“Have you worked out those names yet?” asked his daughter.
“Well, I think I’ve got the Iceman. I’m assuming that Kim Chun-So was hired before Kim Min-Jun?” ventured JJ.
“Correct,” said Carolyn.
“And so he may have been called Kim 1, which looks like Kimi,” continued JJ. Carolyn was smiling. At least her dad still seemed to have a brain.
“Kimi would have been associated with Kimi Raikkonen, F1 driver and former world champion,” elaborated JJ. “They’re all motor racing mad down here, and Kimi Raikkonen’s nickname is the Iceman,” concluded JJ.
“Spot on,” said Carolyn. “What about Lily?”
“I haven’t a clue, Cally, enlighten me.”
“It’s not as good as the Iceman, but as Kim Min-Jun is noticeably shorter than the Iceman, and was assigned to PAU Travel a few months later, apparently, he was clearly Kim 2 and nicknamed after Lil’ Kim the American rapper.”
“How about Jim Bradbury, anybody brave enough to give him a nickname?”
“Road Runner,” replied Carolyn. “Partly because he’s from Arizona and partly because he goes for a run along the streets of Gangnam every single morning before coming to the office.”
“And you and Dannielle?”
“They call Dannielle, Olga, after the actress in the Hitman movies. She was Russian as is Dannielle’s family.”
“And you?”
“Well, I didn’t have a nickname until you waltzed into the communications room. Now they all call me Princess,” said Carolyn with a very sweet smile that might have been a grimace.
JJ recalled that he had nearly always called Carolyn, Princess, when she was little. He didn’t mind that the Korean outpost of the CIA called her that too.
The rest of the meal went well. A renewed bond between father and daughter had emerged. This was the last stressless evening that either of them would have for quite some time and they both seemed to be enjoying it very much. After JJ kissed and hugged his daughter goodnight, dropping her off at her apartment in Gangnam, Carolyn turned and waved.
“By the way Dad, your nickname is Braveheart.”
That was one to live up to, thought JJ.
* * *
The following morning, in the front meeting room at PAU Travel, JJ, Ethel and the Kims were engrossed in a map of the Korean Demilitarised Zone. If ever there was a misnomer, the DMZ was it. The DMZ is a piece of land that acts as a buffer zone between North and South Korea. It is 250km long, 4km wide, and runs across the 38˚ parallel. It is the most heavily fortified border crossing on planet earth.
JJ explained that on this mission the border needed to be crossed four times. The first time was to get to Pyongyang to stakeout and survey the central bank and the visible security, then return. The third time was to get the disguised trucks across the border and then return. The probability of doing that illegally four times without capture was unhealthily low. The anticipated fourth crossing was, in all likelihood, the one where they would most need the option of a fast, illegal incursion across the border, from North to South. The four in the meeting room thought it best therefore to try to cross legally, or apparently legally, the first three times.
Lily spoke up first. “The best legal crossing from South to North is at Panmunjom,” he said, pointing to the village which was the site that the Korean War ended. “The Kaesŏng rail and road crossing was re-opened in 2009. The railway line is used primarily to transport South Korean workers and materials to the Kaesŏng Industrial Group up in the North. It would be relatively easy for the Iceman and me to get the necessary papers, disguise ourselves as workers and get across. We can arrange for a car to be left for us, just on the outskirts of the region. The drive to Pyongyang would be just over an hour from there. If we left tomorrow morning, we could be back by tomorrow night.”
JJ was considering this. Ideally, he wanted to check out the central bank himself. But a foreign visage would attract much more attention and have their papers checked much more thoroughly by the North Korean border guards. He also had to consider that he, Ethel and Victor would all need to cross with the Volvo/FAW trucks and the Sprinter van the following day and their story at that crossing would need to be very convincing.
“OK,” said JJ eventually. “What about the next day when we all need to get across?”
