained, the other passengers were already gone and yet he appeared equable. Kim could see that McEwan was a frequent visitor to the DPRK. Six visits, all to Pyongyang. Perhaps he had been stopped before, or had come to accept the likelihood that it would happen.
And, yet, that did not quite ring true.
Intelligence did not suggest anything was afoot. He should have been able to relax. He had received the current circular from the Directorate and there was no unusual activity reported. And yet…
And yet.
He picked up the telephone and placed a call to the 7th Department HQ. His deputy, Yun Jong-Su, answered. “Comrade-Major,” he said.
“I have a visitor that I would like you to check, Captain,” Kim said. “His name is Peter McEwan. English. I will send you his details now.”
“What am I looking for?”
“I do not know. He arrived in the country this afternoon. His file says he has been here several times before, mostly in the last few months. A businessman. Importing luxury cars for the leadership. Everything appears to be in order and yet there is something about this man that makes me feel nervous. Check his file carefully. If anything is amiss––anything, Yun––then you must contact me at once.”
“Certainly, Comrade-Major.”
“Do not let me down.”
Kim replaced the receiver and found that he had gritted his teeth. Today was his final day in the job before the promotion he had been chasing for so many months. No more airport, no more interminable studying of the same blank faces, all those same oafish Westerners arriving into the Fatherland with their wide eyes and open mouths. He was being transferred to the State Security Department with responsibility for monitoring political dissidents.
It was a prestigious posting and one he had been honoured to accept.
He was almost there. He just had to negotiate this one final day.
* * *
4.
MILTON HAD to wait five minutes for a taxi. Eventually, one turned up: an old Yugo, battered and dented, probably a hangover from the days when the Russians propped up the North Korean economy. “The Yanggakdo Hotel, please,” he said once his luggage was deposited in the back. The car pulled away and, as they paused to turn onto the deserted highway that would lead into the heart of the capital, Milton allowed himself a brief backwards glance. Two tail cars were behind them.
That was good. He wanted them to follow him.
The main route into the city was known simply as Road Number 1. It was so broad it could easily have accommodated six lanes of traffic, but the restrictions on private ownership of cars meant that there was never anything in the way of congestion. The landscape was barren and sparse, wide expanses of dusty flatlands with the occasional ramshackle habitation becoming more frequent as they passed into the outskirts of the city. As the taxi travelled into the capital proper there came the large plane and acacia trees, the lower part of the trunks painted white. Milton had overheard locals discussing the reason for this during a previous visit: it was, variously, to keep away insects, protect the tree from harsh temperatures or, most likely, to denote that the tree was government property and must not be chopped for firewood. As they travelled onwards they came across more and more of the familiar red signposts with propaganda slogans and, behind them, soaring streetlamps that were seldom switched on. The pavements in the central district were as broad as the Champs-Élysées, a grand boulevard that was intended to remind the citizenry of the power of their government. Many of the locals chose to walk in the road since the traffic was so spare. There were no traffic lights, with uniformed police monitoring the few cars and lorries with the aid of glowing batons. All things considered, downtown Pyongyang provided a reasonably positive first impression. It was only on closer inspection that it became clear that chunks of concrete had fallen off the buildings, that the streetlights all tilted precariously in different directions and that the trams were all cratered with dents.
He still felt off-balance. The dream had passed, leaving tiny gossamer webs of memory that reminded him that he had had it. One thing was for sure: it was bad timing. He would have been nervous without it. This kind of deception was not unusual for a man in his line of work but there were very few places where the consequences of discovery would be as severe as in the DPRK. There would be no official protest, no consular activity to get him back. As far as the Group was concerned, as soon as he was in the field he was a totally deniable asset. That rule was rigid; men and women had been lost before, swallowed up into the penal bureaucracies of some of the world’s most inhospitable states, never to be seen or heard from again. The prospect of a life spent in a North Korean gaol was not a pleasant one. Nervousness, even for an operative as experienced as Milton, was not an unreasonable response in the circumstances.
