by Andy Lettau
Ji turned the electric kettle off and brewed his tea. He did it with almost ceremonial devotion, which Pak did not dare to interrupt. Pak simply stood there and listened to the life-story of the man whom, a half hour ago, he would willingly have shot dead. What the old man meant was not entirely clear to him.
"Two months ago my wife died a horrible and painful death. All attempts on my part to secure medical care for her that would initiate a healing process or mitigate her pain were rejected by the authorities. You may think that it is a great honor to have been sent on this mission and entrusted with this command. I on the other hand think it represents the intention to remove a dispensable person whose use to the State has expired. Perhaps I know better than you, Comrade Pak, that returning home is as good as impossible. It is already almost a miracle that we have not been killed so far. Our submarine is intended for coastal, not high seas missions. Our diesel engine gives us away when sailing on the surface at a distance of hundreds of miles. The old batteries of the electric motors allow us to dive for only brief periods. The American Sound Surveillance System, SOSUS, can detect us via hydrophone on the sea bed and has without any doubt stored us in all its databases."
"SOSUS is installed mostly in the Arctic Ocean to monitor the GIUK Gap. So that no Russian atomic submarines move forward from the Cola Peninsula to the Aleutians against the USA," interrupted Pak, displaying his knowledge.
"It may be that this 1950s technology is no longer used in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. It was invented to detect diesel submarines. But nowadays the modern fleets of the major powers triangulate with quite different systems. Anyone wanting to detect us would have had quite different technology to do so. The entire marine technology in our country is hopelessly out of date. We are operating with rafts and a few spears to take on a world power. To be honest, I never believed for one second that our plan was workable. In my opinion, the project demonstrates how treacherous our political and military leadership has become. They cold-bloodedly send us on a suicide mission where they know there is no chance of success. They use us as cannon fodder and throw us to the lions. Don't you see that, Comrade Political Officer?"
Pak walked agitatedly up and down on the spot. His nautical and military knowledge was limited. The sober factuality in Ji's tone made him doubtful. The conversation had taken quite a different turn from the one Pak had expected. The Captain was openly insulting his own country. Pak had no intention of generously overlooking this. He was also unwilling to forget the exchange on the plane and ignore the possible denunciation of his wife. He would come back to these later on.
"We have a torpedo ready on board, Comrade Captain. We are not just anyone who can afford to be ignored. We are a serious threat to the Americans. I still intend to sink an enemy ship and follow the orders given to me. Now that we have come so far, it would be stupid simply to give up. Or do you disagree?"
Captain Ji drank some of his hot tea and took some time before answering, while the aroma of roasted and brewed barley filled the small room.
"Comrade Pak, I have no intention of sinking a non-military ship. I am an officer and am prepared to engage in combat, but I will not be responsible for the senseless murder of thousands of innocent people."
"What?"
"You understood me correctly. I refuse to comply with the order. It is utterly unnecessary to execute such an order."
"I do not quite understand ..."
"As far as I am concerned, we can sink Air Force One; we can go back with the necessary explosives. You can pin as many medals as you like on your chest to commemorate the achievement. But a cruise ship is not an enemy submarine, frigate or heavily armed aircraft carrier. I do not wish to end my life knowing that I have been the greatest terrorist of all time. If you want to lay claim to this title, then festoon yourself with the dubious glory of having sunk the Pride of America. There will be no survivors who could maintain the opposite."
Terrorist.
The word echoed in Pak's head. What would Yang think about it? She knew nothing of his mission, nothing at all. Everything that he had confessed to her was in his diary. And she would never see the diary. If it looked likely that he would ever get home again, he would burn the diary beforehand or throw it overboard.
Pak's animosity towards the Captain slowly gave to the realization that the old boy had a rough exterior but a soft interior. Ji seemed to be a man with a big heart, who had never been able to say what was in it. Was the system in North Korea to blame for this?
"I will think about it, Comrade Captain. But answer me just one question."
"I know what the question is," said Yong-Jo Ji calmly. "You want to know why I made this insinuation about your wife."
"Yes, I would really like to know."
Pak began to get angry again, because he was imagining a situation in which his pregnant wife was taken away by the Secret Service and shipped off to some unspecified location.
"Comrade Pak, I could not see any other possibility of getting you to leave the plane. You probably would have started firing on the approaching Americans. And that would not have ended well. It would have been the death warrant of the crew of the DA BAK SOL."
Pak shook his head. "You could have left. You're the Captain, not me. You can get the men home.
"You forget the I ordered the First Officer to let only the two of us together back on board."
"That's a cheap excuse. We can ask the First Officer if that's what the order really was," snapped Pak.
"Go ahead, ask him. If you want to drag this conflict out, that's the best way to do it."