“Straightforward enough for the Iceman and me,” began Lily. “As we are supposed to be workers, they’d expect to see our faces every working day. For you guys it’s more problematic. The road at Panmunjom, or Highway One, as we call it has very strict border controls. There is a bridge there that needs to be crossed and the North Koreans sometimes make you cross on foot, then pick up your vehicles at the other side. You will be body searched and your papers will need to be accompanied by some official letter or order authorising you to enter the DPRK. The vehicles will be inspected too, so we can’t have anything dodgy poking out of them, like weapons or explosives.”
JJ and Ethel looked at each other and nodded. There was no perfect way to cross the border from North to South Korea and vice versa. There were huge risks at every checkpoint, but time was pressing and they had to get on with it.
“Fine,” said JJ. “Lily, you and the Iceman get going with acquiring or even making the right papers, initially for you both. I’ll have a think about our cover story. If you’re ready by tomorrow morning then get across the border and stakeout the central bank. If you’re up for it, we’ll have another briefing tomorrow night, if not then the following morning first thing.”
With that Lily and the Iceman got up and left the meeting room. JJ told Ethel that he’d need to get a hold of Jim Bradbury to keep him in the loop. While he was doing that, she should get a hold of Victor, find out how he’s getting on with his research on the vault. They’d meet up again in about one hour.
* * *
“For fuck’s sake, JJ,” said Jim Bradbury. “That’s a suicide mission. Four border crossings between North and South in a matter of days, break into their central bank, steal Kim Jong-un’s gold haul. Jesus Christ, why don’t you save yourself the bother and just shoot yourself in the head!” The KLO clearly wasn’t that enamoured with the plan.
“I don’t have much choice Jim,” said JJ who had now given his friend the guts of the operation. “My government thinks it’s a legitimate mission,” JJ continued, having left out the blackmail and insider trading elements. “They’re desperate. The North Koreans refuse point blank to pay their debts and my country is nearly bankrupt,” added JJ trying to put the gloss of legitimacy on his task.
“Why you and not an MI6 black ops squad?” asked Jim.
“Well, in addition to the issue of deniability, it would look a bit odd if the Bank of England suddenly had several thousand additional gold bullion bars one night with official assay stamps on them. As well as steal them, I’m supposed to disguise them, then organise their sale on the physical gold market, then give the monies to my government.”
“And you have the skill to do all that?” enquired the Road Runner.
“I’m supposed to have, Jim,” replied JJ. “I run a large hedge fund portfolio in London and I and my team there know how to buy and sell gold. We do it nearly every week,” he said wistfully, thinking how nice and safe it would be back in London.
“It’s still mega-fucking hair-brained,” said Bradbury. “I know I said I’d help, and I will, but this mission is nuts. On the other hand…” Jim Bradbury said with a grin and after a short pause. “It may be the most action we’ve had around here for quite some time and I, for one, am getting bored out of my pants reading intercepted emails and the like. Bring it on, what can I do?”
Needless to say JJ was absolutely delighted that he could fully rely on his old friend. Jim Bradbury had skills, not least of which was, he knew how to drive heavy trucks. Apparently, in his student days in Arizona, the only summer job he could get to pay him enough to get through the expensive university system in America, was driving semi-
trucks for a friend of his dad’s road haulage company, based just outside Phoenix. After that particularly helpful revelation, JJ and Jim decided that they would not try to recruit an external HGV driver. Jim would drive one of the Volvo/FAW trucks, the Iceman the other. The Iceman did not have an HGV license, nor had he ever driven a truck so large, but Jim Bradbury knew he was the wheelman on several of PAU Travel’s surveillance operations and that involved reasonably large vans, packed with equipment. He was sure he would be fine.
Thank god for that, thought JJ, at least the driver issue was now solved. Assuming Lily and the Iceman came through tomorrow’s surveillance op in one piece, the next day would see six of them attempt to get into North Korea in two large trucks and a Sprinter van.
“JJ,” said Jim. “While the two Kims are getting their papers sorted for the border crossing tomorrow, the rest of us need to scope out two things. First, we need to look at the photographs, diagrams and schematics you have for the DPRK central bank. When Lily and the Iceman return tomorrow, we need to check out how their visuals match our diagrams. Information about the North can be sketchy and even those intrusive fuckers at Google maps can be out of date.”
