The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Forty-Nine

Oppenheim turned to Ben. ‘In June 2011 an incident that was never released to the world media occurred in a classified location near a place called Kwanmo-Bong. You know where that is?’

‘It’s a mountain in North Korea,’ Ben said.

‘Surrounded by impenetrable forest, and believed to be the site of one of numerous military installations in that country devoted to the development of bioweapons. I’m sure you know that the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is strongly suspected of flouting both the Geneva Protocol and the Biological Weapons Convention, in addition to the chemical weapons and nuclear arsenal they’ve already admitted to stockpiling. All part of their Songun or military-first policy to arm themselves to the teeth while their people are starving in the fields. Intelligence agencies believe that dozens of facilities scattered about the country posing as ordinary military bases may in fact be disguising hidden labs for the purpose of creating and storing biological threat agents of various kinds.

‘According to intelligence reports, the June 2011 incident was an attempt by an outside group to break into one of those secret labs and obtain a quantity of such agents. Specifically what they were looking for, we don’t know. We can only speculate that their target might have been a Level Three biohazard agent, classed as extremely serious but treatable, such as West Nile virus or anthrax. More disturbingly, it could equally have been a Level Four agent, for which no known treatment exists. Ebola virus, or Marburg virus, or Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever. Take your pick. All potentially devastating.’ Oppenheim paused. ‘As to who carried out the attack — there’s very little uncertainty on that score.’

‘Streicher,’ Ben said.

Both men nodded. ‘In a nutshell, you have one unhinged lunatic attempting to steal from a whole army of other unhinged lunatics,’ Oppenheim said.

Ben saw the sneer on the guy’s face, and felt a jolt of annoyance at the hypocrisy. ‘Let’s not get too smug,’ he said. ‘The North Koreans are what they are, but they’re hardly the only ones with their finger in the pie. Don’t tell me the Brits aren’t doing exactly the same thing at Porton Down in Wiltshire. The USA and Russia are no different.’

‘You’re right about that,’ Oppenheim admitted. ‘The Russians were intensely hot on biowarfare research throughout the Soviet era. Western powers weren’t slow to lure their scientists to defect over to us and then magic them away to work in rather secretive capacities behind closed doors, developing nobody quite knows what.’ The way Oppenheim said it, it sounded to Ben as if he belonged to the ultra-exclusive club of people who knew exactly what. Maybe he really did, or maybe he just liked to give that impression. Either way, it made Ben wonder about the man’s mysterious background that Luc Simon had avoided mentioning in any kind of detail.

‘Like it or lament it,’ Oppenheim said, ‘that’s the world we live in. The raiders must have thought that the Korean facility would be an easy target. In the event, they turned out to be very wrong. The attempt was not a success.’

‘It was worse than unsuccessful,’ Luc Simon put in. ‘In fact, it was a perfect storm of failure. Streicher completely underestimated the strength of the military presence guarding the facility. Several of his people were killed and the rest only just managed to escape empty-handed by helicopter as far as the coast, from where it’s believed they fled to Japan. When the first intelligence reports about the attack began filtering through, the line of thinking among Western agencies was that this could be Al-Qaeda, or perhaps some other jihadist splinter group, renewing its stated intention to unleash a whole new kind of WMD on the infidel West. Panic buttons were being hit all over the place. Then leaked information started coming through that the bodies of the raiders killed in the incident weren’t your typical Muslim terrorists. They were white Europeans.’

‘That led to some consternation in certain circles,’ Oppenheim said, picking up the baton. ‘Discounting the various factions within Northern Ireland, who all have their own localised agenda and their own habitual ways of operating, there hasn’t been a significantly ambitious white European terror group since the days of Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army Faction, back in the seventies. With the current near-exclusive focus on Islamic jihadists, frankly, nobody knew where to look. Not until our sources in North Korea began releasing the identities of the dead. All of them, it turned out, connected to this little-known group called the Parati that European intelligence services had been keeping half an eye on for years. Until then, the Parati were only a theoretical, low-grade threat. They’d done nothing, at least nothing that we were aware of, that could justify any action being taken against them. Suddenly, it was confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that they were responsible for the North Korea raid. And there can be only one possible reason for such a raid. Streicher’s intention was to deploy biological weapons in mainland Europe.’

Ben said nothing.

‘So here’s what we’re looking at,’ Luc Simon said. ‘We know that Streicher failed in 2011 to obtain biological weapons that he intended to use to carry out his sick personal objectives. The failure cost him some of his best people, and an awful lot of money. He disappeared for a long time, and all efforts to locate him failed. It was as if he’d dropped off the face of the earth. Even his website disappeared, pulled down overnight from the Deep Web. Analysts came to the conclusion that the experience must have completely defeated him, perhaps driven him to drink or suicide. Or that someone within his organisation had killed him.

‘It took many months of intensive police work to discover that he was still active. Whereupon, the joint operation was mounted between French, British and Swiss Intelligence services to plant undercover operatives into the organisation, with a twofold agenda. First, to discover where Streicher had been hiding, and second, to find out what he was up to. They failed on the first count. We still have no idea where he hides out. As for the second, Streicher answered it for us when he carried out the attack on the monastery. Now we know for a fact that he’s by no means given up. All this time, he was simply lying low. Marshalling his forces, forming a new plan in the wake of the failed Korean attack. Looking for an alternative.’

‘And now, it appears,’ Oppenheim said, ‘he’s found it.’

Ben stared at the two of them. ‘You said at the start that you could sum this up in just one word. So cut to the chase.’

Oppenheim glanced again at Luc Simon, as if looking for the green light. Luc Simon again quietly nodded his acquiescence.

Oppenheim turned to Ben and came out with the one word.

It was, ‘Plague.’