Darke Mission

by Scott Caladon

  Park was listening but protesting nothing, often the best policy when talking to a high ranking officer in the secret police, especially on a night when one of your submarines went AWOL.

  “Gok was both the officer in charge of the submarine’s upcoming mission and the supreme leader’s cousin. Having a submarine stolen from under your nose was probably a necessary and sufficient condition for our leader to order Gok’s death. He was also family so that meant that his crime of negligence was multiplied tenfold. Kim Jong-un did not want Gok to cross his threshold ever again.”

  Park felt that he had been given a truthful rendition by Lee as to the motivation behind his fellow diners’ murders. The logic and rationale in some cases may seem a bit retarded, Park thought, but they were gone and Park needed to spend most of the forty-five minute drive to Pyongyang ensuring that his report was as comprehensive and loyal as was humanly possible.

  Major Lee and Commodore Park made their way to the SSD’s awaiting car. The naval officers that had been stationed in Haeju City had been summoned to the docks and the most senior of them put in charge of getting order from chaos, taking any witness statements from the submariners who had been awakened by the explosions and, generally trying to restore a semblance of normality. The quiet man opened the front passenger door for Park. He got in and Major Lee got into the driver’s side. The quiet man was seated directly behind Park. The Commodore felt very uncomfortable with this arrangement. He had seen enough to realise that there was a non-zero probability that the rear passenger’s next move was to garrotte or strangle him. The anxious Commodore had not needed to concern himself with that outcome. The quiet man had fulfilled his kill quota, for this evening at least.

  * * *

  Victor and his thermal lance had cut open a large rectangular hole in the central bank’s main vault. It had taken eighteen minutes and created a huge mess of empty oxygen bottles, burnt out tubes and random pieces of molten metal dotted along the floor. Through the gaping hole, JJ and his team could see the side walls lined with safe deposit boxes, another, smaller vault at the back end of this room and, slap, bang in the middle of the room trays of gold bullion, stacked three levels high. Each tray had 104 bullion bars on it. The bars were gleaming in the artificial light, it was a magnificent sight.

  Before entering North Korea, its capital and its central bank vaults, JJ had no reliable estimate of how many bullion bars would be there. North Korea did not supply data on its reserves to the World Gold Council or the IMF. His guesstimate was made on intel regarding North Korea’s gold mining capabilities and likely gifts and payments from China and Russia. Given the intensity of the gleam from the shiny metal bars before him JJ may have underestimated Kim Jong-un’s gold wealth.

  “No time for gold gawking,” directed JJ. “Lily, Iceman, get loading onto those pallets. Jim, you and I will take the first few up in the lift. Victor, great job, take a breather and then help. Make sure there is no more than one tray full of gold on each pallet, we can’t afford to damage the lift.”

  Everybody got to work straight away. The bars were heavy but the adrenalin was pumping and the first few pallet runs, from vault to ‘Toblerone’, then ‘Toblerone’ to pallet, lift and up to the van, went smoothly. Ethel stayed in the van as look-out. Kwon and Ji-hun loaded the gold into the van. Victor’s good work had given the team a full three hours to accomplish the transfer of the gold from vault to van. JJ knew it was barely enough time.

  “I’m glad we don’t need to push this fucking pallet very far,” bemoaned Jim Bradbury as he and JJ rolled the gold only a few feet from the vault to their conveyor system.

  “Yeah, it’s a bleedin’ nightmare, Jim,” replied JJ. “Nobody better challenge me to arm wrestling, I’ve got jelly arms already and we’re not even halfway through.”

  “We’ve been going for an hour and a half JJ, that’s halfway isn’t it?”

  “It’s halfway in allocated mission time, but tight on target gold acquisition.”

  “We couldn’t really put more gold on each pallet run, JJ,” highlighted Jim correctly. “We won’t be able to push it and the elevator might not take it,” correct on his second observation as well. “How adrift of target will we be when time’s up?”

  “I’ve been trying to keep count while pushing the stuff. We’ve been loading 104 bars on each pallet, it’s taken us three minutes to get from the pallet, via the ‘Toblerones’, to the van. By the time we’re back down to the vault room Lily, the Iceman and Victor have another pallet ready so there’s no loss of time there. I reckon we’ve done around 3,000. Kwon and Ji-hun are struggling to keep pace with the gold delivery; the bars are piling up on the ground. They will need help near the end, for sure,” said JJ.

