by Chris Ryan
The others finished their meals. The cadets and their guides scraped their chairs back and arranged to meet at 8 o’clock the following morning. Then they all headed off to their rooms.
The cadets’ corridor was quiet. Max’s heart was thumping hard as he approached his room. The cadets watched him bend down to examine the superglued hair at the bottom of the doorframe. It was still stuck at either end, but had broken in the middle. ‘Somebody’s been in here,’ he said.
Nobody said anything. Max’s palms were clammy with fear. He listened at the door. There was no sound. He inserted his key and unlocked it. Then he stepped inside.
The room was empty. Max headed straight for the bed and stood on it. He examined the second hair. Each end was firmly stuck to the ceiling panels. Whoever had been in his room, they hadn’t thought to search up there.
The other cadets were waiting. He gave them a nervous thumbs-up then followed them back out into the corridor. They each examined their doors. ‘Someone’s been in my room too,’ Lukas whispered.
‘And mine,’ said Lili.
And Abby’s. And Sami’s.
But the ceiling panels were untouched. The cadets were under surveillance, but their gear had remained hidden.
So far so good.
Kind of.
‘Ten o’clock,’ Max whispered to the others as they congregated in the corridor. ‘That’s when we’ll head to the fifth floor. Until then, stay in your rooms.’
The cadets nodded solemnly. Max returned to his room and locked it from the inside. Then he checked his watch.
Ten past eight. Less than two hours to go.
8
The Fifth Floor
Time check: 21:45 hours.
The hotel was silent. Suspiciously silent. The only sound, as Max sat on the edge of his bed, was the occasional creak from the building. And then a soft knock.
It was Lukas. His face was serious. He had his black dive bag slung over his shoulders. ‘It’s nearly time,’ he whispered.
Max felt his stomach lurch. He immediately noticed that Lukas was wearing black neoprene dive shoes instead of ordinary footwear.
‘I couldn’t get my shoes on over them,’ he said, as if challenging Max to criticise him. Max knew better than to do that.
‘Is Lili ready?’ he said.
‘Are any of us?’ Lukas said. ‘You and me first. Sami and Abby will follow in ten minutes. Lili has the optics. She’ll be watching from her hotel window. But she’ll scout the way to the fifth floor for us first.’
‘Give me a minute,’ Max said, and closed the door. He stood on his bed, removed the panel in the ceiling and hauled down his own dive bag, the handgun, chain cutters and his welding kit. He opened the bag and removed the wetsuit and neoprene dive shoes, which were rolled and stowed in an outer pocket. He took off his clothes, pulled on the tight wetsuit then replaced his clothes over the top. He put on the dive shoes and just managed to cram his feet back into his ordinary shoes. It was uncomfortable, but he wouldn’t have to put up with it for long. He stowed the gun into the empty pocket of the dive bag and slung it over his shoulder. He picked up the bag containing the welding unit and chain cutters and opened the door again.
Lukas was nowhere to be seen. Max locked his room and moved along the corridor to Lili’s room. He knocked and said quietly, ‘It’s me. Max.’ There was the sound of the door being unlocked then opened. Lili let him in. She was chewing her lower lip nervously. At the window, there was a tripod with a high-powered spotting-scope with night-vision capability. It was pointing at the barge on the river. Max glanced at Pyongyang. The same patches of the city were illuminated while others weren’t. It was clear that electricity was scarce.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked Lili.
‘I feel bad,’ she said. ‘I should be entering the river with the rest of you.’
‘Your job is at least as dangerous,’ said Max. ‘If not more. Don’t let them catch you with this.’ He indicated the spotting-scope then turned to Lukas. ‘You have the GPS equipment?’
Lukas nodded.
‘Then we’d better go.’
Before Lili left the room, she removed a small make-up mirror from her wash bag. Holding it, she walked to both ends of the corridor and used the mirror to check there was nobody round either corner. She gestured at Max and Lukas to follow her. Lukas used her key to lock her bedroom. They jogged towards her. Lukas handed over her key. Lili turned the corner and headed to a door further along on the right. She opened it, looked through and nodded at Max and Lukas. They followed.