JJ thought it somewhat amusing that Jim felt Google maps were intrusive given the multiple intrusions that his friend had authorised or carried out in his career.
“Secondly,” Jim continued, “we need really good covers for us taking two big trucks and a van into the North. They’re as twitchy as a guy with Tourette’s on speed,” referring to the DPRK border guards. “If we muck it up on that crossing there’ll be no gold for your bankrupt country and a muddy grave for all of us.”
* * *
JJ, Jim and Victor were back in the meeting room, perusing overhead shots of the new DPRK central bank building. The CIA satellite had taken a decent image of the large, impressive structure in the tree-lined boulevard, close to Taedong River. The shot was from only two nights ago and it was clear that the tallest part of the building complex was complete but that one of the two smaller structures on either side was not. The central bank had previously been located near what is now The People’s Theatre in the Changjon street area. This was torn down a few years ago and the new building was much more of a statement.
“This new building is good news and bad news,” said Victor. “The good news is that the construction may not be fully completed from what we can see. This means that the security guards will be used to building workers, electricians, painters, etc. milling around. They would all need to be authorised and probably subject to spot checks but at least it would not be unusual to see them on the premises. Further good news is that there are parking zones across the street, under the trees. See here,” highlighted Victor, pointing at the photograph. “Lily and the Iceman may be able to park up there and observe.”
“And the bad news?” asked Jim Bradbury.
“Well,” said Victor. “The building is new, so it is likely to have state of the art security installed. As it is only the main tower which is finished, it is probable that the vault rooms are in that building, more likely underneath it.”
JJ and Jim were not overly fazed by the bad news. They had assumed that the central bank would have state of the art security. They also knew that a tunnelling operation was out of the question, it would take too long, and probably be too noisy. In any event, it looked like the central bank structure was stand alone with no adjacent shops, theatres, cafés or other establishments. No, they thought, this breach would need to be quietly through the front door or something very similar.
“Is there a car park?” asked JJ.
“Yes,” said Victor. “Here behind the main building, facing away from the river, towards the centre of Pyongyang.”
JJ and Jim Bradbury considered the information so far. Assuming all had gone well up to that point, the secret service friends concluded that it would be feasible to park their Mercedes Sprinter van in the central bank’s car park. There would probably be CCTV there but Victor intimated that he could freeze the camera’s picture frame or send it on a continuous loop. The heist would be after business hours so any security officer looking at a picture of no action in the car park would just assume that that was what should be going on in the central bank’s car park in the dead of night – nothing.
“We still have a problem,” said JJ, “the van’s got the ‘Toblerone’ conveyor system in it. Assuming we’ve opened the vault without setting an alarm off, loaded the gold onto the ‘Toblerones’, and then loaded the gold bars into the van, we’re not going to have the space to re-load the conveyor system into the van. We can’t leave them there. While there are no markings or manufacturers stamp on the ‘Toblerones’, we need them again to load the tankers with the gold. It’s the same problem as getting the gold from the vaults to the van. We can’t spend sixty hours doing it. Even sixty minutes could be too long.”
“Can’t we drive the tankers to the DPRK car park and load the gold straight on to them?” asked Victor, reasonable enough he thought.
“No,” JJ snapped back not unfriendly, but with purpose. “We can check when the Kims return, but I’d bet anything that there will be no trucks or tankers in the car park. It’s a central bank, not a supermarket or petrol station. There will be saloon cars, executive cars, maybe the occasional sports car but the largest vehicles in that car park will probably be vans like our Sprinter, carrying supplies for the central bank’s daily operations and its workers. Two disguised Volvo trucks with tankers attached, however decaled, would stick out like the proverbial.”
Jim Bradbury didn’t have a lot to offer at this point, but Victor did not seem defeated by his earlier no good idea.