The nerves would return again, but he had passed his first inspection. It was important that he had attracted attention and Peter McEwan was precisely the sort of man to do that. Milton had read his file cover-to-cover. He was a wanted man in several countries. Flouting international sanctions was just one of the crimes of which he was guilty. His main income was derived from smuggling and, to that end, he had extensive links with criminal concerns all around the world from the Ndrangheta in Sicily to the Los Zetas cartel in Northern Mexico. Drugs, luxury
items, arms, counterfeit currency, even people; McEwan was not burdened by conscience and there was very little that he was not prepared to trade. The man had been chosen because of his reputation and because he was known to the MPSS officials, but the benefit of his notoriety also carried its own burden: Milton had to play a part already known to his watchers. He had to hit all the minute beats of a man for whom there was already a voluminous file somewhere deep in the secret police’s vast bureaucracy.
There were imperfections in the plan, of course. If they compared the photographs of Milton with that of McEwan, the deception would not hold for long. Milton had altered his appearance as far as was possible in order to mimic McEwan––the expensive glasses, the slicked back hair, five days’ worth of stubble, the way he walked and held himself––but none of it would hold up under proper scrutiny. It was an approximation, barely more than a sketch, and, just as he had made an attempt to capture the man’s oleaginous manner, that overbearing arrogance and the air of seediness that accompanied him like a bad smell, any kind of inquisition would strip the falsehoods away just like sunlight burning through early morning mist.
British intelligence had its eye on plenty of men and women like McEwan, individual operators who plied their trade in some of the world’s most unpleasant places. Whenever unobtrusive access for a cleaner was required––as now––then the Group would lay its finger on the person who would best allow an agent a means of ingress. The mark would be removed from circulation and replaced. It was a simple ruse and the moral turpitude of those who made it possible meant that the human cost was more easily ignored. Milton’s conscience was not troubled by the cost of his deception.
Outside the window, Pyongyang rolled by. Parts of it were even pretty, with all the blossom and the flowers. They passed the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery and the Schoolchildren’s Palace. They followed the road as it bisected a large public square where hundreds of Young Pioneers, soldiers and paramilitaries were practicing for the Parade, a spectacle of robotic choreography perfected by hundreds of hours of drill. From the sides of buildings and on enormous billboards were the faces of the Great and Dear Leaders: Generalissimo Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il, both of them dead and gone but impossible to forget.
The newest pictures were of the young and untested Kim Jong-un, the scion of the line.
Milton had read all of the ridiculous rhetoric that had flowed from the DPRK since Kim had succeeded his father. “Seas of fire.” “Merciless vengeance.” It was bluster and braggadocio for the most part, but the Koreans had nuclear weapons to back up their threats and now the country was developing other, more insidious, ways to hurt the West. Milton did not know, nor did he need to know, the political calculus that had led to his being there, sitting in a taxi as it delivered him to the heart of Pyongyang. But, as he looked at a row of fresh portraits of Kim Jong-un, Milton knew that the games of brinksmanship that the North had perfected had been played out for too long.
No: Milton did not need to know why the message had suddenly become necessary, only that it was.
He was just the postman.
His job was to deliver it.
* * *
5.
THE HOTEL Yanggakdo, a thousand room monster that was reserved for foreign guests, sat on the prow of an island in the Taedong River. Westerners called it The Alcatraz of Fun for its revolving restaurant on the roof and its basement of decadent delights: a casino, a swimming pool, a bowling alley and karaoke bars. Milton wheeled his luggage into the reception and checked in. One of the black tail cars had parked near to the entrance. Milton noticed that the dark suited man in the passenger seat had disembarked and followed him into the lobby. While he waited for his room to be assigned, he made a lazy scan of the foyer. Two others were waiting for him: a man reading his newspaper as his shoes were buffed by a shoe-shine boy and, at the bar, a man who was drinking a cup of tea. The operatives were relaxed and easy, yet they were not experienced enough to hide their purpose from someone like him. If, and when, he left the Yanggakdo, one or both of those men would follow. There would be a car outside, ready to tail him should he avail himself of a taxi. The polite, smiling receptionist would also be in the employ of the secret police, as would be the bellhop who helped him with his luggage. The cleaners, the waiting staff who delivered room service; all would report back to the Directorate of the MPSS that had been assigned the file for Mr Peter Douglas McEwan, the known smuggler from Great Britain.
