The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

20

'Lee Jong-hee is a North Korean agent,' said Peter Brock. 'He had been in deep cover inside the South Korean military. He was used to murder a fellow North Korean in order to provoke an international incident.'

'I need to get this straight, one hundred per cent,' said Jim West. Peter Brock and he were standing by the study window in Brock's Georgetown home. 'The victim is North Korean. The assailant is North Korean but passing as a South Korean soldier. In other words, a deep-cover agent.'

'Right,' said Brock grimly.

'Now the North Koreans are accusing us of ordering the assassination of one of their officers.'

'Correct.'

'And are demanding an apology, compensation for the family and God knows what.' West slapped the window sill. 'How do they explain that the murderer is in their charge?'

'They say he fled to the North Korean side to escape the brutal punishment he was bound to receive on the South side. They say they will not hand him back because they need to interrogate Lee to establish whether he was acting alone or on the orders of the Japanese, South Korean or US governments. At least their response is diplomatically astute.'

'A euphemism, if ever I've heard one,' whispered the American President.

'They say, regardless of that outcome, they have the right to punish the man who killed their soldier. Therefore they'll be keeping him.'

'What do we know about him?'

Brock looked down at a summary from the National Security Agency which drew together signals intercepts out of North Korea, CIA reports, together with reports from South Korea's National Security Council and Japan's Defence Intelligence Headquarters.

'He comes from Seoul, but his family's home town was in Kaesong. Contrary to our own propaganda, Kaesong was just below the thirty-eighth parallel before the 1950 war—'

'You mean it was ours and we lost it?' interrupted West.

'Yes, Jim, Kaesong was ours — the former royal capital — and it ended up in North Korea, above the armistice line in 1953. Lee Jong-hee's grandfather was lost on the first day of fighting in the Korean War. His grandmother somehow got Lee's mother and her sister to safety. But her brother and other sister went missing. Lee was brought up in Seoul. He is a child of South Korea's democratization and economic miracle.'

'But at the same time he was brainwashed by the North?'

'And brilliantly. To get to work in the Joint Security Area, you have to undergo rigorous psychological tests. Lee had no problem in passing them. He has a steady girlfriend in Seoul. He has an older brother who works for HSBC in Seoul and a sister who's training to be a doctor in Los Angeles.'

'Have we talked to her?'

'We're doing that now.' West walked back to Brock's desk, where they were sharing a pot of Chinese green tea. He topped up his cup. 'North Korea fires a missile into our base at Yokata. We threaten. The next thing we know is that a North Korean soldier is murdered at the most sensitive place in the most militarized area in the whole world. And we're being blamed for it.'

'A diplomatic neutralizer such as we've never seen before,' said Brock, leaning down and pouring his own tea.

'Like hell it is,' muttered West. 'You don't neutralize anything by spraying bullshit in our faces.'

West drained his tea and caught sight of Caroline Brock, smiling nervously. From the tense expression on Brock's face, West realized the discussion was far from over.

'It might not be that simple,' said Brock quietly. 'That's why I've asked Caro to join us.'

The three friends sat down, Brock at his desk, Caro and West in the leather armchairs.

'As you know, Jim,' said Brock, 'Caro's work has taken her inside the world of weapons of mass destruction. That's chemical, nuclear and biological weapons, together with their delivery systems — mainly missiles. Since the nineties, rogue states have been looking to procure the technology and raw materials to make them. Iraq, before we took it back, got its anthrax from the Soviet Union. Pakistan got its nuclear capability from China. One of the key methods of procurement is through universities where research is taking place. In post-Soviet Russia, they were strapped for cash, the staff was unpaid, and the odd sale here and there would keep them afloat. In China, there has been a long tradition of institutions becoming self-supporting without the help of the central government, meaning also that when you have a weak central government, other institutions can operate with impunity. Academics are a fairly tight-knit group. We use them to keep us up to speed on what's going on, who is looking to procure what and why. We've had some spectacular successes in stopping procurement. But we might have let two crucial ones through the net.'

