by Chris Ryan
The choice was made for her. She heard a male voice shouting from the the stairwell. She couldn’t make out what it was saying, but she didn’t need to. ‘Keep walking,’ she hissed at Hwan. ‘Act normal.’
But there was nothing normal about this situation: a terrified North Korean guide leading a teenage Chinese girl towards the hotel’s exit. It was obvious to everybody that something was up. From the corner of her eye, Lili could see the receptionists talking and pointing. And they were barely halfway to the exit when the male voice shouted directly at them. Lili looked over her shoulder. A uniformed secret police officer had entered the reception area from the stairwell. He was screaming at them to stop.
Hwan did stop. But not for long. Lili revealed her pistol. She waved it in the direction of the police officer, who immediately hit the ground. The receptionists ducked down behind their desks.
‘Run!’ Lili screamed at Hwan, aiming the pistol at him. She knew the police officer would also be armed. She knew they only had seconds to get out of there. Their feet clattered across the hard floor of the hotel reception. Lili was faster than Hwan, and had to pull him along by the arm to get him to the exit. When they reached the glass door, the police officer was shouting again, but it wasn’t clear who he was shouting at. He was still lying on the floor, but he had managed to access his pistol. He was stretching out his arm, pointing it at them.
Lili yanked the glass door open, pushed Hwan outside and followed. Just in time. A shot rang out from inside and a bullet slammed into the glass. It didn’t shatter, but a spiderweb fracture spread out from the impact point with an icy crackle.
The flashing lights came from two police cars parked to their left. Lili could see the silhouettes of drivers behind the wheels, and a passenger in each car. But there were no personnel outside the vehicles. It gave them a moment of opportunity. ‘Run to the right,’ she hissed at Hwan, brandishing the pistol in his direction. Hwan did as he was told. They sprinted along in front of the hotel, then across the street towards a line of trees that gave them a little cover. Lili’s mind worked fast. They were on an island in the middle of the river. She did not doubt that the Pyongyang authorities could have it sealed off within minutes. If that happened, they would be trapped.
She had seen, when they drove to the hotel, that there were two bridges cutting across the island from the north of the city to the south. One bridge was for road vehicles. The other was for trains. They were sprinting along the north of the island, amid trees that grew between a main road on their left and the river on their right. They had to use one of these bridges to cross into the main part of Pyongyang, where they could try to lose themselves. And from this position, their quickest option was to head north.
Lili was a lot fitter than Hwan, who was out of breath after two minutes of running. She couldn’t let him slow them down. Each time he lost pace, she pulled him by the arm or waved the pistol in his direction. His eyes were wild, and they grew wilder when they heard sirens. They seemed to be coming from all around. From behind, in the direction of the hotel. In the distance, from the south of the island. And to their right, on the opposite bank of the river, heading towards the bridge. Reinforcements were coming.
Lili forced them to up their pace, silently thanking the Watchers for putting them through such a brutal fitness regime over the past couple of months. The road bridge appeared ahead of them. It was broad and there was very little traffic. But on the other bank of the river, moving parallel to Lili and Hwan, were five – no, six – police cars, lights flashing, sirens sounding. They turned on to the bridge just as Lili and Hwan hit the road leading off it. To her left she could see sets of bright headlights coming from the other direction. They were cut off on both sides.
What to do? The police officer at the hotel must have raised the alarm and now he had reinforcements searching for them. She had to make a decision. Fast.
‘Cross the road!’ she screamed at Hwan. Before waiting for a reply, she hustled him across the highway as police vehicles closed in on them from both directions. They crossed in a matter of seconds, unsure if they had been spotted by the approaching vehicles. Lili had no time to worry about that. Straight ahead of them was the railway line. It was protected by a wire fence about four metres high.
‘Climb it!’ she screamed at Hwan.