They were in a concrete stairwell. They headed down, Lili scouting each floor in advance and rapping three times on the wall to indicate it was safe for them to descend with their gear. Between each floor, there was a half landing where the stairs turned back on themselves. On each of these half landings was a cupboard. Max checked the first one, to see nothing but mops and cleaning equipment. Good places to hide, he thought, if they needed to. But they met nobody on the eighth floor, nor on the seventh. When Lili reached the sixth floor, she signalled up at them to follow. But they had just reached the half landing when she let out a gasp. ‘Hwan!’ they heard her say.
‘Lili?’ Hwan said. Even though Max couldn’t see the young Korean man, he could tell he was out of breath. ‘Who else is there?’
Max moved as slowly and silently as possible. He unslung his dive bag from his shoulder, put the welding kit bag on the floor, then indicated to Lukas that he should hide all three bags in the cleaning cupboard. Then he continued down the stairs. Hwan and Lili were standing opposite each other, just next to the door that led on to the fifth floor There was an uncomfortable silence. Max endeavoured to give Hwan an easy smile. ‘We thought you’d be in bed,’ he said as he approached them.
‘I … I was,’ Hwan stammered. ‘But then I got called down to reception. Somebody saw you give me your food. You must not do that again. I am in trouble for accepting it.’
‘Right,’ Max said carefully. ‘I’ll remember that. I’m sorry, I just thought –’
‘I know,’ Hwan said.
‘Look, mate,’ Max told him, ‘we just wanted to have a peek around. You won’t tell anybody, will you? We’re just being nosy.’
Hwan frowned. ‘You should not be like that,’ he said quietly. ‘Not here.’ He glanced sidelong at the door to the fifth floor. ‘This is out of bounds,’ he said. ‘You understand?’
Lili put her hand on the handle and rattled it. ‘Locked,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Hwan agreed. He pointed up the stairwell. ‘I must go,’ he said. He frowned again. ‘If anybody asks, I have not seen you. But you should return to your rooms.’
‘We will,’ Max said. ‘I promise.’
Hwan continued up the stairwell. Lukas was standing there silently. Hwan looked him up and down, but said nothing as he passed and continued up the stairwell and out of sight.
Max was sweating badly as Hwan’s footsteps faded away.
‘Can we trust him?’ Lili said.
‘I think so. We don’t have much choice. It’s that or abort the mission. Can you get that door open?’
Lili didn’t answer but removed a set of tension wrenches from her pocket while Max moved up the stairs again. Lukas had retrieved their gear from the cleaning cupboard. By the time they’d carried the bags downstairs, Lili had opened the door to the fifth floor. ‘Good luck,’ she whispered.
‘Get the others down here as quickly as possible,’ Max said as they slipped through the door. They heard her locking it behind them.
It was pitch dark, with the stale smell of disuse. Max and Lukas stayed still for a moment, listening hard for any sound of movement. There was none.
‘They packed me a torch,’ Lukas whispered. He switched it on, keeping his hand over the bulb to restrict the light, and played the narrow beam around the space.
A face seemed to jump out at Max from the darkness. He started, but calmed himself as he realised it was a propaganda poster on
the far wall of this large room. It was the same poster of the Supreme Leader he’d seen all around the city. The whole room was plastered with these propaganda pictures, like some spooky old museum.
‘Weird,’ Lukas muttered.
‘Right,’ Max said. He pointed towards a corridor in the far corner. ‘That way,’ he said, remembering the layout of the plans Hector had shown them. They crossed the room and moved along the corridor. It was plastered with more propaganda pictures. On the left there was an opening leading into another room. Curious, they looked inside. It was empty, but one wall was covered with TV monitors, and another with desks of listening equipment. It seemed rather old-fashioned. ‘I bet they used to use the fifth floor for surveillance,’ Max whispered. ‘They probably have more sophisticated ways now, but I guess that explains why they don’t want anybody poking around here.’
