The Midas Legacy

37

The view from the jet’s windows as it crossed the border from China into the so-called Hermit Kingdom revealed a striking contrast. Along the northern bank of the winding Yalu River sprawled numerous Chinese towns and cities, lights blazing in the night. To its south, though, was almost a wilderness, what settlements there were far smaller and more dimly lit than their counterparts across the water. The blackness was so empty that it could be mistaken for open ocean, only the occasional smudges of illumination breaking the illusion.

Eddie peered down at the isolated country below. ‘They must’ve forgotten to pay their electricity bill.’

‘Eddie,’ Nina cautioned quietly. The mission briefing by MacNeer and a coterie of State Department and CIA advisers before they left the United States had warned that not only would the trio of stony-faced North Korean ‘guides’ ostensibly accompanying them to translate and assist really be spying on everything they said and did, but also that the plane — and any other vehicle they travelled in — would be bugged.

The Yorkshireman was unconcerned, however. ‘What? There’s so few light bulbs, it looks like Norfolk down there.’

‘I assume if I were British I’d find that hilarious.’

‘If you were British, you’d say words like “mum” and “herb” properly.’

She gave a mocking snort, covering her nervousness as she noticed one of their minders seemingly taking a mental note of their conversation. To distract him, she asked a question. ‘How long before we land?’

Another of the guides glanced at his watch. ‘In twenty-five minutes, approximately.’ The Koreans spoke reasonably good English, but strongly accented.

‘Good. It’s been a long trip,’ said Eddie. They had flown from New York to China by commercial airline, being picked up by the North Korean plane for the last leg of the journey. ‘And the service hasn’t exactly been first class,’ he added in a fake whisper to his wife. ‘They didn’t even offer us a bag of peanuts.’ The nearest guide frowned slightly.

North Korea was a small country: at its narrowest point, less than two hundred miles separated the Chinese border from the heavily fortified demilitarised zone that lay between the Democratic People’s Republic and the vastly wealthier South Korea. Before long, the aircraft entered its final approach. Below was a large military airbase, the first brightly lit place they had seen since crossing the Yalu. A long, wide runway slashed across the landscape. The plane touched down on it, soon coming to a stop.

One of the guides opened the hatch and lowered the stairs. Nina and Eddie stood; another translator moved as if to take their single item of baggage, but the redhead quickly collected it. ‘Thanks, but I’ll carry that,’ she told him, lifting the padded plastic case containing the small Crucible.

Cold air hit them as they stepped on to the concrete. North Korea was nowhere near as frigid as Iceland, but there was still a bitter chill to the wind. To the new arrivals’ relief, a car was waiting for them, a large Chinese-built SUV. Eddie was not looking at the vehicle, however, but at something beyond it. ‘Bloody hell. That’s a big-arse plane.’

‘You’re not kidding,’ Nina agreed. Looming over its surroundings, so huge that its tail rose higher than the roof of even the largest hangar, was a Russian Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft. Built for the Soviet military, this one had been transferred to private hands, an air freight company’s name emblazoned on its side in Cyrillic lettering. It was slightly shorter than a Boeing 747, but much more bulky; practically the entire length of its swollen fuselage was a cavernous cargo hold, built to swallow trucks, helicopters, even tanks. ‘Wonder what that’s doing here?’

‘Maybe it’s carrying all the gold we asked for.’ They shared wry grins as their minders ushered them into the car.

The SUV set off, heading away from the runway towards a checkpoint in a high fence. Several guards were on duty, one shining a flashlight suspiciously over the vehicle’s occupants before waving to a comrade to let it through. They started up a winding road into the darkened hills beyond. Nina gave her husband a concerned look when she realised there were no safety barriers, only white-painted stone markers warning of the steep drop into the densely forested valley below. The surface had been asphalted, but it was broken and potholed, giving them a very bumpy ride.

They passed under a double line of electricity pylons, doing so again several minutes later as the twisting road doubled back upon itself. ‘Something up here needs a lot of juice,’ she whispered.

‘Maybe they really do have a…’ Eddie began, before noticing one of the guides surreptitiously tipping his head towards them. ‘Massive hairdryer,’ he finished. ‘Those things use a load of power.’

‘How would you know?’ his wife said, rubbing his shaved head. The remark proved that their travelling companions were indeed listening in, as one tried to hide a smirk.

The SUV continued its zigzagging ascent. A half-moon lit the landscape, revealing the brooding silhouette of a rocky peak rising above the forest. Eventually the road flattened out, leading them to another checkpoint. The driver’s credentials were checked, the passengers scrutinised by armed men, then finally a radio call was made to confirm that all was in order before they were allowed to pass through.

What awaited Nina and Eddie came as a surprise.