“We could always hot-wire one of the vans in the car park,” he ventured. “I’ll have the cameras on a loop so they won’t notice a thing.”
JJ thought immediately that was a workable option. “Good,” he said. “Well done Victor. We’ll check with Lily and the Iceman. If there’re a few vans dotted around the car park that’ll be good news.”
Jim Bradbury still appeared thoughtful. “What about the tankers, JJ?” he asked. “Where are they going to be?”
“When I was looking at the maps and satellite image coordinates with the Kims, I noticed there is a substantial petrol station, south of the river across the bridge, right here,” said JJ stabbing the map with his right forefinger. “During the daytime, Lily told me, it is quite busy given that there are not many petrol stations in Pyongyang. Apparently this one was built recently by Pyeonghwa Motors, has four to five rows of pumps and, more relevantly from our point of view, a trailer park where trucks and fuel tankers can park up before either unloading or loading their goods or petrol. Often, according to Lily, there can be several tankers there overnight. At night the petrol station is much less busy. This is the ideal location to park our trucks and to do the gold transfer.”
Victor, Jim Bradbury and JJ thought that they had accomplished as much as they could on the transport plan for the moment. They’d await the scouting report from the Kims if and when they got back from their surveillance op, before making any adjustments. In the meantime, they’d find Ethel and start to work on their stories for the border crossing.
* * *
While the boys had been figuring out the transport plan, Ethel and two of the junior PAU Travellers had been working on the Volvo/FAW trucks. Their main task was to decal the tankers with the logos and paintwork of PetroChina, one of China’s largest oil and gas companies. The main decal looked like a fully-open flower with serrated edges, mustardy-yellow on top and solid, rust coloured red on the bottom. It was distinctive and it was all over North Korea.
Ethel’s phone beeped. It was a message from JJ asking her ETA back at PAU. Ethel replied ten minutes. They’d finished up on the trucks and a fine job they had done, she thought. Now, back to the grungy part of the mission.
“We’ve got the trucks set up as Chinese FAW tractors delivering petrol from PetroChina in Shaanxi tankers,” beg
an JJ. “That part has been relatively straight-forward. We’ll aim for a border crossing just after breaking dawn on Thursday. That way the border guards may be a bit sleepy and less inclined to go through with a thorough inspection. The issue for this meeting is our collective covers.”
Ethel, Victor, the two Kims and Jim Bradbury were listening attentively. This is where the pre-match heist would succeed or fail. Lily and the Iceman felt comfortable enough with their plan for the surveillance operation on the DPRK central bank tomorrow, Ethel felt that the trucks would pass muster and Victor seemed content with his research and all the equipment he had in tow.
“The starting point should be that we are delivering new petrol tankers to Pyeongwha Motors in Pyongyang from PetroChina in Beijing. Lily and the Iceman can be the drivers just for the border crossing itself. Don’t panic Lily, you’ll be approaching the border guards at, maybe, 10mph; you’ll need to get out and speak to them to allow you to cross. One of the guards may even get in the cab with you, but that’s no sweat. Once crossed, Jim will take over truck driving,” said JJ. “You two stars,” he continued, pointing to the Kims, “need to be the first contact. You look local, you sound local, in fact are local so the initial response will be that you are not a threat. You’ll be dressed in PetroChina overalls, so the first impression as to how you look and talk will seem OK. The rest of us will be dressed in suits. Jim and I will appear to be PetroChina executives. Foreigners but seconded from Beijing to Seoul, primarily to ensure the safe delivery of these new fancy dan tankers. Ethel will be our corporate PA and Victor a petrochemical engineer, specifically requested by Pyeonghwa Motors.
“Those of us who cannot speak Korean will say as little as possible. Victor, you need to seem like some babbling egghead so be prepared to drop stuff, generally be clumsy and geeky, etc. Ethel you need to get a pair of specs, look a bit like a PA and hang on every word that Jim and I utter,” said JJ smiling.
Ethel gave him a look which said in your dreams, bub.
Darke Mission Page 22