by Chris Ryan
‘Briefing room in twenty minutes,’ Hector announced before he, Woody and Angel disappeared up the stairs. The cadets headed towards their ground-floor dormitories: one for Max, Sami and Lukas; one for Abby and Lili. There was a warm boot room adjoining the boys’ dormitory, where they stripped out of their clammy wetsuits and took hot showers in their individual cubicles. The walls were plain concrete, the lights flickering strips. There was nothing luxurious about their quarters. It was the cadets’ job to keep them clean. None of them dared complain about it to Hector. They knew better than to appear pampered.
Back in the dormitory – where they had a bed, a wardrobe and a bedside table each, nothing more – they pulled on dry clothes. Nobody spoke. They had only been on one operation before this. It had been traumatic and dangerous. Max suspected the others would be as anxious as he was at the thought of being deployed again. They didn’t need him to bring it up, so he kept quiet.
Just as he was finishing getting dressed, Abby entered.
‘Hey!’ Lukas said. He was shy about being seen without his shirt on. Max had noticed that he went out of his way to cover up the gang tattoos on his dark skin.
‘Ah, you’re so coy, Lukas,’ Abby said, winking at him. ‘C’mon, you lot. Our room. We can hear them.’
The girls’ dormitory was almost identical to the boys’, and just as spartan. There were two beds rather than three, and an exposed heating pipe. It ran from the ceiling, down one corner of the room and along the wall. Abby had discovered its strange properties within a week. The pipe led up to the main room on the first floor. It was a large room with tall windows facing out over the valley. It was here that Hector often spoke to Woody and Angel about the cadets’ progress. They knew this, because if they put their ears to the pipe and remained still and silent, they could just make out voices in the room above. On occasion Max had wondered if the adults knew they could be overheard. Whenever the cadets had tried to eavesdrop, the conversations had been bland and uninteresting. Occasionally they had learned what training exercise awaited them the following day. Fitness, maybe, or counter-surveillance, or navigation, or one of the other myriad skills they were being taught … But apart from that, nothing.
This morning was different. As Max put his ear to the pipe, he heard muffled voices talking over each other. He screwed up his face as he tried to tune his ear into the indistinct sound.
‘It’s too dangerous,’ Angel was saying. ‘The three of us can’t realistically be nearby. They’ll be on their own. And you know what’ll happen if they get caught.’
‘If you want to argue it out with our superiors, be my guest,’ Hector replied.
‘Seems to me,’ Woody said, ‘that the Special Forces Cadets are getting a little too good at digging our superiors out of a hole.’
‘Amen to that,’ Hector said. A pause. ‘This lot are good. Better than I expected. They made short work of us in the lake.’
‘You’re not going to tell me you’re proud of them, Hector?’ Angel said.
‘He didn’t look proud of them when Lili ripped that mask off his face,’ Woody chuckled.
‘Have you two quite finished? The cadets will be up here any minute. I need to get back on the radio and find out more about the operation. If those kids are being sent into North Korea –’
Max didn’t hear the end of Hector’s sentence. Lili gasped and pulled away from the pipe. ‘What’s wrong?’ Sami asked, his forehead creased with concern.
‘North Korea …’ Lili whispered. ‘It’s … it’s a terrible place.’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ Abby said. ‘But I don’t know much about it. Why’s it so bad?’
‘It’s a dictatorship,’ Lili said. ‘The government has absolute power over the people, and they have no freedom to do what they want. Wherever they go, there is someone watching them. Whatever they do, it is reported back to the police or the authorities. If they say something bad about the government, they are put in prison. But not an ordinary prison. Hard labour camps, concentration camps. Sometimes they are not sent to prison at all. Sometimes they just disappear. Everybody knows that they are killed, but people are too scared to say anything.’
‘How come you know so much about it?’ Lukas asked.
