Darke Mission (40 page)

The US dollars were definitely the currency to take. Not only was the greenback still the world's reserve currency and acceptable in many countries as nigh local money or better, it was probably the right choice tonight from a perspective of weight and bulk. A US $100 bill weighs 1 gram, a minor piece of trivia that JJ recalled from his early days of economic research. So, $100,000 would weigh 1kg. Each wrapped packet of $100 bills had $20,000 in it. Victor's kit bag could hold maybe 80 packets at a time gauged JJ. The bag would take two minutes to fill and two minutes to get to the awaiting van. In the twenty minutes or so left before the exit deadline that meant only five trips for the kit bag or 400 packets in total.

“Jim!” yelled JJ. “Get that forklift over here and start sticking these trays of $100 bills on it.” Jim Bradbury came zooming along on his new found toy. “OK Jim, we've got one shot at this. The last trip on the service lift is going to be you, the forklift and a whole lot of dollars.”

“What about the weight?”

“I'm working on that. You and the forklift's combined weight is probably around 250kg. The lift's capacity is 1,500kg, so we could have 1,250kg spare. Each of these trays has twenty-eight packets of 200x $100 bills, weighing 5.6kg, excluding the tray itself. OK, Jim, for the last run, take as many trays of bills as you can get into the lift and then we're done.”

“Fine, JJ,” said Jim, and set about his task.

JJ's brain was close to meltdown now. There was too much going on, too many calculations and they had only ten minutes left before they had to exit the central bank. One last calculation, thought JJ, this mission can't go south just because of arithmetic. That heinous little shit Robson was after a minimum of £3 billion. At GBP/USD 1.5000, close to where the cable rate was yesterday, that meant US $4.5 billion. JJ and his team might just have nicked 6,000 gold bars each weighing 12.5kg. At $1,800/oz. substantially higher than it was two weeks ago, that's US $4.5 billion in gold. Target reached if the gold price held up. The dollar cash would amount to around $125 million extra. Good, thought JJ, this team deserves a decent bonus.

Final calculation done, JJ then shouted, “Go, go, go, we're out of here now. Lily, Iceman, drop everything, go. Victor, Kwon, chop chop. Take your stuff and let's go. Jim, get the cash up top, I'll check the security guards.”

“What about the ‘Toblerones'?” asked Jim.

“We'll need to leave them. They won't fit into the van with our weapons and all the gold in it, they won't fit in that local 4x4 we've hot-wired because the cash will need to go in that. We'll need to adjust our plan as we head to the petrol station,” JJ replied.

Exit accomplished, the team of eight piled into the Sprinter van and the newly acquired 4x4. Gold was loaded, cash was loaded, they were loaded. Sunrise in Pyongyang was at 6.24am that day. It was now 5.50am and it seemed likely to be a bleak morning, regarding the weather at least.

The team left the DPRK's central bank without a hitch. Driving in convoy, at the same pace as the early morning traffic, both van and jeep turned into the road that Kwon's apartment was on. Kwon and Ji-hun got out of the jeep, leaving Lily and Ethel inside. The plan was for Kwon to hold onto Ji-hun for a couple of days and then organise a border crossing where the moaner would be met by two CIA officers from PAU Travel in Seoul. Both JJ and Jim intended to stick to the deal agreed with Ji-hun. His information had been very useful and at no point had he tried to disrupt the heist or alert the North Korean authorities. It was a real squeeze in the Mercedes van. Jim decided to join Ethel and Lily in the jeep, leaving JJ, the Iceman and Victor in the front cabin of the van. It was about 6.05am now. The sun would soon attempt to beam a few shafts of light through the grey clouds but it still seemed like night time. JJ was glad about this. Maybe it would give them a few more precious minutes to distance themselves from the central bank before the alarm was raised. The security detail was scheduled to be relieved at 7am. JJ and his team had nearly one hour's head start.