Hwan was doubled up, trying to catch his breath, but he moved as Lili poked the gun into his ribs. He scaled the fence with difficulty, arms and legs sliding all over the wire mesh. Lili had to push him up from below as he struggled to reach the top. When he fell heavily on the other side, she was worried that he’d hurt himself. Lili climbed it more expertly, landing like a cat, and just in time. The police cars had crossed the bridge and were almost alongside them. Lili pressed Hwan to the ground, out of sight, just by the rail track. Her companion was shaking hard, from fear, exhaustion or both. The ground was a mixture of grit and soil, and he had his face pressed into it. Lili wasn’t sure, but she thought he might be crying.
There was a new noise. It was faint, and drowned out by the sirens at first. But it quickly grew louder. A mechanical noise. Lili looked north. Nothing. She looked south and she saw them: the bright lights of a train thundering in their direction. Her stomach twisted in panic. She couldn’t tell how far away the train was, but it was close and it was moving fast. They were lying right by the tracks. It was going to hit them …
‘Hwan! Move!’ she shouted. But Hwan didn’t seem to know what was going on. She got to her knees and hauled him away from the track, back against the fence. They pressed themselves into the ground again. The noise of the train was deafening. It had almost reached them, and all Lili could do was hope they were out of its path.
The train missed them by a whisker. The noise was so loud it seemed to come from inside Lili’s body. The air displacement blew her hair wildly. It took less than ten seconds to pass, but those ten seconds felt like ten minutes. Once it had passed, she felt more breathless than she had been after running from the hotel. Her face was blasted with grit and her ears were ringing. Hwan was still shaking. They remained pressed down into the ground for a full two minutes before Lili dared turn and look to her right.
Through the fence, she could make out activity on the bridge. Several vehicles had stopped halfway across it. In the beam of their headlights, she could make out the silhouettes of personnel moving in front of them. The police had set up a roadblock to stop anyone leaving the island.
But their attention was not focused on the railway bridge. They had made it over the fence unseen. Lili did not dare stand up for fear of revealing herself. She crawled so she was lying next to Hwan. ‘What will happen if they catch us?’ she demanded.
Hwan could barely speak for fear. It took several goes for him to answer. ‘They will send us away,’ he whispered. ‘To a prison camp. For many years. Maybe for ever.’
‘Do you want that to happen?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then you’d better do exactly what I tell you. We can’t stay here. They’ll find us eventually. We need to get off the island. That means crawling along this rail track. You go first. Don’t think of standing up and running. The guys at the roadblock will have weapons and they can shoot us at this distance. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. But what happens when we get across the river?’
‘When we get across the river, you and I are going to have a little talk. Then we’re going to work out how to rescue my friends.’ She checked the time: 01:30 hours. It had been a full forty-five minutes since Max and Lukas had been captured. The thought made her feel sick.
‘Get moving,’ she hissed. ‘They’re going to search this island thoroughly. We can’t be here when they do.’
13
Prospero
The pain was all-consuming.
Max’s abdomen was so bruised it hurt to breathe. He winced as he inhaled. His throat was sandpaper-dry. His lips were caked with dried blood from his nose. His head throbbed. It made i
t hard to think. Where was he? What had happened?
It all came back to him in a matter of seconds and he suddenly felt like retching again.
It was more than dark. There was no difference between eyes open and eyes closed. Thick, impenetrable blackness. All he knew was that he was lying on his front. The floor was hard and cold. Slightly damp. He was still wearing his wetsuit, which was clammy and tight, but the rebreathing apparatus and wrist unit had been taken from him. So too had the pistol and the chain cutters. Somewhere in the distance was the grinding hum of an engine. Slowly, painfully, Max pushed himself to a kneeling position. He felt nauseous and struggled to stay upright. Somehow he managed it.
His fists were clenched and sweating. He opened them up and prepared to feel around in the darkness, then remembered something Woody had told him in training. If you don’t know what you’re about to touch, use the back of your hands, not your palms. It’s less debilitating if you get burnt or cut. He turned his hands so the backs were facing out, then pushed tentatively into the darkness.