Lukas grunted his agreement and led them away from the surveillance room. They came to a second door on the right. It creaked as they opened it. They found themselves in what might have once been a store room. There were empty shelves on two walls, and a number of wicker baskets dotted around. On the far wall was a square opening: the laundry chute. They approached it. Lukas shone his torch down the hole. It was a sheer drop, with no sign of the bottom.
‘Kill the light while we wait for the others,’ Max said.
Lukas switched off his torch. The two cadets crouched beneath the opening to the laundry chute and waited silently.
Five minutes passed.
Ten.
Then they heard a noise. Saw the flash of a torch beam. Max felt himself tensing up as figures appeared. He squinted. Could he recognise the outlines of Sami and Abby? They were behind the torchlight so it was impossible to tell. But as the torch illuminated the two crouching cadets, he heard Abby’s voice.
‘Sheesh, did you see that room with all the surveillance equipment?’ she whispered. ‘What kind of place is this?’
The kind of place, Max thought, where the punishment if they were caught would be severe.
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘No,’ Sami replied. ‘But Lili said you met Hwan.’
‘I think it’ll be okay,’ Max said.
‘Are you sure? If he tells someone …’
‘He’s got nothing to tell. Only that he found us wandering round the hotel. Come on, let’s get to work.’
Abby and Sami had more gear than Max and Lukas. In addition to their dive bags, they each had a holdall. Sami’s contained the abseiling gear, Abby’s the second underwater welding kit. The abseiling gear comprised a long coil of rope, a harness and a steel bar, somewhat wider than the laundry chute opening. Max had more experience of abseiling than the others. It had been his skill in this discipline that had brought him to the attention of the Special Forces Cadets in the first place. Leaving his welding unit on the ground, he donned the harness and clipped himself to the rope. He positioned the metal bar so it lay across the opening, then climbed into the chute. He nodded at the others, who were still lit up by torchlight, then started to lower himself down the chute.
The first few metres, while there was still a little light from above, were the easiest. After that, it became dark and horribly cramped. The dive bag on his back pressed against the back of the laundry chute. It stopped Max from falling too fast, but it made him claustrophobic. It felt as though the walls were pressing in on him in the darkness. He had to breathe deeply to keep himself from panicking.
He continued to descend in the blackness, unsure how far he’d come or how long he had taken. Now and then he heard voices as the laundry chute passed behind the walls of occupied rooms. Here he moved with the utmost care, reducing his speed by half and keeping as silent as possible. And though it grew colder the further he descended, he was drenched in sweat. Part of that was because he wore a wetsuit under his clothes. Part of it was raw fear.
The bottom of the chute arrived suddenly. There was no light to announce it. He simply fell backwards where there was no back wall to support his dive bag. He tumbled painfully on to a cold concrete floor. There was a smell of damp and something else – something foetid. A rustling noise surrounded him. He didn’t want to think what was making that sound. In the darkness, he unclipped himself from the rope, then tugged on it three times. Almost immediately he felt it sliding out of his grasp as one of the other cadets pulled it back up the chute.
Max stood in the complete darkness, listening to the scurrying sounds. His skin prickled. The damp air caught in his lungs. He waited. Ten minutes later he heard something moving down the laundry chute. He switched on his torch to see the two bags containing the underwater welding units land on the floor. He untied them, then allowed the rope to be pulled back up.
The next delivery was a cadet: Abby. She was pale-faced and sweating. For once, she had no wisecracks. Her attention, like Max’s, was grabbed by the sudden blurred movement of rodents, scared by the light, into the corners of the dank basement.
The rope disappeared again. They waited in tense silence for the next cadet. Max looked around the basement. There was a door against one wall, but he didn’t think anyone had been in here for years. It was crumbling with neglect, the floor thick with rat droppings. He felt like he was inhaling poison.
