False Flag

by Jack Slater

  A chill ran through her body. She had heard tales of the atrocities carried out in North Korea’s labor camps. Tales of beatings, of torture, of pregnant women forced to work in the fields even as their waters broke. And most pertinently, of prisoners so hungry they resorted to eating bugs straight out of the ground.

  Was this her future? Branded as an enemy of the Korean revolution and forced to work here until the day she died?

  Her train of thought was broken by the metallic screech of gates opening, then closing as the truck passed through. It screeched to a halt, and the engine died, matched shortly after by the first vehicle in the small convoy. For a second, silence reigned, and Eliza redoubled her efforts to get a sense of her bearings.

  Was she in the prison camp?

  No.

  Wherever she was, it looked more like a military encampment. The truck had stopped on a paved parade ground, at the center of which stood a flagpole, crowned with two flags: the red star on a blue background that was the North Korean flag, and a rectangle of red cloth just below it, fluttering in the slight breeze.

  Eliza was too far away to make out the yellow insignia that decorated the second flag, but she didn’t need to. She knew exactly what it was: the hammer, sickle and ink brush logo of the Worker’s Party of Korea.

  Around the parade ground were buildings. Mostly just one or two stories tall, they were functional structures, constructed out of drab concrete. It could have been any military base anywhere, except for the flags, which were an unmistakable reminder of the situation in which Eliza Ikeda now found herself.

  The truck door creaked open, boots thudded against the ground, and it closed again. A harsh voice rang out, speaking in Korean. It belonged to one of her captors, and the memory of her beating made Eliza shiver. “Where is the colonel?”

  She couldn’t make out the indistinct reply.

  But she didn’t have long to wait to find out. A bell rang out, harsh and discordant against the otherwise quiet mountainside. Eliza’s vision only extended a few inches to the left and right of the crack she had fashioned between the wooden planks, but even so she saw dozens, then hundreds of people streaming from the buildings that hemmed in the parade ground. Men, women—even children.

  Why kids?

  A crowd formed around the truck, not too close. All were dressed in military uniforms, even the children, who looked ridiculous in oversized fatigues that practically swallowed them whole. In the center of the crowd stood the five men she recognized—her captors. The men who had snatched her from the Ritz-Carlton in Macau days earlier, beaten her to within an inch of her life, and then taken her here, to experience fresh horrors that she could barely imagine.

  A commanding voice rang out, immediately catching Eliza’s attention. “You are late, Captain. I hope you come bearing good news.”

  The voice’s owner strode into view, dressed the same as all the others, but wearing an air of unquestioned authority that was unmistakable. From her limited viewpoint, it was difficult to make out the finer details of his face, but it was impossible to miss the ugly scar that marked his cheek.

  Eliza watched, attention hooked by the man’s obvious confidence. He walked like he owned the place, like he was the king of all he surveyed. His voice was cold, dead, as though all emotion had been leached out of his soul.

  Captain Jung’s voice quavered. “The American is dead. But we didn’t return empty-handed.”

  The colonel’s eyes narrowed. He stood in front of his men, feet apart, toes pointing at ten and two. He held his hands clasped behind his back. His men—and the entire crowd—looked upon him with spellbound fascination, a fascination that was evidently laced with fear. Though she had never met the man, Eliza’s chosen line of work had brought her into contact with many like him. In another place, at another time, he might have founded a cult or risen through the ranks of a gang of street thugs. From the cringing reaction of the crowd around him, he was clearly no stranger to violence. His emotionless voice suggested a sociopathic nature.

  “That wasn’t a yes,” he spat.

  The captain flinched. “He was dead by the time we arrived, sir. There was nothing we could —”

  In the blink of an eye, the short, scarred North Korean colonel twisted his body and delivered a stinging slap that echoed around the silent parade ground. “You failed.”

  “We —”

  The colonel switched his attention to one of the other men. They stood, ramrod straight, staring into the distance — plainly hoping that their boss would take the flak for the failed operation.