‘North Korea shares a border with China. It is over eight hundred miles long. Sometimes defectors cross the border to escape into China and people hear their stories. Most North Koreans would prefer to cross over into South Korea. But that’s almost impossible. Anybody seen trying to cross that border would be immediately shot. There are rumours – I don’t know if they’re true – that the government electrocutes certain rivers that people might use to escape. There are food shortages, electricity shortages … there are shortages of everything.’
‘Except bullets, by the sound of it,’ Max said.
Lili nodded. ‘They hold public executions in North Korea, and even children are forced to attend. In the countryside, people are starving. You can see bodies by the road where people have died of hunger. And in the labour camps …’ She shook her head, as if trying to rid herself of a thought.
‘What?’ Abby said quietly.
‘I read somewhere that when people die in the camps, the bodies are left out for the rats. They eat the eyeballs first, so the corpses look like zombies …’
The cadets stared at her in horror. ‘They won’t be sending us to one of those places, surely?’ Sami said in a quiet voice.
‘I don’t think so,’ Lili said uncertainly. ‘There are parts of North Korea that are supposed to be safe for tourists.’
‘Tourists?’ Abby said. ‘Who’d want to go there on holiday?’
‘Well, I don’t really know. Just people who are interested, I suppose. They go to the capital. It’s called Pyongyang. But they are accompanied everywhere by a North Korean guide. They are only allowed to see the parts of the city the government wants them to see.’
‘I heard that the Americans were trying to improve their relationship with the North Koreans,’ Max said. ‘Maybe things are better there now?’
‘If they’re better,’ Lukas said darkly, ‘why are we being sent there?’
Nobody had an answer to that. They sat in silence. It occurred to Max that Valley House was a bleak and uncomfortable place. But all of a sudden it truly felt like home. As an orphan, he’d never had that feeling about anywhere. He realised he didn’t want to leave.
‘We’d better go,’ said Sami. ‘They’ll be waiting for us.’
The cadets stood up quietly. They filed out of the girls’ dormitory and up the stairs to the room where the Watchers waited for them.
Their faces were grim. Max could tell this was going to be serious.
3
Missing
‘Okay, listen up,’ Hector said before they even had a chance to take a seat on one of the armchairs or sofas dotted around the room. He stood behind a desk, his palms pressed down on the top. Woody and Angel stood by the window. Woody’s sandy hair was still damp, his friendly face ruddy from the cold. Angel’s fiery red hair, normally pulled back into a tight ponytail, was dishevelled. ‘Green Thunder will touch down at the landing zone in about fifteen minutes.’
Green Thunder was the Special Forces Cadets’ helicopter. The valley was inaccessible by foot. Green Thunder was used to transport them from this inaccessible location to wherever they needed to be.
Hector raised his hands and cracked his knuckles. ‘Right. North Korea. What do you know about it?’
The cadets glanced at Lili.
‘Bits and pieces,’ Max said.
Hector pretended not to have heard him. ‘The Korean Peninsula is situated between China and Japan. It split into north and south after the Second World War. South Korea is a modern, thriving country. North Korea is a brutal police state run by despots. There is no freedom of speech, no freedom of movement. For Western intelligence agents and military personnel, it’s one of the most dangerous places on earth. It’s no great secret that the West send
s spies into North Korea. If they are discovered, they are dealt with brutally.’
‘How?’ Lukas asked.
Hector glanced over at Woody and Angel, then back at Lukas. ‘The last time the North Korean secret police questioned a suspected spy, they deported him back to the USA. He died within days of his return, having suffered severe brain damage. Put it this way: he didn’t get that from combing his hair. And the worst thing was that the North Koreans had got it wrong. He wasn’t a spy. He was just a student who’d wandered off the beaten path and found himself somewhere he shouldn’t have been. He was a tourist, not an intelligence agent.’
Hector let that sink in before continuing.
‘There are Western spies in North Korea of course. There have to be. For years, North Korea has been developing nuclear weapons. It’s something the West really doesn’t want. The British, the Americans, the French, the Germans, the Australians: we all want to know what’s going on with the North Korean nuclear programme. So we send agents into the country to gather information.’ Hector sniffed. ‘That’s what this is about. One of our people – one of our best people – is missing. We believe the authorities have the agent in custody now.’