Nam-Chol Pak's brain was working feverishly. The old boy seemed to be a real fox. He must have had a shrewd idea of the mutual distrust that it would cause if Pak were to ask the First Officer. Once Pak had asked the question, the atmosphere would most certainly have been poisoned. Political Officers were not exactly welcome guests among the military. Pak would have made himself extremely unpopular, and it might have led to an outbreak of violence. Anyone challenging the authority of the Captain of a ship ran the risk of being treated as a mutineer.
"OK? Do you want me to get him in here?". Ji asked, looking Pak directly in the eye.
Pak turned away and tried to find the answer in the Captain's tea. A silent minute elapsed before Pak answered.
"No, I believe you, Comrade Captain. Your argument about one helping another to defect is very plausible. Dead or alive, you would have had to bring me back on board. Right?"
Ji slurped the last mouthful of tea and placed the cup noiselessly on the saucer. Instead of an answer he allowed himself an inscrutable smile and put his large hand on the shoulder of a surprised Pak. It was an indulgent, almost paternal gesture. As if the more mature man wanted to signal to the younger man that it was good to have demonstrated understanding.
Pak clearly found the situation unpleasant. He took a step backwards to remove himself from the hand on his shoulder. For him a few points in the conversation had become clear, and it was not his intention to record the personal views of the Captain in his diary or announce them in Pyongyang. This at least was his current opinion. But the dangerous odyssey was not yet over and a lot could still happen. Still, the matter concerning Yang had to be cleared once and for all, before this threatening situation between the two men reached breaking point.
"Comrade Captain, for any future cooperation between us to be possible I have to clarify the matter concerning my wife. I am not in the least interested in how you got hold of this information. I have no idea if Yang was working for a Christian organization. I do not know anything about it. The only thing that interests me is whether you would really use this kind of pressure."
Captain Ji plucked an imaginary speck of dust from his uniform and once again resumed his customary impenetrability. His answer was as mysterious as it was wise.
“Comrade Pak, the question is not whether I personally would use such a means of pressure. The question is whether we want to continue to serv
e a system that requires of us the methodical and inhuman use of such means of pressure. And, please excuse me, I would like to rest before we sink the thing outside."
Pak remained a moment as if rooted to the spot to take in the meaning of his words. He then saluted half-heartedly and turned on his heel. He left the Captain's cabin and went back to his own. He spent a half hour staring at the ceiling until he finally got out his diary and wrote down a single sentence in it.
My darling Yang, I think I have realized today for the first time that no State should put itself between the love of two people.
He then closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep for a half hour and dreamed of what was to happen later:
The sinking of Air Force One by opening the excess pressure valves and the departure of the DA BAK SOL for home.
CHAPTER 12 Part II
Atlantic Ocean
Korean submarine DA BAK SOL
29th December
Outside the darkness was ghostly, because it was actually daytime. The particles of ash were obscuring the sun and the air was still burning on the skin. The DA BAK SOL was going at a speed of fifteen knots through what was largely a sea of dead bodies. Corpses kept hitting the sides of the boat with dull sounds and spinning around in the spray. The bodies were clearly those of sailors on a warship. They had uniforms with American badges indicating rank. They were also covered with burn blisters, clear proof of the enormous firestorms that had broken out after the meteorite strike.
Pak was standing on the tower wearing a yellow fireproof overall and the obligatory protective mask and looking apathetically at the distorted faces of the dead, which he could see with the searchlight. They must have been through hell, whether they had been on or below deck when the fire broke out. There was no sign of their ship, possibly drifted away or gone down.
Pak was not in the best of moods, though Air Force One was now at the bottom of the ocean and he had been able to sink it himself. Together with a crew member he had swum over to the plane after waking up and opened the pressure relief valves of the 747. This together with the destruction of the inflated air bags had taken almost three hours - three hours in which he had been protected from further Zodiacs and unknown shapes at sea.
As if for confirmation he unconsciously touched the breast pocket of his overalls to find the digital camera he had used to record the events of the sinking. The photo of him that showed him standing on the wing and, in the background, a US President's coat of arms on the tail wing being washed around with water would under normal circumstances go into the history books. Pak now doubted however that there would be a future history, for him or anyone else.
The rapid sequence of the dramatic events and the dispute with Captain Ji had thrown everything into confusion. His hope that Yang might have survived the catastrophe at home was disappearing by the minute. The many dead at sea, especially their terrible burn marks, produced the sad thought in him that the whole world might have caught fire. Because he was not familiar with BBC documentary films in which scientists had generated a computer simulation of a meteorite strike, he had only a vague idea of what the global catastrophe would actually look like after the earth had been hit. His imagination was simply not up to the task of envisioning this scenario. But if it could pluck the most powerful man on the planet, the US President, out of the sky ...
"This damned heat", groaned Captain Ji suddenly and put a handkerchief to his mouth to keep out the rust particles. He coughed and carried on. "There's nothing we can do here. The poor devils have had it. Maybe the crew of the US Navy warship the US President and his entourage wanted to board. It might even have been an aircraft carrier. Anyway, I'm now giving the order to dive."
