The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (3 page)

British intelligence had its eye on plenty of men and women like McEwan, individual operators who plied their trade in some of the world’s most unpleasant places. Whenever unobtrusive access for a cleaner was required—as now—then the Group would lay its finger on the person who would best allow an agent a means of ingress. The mark would be removed from circulation and replaced. It was a simple ruse, and the moral turpitude of those who made it possible meant that the human cost was more easily ignored. Milton’s conscience was not troubled by the cost of his deception.

Outside the window, Pyongyang rolled by. Parts of it were even pretty, with all the blossoms and the flowers. They passed the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery and the Schoolchildren’s Palace. They followed the road as it bisected a large public square, where hundreds of Young Pioneers, soldiers and paramilitaries were practicing for the parade, a spectacle of robotic choreography perfected by hundreds of hours of drill. From the sides of buildings and on enormous billboards were the faces of the Great and Dear Leaders: Generalissimo Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il, both of them dead and gone but impossible to forget.

The newest pictures were of the young and untested Kim Jong-un, the scion of the line.

Milton had read all of the ridiculous rhetoric that had flowed from the DPRK since Kim had succeeded his father. “Seas of fire.” “Merciless vengeance.” It was bluster and braggadocio for the most part, but the Koreans had nuclear weapons to back up their threats, and now the country was developing other, more insidious, ways to hurt the West. Milton did not know, nor did he need to know, the political calculus that had led to his being there, sitting in a taxi as it delivered him to the heart of Pyongyang. But as he looked at a row of fresh portraits of Kim Jong-un, Milton knew that the games of brinksmanship that the North had perfected had been played out for too long.

No, Milton did not need to know why the message had suddenly become necessary, only that it was.

He was just the postman.

His job was to deliver it.

THE HOTEL Yanggakdo, a thousand-room monster that was reserved for foreign guests, sat on the prow of an island in the Taedong River. Westerners called it the Alcatraz of Fun for its revolving restaurant on the roof and its basement of decadent delights: a casino, a swimming pool, a bowling alley and karaoke bars. Milton wheeled his luggage into the reception and checked in. One of the black tail cars had parked near the entrance. Milton noticed that the dark-suited man in the passenger seat had disembarked and followed him into the lobby.

While he waited for his room to be assigned, he made a lazy scan of the foyer. Two others were waiting for him: a man reading his newspaper as his shoes were buffed by a shoe-shine boy and, at the bar, a man who was drinking a cup of tea. The operatives were relaxed and easy, yet they were not experienced enough to hide their purpose from someone like him. If, and when, he left the Yanggakdo, one or both of those men would follow. There would be a car outside, ready to tail him should he avail himself of a taxi. The polite, smiling receptionist would also be in the employ of the secret police, as would be the bellhop who helped him with his luggage. The cleaners, the waiting staff who delivered room service, all would report back to the Directorate of the MPSS that had been assigned the file for Mr Peter Douglas McEwan, the known smuggler from Great Britain.

The room was clean and tidy, pleasant enough. Double-glazed windows behind thin net curtains offered a wide view of downtown Pyongyang. Milton sat back on the bed and took off his shoes. The TV in his room was switched on, looping a series of important events: “Kim Jong-un provides field guidance at the Pyongyang Hosiery Factory,” said one report. The next showed the young leader astride a large chestnut horse, inspecting troop movements near the demilitarized zone. Milton took up the remote control and switched through the channels: the BBC, CNN, an anonymous football match with teams that he did not recognise. The room would be rife with bugs, but Milton made no effort to find them, nor even to adapt his behaviour to take them into account. He wouldn’t have been able to neutralise them even if he had been able to find them. And he had no way of knowing whether the mirror that faced the bed was two-way.

None of it mattered.

He wanted them to watch.

He took off his shirt and went through to the bathroom to wash his face. The light fell over the tattoo across his shoulders and back, the angel wings tipped with razor claws. He dunked his head in the sink, scrubbing the cold water into his pores, trying to excise the last somnambulant effects of the dream.