Brock stopped his introduction and looked across the room to his wife. 'There's been a theft at the Pokrov Biologics Plant near Moscow,' said Caroline candidly. 'It's meant to be a vaccine factory for animals, but we have known for years that illegal supplies of smallpox are being kept there. During the Cold War Pokrov was what is known as a turnkey operation. It could do everything: research and grow viruses, weaponize them and stuff them in the bombs for delivery. There had been attempts before to take viruses out — strange Arab businessman, and that sort of thing, but none succeeded.'

'Until six weeks ago,' said Brock.

'Yes,' said Caroline softly. 'Until six weeks ago. Or to be exact, the same week the IL-4 agent was stolen from Canberra.'

'And we only know now?' said West.

'If you walk through the Pokrov laboratories, even today, you find rows and rows of incubators holding hens' eggs. This is a classic way of growing the smallpox virus,' said Caroline. It was important that he should know the whole story, so she didn't answer the President directly.

'A week ago, a night watchman working at Pokrov had a heart attack. He survived but apparently underwent a religious conversion where he confessed to the priest that he had taken 500 dollars to let a man into the laboratory. Another 200 dollars was paid to the scientist on duty that night. To put it in context, Jim, a night watchman earns about 80 dollars a month; the scientist about 200 dollars.'

'It wouldn't have cost a heap to put them on a decent salary,' muttered West.

'The virus freezers are secured with a simple padlock. There's a clay seal that indicates whether they have been broken into. When the night watchman's story was checked out, three freezers were found to have been secured with fresh seals: they had been tampered with. The eggs which were taken were being used in tests to stabilize the smallpox virus during the trauma of weapons delivery. They were the most dangerous and durable form of the virus.'

'Where'd they go?' asked West, putting down his fork and wiping his mouth with a napkin.

'We don't know,' answered Brock.

'Russian intelligence?'

'They don't know or they're not telling us.'

West looked towards his National Security Advisor: 'But you do know, or Caro wouldn't be here now.'

'The man who let the thieves into the Canberra laboratory is a scientist called Dr John Mason,' said Brock. 'He's young. He's brilliant. But he has a gambling, drink and unfaithful-wife problem. Lazaro Campbell has just come back from interviewing him.'

'I see,' muttered West. He shifted uneasily in his seat, crossing, then uncrossing his legs as if his body language was bracing him for what he was about to hear.

'Mason confirmed the story about the creation of IL-4,' said Brock.

'It's actually a thin jelly which coats the egg so that sperm can't get into it,' said Caroline. 'The plan in Australia was to spread it among the population with the mousepox virus, rather like was done with myxomatosis on rabbits years ago, in order to render mice infertile and cut down the population.' She shrugged. 'But IL-4 turned out to be a lethal catalyst. She shrugged, casting her eyes to the floor. 'A complete accident of science.'

'Mason maintains that he doesn't know who took it,' said Brock. 'He received money and instructions. That was all. They traced calls on his mobile and home and office phones, and found nothing. Then they were bright enough to check on the call boxes. A number of calls from two different boxes near his home and office matched. The outward calls went to Surrey University in England, a Korean-American organization in San Francisco, a similar society in Canterbury City near Sydney, Australia, where there's a big Korean community, and a Korean-Japanese scientific group in Tokyo. The single inward call came from a hotel lobby in Beijing, China.'

West drew his hands down his face. 'I get the point. But there's still damn all I can do.'

'This, the missile, the shooting,' said Brock, prompting West to glance at him, his eyes narrowed with irritation.

'No.' He shook his head. 'There has got to be another way that does not risk the lives of our troops in South Korea.'

'We're concentrating on the San Francisco call,' said Brock. 'If we can make something stick, we'll get Campbell and a couple of Australian ASIS officers to bring Mason over here, where we should be able to get more out of him.'