They knew there was a runway built on a plateau halfway up the small mountain, and that one end had been dug into its side — but they hadn’t been prepared for just how deeply it went into the heart of the peak. Lines of bright overhead lights receded into the distance, the runway continuing into the rock for almost as far as it extended in the open.

And the excavations were continuing, even at night. Trucks were bringing rocky debris out of the mountain and dumping it over the side of the plateau, going back underground for more as soon as they had delivered their loads. ‘Must be a really massive hairdryer,’ Eddie remarked.

Nina noticed a group of armed soldiers at the dump site; between them she glimpsed men and women in dirty grey clothing picking up rocks that had not gone over the edge. Prisoners? A forced labour detail? What she knew about the brutal North Korean regime, its appalling human rights abuses condemned by the UN in language as strong as diplomacy permitted, suggested that either guess was likely to be correct.

But the SUV swept onwards before she could get a clear look. The driver brought them down the runway, which was considerably narrower than the one at the base below, towards the gaping tunnel mouth. On each side of it were gun emplacements, turrets surrounded by sandbags. ‘Miniguns,’ said Eddie, seeing that the weapons were six-barrelled Gatling guns. ‘One way to put off the Jehovah’s Witnesses.’

‘I guess they really don’t want uninvited visitors,’ Nina replied.

They drove down the long tunnel. What she had thought was a concrete wall at its far end turned out to be a blockhouse, presumably to keep any planes with faulty brakes from careering into the still larger space that widened out beyond it. The SUV pulled up at the broad structure, where a rank of soldiers stood to attention. Two officers waited before them, watching their guests’ arrival.

One of the guides opened the door for Nina and Eddie. ‘Dr Wilde, Mr Chase,’ he said, ‘welcome to People’s Special Engineering Facility Number 17.’ He saluted the officers. ‘This is the base commander, Colonel Kang Sun-il.’

The older of the two men regarded Nina and Eddie disparagingly. Although he was short, not even Nina’s height, he exuded menace, his eyes narrow and almost snake-like in their coldness. ‘Welcome to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,’ Kang said, sounding anything but cordial.

‘And the facility’s chief of security,’ the translator continued, indicating the younger man beside the commander, ‘Major Bok Jeong-hun.’

‘Delighted to make your acquaintance,’ said Bok with a predatory smile. His English was fluent and confident, even more so than the translators’. He was several inches taller than his commander, the absence of the other soldiers’ tight-faced haggardness suggesting that his upbringing had been relatively privileged.

Unsure of protocol, Nina settled for a modest bow. Eddie gave the two officers a brief bob of his head. ‘We’re both glad to meet you,’ she said. ‘So, shall we get down to business?’

The colonel took a moment to decipher what she had said, prompting the guide to repeat her words in Korean, which in turn drew a snapped rebuke. The translator shrank back, head bowed in craven apology for his presumption. ‘Yes, business,’ Kang said, eyeing her case. ‘You have Crucible?’

‘You have our money?’ Eddie countered, remembering the part they were playing.

‘Ten million dollars American, ten million dollars gold. Yes.’

Nina opened the lid of the case, letting the two men glimpse the crystalline sphere inside. ‘It’s here. The money?’ She was all too aware of the weakness of her position; there was nothing stopping the Koreans from taking the Crucible by force, or shooting the visitors where they stood.

But Kang simply nodded. ‘Come,’ he said, starting around the blockhouse.

Nina surveyed her surroundings as everyone followed. The hulking concrete building was apparently a control tower, a high line of windows looking out along the runway. Below them was a trio of giant portraits: Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, the three generations of family who had ruled North Korea as absolute dictators since the 1940s. ‘Oh, herro,’ Eddie said quietly, barely hiding a grin.

‘Don’t you frickin’ dare start quoting Team America!’ Nina hissed. ‘They’ll probably shoot us just for having watched it.’ But she had to admit that the late Kim Jong-il did indeed closely resemble his puppet counterpart from the satirical comedy.

Noise ahead caught her attention. A large elevator platform bearing several tons of rubble rose from a wide shaft to stop at floor level. More workers in filthy clothes began to unload the lift’s cargo for transfer into a waiting truck. An emaciated man staggered under the weight of a rock, falling to the concrete floor. A soldier rushed up to him and repeatedly slammed his rifle butt against the man’s back, screaming abuse with each strike. None of the other workers dared even look, struggling with their own burdens.

Bok saw Nina’s shock. ‘Criminal elements,’ he said dismissively. ‘They work for the glory of our nation to pay for their crimes.’

‘And what crimes were those?’ Eddie asked, disgusted. The prisoners were a mix of male and female, young and old.

‘Does it matter? They are guilty.’