  “That doesn’t solve our problem, though, does it, JJ? We’re still going to be short by dawn.” Three in a row of correct observations by the KLO, but no light bulb moment as yet. “I wonder how they got down here in the first place?” asked Jim.

  JJ did not respond immediately though Jim’s question had triggered a train of thought in the Scot. This particular train did not yield a robust conclusion, but it did yield a course of action. “Let’s ask Ji-hun,” said JJ, hoping that the moaner’s response was close to JJ’s thinking.

  Jim and JJ were quickly in the back of the Sprinter van. “Kwon, ask Ji-hun how they moved around the gold and other heavy objects in the vault level. We need a concise answer. The clock is ticking.” The urgency in JJ’s voice was plain to hear. Ji-hun responded swiftly to Kwon’s question.

  Deep cover translated. “He says they use small fork lift carriers. They’re housed in a back room at the far end of the vault floor. The west wing of the building isn’t finished yet and the contractors have been allowed to keep them there temporarily.”

  “Anything else we should know?” asked JJ.

  “No,” said Kwon, taking his lead from Ji-hun’s head shake.

  JJ and Jim bounded out of the van and back into the service lift with his pallet ready for another load of gold. “That should do the trick?” said Jim, looking at JJ with questioning eyes.

  “Maybe,” replied JJ. “The fork lifts will help Lily and the Iceman get the gold from the ‘Toblerones’ faster but even if they fit in this lift, which they probably do, the extra weight would mean that we could transport fewer gold bars on every trip. It’s touch and go Jim.”

  When the pair reached vault level, Jim went in search of the fork lifts, while JJ went to help Lily, the Iceman and Victor load the gold onto the pallet and ‘Toblerones’. The two helpful Koreans were visibly flagging now, each human action slower than an hour ago, sweating away and generally looking a bit floppy.

  “Victor,” said JJ, signalling for the safe cracker to join him. “I need your help. We have a problem. The short of it is we may not have enough time before breaking light to get the gold we need up top. Any bright ideas?”

  “How much is 3,000 gold bars in money that I would understand?”

  “Well…” began JJ engaging his mental arithmetic cells, “each bar is 12.5kg in weight, at yesterday’s closing COMEX price gold was around US $1,800 per ounce or US $60,000 per kilogram. Each bar is therefore worth $750,000 so approximately $2 ¼ billion for a load of 3,000.”

  Victor was somewhat impressed by the old man’s mental agility. He’d have done it quicker on his tablet calculator he ventured but then again he didn’t know the price of gold to begin with. Victor was mulling over this information. JJ wanted to say ‘chop chop’ but he refrained. The young safe cracker had done his job, this was like overtime.

  “I don’t know if this is the answer or not…” said Victor, inadvertently adding a few more degrees of anxiety to JJ’s mental stress, “but do we need to steal just gold? Would cash do?”

  Would cash do, pondered JJ. “It would Victor but I didn’t see any cash lying around. We don’t have time to check all the safe deposit boxes. What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that the smaller vault at th
e back of the room is where any cash is. Since the security management of this bank clearly thought that the main vault door was impenetrable they skimped a little on this one. It’s a single combination four digit lock, no timer, no trip alarm and substantially fewer unlock combinations than Big Bertha here.”

  “Can you burn through the door quickly?” asked JJ, warming to Victor’s thought process.

  “No,” he replied immediately. “I’ve no tubes left for the lance. They were all used up getting in here.” JJ was about to look miserable again but Victor continued. “However, I do still have my guile and listening equipment. If I can’t unlock that door in under ten minutes then I’m not Albert Spaggieri’s grandson!” he exclaimed, triumphantly.

  “Great,” said JJ. “Get on it and let me know when you’re through.”

  While JJ and Victor were having their conflab, Jim had found the small forklifts and he and his Korean colleagues were speeding up the gold transfer from their vault trays to the service lift. They had only forty-five minutes left now to get all the booty onto the van and exit the central bank’s car park. JJ was a wee bit happier but how far towards top utility happiness was going to depend on Victor, how he did and what he found. As he was mulling this over, JJ joined Jim again on the pallet run.

  “JJ,” said Jim. “I was thinking.”

  “Fire away, Jim,” encouraged the KLO’s friend.

  “You know how I can drive heavy duty trucks since my student days in Arizona?”

