The Fox

  Sue Jennings had enjoyed the stay of the six visitors from Israel. She did not know why it was necessary that they be there, but she trusted Sir Adrian enough to believe him when he told her he had in mind a plan to safeguard her and her children.

  She noted the resemblance between herself and the blonde woman and between her sons and the young curly-headed boys. She was not foolish enough to believe that there was no point to this. There had to be some form of impersonation in the offing, but she did not know why. Nor did she need to know. That is how it is in the world of smoke and mirrors.

  But she had enjoyed their stay. It made a change from the monotonous routine. They had stayed only a couple of days, observing her and her sons closely throughout that time, then they were gone.

  That apart, in the embrace of the SAS captain Harry Williams she was enjoying love-making she had never experienced nor even imagined in her previous life. Her second son, Marcus, was perfectly content at his new school. He had been named captain of the Colts XI cricket team, and that had brought him the attentions of his first girlfriend.

  What Sue did not know was exactly what was happening in the computer wing, where her elder son, Luke, as self-contained at a screen as ever, spent hours tapping away, in a world where it seemed no one, not even Dr Hendricks, could follow him.

  It was that same Dr Hendricks who, on a supremely hot day at the beginning of August, withdrew to his own private office and dialled the phone number of Sir Adrian.

  ‘He’s done it,’ he blurted when the connection was made. ‘He’s bloody well done it. He’s gone through the lot … firewalls, air gap, the bloody lot. It has defeated everyone for years, but we have them. And Tehran has not even noticed the penetration.’

  Sir Adrian could have told Avi Hirsch, now back in post, but he was a modest man and gave the present to Mrs Marjory Graham. The Prime Minister secured a very private line to the Israeli ambassador instead and alerted him, in the knowledge that Israel’s Prime Minister would not be displeased. Then she ordered that the access codes to the main computerized database of FEDAT be passed to Jerusalem and to Washington.

  The harvest that these codes permitted to emerge from the Iranian nuclear research department in Tehran proved that both leaders, Israeli and American, had been right. Iran had consistently been lying to the International Atomic Energy Agency and thus the world. Nuclear research had never ceased, not even slowed. In the light of the FEDAT harvest, the yield from the archive raid on Shorabad paled to a fraction of what had been concealed. It caused uproar.

  The US had pulled out of the international treaty abrogating the economic sanctions against Iran. Most of the other parties to the treaty had objected to this. But they had not seen the contents of the FEDAT archive.

  In Jerusalem, a dead-letter drop in a wall behind a coffee shop was closed down, and in Tel Aviv a quiet arrest was made.

  Chapter Fifteen

  IT WAS A very private consultation and it took place over a lunch on the sunlit terrace of Chequers, the British Prime Minister’s official country mansion outside London. The staff, as ever, were drawn from the catering arm of the RAF. The PM’s husband, Colin, put his head through the patio doors, nodded, beamed and withdrew to watch the cricket match between England and Australia.

  Marjory Graham was not a great drinker but she enjoyed the occasional glass of Prosecco before Sunday lunch. Sir Adrian took the same. When the waitress withdrew, Mrs Graham turned to her guest.

  ‘This North Korean business. What do you make of it, Adrian?’

  ‘You have already received a full briefing from the Foreign Office?’

  ‘Your former masters. Of course. But I would appreciate your take on it.’

  ‘What was the official view?’

  ‘Conventional, of course. Conformist. We should follow the American lead. Agree with the State Department and the White House. And you?’

  Sir Adrian sipped and stared across the rolling lawns.

  ‘I have on occasion participated in a few deception operations. Even run one or two. They can be exceptionally damaging to the opponent and beneficial to oneself. They can cause the enemy months, even years, of error. Time, money, effort, sweat, toil and tears. And all for nothing. Even for a lot less than nothing. For error. But the worst variant is self-delusion. I fear that is the ocean the Americans have chosen to swim in.’

  ‘The complete denuclearization of North Korea. Not feasible after all?’ she asked.