‘Guilty of not being able to carry a big lump of stone?’ The beaten man collapsed, other soldiers surrounding him to deliver brutal kicks. ‘You’ve got some real tough guys there, going four against one.’

If he had registered Eddie’s sarcasm, Bok chose to ignore it. ‘All the troops protecting this facility are our country’s very best,’ he said proudly. ‘They will fight without fear against any threat, and bring defeat to our enemies. They each proved their unflinching dedication to their duty by executing a criminal with only a bayonet, or their bare hands.’

‘That’s… dedicated, yeah,’ said Nina, trying to conceal her horror.

They passed beyond the edge of the runway tunnel into a broad passage along the blockhouse’s wall. Lined up before them were numerous vehicles; mostly jeeps and trucks, though some were more exotic. ‘Hang on, I saw those in a film,’ said Eddie. ‘Die Another Day, right?’ He gestured at a group of small four-seater hovercraft — which had undergone extensive modifications. Sloping wedges of armour covered their noses, narrow slits providing the only visibility for their pilots. Large-calibre guns were mounted on pintles at the top of the shields. ‘You’re nicking ideas from crappy James Bond movies? Don’t tell me you’ve got an invisible car an’ all.’

Kang glared at him, but Bok was amused. ‘Yes, there,’ he said, pointing at an empty space.

‘Good one,’ Eddie replied with a humourless smile. His gaze turned to another collection of oddball machinery. ‘And you’ve got some Little Nellies, too.’ These were ultralight aircraft, barely more than powered hang-gliders with oddly shaped bodywork enclosing the tandem seats. The fabric wings and faceted bodies were all a dull charcoal grey. ‘They’re hardly stealth bombers, though.’

Kang clearly understood, but chose to respond in Korean, the translator relaying his words. ‘That is exactly what they are, Mr Chase. They can fly over the demilitarised zone invisible to radar, and drop bombs.’

‘You can’t exactly carry a blockbuster on one of those little things, though.’

‘They can also land commandos behind enemy lines. We do not need to spend billions on one plane for it to be a good weapon.’ The colonel puffed out his chest in smug pride as the group rounded the blockhouse and the depths of the underground space came into full view.

It was an irregularly shaped artificial cavern the size of several football pitches. Hefty pillars were dotted throughout to support the fifty-foot-high ceiling, upon which was an endless grid of harsh lights. It was not the scale of the facility that made Eddie and Nina stop in surprise, though. It was what it was being used to build.

A production line occupied most of the vast space. But it was not making vehicles.

The seemingly random collection of metal pieces at one end gradually took on deadly form as they progressed through the factory. Curved plates became fuel tanks, mating with pumps and pipework and enclosed in cylindrical bodies, all to the percussive accompaniment of rivet guns and the crackle of welding torches. The bell-like nozzles of rocket motors were fitted at one end, conical nosecones at the other. The final results were revealed in all their sinister glory at the end of the line.

Missiles.

A fully completed example hung in a cradle, several white-overalled men inspecting it carefully. Sixty feet long and five in diameter, its two stages were painted a mottled camouflage green. There were no fins or anything else to break up its shape, a harsh, uncompromising digit of death.

This one was not yet ready to leave its birthplace. But it had siblings that were.

Parked at the line’s end were three enormous trucks, Chinese lumber transporters adapted for military purposes to avoid the arms embargo. Each vehicle had sixteen wheels, spreading the weight of a hefty hydraulic lifting system designed to raise its cargo from its horizontal bed to the vertical. They were TELs — transporter erector launchers, built to ferry ballistic missiles by road and fire them without the need for expensive and easily targeted silos.

And these were loaded. Each TEL bore a missile. ‘Shit,’ said Eddie as he stared at the weapons. ‘Those are ICBMs!’

Kang stopped, his subordinates all following suit. ‘You know our weapons?’ he asked with evident suspicion.

‘Call it a hobby,’ the Englishman replied with what he hoped was a disarming smile. He decided not to mention that his knowledge of missiles came largely from SAS briefings, where he had been taught to identify the weapons of hostile powers for the purposes of sabotage. ‘That looks like a modified Scud first stage with a copy of a Russian sub-launched missile on top of it. Just a guess, mind.’ He smiled again.

Kang’s scowl confirmed he was probably right, but the North Korean was not about to admit that his country was reliant upon second-hand designs. ‘You guess wrong. That is our latest missile, the Hwasong-15.’

Eddie shrugged. ‘I’ll update Wikipedia.’

Nina had noticed something about the missiles — not just the ones still under construction, but the completed articles on the TELs. Or rather, the incomplete articles. The tapered nosecones were abruptly truncated at the tip, looking like empty bullet casings. ‘They’re missing something.’