He picked up the telephone and dialled a Chinese number. He held a brief conversation with the man at the other end of the line, checking that the transporter with the eight luxury cars had crossed the border successfully. It had, and it was due to arrive in the city tonight, around nine, right on schedule.

He made himself a gin and tonic from the minibar. Cheap Chinese gin, tonic that barely retained any fizz. He took the drink to the window and looked down from the thirteenth floor. The roads were virtually empty. The sky, usually so full of the vapour trails from passing jets, was clear. He stared for a long time. Moranbong Park was half a mile away, and Milton remembered it from his last trip: its host of pagodas, clouds of blossom and the people spreading picnics, drinking rice liquor and singing sentimental folk songs. Red flags fluttered at road junctions. Statues of the Kims could be seen in public places, arms raised aloft in victory that was so pyrrhic as to be a horrible joke. The enormous, clawed finger of the Ryugyong Hotel, designed as the tallest in the world when construction started twenty years earlier, still stood unfinished. An attempt to trump the upstart South, it stood instead as a permanent reminder of the North’s failure.

He allowed his thoughts to wander a little. He had an appointment to keep. Two people that he did not know would be waiting for him in the park. His instructions were to leave the hotel after dinner. He was not, under any circumstances, to lose his tail. All he had to do was to be certain to arrive at eight.

JOHN MILTON took a single table in the restaurant and ate
pansanggi
, a collection of small dishes including grilled beef, brined fish and boiled cabbage. He ate at a leisurely pace, flicking through a translated copy of the
Workers’ Newspaper
that he had collected from a rack in the lobby. There were no obvious signs of surveillance, but Milton was sure that the staff were keeping an eye on him. He thanked his waitress and left a ten-euro note as a tip, collecting his overcoat and walking brusquely across the foyer and straight for the exit. He knew that he would leave confusion in his wake; foreigners were not generally allowed to wander the streets without a chaperone. He emerged into the chill air and set off quickly at a fast walk.

It was busy outside: workers went on and off shift at the hotel, factory hands hurried for the busses that would take them to their flats on the outskirts of the city, a few cars and lorries made their way along the roads. Milton did not look back, but he knew that he would immediately be followed. He looked in the window of a small department store and saw one man hurrying after him determinedly. He did not see the large black Mercedes detach itself from the hotel’s parking lot, but he heard its engine as it accelerated and overtook him. He turned to see the man in the passenger seat staring at him through the window of the car, and for a moment, he had the grim premonition that he was about to be detained. He had considered the possibility and had decided that he would run, but the chances of successfully making his appointment would be remote. Most likely he would be captured and swallowed up into the vast bureaucracy of the intelligence service, eventually emerging into a gulag—a kaolin mine, a re-education camp—from where he would never escape.

He crossed the road at the entrance to the park, his muscles twitching and his gut watery with nerves, but the order for him to stop did not come.

The park contained many significant monuments, including the Pyongyang Arch of Triumph, where he was to make his rendezvous. The broad avenues were sparsely populated, the occasional jogger passing by or couples strolling towards him, arm-in-arm, idling the evening away. Milton had no need to check his tail. He knew they were there and that they would stay with him for as long as he let them. There would be a panic if they were to lose him, and that was something he could not afford. He needed them there to see the show that they were going to put on for them. If they lost him and flooded the area with agents until they found him again, the plan would not work.

He maintained a careful balance of speed: fast enough to stay ahead of them, yet not so fast that they might panic. He wanted them to think he was a tourist taking in the sights.

He glanced at his watch: seven thirty.

He concentrated on maintaining his sense of calm, but it became harder and harder to do that. He was alone in a hostile country, travelling under a flimsy pretence. He was fooling himself if he thought this was easy, as simple as his last job in Manila or the one before that in South Africa. The wind had dropped a little, and he could hear the men on his tail now, footsteps striking the pavement, unhurried and assured. How far were they behind him? He dared not look. He was frightened. He thrust a hand into his trouser pocket and rubbed a coin between his thumb and forefinger, turning it over so that he could feel the striated edge.