  ‘It is a scam, Prime Minister. A lie, a confidence trick. But skilfully offered, as ever. And I fear the White House is falling for it. Again.’

  ‘Why? They have some very fine brains.’

  ‘Too many have been fired. And the man who lives there lusts to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. So the desire to believe is triumphant. Always the precursor of a successful confidence trick.’

  ‘So you think Pyongyang is lying?’

  ‘I am sure of it.’

  ‘How do they get away with it? Time after time?’

  ‘North Korea is an enigma, Prime Minister. On the face of it, she has nothing. Or very, very little. In world terms, the country is small, barren, devoid of raw materials, hideously governed, bankrupt and very close to starving. The two grain crops – rice and wheat – have failed again. And yet North Korea bestrides the world like a conqueror.’

  ‘And how does the regime manage this, Adrian?’

  ‘Because it is allowed to. The logical are always frightened of the insane.’

  ‘And because they have nuclear bombs.’

  ‘Yes, both types. Atomic and thermonuclear. Uranium and polonium. North Korea has ample stocks of both and, though the Kim regime may seem to be handing some over for destruction by the International Atomic Energy Agency, I am convinced it will retain others in secret places. It depends on whether the outside world will believe the lies.’

  ‘But if North Korea publicly destroys its weapons-testing site – what is it called?’

  ‘Punggye-ri, Prime Minister.’

  ‘With that destroyed, how can they go on?’

  ‘Firstly, because Punggye-ri, which is or was a mountain, is already destroyed. And by them, in error. For thirty years at least, three successive regimes, all dominated by the Kim dynasty – grandfather, son and now grandson – have laboured night and day to create and own an entire armoury of nuclear bombs.

  ‘Years ago, they chose the mountain of Punggye-ri and began to bore into the side of it. They dug and dug until they reached the heart. Machines were used, but also slave labourers. Many thousands died of malnutrition and overwork. Enough spoil was dug out of the mountain to create two more; it was trucked far away so as not to be seen from the air.

  ‘When they reached the core they went on digging. More tunnels, galleries, testing chambers, over 180 miles in all. That is a motorway-sized tunnel from London to the Hook of Holland. Then Mother Nature took over. The mountain could take no more. It began to fracture, to collapse inwards.

  ‘Still they would not stop. Then they tested their biggest H-bomb deep underground. They triggered an earthquake measured at over six on the Richter scale. That completed the implosion of the mountain of Punggye-ri.

  ‘Simultaneously, the North Korean economy began to collapse, like the mountain, due to the economic sanctions imposed by the outside world after they expelled the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is when, last year, they hit upon the ruse: we will publicly destroy Punggye-ri if you will ship us the grain and oil we need. And the West has fallen for it.’

  At this point the Prime Minister interjected:

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘It is all in the public domain, if you know where to look. There are men and women in the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies, RUSI for short, who spend their lives studying every detail of the strategic dangers, worldwide. It pays to consult them.’

  ‘Then why has the West fallen for a scam?’

&nb
sp; ‘Actually, Prime Minister, it is the USA in the form of the State Department and the White House that has fallen for it.’

  ‘I repeat, why have they fallen for it?’

  ‘Because, Prime Minister, they have chosen to.’

  Sir Adrian had spent his working career as a civil servant in one of the most rigorous disciplines that exists – secret intelligence. He was convinced that most politicians and far too many senior civil servants possessed personal egos of Himalayan proportions. Such vanity could permit self-delusion with little harm done other than the expenditure of huge sums of taxpayers’ money to no purpose. Government waste is a fact of life. But if you indulge in self-delusion on a covert mission in the heart of an enemy dictatorship, you can end up very dead. The reason he was prepared to work for Marjory Graham was because he knew she was a rare exception to the rule of ego.

  ‘Oh dear, do you really think so little of us, Adrian?’

  ‘In 1938, I was not even born. I was a 1948 baby.’