Nothing.
He shuffled along on his knees. Only then did he feel something attached to his right ankle. It was uncomfortable, and when he moved, it dug painfully into his skin. He stretched out to feel what it was: a thick metal ring with what felt like an interlocking metal chain leading from it. He followed the chain with his fingertips. It was attached to a nearby wall. Max realised he was manacled.
‘Is that you, Max?’
Max started, then felt a wave of relief as he recognised Lukas’s voice. His friend sounded as bad as Max felt. His voice was weak and croaky. Max estimated that he was about three metres away, but he had no way of being sure.
‘Mate,’ Max whispered, ‘what happened?’
‘They knew we were coming,’ Lukas said darkly. ‘Someone tipped them off.’
There was a silence before they said, at the same time, ‘Hwan.’
‘I thought he was okay,’ Max said.
‘Me too,’ Lukas admitted. ‘I guess Hector was right when he said we shouldn’t trust anybody.’
They remained silent for a minute.
‘Are you chained up?’ Max said.
‘Yeah. We’re not going anywhere by ourselves.’
‘What do you think they’re going to do with us?’
Another silence. Then Lukas said, ‘I don’t think they’re going to kill us. I think they’re going to torture us to find out who we are.’
It was then that they heard a third voice. Female. Throaty. The voice of a thousand cigarettes.
‘What is this? The school playground?’
Max and Lukas said nothing. Max felt himself tensing up, ready to fight if he needed to.
‘You’re half right and half wrong of course,’ the voice continued. ‘They are going to torture you to find out who you are. You sound like youngsters, and they will be very interested to know more about you. But then they will kill you, and some innocent explanation will be found for your deaths. The world cannot know that the Korean regime is willing to eliminate young people as well as old.’
Max swallowed hard. ‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘I was about to ask you the same thing.’
‘Do you know anything about Prospero?’ Lukas said.
‘I’ve always hated that codename,’ said the woman.
‘Are you Prospero?’ Max asked.
‘Obviously.’
‘But … you’re a woman?’
‘Last time I looked.’
‘I thought …’
‘You presumed. There’s a big difference between presuming and thinking. Now tell me what you’re doing here.’
‘We’re here to rescue you,’ Max said.
There was a pause. Then a muffled sound which, after a few seconds, Max realised was laughter. Despite everything, he felt himself blushing in the darkness.
‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘How would you say it’s going, this grand rescue?’ Prospero said. ‘I expected help of some sort but – forgive me – not this. I suppose I have just learned something about how highly I am valued by my paymasters. Which is to say, not highly at all.’
‘That’s not true,’ Lukas said. He sounded aggressive. Max could picture him jutting out his chin. ‘There’s five of us, and the others will be working something out. You’d better get ready.’
‘Lukas …’ Max hissed. He was giving away too much information. What if somebody was listening?
‘Relax,’ Prospero said. ‘I am quite certain there are no English speakers on the boat. They are waiting for an English-speaking interrogator to arrive in the morning. I can’t say I’m looking forward to making his – or her – acquaintance. But for now, we can speak freely.’ She started to cough – a deeply unhealthy, chesty sound. When she’d recovered, she said, ‘I have some matches in my shoe that they have failed to find. I’m going to light one so I can see your faces.’
There was a scratching sound, then a yellow flame illuminated the blackness. It was tiny, but enough to hurt Max’s eyes. He only caught the briefest glimpse of Prospero’s face, and of their surroundings.
The British spy was older than Max had imagined. Her face was leathery and lined. It was also bruised, swollen and cut. One eye was barely open. Her upper lip was thick. She had clearly been badly beaten, and recently. She wore canvas trousers and a T-shirt, and was lean and muscular.
They were in a long space with steeply inclining metal walls dotted with painted metal rivets. Prospero was at one end. Max was three metres from her, Lukas the same distance from Max. The brief glimpse of their surroundings confirmed what Max already suspected: they were in the hull of the prison boat. And he clearly saw that they were each manacled to the boat’s hull with a thick, short chain.