The room was clean and tidy, pleasant enough. Double-glazed windows behind thin net curtains offered a wide view of downtown Pyongyang. Milton sat back on the bed and took off his shoes. The TV in his room was switched on, looping a series of important events: ‘Kim Jong-un provides field guidance at the Pyongyang Hosiery Factory,” said one report. The next showed the young leader astride a large chestnut horse, inspecting troop movements near the demilitarized zone. Milton took up the remote control and switched through the channels: the BBC, CNN, an anonymous football match with teams that he did not recognise. The room would be rife with bugs but Milton made no effort to find them, nor even to adapt his behaviour to take them into account. He wouldn’t have been able to neutralise them even if he had been able to find them. And he had no way of knowing whether the mirror that faced the bed was two-way.
None of it mattered.
He wanted them to listen and watch.
He stripped topless and went through to the bathroom to wash. The light fell over the tattoo across his shoulders and back, the angel wings tipped with razor claws. He dunked his head in the sink, scrubbing the cold water into his pores, trying to excise the last somnambulant effects of the dream.
He picked up the telephone and dialled a Chinese number. He held a brief conversation with the man at the other end of the line, checking that the transporter with the eight luxury cars had crossed the border successfully. It had, and it was due to arrive in the city tonight, around nine, right on schedule.
He made himself a gin and tonic from the minibar. Cheap Chinese gin, tonic that barely retained any fizz. He took the drink to the window and looked down from the thirteenth floor. The roads were virtually empty. The sky, usually so full of the vapour trails from passing jets, was clear. He stared, for a long time. Moranbong Park was half a mile away and Milton remembered it from his last trip: its host of pagodas, clouds of blossom and the people spreading picnics, drinking rice liquor and singing sentimental folk songs. Red flags fluttered at road junctions. Statues of the Kims could be seen in public places, arms raised aloft in victory that was so pyrrhic as to be a horrible joke. The enormous, clawed finger of the Ryugyong Hotel, designed as the tallest in the world when construction started twenty years earlier, still stood unfinished. An attempt to trump the upstart South, it stood instead as a permanent reminder of the North’s failure.
He allowed his thoughts to wander a little. He had an appointment to keep. Two people that he did not know would be waiting for him in the Park. His instructions were to leave the hotel after dinner. He was not, under any circumstances, to lose his tail. All he had to do was to be certain to arrive at eight.
* * *
6.
JOHN MILTON took a single table in the restaurant and ate pansanggi, a collection of small dishes including grilled beef, brined fish and boiled cabbage. He ate at a leisurely place, flicking through a translated copy of the Workers’ Newspaper that he had collected from a rack in the lobby. There were no obvious signs of surveillance, but Milton was sure that the staff were keeping an eye on him. He thanked his waitress and left a ten euro note as a tip, collecting his overcoat and walking brusquely across the foyer and straight for the exit. He knew that he would leave confusion in his wake; foreigners were not generally allowed to wander the streets without a chaperone. He emerged into the chill air and set off quickly at a fast walk.
It was busy outside: workers went on and off shift at the hotel, factory hands hurried for the busses that would take them to their flats on t
he outskirts of the city, a few cars and lorries made their way along the roads. Milton did not look back but he knew that he would immediately be followed. He looked in the window of a small department store and saw one man, hurrying after him determinedly. He did not see the large black Mercedes detach itself from the hotel’s parking lot, but he heard its engine as it accelerated and overtook him. He turned to see the man in the passenger seat staring at him through the window of the car and, for a moment, he had the grim premonition that he was about to be detained. He had considered the possibility and had decided that he would run, but the chances of successfully making his appointment would be remote. Most likely he would be captured and swallowed up into the vast bureaucracy of the intelligence service, eventually emerging into a gulag––a kaolin mine, a re-education camp––from where he would never escape.
He crossed the road at the entrance to the park, his muscles twitching and his gut watery with nerves, but the order for him to stop did not come.
The park contained many significant monuments, including the Pyongyang Arch of Triumph where he was to make his rendezvous. The broad avenues were sparsely populated, the occasional jogger passing by or couples strolling towards him, arm-in-arm, idling the evening away. Milton had no need to check his tail. He knew they were there and that they would stay with him for as long as he let them. There would be a panic if they were to lose him, and that was something he could not afford. He needed them there to see the show that they were going to put on for them. If they lost him, and flooded the area with agents until they found him again, the plan would not work.