* * *

Van and jeep were now crossing the bridge over the Taedong River. Everything seemed normal, a few cars and trucks were also crossing, in both directions, there was no obvious police or military activity. JJ closed his eyes for a few moments. He was mentally and physically exhausted. The petrol station was only minutes away and the Scot was absent a decent idea as to how to get the gold onto the petrol tankers, where the ‘sunbeds' awaited. On that score, nothing was in their favour. They were an hour behind schedule. It was nearly breaking light and there were no conveyor systems to get the gold from the van to the tankers. It was beyond impossible to think that they could load the bullion bars manually. It would take three hours at least, much of which would be in broad daylight, at Pyongyang's busiest petrol station, on a working day. JJ was more than crestfallen. All the work that had gone into disguising the tankers, Vincent Barakat's brilliant sunbeds, Harold McFarlane's outstanding modifications. It was all a waste of time. They were going to have to get the gold across the border in the van.

“Iceman, if you really really had to, I mean no choice in the matter, get to the South from here, illegally and in a hurry, how would you do it?” asked JJ. The Iceman did not like this question. Victor didn't seem over the moon about it either. They thought the plan was to cross the border peacefully, admittedly with fake papers, in the cab of a disguised petrol tanker. The Iceman pondered awhile.

“From here, the border is about 150km away, as the car drives. At speed it would take us over an hour, less than an hour and a half. There are three checkpoints before the border crossing at Kaesŏng, these being Chollima, Songnim and Hwangu. Songnim is the most heavily manned by the people's army. However, as soon as we would rush the first crossing, the others would be alerted. It would be a firefight at Songnim and we would lose.”

“Can we go off-road, around any of them?” asked JJ, not yet prepared to throw in the towel.

“Possibly Chollima, though that would be a bit of a dice roll,” replied the Iceman. “Hwangu, yes, it's often manned by only a few soldiers with decrepit rifles, but definitely not Songnim. No, not Songnim. The checkpoint there is heavily fortified – the docks and all that.”

JJ was still mulling over the options when the van and the jeep pulled into the petrol station's trailer park. Their PetroChina tankers were still there, pity they were just one big lump, or two to be precise, of useless metal, rubber and sunbed. There was not much activity in the trailer park right now but there would be. It was just before 6.20am so men and metal beasts would soon be as one. JJ beckoned to the team to huddle round, they needed a brief time-out. Everyone was ears akimbo.

“Look,” said JJ. “Well done everyone back at the bank. At this point we've pulled off the biggest bank job in history and killed no one in the process. Victor's grandfather would be very proud.” JJ smiled at Victor and everybody gave him a nod, a wink or a thumbs up. “That was the good news. The not so good news is that we are sans ‘Toblerones'. We had to leave them behind. At a reasonable guess, it would now take us three hours to load by hand all the gold into the tankers' sunbeds. This place will be buzzing in half an hour. We'd just get caught. Simple as that.”

“Any bright ideas?” asked Jim.

“Not any that will keep us alive, gold intact, and out of the hands of the secret police,” replied JJ. “We could try to rush the checkpoints and crash through… but the Iceman tells me we would have three checkpoints to negotiate before the border crossing and that we would not survive a firefight at Songnim, where the military would be waiting for us.”

Lily and Jim nodded. Local knowledge was against the checkpoint crashing option.

“Can't we just bribe the guards at the checkpoints?” asked Ethel, ever one for the old-fashioned, bloodless ways.

“In most countries, Ginger,” replied JJ, “that would be a good idea. Here in the DPRK, the guards wouldn't know what to do with a bar of gold or a fistful of dollars. Jesus, we even had to assure the kidnapped moaner Ji-hun that he was being bribed with South Korean won. Unfortunately we don't have any South Korean won with us.”

There was a silent pause, which seemed to last an eon, but was in fact a few seconds.

“I do,” said Victor.

“I do what?” retorted JJ.

“I do have a wad of won,” Victor replied.

“How did you get that? Never mind I know how you got it, chief of the safe cracking clan. How much do you have?”

Victor unzipped his backpack and brought out four, thick wrapped packets of crisp South Korean won.

“How much is there?” asked Ethel, not sure if she should be super proud of her opportunistic CI or bemoaning his genetic lack of honesty.

JJ took one of the wrapped packets of notes from Victor. “They look about the same size as the US dollar packets we've got in the jeep. Each packet should have about 200 notes in it. These are 50,000 South Korean denomination notes, so, around won 10 million in each packet. At yesterday's USD/KRW exchange rate $38,000 in total,” concluded JJ.