The cadets stared at him. Were they all remembering, like Max was, what Lili had told them about life in North Korea? He wondered what this captured spy was enduring at this moment.
‘The North Koreans are demanding an exchange,’ Hector continued. ‘The South Koreans have captured two high-level North Korean agents. The North Koreans want to swap their two for our one.’
‘Then why not do that?’ Lili asked. She sounded relieved that there might be a straightforward solution to the problem.
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Sounds simple to me,’ Lukas said.
‘We know how the North Korean secret police operate. Before making any exchange, they will torture our agent. The agent will be able to hold out for maybe seventy-two hours before spilling everything they know. And remember the American tourist I told you about. Our agent may not survive the interrogation process. The exchange the North Koreans are proposing would guarantee nothing: not the safety of our agent, nor the secrecy of any information they have.’
Woody wandered to the middle of the room. He gave the cadets an encouraging smile. ‘There’s something you need to understand,’ he said.
‘Make it quick,’ Hector told him. ‘We don’t have much time.’
‘We have time for this. It’s important. The exercise we did in the lake this morning? Sure, you learned how to use a rebreather. But you’ve probably worked out that it was about something else. Anyone care to guess?’
There was a moment of silence. Then Lukas said: ‘Teamwork?’
‘Right.’ Woody smiled again. ‘It’s the most important lesson you’ll ever learn in this job. Once you’re in the team, we’ve got your back. If you’re in trouble, there’s nothing we won’t do to get you out of trouble. But the team is bigger than you think. It’s not just the five of you. It’s every agent, every undercover operator and every soldier. If one of our people is compromised, we do whatever it takes to help them. This agent in North Korea is one of us. One of you. And if they’re one of us, they don’t get left to their fate.’
‘Very touching,’ Hector muttered.
‘I still don’t get it,’ Max said. ‘I thought the whole point of the Special Forces Cadets is that we go into situations that aren’t suitable for adults.’
‘If you’d let me finish?’ Hector said pointedly. ‘The North Korean authorities will be expecting a rescue attempt. They already have a heightened level of security at all their border crossings. Tourists are being turned away for the flimsiest reasons, just on the off-chance that they might be agents. We could parachute in regular Special Forces, but it would take time for them to mobilise and it would be hard for them to operate on the streets of Pyongyang because they’d look so different to regular members of the public. We need people who can cross the border quickly, legally and without suspicion and who have a legitimate reason for being in North Korea. That’s where you lot come in.’
‘How do we enter legally?’ Abby asked. Unlike Max, she was not shouted down.
‘There are tour companies who specialise in bringing Westerners into Pyongyang for a few days’ sightseeing. The five of you will be registered with one of these companies. Your guides won’t know your real identities, which is safer for them. But they are experts in moving tourists in and out of the country. We’re confident you’ll be allowed in if you’re with them.’
‘Then what?’ Sami asked.
‘Then you get to work. British intelligence are well informed about North Korea. They know the location of most of the interrogation facilities. And the North Koreans know that they know. As they are plainly expecting a rescue mission, they have ensured that the spy is not being held in any of these facilities.’
‘So where is he?’ Lili asked.
‘Pyongyang is on a river,’ Hector said. ‘It cuts the city in two. We think our target is locked up on a secure boat moored to a pier on the northern bank of the river.’
‘Why a boat?’ Abby asked. ‘Why not a prison? They’re kind of hard to break out of. Trust me.’ Max remembered that Abby had been born in a tough Northern Irish prison.
‘But they’re pretty easy to break in to,’ Angel said. ‘Trust me, hun – I’ve done it a few times. And there’s another reason boats are better than buildings. If you’re expecting a rescue attempt, boats can move. Buildings can’t.’
‘Keeping our agent on this boat in the centre of Pyongyang means that the officials and interrogators in Pyongyang have easy access,’ Hector said. ‘But the boat can also move downriver to a new location if a rescue attempt is suspected.’