Sami arrived next. Max recognised his friend’s trainers as they appeared at the bottom of the laundry chute. Sami had managed to descend with his dive bag and his holdall, and he was sweating furiously as a result. He took in the basement with a glance and did not seem as concerned by the environment as the others. Max reminded himself that, in another life, Sami had spent a long time living in poor conditions.
The rope disappeared again. It seemed to take an age for Lukas to descend. In reality? Five minutes. His neoprene shoes announced his arrival. Max blinked at them as a worrying though hit him. When Lukas emerged from the laundry chute, he said, ‘Did Hwan see your shoes?’
Lukas, sweating, looked down at his feet. ‘What?’
‘You’re the only one of us who didn’t manage to get their regular shoes over their dive shoes. Did Hwan see?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think so?’ Max’s voice had an edge. He couldn’t help it.
‘Back off, Max.’
Sami stepped in. There was something about the disappointed expression on his honest, open face that made Max and Lukas fall silent. He took hold of the rope. ‘This had better still be here when we get back.’ He gave it a tug to check it was still firmly anchored at the top of the laundry chute. His eyes widened as he pulled away more slack than he expected. ‘Oh no,’ he whispered. ‘No, no, no …’
There was a clattering, echoing sound from the top of the chute. The cadets winced as the ring of the iron bar bashing against the sides of the chute grew louder and louder. It sounded to Max as if it must surely be audible to everyone in the hotel. After a few seconds it crashed to the ground. The rodents squeaked in fright as they scattered into the dark corners of the basement.
Then silence.
The cadets stared at each other.
‘Well,’ Abby said, giving the boys a steady look, ‘I’d say this is all going swimmingly, wouldn’t you?’
9
The Sewer
Time check: 23:05 hours.
The cadets moved quickly, stripping off their outer clothes to reveal their wetsuits. The metal bar falling had made everything more urgent.
‘I think the chute might be narrow enough for us to use an old mountaineering trick called chimneying when we want to get back up,’ Max said as they changed. ‘What you do is, you put your back against one wall, your feet against the opposite –’
‘Tell you what, Max,’ Abby said. ‘Why don’t you explain it when there isn’t a risk of one of those spooky hotel staff coming to find out what that noise was?’
‘Roger that,’ Lukas muttered.
They bundled up their clothes and placed them at the bottom of the laundry chute. Then they shouldered their dive
bags and moved across the basement. According to the plans of the hotel, there was a panel in the floor against the wall opposite the chute. It meant swiping away a thick layer of rodent droppings with their feet. Abby was the one to find it. She knelt down and dug her fingernails under the edge of the panel. She managed to raise it a tiny bit, but it was heavy and it took the strength all four of the cadets to shift it.
The hole it revealed was just about big enough for a person to squeeze through. They could hear liquid trickling below, and there was an overpowering stench that made Max retch. Lukas shone his torch into the hole. It wasn’t a big drop – a couple of metres at the most – but it was a distinctly unappealing one. A stream of human waste ran below them, glistening and foetid. Max caught sight of several long, slithery tails scurrying away from the torchlight. He retched again.
‘You’re seriously telling me we have to go down there?’ Abby whispered.
The cadets peered into the hole again. ‘It is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen,’ Sami said earnestly. He looked at Max, wide-eyed. ‘You go first.’
‘What? Why me?’
‘Because you are definitely the bravest,’ Sami said. His expression was serious, but Max had the feeling his friend was just trying to flatter him.
‘I’ll do it,’ Lukas said. Without waiting for a reply, he lowered himself into the hole, gripping his torch between his teeth. ‘Oh, man,’ he said. His voice echoed against the stone walls of the sewer. ‘This Prospero dude better be grateful.’
Lukas moved along the sewer to give the others room. Max went next. As he lowered himself, he felt his neoprene-clad foot press down on something soft and squishy. He winced again, unwilling to look down. Then he made the mistake of breathing in through his nose. The smell was fouler than anything he’d ever experienced. He clamped one hand over his face, but had to release it again as Sami passed him one of the underwater welding kit bags. Sensing Abby and Sami behind him, he tapped Lukas on the back and pointed along the sewer to get him moving.