  ‘And I ten years later, in 1958. Your point?’

  ‘In 1938, we had MI6. The Americans had not yet founded the CIA. And the USA was plunged in isolationism. But our agents were active in Nazi Germany. They knew about the first concentration camps – Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald. We discovered what they were, where they were, what went on inside them. We reported back. No one wanted to know.

  ‘We reported that Hitler was laying down the keels for warships that a peace-loving Germany would never need. Again, no one in London wanted to know. We discovered new Messerschmitt fighters were rolling out at two a day. We reported this. Downing Street once again turned its back.

  ‘A gullible Prime Minister listened only to the appeasement-fanatical Foreign Office. Hitler, he allowed himself to be convinced, was an honourable gentleman who, once he had given his word, would abide by it. But day by day the Führer was breaking every term of the Versailles Treaty of 1918, every pledge he had ever made. And it was all provable.’

  ‘Adrian, that was then, this is now. What is your point?’

  ‘That it is happening again. The world’s leading Western power has decided to delude herself that an oriental monster of proven savagery will convert into a peace-loving partner in exchange for a bit of rice. It is another triumph of self-delusion.’

  Mrs Graham replaced her coffee cup and gazed across the green fields of England, so far from the gutted mountains of North Korea.

  ‘And this mountain …’

  ‘Punggye-ri.’

  ‘Whatever. It really has no value?’

  ‘None at all. It is no longer a testing site. What they will be dynamiting in front of the applauding world is already little more than rubble. The site is no longer fit for purpose. But, they have others. And, in any case, at the moment, they do not need to do any more tests. They have stocks enough to threaten the civilized world.

  ‘Destroying Punggye-ri is not a problem. But they do have two other problems. There is not much point in having nuclear bombs if you cannot deliver them on target many miles away, even thousands of miles away. Their biggest intercontinental ballistic missile is still not strong enough to deliver their smallest thermonuclear warhead. They are seeking to miniaturize the warhead and increase the ICBM. Eventually, they will succeed.

  ‘The Hwasong-15 missile will be improved to carry their thermonuclear warhead, making it capable of reaching not the American island of Guam but any point on the entire US mainland. When that is done, they will not need to ask for favours; they will demand them. Or else.’

  ‘So, if the public destruction of an already-destroyed mountain is nothing but a sideshow, what do they really want?’

  ‘A sort of bridging loan, Prime Minister. Many millions of tons of grain, billions of gallons of fuel oil. Except that a loan should be repaid. This would never be repaid. So it would be … a gift, to be set against good behaviour. So long as it lasts, meaning so long as it suits. For years, China has been North Korea’s saviour. But President Xi is running out of patience. Hence the desperate wooing of the White House.’

  ‘And if the North Korean dictator does not get this “bridging loan”?’

  ‘Then Kim Jong-un runs into problem number two. Unlike our Foreign Office, I take the view that pudgy little Kim is much weaker than he seems. All we ever see are vast squadrons of strutting, goose-stepping, ultra-trained and ultra-fanatical loyalists in Pyongyang. But only the million privileged loyalists are allowed to live in the capital – well housed, well fed, well employed. Only these, carefully selected, are allowed to appear before Western cameras. Plus, the 200,000-strong ultra-loyal army, the praetorian guards, who would die for him and his regime.

  ‘But outside the capital are twenty million country-dwellers and a million more soldiers. They stand on the threshold of mass starvation. Not the soldiers – they are fed. But they have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, withered by malnutrition, clinging to life, producing undersized, dwarfish children. I wonder, Prime Minister, do you recall Nicolae Ceauşescu?’

  ‘He came here once, did he not?’

  ‘He did indeed. We very foolishly made him an honorary knight of the realm for supposedly standing up to Moscow. Another Foreign Office idea. King Charles Street seems to have an appetite for dictators. Later, we stripped him of it. When he was dead. A bit late.’

  ‘So what has he to do with all this?’