  “Yes,” replied JJ.

  “Well those trucks all had weight limits as to what they could safely and legally carry. I can’t do the math in my head, JJ, but this gold is seriously fucking heavy. While, space wise, it’ll fit into the Sprinter van at a squeeze, there is no way that van is going to be able to haul all the gold without collapsing where it stands.”

  “You’re right – up to a point,” replied JJ. “The scoop is this. We’re aiming for 6,000 bars of gold, that’s 75,000kg in weight. That’s seventy-five metric tonnes. A normal Sprinter van’s maximum payload is no more than twenty-five metric tonnes. Did you notice my inclusion of the word normal Jim?”

  “I did,” Jim replied. “Keep going for god’s sake.”

  “Well, I didn’t bring a van with me all the way from England for the good of my health. I could have picked up a Sprinter in Seoul and saved myself the bother. This is no ordinary Mercedes van. It’s been tweaked and augmented by one of the best F1 teams in the world. The V6 engine has nearly 400bhp compared with the standard 160bhp, upgraded brakes and a short-shift gear change. More important for us, the van has upgraded suspension, same as a Hummer H3, enhanced torsion bar and titanium leaf springs, front and rear. It also has a false floor. The space between the original floor pan and the one the gold’s on is filled with extra Kevlar and aluminium coil springs. This gives additional cushioning and reduces the direct weight to the axles, wheels and tyres. Speaking of those both the wheels and tyres are special order to take the weight. Finally, the coup de beauté, as you would know, Jim, is the axles. Our van has two additional axles, air over hydraulic modified from a Volvo 700. Not only can our van carry the gold, it can shift like The Road Runner.”

  “Eight wheels?” queried Jim, the only question he could come up with following JJ’s detailed rendition. “I saw only four.”

  “The van’s been so extensively modified, Jim, you could barely believe it. The additional wheels are housed under the false floor. When needed, they come out like an aircraft’s. When they’re stored, they lie horizontally and as they come out they go vertical, ready to move. It’s fuckin’ ingenious, I tell you,” exclaimed JJ, all chuffed on behalf of the brilliant work of Harold McFarlane and his team at McLaren. On their last gold transfer to the van, JJ had instructed Ethel to lower the additional wheels; the van was ready.

  As the friends re-entered the main vault room, Victor was standing at the far end, bowing like a lead thespian taking a final curtain call. “Through!” was his only utterance.

  “That’s beezer, Victor, well done,” said JJ. “Found anything worthwhile?”

  “There’s a lot of cash, wrapped in plastic and stacked like the gold bars. Different currencies, mainly US dollars, euros, yen and South Korean won.”

  Ironic, thought JJ, the DPRK and its supreme leader may philosophically detest the South, the USA and Japan but Kim Jong-un seemed happy enough to hoard their currencies. JJ scanned the piles of wrapped foreign currency in front of him. The US dollars seemed all to be in $100 bill denominations.

  “OK,” said JJ. “Iceman, you and Lily come into this vault. Victor go topside and bring Kwon down here. Tell Ethel to watch Ji-hun. When Kwon’s here, Victor, you and him take over loading the gold. It won’t be for long, we need to be out of here in thirty minutes. Jim, you and I will continue on the pallet run and make sure the gold is stacked securely in the van,” instructed JJ.

  Victor took off instantly, clearly there was not a lot of time for congratulations and back slapping, though richly deserved, for his safe cracking skills.

  “Lily, Iceman, start taking the US dollars. Load them into Victor’s kit bag, it must be nearly empty now with no oxygen bottles, thermal lance tubes and breathing equipment. Make sure his electronic gear is safe. In twenty-five minutes stop loading the cash, take it topside. You can’t use the service lift, take the smaller main lift. If the cash fits in our van, great, if not lob it into the one next to us that Iceman hot-wired earlier.”

  The US dollars were definitely the currency to take. Not only was the greenback still the world’s reserve currency and acceptable in many countries as nigh local money or better, it was probably the right choice tonight from a perspective of weight and bulk. A US $100 bill weighs 1 gram, a minor piece of trivia that JJ recalled from his early days of economic research. So, $100,000 would weigh 1kg. Each wrapped packet of $100 bills had $20,000 in it. Victor’s kit bag could hold maybe 80 packets at a time gauged JJ. The bag would take two minutes to fill and two minutes to get to the awaiting van. In the twenty minutes or so left before the exit deadline that meant only five trips for the kit bag or 400 packets in total.