Pak nodded silently and turned the searchlight off. The uncertainty about what could have happened elsewhere in the world kept eating away at him.
Ji had an idea what was on his mind. "You're wondering if your wife is OK, I suppose ?"
Pak nodded. "Yes."
Ji coughed again and stared into space for a few seconds. "She's probably walking along Changgwang Street and running a few errands."
"Probably," replied Pak. He didn't sound convinced.
Two wordless minutes passed, and then Ji turned to one side to go down the steps back into the boat. Pak just stared into space, with his thoughts far away from this inhospitable place.
As he too wanted to get back below deck, he suddenly thought he could make out a movement and flickering on the horizon. He screwed up his eyes and looked intensely over the bow. Was that a ship?
Because the radar and sonar had stopped working, he took his telescope and focussed the lens on the point where he thought he had seen the shape.
The he saw the outlines.
"Comrade Captain!", he called out over the primitive speaker to the bridge.
"Yes?" was the immediate response.
"There's something in front of us in the water. A ship or submarine. It seems to be very large."
Yong-Jo Ji rushed back like a whirlwind to the tower.
"There!", Pak explained and pointed in the direction of the foreign body...
One look through the telescope was enough for the Captain of the DA BAK SOL to be sure of what was in front of him.
"Ship submersible guided missile nuclear, short SSGN. 560 ft. long, officially 820 ft. diving depth, min. 140 crew, packed with enough nuclear cruise missiles to bomb a country back into the Stone Age. Better not to take this Yank on. It's the modernized Ohio class."
Pak whistled quietly through his teeth. His heart began to race. Adrenalin was pumping through his body. The dark and melancholy thoughts had all of a sudden disappeared.
"They should have located us long ago. There must something wrong with them."
"Hard to say," replied Ji. "We didn't locate him, he didn't locate us. Apparently it's not just our sonar and radar that have had it."
"Hm, what could it be? Maybe an EMP?"
"Electro-magnetic impulse, triggered by the meteorite strike? Maybe. If it was still on the surface. Seems unlikely, though."
"And the dead we've just passed? Do you think they belong to the crew?"
Ji thought for a moment. "No. That doesn't fit the uniforms here. The dead have to be from another US naval vessel."
"And now?"
"We dive and wait. We will have to think carefully about what to do next. We are not fully operational and are navigating almost blind. Let us observe through the periscope what the Americans propose to do. So, back down. Now!"
Pak needed no second order and disappeared like a rabbit below deck. The tower was hardly sealed when the gurgling of water could be heard, which enveloped the DA BAK SOL like a cocoon. Shortly afterwards Captain Yong-Jo Ji was at the periscope.
"Damn! Even this monster can hardly be seen in the dark. Let's hope that it hasn't seen us! It could sail right over us without getting a scratch."
"Let me see," said Pak. "I've got eyes like an owl that can spot a muskrat in a thicket from the top of the Paektusan."
Ji snarled and wrinkled his brow at the strange comparison. It didn't take Pak more than five seconds to spot the enemy.
"Looks as if the Americans have stopped. They're lying with the starboard side to us."
"Distance?"
"Hard to say ..."
The men changed their positions again. Now it was Ji once again who looked through the complicated structure of prisms and mirrors. His long experience permitted only one conclusion: "Three nautical miles, maybe a bit less. And they haven't stopped the engines, they're just on silent running. The Zodiacs that we almost came into contact with a short while ago probably came from this submarine. Perhaps they went over to get supplies and documents from the 747."
"Yes, that's possible," agreed Pak. "But strange that we didn't notice the submarine the first time. And also when I carried out the sinking of the plane after going over for the second time. It should be really difficult to miss something like that."
"T
he Americans must have been further away from the plane at the time. Perhaps they were busy with other things. Or they had dived and, as I said, also had problems locating us."
"Hmh, it doesn't really matter whether we've been lucky or not. Anyway, someone could still be on board, the last person we'd expect to find here in fact."
"You mean ..."
"The American President, yes," Pak finished Ji's sentence.
There was an unholy silence. No member of the crew standing dared to say anything. An outsider might have thought that they had all suddenly held their breath. There was only question in everyone's mind, which Pak finally managed to whisper aloud.
"Comrade Captain, what do you think? Do we not have a rewarding target for our torpedo?"
Ji had seen the question coming. He took his time answering it. He thought it highly probable that this Political Officer was at the moment experiencing a fit of megalomania. First, the utterly unnecessary and risky sinking of the Presidential airplane that was of no further use, and now the suggestion of playing David against Goliath. Comrade Nam Chol Pak was probably already, in his mind, marching up to the Beloved Leader himself to have the highest medal of honor of North Korea pinned on him personally by the great man.