The light died, leaving a ghost of the flame on Max’s retina. ‘You’re even younger than I expected,’ Prospero said. She was unable to hide her disappointment.
‘And you’re even older,’ Max said.
Prospero chuckled. ‘Touché,’ she said. ‘Now tell me about this escape plan of yours.’
Max explained what they had tried to do. The swim upriver. The underwater welding kit. Their instruction to scuttle the boat and provide Prospero with a handgun so she could make her own escape from Pyongyang. ‘Well,’ the woman said when he’d finished, ‘I can safely say I’m glad you failed.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lukas said. ‘You don’t want to get away?’
‘Of course I want to get away. But you may have noticed that we are chained to the hull of this boat. If you had managed to scuttle it, there is no way I would have been able to escape. Of course, a more cynical person than myself might jump to the conclusion that this was the whole point.’
‘What do you mean?’ Max said.
‘I mean that if I had managed to escape, all well and good. But if I hadn’t? I have many secrets that British intelligence would not want to fall into the hands of the North Korean authorities. If I were to die in the rescue attempt, that would be an acceptable outcome. Maybe even the best outcome.’ She said this in a chilling, matter-of-fact manner, as if she expected and almost welcomed such an outcome. ‘You’ve been sent on an assassination mission, my young friends, even though you didn’t know it.’
‘That’s not true,’ Max said hotly. ‘We’re here to rescue you. Our handlers were clear about that.’
‘Rule number one of secret work,’ Prospero said, ‘accept that your handlers aren’t telling you everything. Or that their superiors are keeping them in the dark. Somebody is always lying to somebody else. It’s in our nature.’
‘They’d have told us,’ Max insisted. ‘If our job was to kill you, they’d have said so.’
‘And would you have done it?’ Prospero asked.
Max had no answer for that.
‘You’re young,’ Prospero said. ‘And new to this. Perhaps you haven’t yet stopped to ask yourself the question that we all ask ourselves, at some time or anothe
r.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Why?’ Prospero said. ‘Why do we do what we do? We receive no praise. Nobody ever even hears about us, and we’ll certainly never be rich. So why do we do it?’ There was a long silence, then she said, ‘The answer is simple of course.’
‘What?’ Lukas demanded.
‘We do it,’ Prospero said, ‘because it’s the right thing to do.’
‘The way you’re talking,’ Lukas said, ‘you think the right thing to do is to give up and let yourself die.’ He sounded almost spiteful.
‘I’ve been in this game for a long time, young man. You learn not to worry about what you can’t control. During the Second World War, spies were routinely provided with cyanide pills for if they were captured. Sometimes a quick way out is better than the alternative. Choosing to die is not always the same as giving up, you know.’
‘Wait,’ Max said. An icy sensation was running through his blood. He remembered standing at the edge of the lake near Valley House, discussing whether they had acted the way the Watchers had intended. Sami had used exactly the same words as Prospero. It was the right thing to do. ‘Lukas, if you were Abby and Sami, what would you be doing now?’
A beat. Then Lukas swore under his breath.
‘Who are Abby and Sami?’ Prospero said.
‘Our friends,’ said Max. ‘They were in the river with us with a separate welding unit. If we activated our panic buttons, they were to return to the hotel, but …’
‘But what?’ Prospero said.
‘If it was me,’ said Lukas, ‘and my friends had been caught, I would go after them.’
‘The right thing to do,’ Max muttered.
Prospero chuckled softly.
‘Will you stop laughing?’ Max said testily.
‘I’m afraid that’s unlikely to happen, boys,’ Prospero said. ‘While you were out cold, the barge moved position. We’ve travelled a good distance downstream. I’d say it’s very unlikely they’ll be able to get anywhere close to us.’ She paused. ‘Even if one of them is a girl,’ she added quietly.