  “Jim!” yelled JJ. “Get that forklift over here and start sticking these trays of $100 bills on it.” Jim Bradbury came zooming along on his new found toy. “OK Jim, we’ve got one shot at this. The last trip on the service lift is going to be you, the forklift and a whole lot of dollars.”

  “What about the weight?”

  “I’m working on that. You and the forklift’s combined weight is probably around 250kg. The lift’s capacity is 1,500kg, so we could have 1,250kg spare. Each of these trays has twenty-eight packets of 200x $100 bills, weighing 5.6kg, excluding the tray itself. OK, Jim, for the last run, take as many trays of bills as you can get into the lift and then we’re done.”

  “Fine, JJ,” said Jim, and set about his task.

  JJ’s brain was close to meltdown now. There was too much going on, too many calculations and they had only ten minutes left before they had to exit the central bank. One last calculation, thought JJ, this mission can’t go south just because of arithmetic. That heinous little shit Robson was after a minimum of £3 billion. At GBP/USD 1.5000, close to where the cable rate was yesterday, that meant US $4.5 billion. JJ and his team might just have nicked 6,000 gold bars each weighing 12.5kg. At $1,800/oz. substantially higher than it was two weeks ago, that’s US $4.5 billion in gold. Target reached if the gold price held up. The dollar cash would amount to around $125 million extra. Good, thought JJ, this team deserves a decent bonus.

  Final calculation done, JJ then shouted, “Go, go, go, we’re out of here now. Lily, Iceman, drop everything, go. Victor, Kwon, chop chop. Take your stuff and let’s go. Jim, get the cash up top, I’ll check the security guards.”

  “What about the ‘Toblerones’?” asked Jim.

  “We’ll need to leave them. They won’t fit into the van with our weapons and all the gold in it, they won’t fit in that local 4x4 we’ve hot-wire
d because the cash will need to go in that. We’ll need to adjust our plan as we head to the petrol station,” JJ replied.

  Exit accomplished, the team of eight piled into the Sprinter van and the newly acquired 4x4. Gold was loaded, cash was loaded, they were loaded. Sunrise in Pyongyang was at 6.24am that day. It was now 5.50am and it seemed likely to be a bleak morning, regarding the weather at least.

  The team left the DPRK’s central bank without a hitch. Driving in convoy, at the same pace as the early morning traffic, both van and jeep turned into the road that Kwon’s apartment was on. Kwon and Ji-hun got out of the jeep, leaving Lily and Ethel inside. The plan was for Kwon to hold onto Ji-hun for a couple of days and then organise a border crossing where the moaner would be met by two CIA officers from PAU Travel in Seoul. Both JJ and Jim intended to stick to the deal agreed with Ji-hun. His information had been very useful and at no point had he tried to disrupt the heist or alert the North Korean authorities. It was a real squeeze in the Mercedes van. Jim decided to join Ethel and Lily in the jeep, leaving JJ, the Iceman and Victor in the front cabin of the van. It was about 6.05am now. The sun would soon attempt to beam a few shafts of light through the grey clouds but it still seemed like night time. JJ was glad about this. Maybe it would give them a few more precious minutes to distance themselves from the central bank before the alarm was raised. The security detail was scheduled to be relieved at 7am. JJ and his team had nearly one hour’s head start.

  * * *

  Van and jeep were now crossing the bridge over the Taedong River. Everything seemed normal, a few cars and trucks were also crossing, in both directions, there was no obvious police or military activity. JJ closed his eyes for a few moments. He was mentally and physically exhausted. The petrol station was only minutes away and the Scot was absent a decent idea as to how to get the gold onto the petrol tankers, where the ‘sunbeds’ awaited. On that score, nothing was in their favour. They were an hour behind schedule. It was nearly breaking light and there were no conveyor systems to get the gold from the van to the tankers. It was beyond impossible to think that they could load the bullion bars manually. It would take three hours at least, much of which would be in broad daylight, at Pyongyang’s busiest petrol station, on a working day. JJ was more than crestfallen. All the work that had gone into disguising the tankers, Vincent Barakat’s brilliant sunbeds, Harold McFarlane’s outstanding modifications. It was all a waste of time. They were going to have to get the gold across the border in the van.