‘And let’s not skirt around the issue,’ Angel said. ‘It’s easy to dispose of a body quickly in a river.’
‘Right,’ Hector agreed. He looked around. ‘Your mission is this: enter Pyongyang and help the spy escape from the boat before the North Korean authorities have a chance to do their worst.’
‘What’s his name?’ Abby asked. ‘The spy, I mean.’
‘We can’t tell you.’
‘Why not?’
Hector exchanged a meaningful glance with Woody and Angel. ‘Because our agent has a family,’ he said.
‘I don’t understand –’
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Max interrupted. ‘If one of us is caught, and we know the spy’s real name, it won’t be long before they torture it out of us. And when that happens, the spy’s family is at risk.’
A heavy silence fell on the room as the cadets considered that possibility.
‘Max is right,’ Hector said. ‘The less you know about your target, the less you can reveal. For now we will refer to our agent only by a codename: Prospero.’
‘There’s something else I don’t get,’ Max said. ‘If this boat contains a high-level target, it’s going to be well guarded.’
‘Right,’ said Hector.
‘And I’m guessing there will be armed personnel on the pier where it’s moored.’
‘You bet.’
‘So how do we gain access?’
‘I’d have thought that would be obvious,’ Hector said. ‘You swim. Woody’s wrong: this morning’s exercise wasn’t only about teamwork.’ He cocked his head as if he heard something. Then Max heard it too. The distant throbbing of helicopter rotors.
‘That’s Green Thunder,’ Hector said. ‘We need to board. We’ll brief you further when you’re in transit. Don’t just stand there staring at me. Get going. Prospero’s life could depend on how fast we move.’
4
First Class
There was no time to make any preparations. The cadets didn’t even return to their dormitories. The Watchers hurried them out of Valley House to the landing zone. Green Thunder, a twin-rotor Chinook helicopter, had touched down. Its tailgate was opening. Max felt a surge of something in his gut: half excitement, h
alf terror. The last time they’d left Valley House in Green Thunder, they had almost never returned. But still, the adrenaline rush was there.
Inside the aircraft, he and the others strapped themselves in. The tailgate closed and then they were airborne. They each had a set of headphones fitted to the wall behind their benches. Once they all had them on, the pilot spoke. ‘We’ll be putting you down on the tarmac at Heathrow in approximately two and a half hours. British Airways is delaying a flight to Beijing for you. It’s a full flight. Get ready for some dirty looks from the other passengers.’
Max happened to be watching Lili as the captain spoke. Her face lit up when the captain mentioned China, then she bowed her head. There would be no time for visiting now they were on ops.
Apart from that terse communication, they heard nothing from the flight deck for the remainder of the journey. The cadets sat uncomfortably in the dark, noisy belly of the Chinook. The reek of aviation fuel caught the back of Max’s throat. His body vibrated with the hum of the aircraft. It struck him that it had been a very busy morning. ‘Better than school,’ he muttered to himself. Lukas, sitting opposite, inclined his head questioningly. ‘Nothing,’ Max mouthed.
They touched down just after midday. An unmarked airport transit bus was waiting for them. As the cadets filed down the tailgate of the Chinook, Max saw a man in military uniform waiting by the bus. He stared at the cadets with open curiosity.
‘Eyes forward, soldier,’ Hector said.
The soldier saluted and handed Hector a briefcase. Hector took it wordlessly and entered the bus. The cadets followed. As the bus roared across the tarmac, Max looked back. The soldier was staring after them. He wondered what the soldier would tell his mates back in barracks about the five teenagers landing at Heathrow by Chinook.
The bus approached an enormous passenger aircraft, gleaming white in the midday sunshine. Since joining the Special Forces Cadets, Max had made several journeys by helicopter. Before then, he had lived in a residential care home. Holidays had been rare and foreign travel unthought-of. He had never been in an aeroplane, and he felt apprehensive.