  ‘Before he died, Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, admitted to Condoleezza Rice that his secret fear was what he called his “Ceauşescu moment”.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘Like the Kims, Ceauşescu was a ruthless Communist tyrant. He ruled Romania with a rod of iron. Like the Kims, he was cruel, self-enriching and corrupt. And, like the Kims, he drenched his people with unrelenting propaganda to persuade them to worship him.

  ‘One day, making a speech at the provincial town of Timişoara, he heard a sound he had never heard in his life. It is all on camera. He could not believe what his ears were telling him. He tried to go on, then lost his thread. Finally, he fled the podium, ran to the roof and was taken away by helicopter. The people were booing him.’

  ‘He didn’t like that?’

  ‘Worse, Prime Minister. Within three days, his own army had arrested him, tried and convicted him and shot him, along with his ghastly wife. That was Kim Jong-il’s dreaded moment: when the people eventually turned and the army acted to save themselves.’

  ‘That could happen to the Pudding?’

  ‘Who knows how much starvation the North Korean people can take? Unless, of course, the West capitulates and bails him out.’

  ‘In which case, Adrian?’

  ‘He will have enough time to complete the increase in payload of the Hwasong-15 missile and the reduction of the thermonuclear warhead to portable size. Then he can blackmail the world. No more concessions by blowing up useless mountains.’

  ‘So the grain shipments are his real Achilles heel?’

  ‘In part. The real key is not the A-bombs or the H-bombs but the missiles. He must perfect his launch systems. I suspect it will take two years, maybe three, with several more test launches. At the moment, the Hwasongs are waiting in their silos.’

  ‘Self-delusion or not, Adrian, I cannot start a war of words with the White House. Short of that, is there anything we can do?’

  ‘I believe the Hwasongs are all controlled by super-computers, which are heavily protected but contain the proof of the North Korean nuclear ambition. Like the FEDAT archives in Tehran, which at last convinced the White House it was being lied to. If we could prove that the Pudding is lying …’

  ‘Well, can we?’

  ‘We have one bizarre weapon. An anxious boy with spectacular gifts. I would like to direct him at North Korea.’

  ‘All right. Permission granted. But keep it very quiet indeed. Keep me posted. And try not to start a war. There is a man across the Pond who wants the Nobel Peace Prize.’

  In her inner circle, Marjory Graham
was known for her sardonic sense of humour.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE YELLOW SEA is not yellow. It is grey, cold and hostile and the four men crouched in the broken-down fishing skiff were shivering. It was a bleak dawn but neither the chill nor the covered sky blotting out the sun rising over Korea to the east had caused their misery. It was fear.

  To defect from North Korea, whose coast was still visible through the morning mist, is extremely hazardous. It was not the tossing sea that made them shiver but the knowledge that, if caught by one of the numerous North Korean patrol launches, they would face a life sentence in a slave labour camp or execution by the more merciful firing squad.

  Three of the men were fishermen, accustomed to the waters of Korea Bay, the northern part of the Yellow Sea. They had been massively bribed by the fourth man to attempt to avoid the patrols, to dump him on the coast of South Korea then sneak home before daylight came. And they had failed. Halfway through their southward journey their clapped-out old engine had broken down. Though they had paddled furiously for hours, wind and wave had been from the south, holding them motionless off the coast of the fearful North Korean peninsula.

  They heard the sound of the engine before they could make out the smudge of grey on the horizon or discern any flag or pennant to ascertain its identity. But the engine rumble came closer and closer. They hoped that the rolling waves might disguise their tiny hull, draped with their nets as an optimistic camouflage. But the patrol boat would have radar and it must have spotted something. It kept on coming. Five minutes later it hovered over them and a loudhailer ordered them to heave to.

  Abeam was another smudge, emerging from the strengthening light. They hoped and prayed it might be Kaul-li island with its tiny port of Mudu; a dot on the ocean, but within South Korea. The voice behind the bullhorn called again and one of the fishermen looked up, his face suffused with hope.