A road crossed the park, and as Milton traversed it, he saw the Mercedes again. It slowed to a halt, drawing in at the kerb, the tinted windscreen revealing nothing. He looked at his watch. Five minutes to eight. He heard footsteps quickening a little behind him. Two pairs. Were they going to take him now?

Finally, he reached the Arch. It was tall, sixty metres at its apex, a larger facsimile of the Arch in Paris. The white granite blocks looked ghostly in the moonlight. A second road, reserved for park officials, was nearby, and parked along it was a Volvo 144. Four vaulted gateways were decorated with azaleas carved into their girth, and it was from the western-facing one that Milton saw the two figures emerge.

A man and a woman.

They moved towards him.

The woman moved ahead and spoke in quiet, accented English. “Mr McEwan?”

“Yes.”

“How many followed you?”

“Two on foot. Another couple, at least, by car.”

“Where is the car?”

“It was parked by the road. The men on foot—what are they doing?”

“Waiting,” the woman replied.

The second man spoke in urgent Korean.

“There’s another,” the woman said. “Three now. They’re coming. We must be quick. Are you ready, sir?”

Milton nodded.

The man made to strike him on the head with a billy club. The blow missed, although it would not have been obvious from a distance and in the deepening gloom. Milton made a show of falling forwards, the man grabbing him beneath the arms and dragging him towards the Volvo. The rear door opened, and he flung him inside.

MILTON ALLOWED himself to be half-pushed, half-pulled inside the car and pressed himself down against the seat. The English-speaking woman got in beside him, her companion going around to the passenger seat.

The tyres squealed as the Volvo pulled away.

“Stay down, please,” she said.

Milton did as he was told.

“Your papers.”

Milton reached into his pocket and handed over his passport and his visa.

The car accelerated, speeding away from a sudden shrill blast of whistles as the three MPSS officers sounded the alert. The blacked-out Mercedes quickly reversed, bumping across the rough ground as it sought the service road. The Volvo had a head start, and the driver quickly took advantage, swinging off the road and barrelling at high speed along the broad path that cut between two neighbouring stands of trees. Joggers stood and gaped as they roared by, the Mercedes giving pursuit but already five hundred yards behind them.

The driver spun the wheel to bring them back onto a main road and took a hard left until they reached a built-up area of the capital again. He slowed, slotting them behind a truck carrying a consignment of watermelons beneath an unsecured tarpaulin that flapped in the wind.

The woman paused to look out of the rear window. Satisfied, she turned back to Milton. “My name is Su-Yung Jong-nam. I will be with you until you have completed your objective.”

“The man in the front?”

“My brother, Kun. If you need anything, you must ask me. For now, our objective is to get you away from here.”

The driver took a sharp right into a quiet alleyway and parked. It was quiet for a moment, just the restive background sounds of the city as they collected themselves. Su-Yung did not wait for long. She reached into her bag and withdrew a package of documents, including a German passport. She pressed them into Milton’s hands.

“Study these. Your name is now Alexander Witzel. You are a German tourist staying at the Pothonggang Hotel. They are looking for an Englishman, remember, not a German. They said you speak the language.”

“I do.”

Milton checked through the papers. The passport was an impressive fake, bearing his own photograph on the second page.
Another new identity
, he thought, a little wryly. He had lost count of them all by now.

“Is it in order?”

“It’s very good,” Milton said.

“I am pleased.”

“What happened to McEwan? The real one?”

“He was shot. The authorities will find his body in the car once it has been set alight. His passport will be on his person. They will not be able to identify him from his likeness, but they will be able to confirm that it is him from his fingerprints or his teeth.”

“How will they have access to that?”

“Mr Milton, my country might be backwards in almost everything else, but one thing that it is extremely good at is discovering information. Mr McEwan has a criminal record in your country. Finding that is a matter of child’s play for the Ministry of Information.” She shook her head in what might have passed for an expression of grimly patriotic satisfaction. “The police will believe that he is dead, the victim of a smuggling deal that has gone wrong. They will be distracted by a murder hunt, and you will be free to go about your business.”