  “You,” he growled, pointing at one of the men. “Give me your side arm.”

  The soldier did as he was ordered, un-clipping his holster and handing his boss a small black pistol, the barrel reversed. He did not speak.

  “All of you, on your knees,” the colonel ordered.

  Eliza could not tear her attention away from the macabre sight. She had no doubt that she was about to witness a public execution—a punishment that had been retired decades if not centuries before in most civilized countries.

  But North Korea was a country apart from the rest of human civilization. It did not obey the ordinary rules.

  And this encampment, high in the mountains, seemed almost like a country within a country, ruled with an iron fist by this man with a scar on his face. His word was law. Eliza did not yet understand what he wanted, or why he had sent his men to retrieve Emmanuel Alstyne and his thumb drive full of American military secrets. But a tendril of fear coiled in her gut as she watched the scene play out in front of her—and not for her own safety. Whatever this colonel’s ultimate goal truly was, she feared that if he was permitted to achieve it, it would come at an almost unimaginable cost.

  The soldiers fell to their knees. Eliza had wondered if they would fight, or protest their innocence, but they did neither. They acted like beaten dogs—easily powerful enough to overcome their abuser, and yet unable to question the programming that had been beaten into them from birth.

  A flash of insight struck Eliza in that moment. That was it—it explained why the kids were here. They were soldiers.

  Child soldiers.

  The realization sickened her, and for a brief moment she tore her attention away from the soldiers on their knees and looked at the blank faces of the young boys and girls in the crowd. They should be innocent, playing with their siblings, growing up in the homes of their mothers and fathers, and not in a place like this.

  Instead they were torn as babies from their mothers’ breasts and fashioned into instruments of death. Though Ikeda couldn’t bring herself to simply forget the torments that Captain Jung and his men had inflicted upon her, she began to understand them, for the first time. Understand that they knew no other life than pain.

  The colonel drew back the slide on the pistol, the metallic snick drawing Eliza’s attention. She watched as he placed it on the trembling captain’s forehead.

  “Tell me, Captain Jung. Why should I allow you to live, now that you have failed me?”

  The man’s voice broke as he attempted to reply. He cleared his throat and tried again. “We have the drive.”

  “It’s encrypted,” the colonel snarled. “Without the American, it’s useless.”

  “There was a woman…”

  “What woman?” the colonel growled.

  “The crate, in the bed of the truck.”

  The colonel snapped his fingers, and from outside her field of vision, Eliza heard the footsteps of attentive soldiers rushing toward her. Then thuds, as soldiers jumped into the truck, then her stomach swayed as hands lifted the crate. She fell backwards, and was once again blind in the darkness. Fear gripped her, her mind almost descending into panic.

  No, she thought desperately. Don’t succumb.

  Hot tears filled her eyes, but she did not let them fall. As she had done before, she visualized herself in the water, buffeted by waves flecked with chunks of ice. A cold so piercing it stifled all conscious th
ought. A cold so all-encompassing it tempted her body to simply shut down, to give up. To conserve energy and heat around its major organs.

  But just as she did on a long, Arctic swim, Eliza fought. She pictured her limbs cutting through the frigid water, concentrated on maintaining her steady breath.

  In, one, two; out,three, four.

  The panic faded. Eliza’s chest stopped heaving, and her eyes blinked open in the darkness, no longer glistening with tears. She would survive this. She didn’t know how, but she would make it through.

  Outside the crate, she heard men grunting, and then a shock rocked the wooden box as it was thrown unceremoniously against the ground. Once again, Eliza was tossed around like a child’s doll in a tumble dryer.

  “Open it,” the colonel ordered coldly.

  Eliza Ikeda had spent hours, perhaps days locked in the darkness of that box, with neither food nor water. Throughout all that time, all she had hoped for was to once again feel the heat of the sun on her face, to breathe air that wasn’t infected with the acrid scent of her own piss and sweat. But as a crowbar splintered the wooden planks, she realized that at least in here, she knew what her problems were. But out there, she was about to face an entire ocean of unimaginable horror.

