1000 Yards

1

“Sir — are you alright?”

John Milton heard the woman’s voice and prised open his eyes. He was feverish with sweat.

A pretty stewardess in a red Air China uniform was peering down at him, concern on her face.

“Sir?”

Milton looked to his right. The passenger on the other side of the aisle was looking at him anxiously. “Sorry—”

“Is everything alright, sir?”

“Yes.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s fine. I’m a bad flyer, must’ve been the sleeping pills. Really, I’m fine.”

He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead dry. His breathing returned to normal and his muscles loosened, and relaxed. “Where are we?”

“We’ve landed,” she said with a sunny, surprised smile.

“Already?”

“Welcome to Pyongyang.”

Milton sat quietly for a moment, letting consciousness slowly return. How long had he been out? He remembered eating the tasteless meal, then a drink as he watched them cut across the clouds, and then … and then, he couldn’t remember. An hour? Two hours? He had thought that he had mastered the blackouts, that he had forced them away, but this was the third time in a week. There had been one in London and then another in his hotel room in Beijing. He couldn’t ignore it any longer. They were getting worse and, for a man in his particular line of work, that was a very bad thing indeed.

He concentrated on putting his worries aside. This was no time to be weak. He waited patiently for the queue of passengers to disperse and then, after grabbing his carry-on luggage from the overhead locker, he disembarked, a little unsteadily, descending the flight of stairs fixed to the back of a pickup truck that had been parked up against the fuselage of the Air China 737.

He stepped down onto the tarmac of Pyongyang Suran International Airport.

It was an unseasonably cold Spring afternoon, and the wind carried in great gusts of icy rain. There was no bus to transfer them to the terminal and the walk was unpleasant. Milton was hatless, holding a copy of the Chicago Herald-Tribune over his head, the other gripping the handle of his bag. The newspaper was quickly sodden. He set his jaw to the cutting wind; there was nothing to be done to prevent it whipping between the folds of his jacket and it did not take long for him to feel cold to the bone.

Welcome to North Korea, he thought. How I’ve missed you.