Eddie had spotted it too. ‘Yeah, looks like you haven’t put the warheads on ’em yet.’

Kang’s small smile was both unexpected and alarming. ‘They will soon be ready. Now come.’ He set off again, his men falling in behind him. Nina and Eddie exchanged concerned glances, then followed.

They continued around to the far side of the blockhouse, seeing more of the colossal space. Across the cavern were ranks of huge cylindrical tanks marked with red warning symbols; the missiles could be fuelled for launch before being loaded on to the TELs. The group’s destination was closer by, however. A large opening in the floor housed a trio of elevator tracks that descended deeper into the bowels of the mountain. A chain-link fence was the only barrier around the gaping chasm, the two waiting elevator cars open-topped cages with folding metal gates. ‘I guess North Korea isn’t big on workplace safety,’ Nina muttered.

A soldier hurried ahead of the two officers to open the gates of one car. Kang and Bok entered, the translator gesturing for Eddie and Nina to join them. A couple of the other troops followed them in, the remaining soldiers entering the second car.

The elevator was manually operated, the first soldier closing the gates and going to a control board to take hold of a large brass lever. He pulled it, and the car began its lumbering descent, the cables shrilling alarmingly. The second car followed on the parallel track. A stifling breeze gusted up from below, the shaft providing ventilation as well as access.

Rough rock walls slid past, opening out some eighty feet below to reveal another subterranean floor. This was not as large as the first, though still cavernous in its own right. More production lines were at work, some producing the microlight aircraft they had seen above, others an assortment of heavy weapons. Facility 17 was operating at full tilt to build up the North Korean war machine.

Bok saw Nina’s trepidation. ‘Impressive, yes?’

‘Seen bigger,’ Eddie replied, dismissively and truthfully.

The major smiled with all the charm of a rattlesnake. ‘But we have a lot more to show you.’

Nina’s worry grew stronger still. North Korea was revealing its military secrets to two foreigners — one of whom was a citizen of its most hated enemy. Even if they believed she was purely motivated by financial greed, it seemed unlikely that such a show would be given without consequences.

A new floor rolled by, markedly smaller, with several tunnels leading out of the main space. It was home to another assembly line, but this was not currently in operation, the machinery covered by dust sheets. There was still plenty of activity going on out of sight, however: an endless clinking and hammering of tools on stone. Down one of the tunnels she glimpsed a conveyor belt carrying stones towards the cargo elevator she had seen earlier. The rubble dumped in the forest was excavated from here — by hand, there being no noise from drills or jackhammers. Nina didn’t even want to imagine how many unfortunates were being forced to expand the underground base.

But her own concerns quickly returned as the lowest level came into view below. The air was now unpleasantly hot, banks of whirling fans at the shaft’s foot forcing it upwards. Whatever was going on was producing a lot of waste heat.

The car stopped. The other elevator arrived alongside it and everyone filed out. The three Kims, larger than life, watched them beatifically from a wall.

Kang waited for the group to assemble before leading the way through a set of double doors. Beyond was a short corridor. He exchanged words with a man in a captain’s uniform, then nodded and dismissed him. The young officer disappeared into a side room occupied by several other soldiers. The colonel continued on to the end of the passage, where a pair of metal sliding doors emblazoned with strident warnings in Korean blocked the way. He swiped a keycard through a reader and the barrier rumbled open. ‘In here,’ he said.

Nina and Eddie followed him into a large, softly lit control room. It resembled that of a power station, banks of monitoring equipment lining the walls and large boards covered with indicator lights showing the status of numerous systems. The hardware’s styling was dated, the moulded plastic panelling straight out of the 1970s, but a cluster of flat-screen monitors and a brace of laptops showed that at least some of the systems were up to date. Several technicians in white coats stood and bowed respectfully to the facility’s commander. Behind them, a bank of windows overlooked a large subterranean chamber, though from where she stood, Nina couldn’t see what lay below.

Kang spoke to a senior technician, then faced the Westerners. Bok stood beside him with an air of malevolent anticipation. The soldiers spread out behind Nina and Eddie, blocking the exit. ‘All right,’ said Eddie, ‘what’s all this?’

‘We’ve brought you the Crucible, just as we promised,’ Nina said, trying to sound confident. ‘So you can keep to your side of the bargain and give us our money.’

‘There will not be any money, Nina,’ said a new voice. ‘Not for you.’

Eddie and Nina whirled — to see Fenrir Mikkelsson entering the control room. The soldiers’ guns snapped up, all aimed at the couple.

‘I think,’ said Eddie as he took in the line of weapons, ‘this definitely qualifies for a “buggeration and fuckery”.’

‘I think,’ Nina replied, ‘that’s a fucking understatement.’