  Remember, she urged herself, you speak Mandarin. No English, no Korean. Just Mandarin.

  Eliza knew that the chances of her surviving this were limited at best. She needed every advantage she could get. Her captors thinking that she could not understand them was a slim one—but it was all she had.

  The crate cracked open around her, and the light kissed her skin, almost blinding her. She huddled on the ground, unmoving, pretending to be unconscious—which in reality was not far from the case.

  “Who is she?” The colonel said.

  Eyes closed, Eliza listened.

  “I believe she was sent to kill the American,” the captain replied in a pleading tone. That was, after all, what he was doing—begging for his life.

  “And you let her succeed,” the man’s commanding officer replied coldly. “You endangered the entire plan.”

  Eliza concentrated on maintaining a neutral expression, knowing that to give any sign that she understood what was being discussed was tantamount to a death sentence. But battered as her body was, her intelligent mind went into overdrive.

  She had assumed that acquiring Alstyne’s secrets was the end goal—but that, apparently, was not the case. There was a greater strategy at play here—and if she got the chance, she needed to find out precisely what it was.

  “Colonel,” the captain whimpered. “You said yourself, the American was never part of the original plan. We only learned of him at the last —”

  The colonel cut him off. “Plans change, Captain. And when they do, it is your responsibility to adapt to that change—not quail in the face of it. Does she have the encryption codes?”

  “I —”

  “You what?” the colonel sneered. “Do you know, or don’t you?”

  “I interrogated her personally, Colonel,” the captain said. “She claimed not.”

  Eliza remained on the cold, hard ground, eyelids sealed shut. Though she could not see the scene unfolding around her, she could picture it—every actor in the danse macabre in their assigned positions. The five kneeling men. The sneering, vicious colonel. The entranced onlookers.

  “Lieutenant Jin?”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Has the captain omitted any information that might later prove relevant?”

  Jin replied haltingly, as though torn between the warring desires of self-preservation and not wanting to sell out his commanding officer. Eliza imagined the trembling of his jaw, his flickering eyes. “No, sir.”

  “Then stand up.”

  Jin’s boots scraped on the ground. He moved with the excruciating slowness of a condemned man marching toward his own execution. A scrape, then a pause. Then a muffled grunt. Then a metallic sound, followed quickly by a sharp intake of breath.

  “You know what to do, Lieutenant,” the colonel said harshly.

  Jin didn’t reply. Eliza strained her ears, desperately trying to figure out what the hell was going on around her, though she dared not open her eyes. A moment later, a muffled, terrified groan rang out across the silent parade ground—the sound of a man understanding his fate.

  And then a single gunshot cracked through the sky. A body slumped to the ground. For a few seconds, no one spoke. The wind did not blow. Eliza barely heard the sound of their own heartbeat, or the blood rushing in her eardrums.

  Justice had been delivered. Of a sort.

  An Old World sort of justice, where the aim was to strike fear in the hearts of those who were watching. And those who were listening.

  It succeeded.

  Eliza was left under no uncertain illusions as to her fate, if she allowed herself to meekly succumb to this sociopath’s desires. She would have to find a way to survive, to escape this place. But how, she had no idea.

  “Captain Jin,” grated the colonel’s emotionless voice, “congratulations on your promotion. I trust that you will not fail me like your predecessor.”

  “No, sir.”

  One of the surviving captors spoke up, his fearful tone indicating that he would rather not have to. “And the prisoner, Colonel? What are your orders?”

  The reply was swift. “Take her to Building 12. I will be with you shortly. I have some business to attend to first.”

  30

  Almost exactly 24 hours after first meeting his North Korean contact, the enigmatic smuggler nicknamed “Jack,” Jason Trapp arrived at the pre-agreed rendezvous point—a small warehouse and dock that sat at the edge of the Yalu River, the natural border between the People’s Republic of China and the secretive communist state of North Korea.