Everybody was impressed by JJ's foreign exchange knowledge, except Victor who had mistakenly thought he'd purloined himself a small fortune from the DPRK central bank. With won in hand, JJ was working on a plan. Under intense time pressure it was not likely to be a great plan but they couldn't hang about all day in a DPRK trailer park; that was for sure.

As the Scot's brain was whirring and clanking away, the Iceman's cell phone vibrated. It was a text message from deep cover Kwon. “It's Kwon,” announced Kim Chun-So.

“For fuck's sake!” exhaled Jim Bradbury. “Has that moaner Ji-hun bolted?”

The Iceman read his message and then replied. “Kwon says that there was some major commotion at the Haeju docks last night. He doesn't know exactly what but his information is that many military personnel and secret police are either there or on their way there today. No mention of the moaner.” The Iceman was half expecting some kind of response to deep cover Kwon's news, but none was forthcoming. JJ was pacing a little, in a circle, and still behind the Sprinter van. He was juggling casually with Victor's won. After a few minutes he spoke.

“Right, here's what we're going to do.” JJ proceeded to outline his plan to the team. The petrol tankers may come in useful, after all. Jim was to drive one and the Iceman the other. They had the correct change of clothes and decent forged papers. They could both speak Korean. They would approach the checkpoint at Chollima first. The van and jeep would go off-road at this crossing. JJ and Victor in the van, Lily and Ethel in the jeep. Lily had his sniper's rifle so he would keep the checkpoint guards in his sight until Jim and the Iceman were safely through, then re-join them on the other side. If Kwon's intel was correct, the main road from Pyongyang to Hwangu would be busy today with military vehicles. After Hwangu there would be nothing because that was where the military would need to turn off to take the road to Haeju docks. The guards at Hwangu would likely let the petrol tankers and other civilian vehicles through swiftly so as not to delay the military and secret police. That left two problems, the Songnim checkpoint and the Kaesŏng border crossing. Songnim was the immediate problem. If there had been a major incident at one of the DPRK's west coast docks, the military would not want to leave undermanned a second set of west coast docks. The checkpoint at Songnim was likely to be fully manned and fortified.

The first part of JJ's revised plan worked well. The Chollima checkpoint was lightly guarded. The Iceman, in the lead tanker, was questioned by one of the guards and had his papers checked. He was cleared and the guard then just waved the second PetroChina tanker through. Jim Bradbury had donned his baseball hat and the guards never gave him a second look. Lily, meanwhile, had found the disused farm dirt road that Kwon had told him about. There was a field to negotiate but it was fortunately flat enough and solid enough not to give the heavyweight van any problems. As the PetroChina tankers drew close to the checkpoint, the van and jeep stopped in the field. Lily got into the back of the jeep, lay flat and set up his CheyTac M200 rifle. He was about 1,500 metres away from the Chollima guard's head, so well within the range of this rifle. It was not needed. Once the tankers were through, Lily packed up his rifle. Jeep and van then re-joined the convoy a few hundred metres down the road.

Songnim was next. The population of this city was around 150,000, similar to that of Springfield, Massachusetts. The main industry was a steel processing plant but its access to nearby rivers meant it was also involved in the transportation of raw materials and finished goods. Then there were the docks which could accommodate ships of 4,000 tons weight or slightly more. There were no off-road options to circumnavigate the Songnim checkpoint. The team's four vehicles would need to get through on the main road.

JJ's convoy was now in the order of van, then jeep, with the two tankers lagging a little behind. As they approached the Songnim checkpoint there was a small queue heading south as they were, and no queue heading north. The Sprinter van was being driven by JJ, the jeep by Lily. From a distance of about 200 metres from the back of the queue, JJ could see four soldiers at the checkpoint, inspecting vehicles and their occupants. Two further military guards in low height towers were acting as spotters, on either side of the raised barrier, and what appeared to be a small billet which probably housed no more than half a dozen back-up soldiers. Directly below the watchtowers, JJ could see the outline of two military jeeps, probably of Chinese origin. These dark green jeeps could carry four soldiers in addition to the driver and front seat passenger.

“OK, Jim, your time has come, good luck,” said JJ, talking softly into his AN/PRO-148 walkie-talkie, a state of the art secure multi-band satellite transmitter and radio.