  Trapp was dressed in dark clothing and carried a waterproof bag on his shoulder which contained a small pistol, several magazines and ammunition, a compass and a foldable pair of field binoculars. Each of the items was wrapped in cloth, to minimize the chances of them emitting any sound that might get him caught.

  He would need additional supplies once he was across the river, but for now he preferred to travel light. He also had a flat Korean worker’s cap pulled low over his forehead to obscure his face.

  He knew that he could do little to hide his bulk. Few North Koreans could hope to measure up to his height—not even their tallest soldiers, who were assigned to face off with their South Korean and American counterparts at the DMZ, in a bizarre throwback to the Cold War. Like most of the rest of the North Korean population, the average army conscript stood at only a fraction over five and a half feet in height, a result of childhood malnutrition that was scarcely alleviated even once they received army rations.

  Trapp, by contrast, was the perfect product of the system the North Korean regime so abhorred, towering at almost a foot taller and eighty pounds heavier than anyone he was likely to encounter across the river. So, all in all, the cap hiding his face served precious little actual value. But old habits die hard.

  As he entered the small, mostly empty parking lot outside the dilapidated warehouse, Trapp paused, his wraithlike eyes scanning the scene for anything that looked out of place. His contact was resting against the hood of the truck that hung low over its suspension, lit only by the glow of a single dull bulb on the outside of the warehouse, and the light thrown off by the screen of his cell phone in his hands. Trapp didn’t recognize the truck’s logo, and presumed it was manufactured either in China, or perhaps North Korea itself.

  He hung back, his body pressed against the corrugated iron walls of the warehouse as he tasted the air, trusting his finely-honed instincts for danger to warn him if he was about to walk into a trap. He didn’t expect to be double crossed, but then again, few people ever did. Better to be prepared, just in case.

  But Trapp sensed nothing amiss. Just the smell of a cheap cigarette brand, carried in the muggy evening breeze. He decided to chance it. He had
already tarried in Dandong for far too long. Every second he waited was another in which Eliza languished in captivity, and in which the United States was carried ever closer to all-out war by a braying, salivating press eager for ratings and clicks, and three hundred million enraged citizens.

  He strode toward the smuggler, eyes still scanning the scene, just in case he had missed something lurking in the darkness. The man glanced up from his phone.

  “You still want to go ahead with this, my friend?” Jack asked, shaking Trapp’s hand in greeting. “Because once we cross that border, there is no turning back.”

  “I’m committed, you don’t need to worry about me,” Trapp replied. “Just make sure you meet me on the other side.”

  Jack’s teeth flashed white against the evening gloom. “I’ll do my part. Just don’t get caught.”

  “I’ll try not to,” Trapp said drily.

  “I’m serious,” Jack said, narrowing his eyes. “If you’re in danger of being apprehended, then do not let them take you alive. Take the easy way out. I promise you, my friend, you will regret it for the rest of your life if you do not. I’ve seen the camps. I know what happens to people who enter them.” He shivered. “Just don’t let it happen to you.”

  Trapp grimaced, not at the prospect of his own capture and torture, which he knew was an occupational hazard, but at the reminder of what Eliza Ikeda was no doubt experiencing at this very moment.

  Where was she, right now? He was about to enter North Korea, with only a vague idea of what he would do when he reached the other side of the border. Mitchell had supplied him with the location of the camp that was suspected to house Unit 61—but there was no guarantee the intelligence was correct, or that Eliza would be there even if it was.

  But then—what other choice did he have?

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” he replied, bouncing from foot to foot as a wave of nervous energy flooded through him, as it so often did before he entered harm’s way. Trapp was no stranger to fear, but he did not hide from it, as so many other men tried to do. He knew that was a fool’s errand. He embraced his fears. They were what kept him sharp; what kept him alive.