“I think we need to be doubly careful about this one,” said Maurice.
“And I think you need to talk to the lovely Miss Ogden. Soonest.”
“I’ve got another meeting with our target before that can happen.”
“It almost seems he wants to talk to you more than you want to talk to him.”
“If we’re being set-up, he would.”
“Perhaps he’s just desperate to get away, and sees you as his only chance.”
“Or he sees this as his only chance to set us up.”
“And his friend.”
“Two to worry about.”
“Three, with Betty.”
“I’m sure she’s OK. She’s worked for us for years. There must be a simple explanation.”
“I hope so.”
Maurice Northcot stood lo leave. As he reached the door, James called after him.
“Keep in touch, and deal with me direct.”
Maurice nodded.
“And Maurice.”
He turned.
“Be careful until we know what’s going on.”
***
Choi was already there when Maurice returned to the pub that evening. He really wished he’d been able to speak to Betty first. He would just have to be doubly careful, that’s all.
Choi had two beers on the table in front of him. He must have been very confident that Maurice would turn up.
“You’re late,” said Choi.
“Sorry,” replied Maurice, who had deliberately kept the student waiting, to make him sweat a bit.
“I thought you weren’t coming.”
“There’s no real reason why I should have come at all, from my point of view,” Maurice pointed out. “You want me to help you, but why should I? What do I get out of it?”
“I can understand that,” replied Choi. “But I have to assure you that your country will benefit greatly if you can help us both to stay here, and you will gain the credit for that.”
“How can that be? You are only students.”
Choi nervously sipped his beer.
“I have an uncle who is a nuclear scientist,” replied Choi. “He also wants to leave our country, but that is impossible for him.”
“But you are not a nuclear scientist, so what good will that be if you stay here?”
“I can bring you valuable information.”
“Why can’t your Uncle bring it?”
“He cannot visit here again.”
“Again?”
“Again. He came with others as a guest of your Government not long ago. He also visited America, but did not like it or its people. Which is why he would like to return here.”
“So why doesn’t he?”
“There is no such thing as freedom of movement in our country, and it is almost impossible to leave it.”
“You have.”
“But I am also on a sponsored visit, as my Uncle was.”
“Who has sponsored you, then?”
“I am a student at Pyongyang University, where we have an English teacher. She arranged it for the three of us, and is back here herself as a tutor at Westminster University where we are now studying. That is how it was arranged.”
“I see,” said Maurice thoughtfully.
“So if you stay here, and your Uncle, if he exists, cannot leave, how will you get hold of this ‘valuable information’?” asked Northcot.
“I will arrange it, do not worry.”
“Why do you think we would find it valuable, anyway? We have our own nuclear power stations. We know all about it – or someone does, I suppose.”
“My Uncle is working on our nuclear weapons programme, which is very dangerous for many countries. That is why the information which I can supply will be so valuable.”
“I’m not sure I believe any of this, if I’m honest,” said Maurice.
“But you must – you simply must,” implored Choi.
Maurice stood up.
“Please don’t go! Let us talk more,” pleaded to student.
“I talk better with a full glass,” replied Maurice. “Will you have another?”
He looked closely at Choi when he returned from the bar.
“I’m still not sure I can help you and your friend even if I wanted to and believed you,” he said.
“But you really must,” Choi insisted. “If you help me you will be helping your country.”
“Now listen to me,” demanded Maurice. “If you are here, and your Uncle is still in Korea, how will you contact him? How will you get hold of this information? How do you know he will give it to you if you ask? Will he ring you up, or send you a letter or something? If he’s that important, he could not possibly do any such thing, and you know it better than I do.”
“There are ways.”
“Rubbish,” snorted Maurice.
“I am telling the truth,” insisted Choi, getting worried. “My Uncle wants our weapons programme stopped, because he knows how dangerous it is. There have already been tests, and he knows that if ever our country’s leaders should be so foolish and arrogant as to launch an attack on America or one of its allies, we would all be wiped out and our country destroyed. He knows that, but cannot stop it happening. Our dictators are too stupid to understand.”
“So if we had all this information you are talking about, how would that help?”
“Your scientists and your military would be able to stop the development programme.”
“Based on the information your Uncle will send you on a postcard or something? Do me a favour.”
“You must try to understand, please.”
“I think I understand that you and your friend just want to escape your country for some reason or other, and want me to arrange for you to get political asylum or something.”
“If that was all we wanted, there are proper procedures for applying and we could do that.”
Maurice looked at his watch.
“Please don’t go yet. We must talk more.”
Maurice sighed.
“I’ll finish my beer, and then go.”
“I must try to convince you that we are honest and want to stay here for good reasons, which I have explained.”
“What about your families, then, if you don’t go home? What will happen to them?”
“If we simply defect, they will all suffer terribly and perhaps be killed. All of them, including distant relations. Such is the way in my barbaric country.”
“So how can you stay here without defecting? That’s not possible.”
“We had in mind a tragic but fictitious accident, in which we are both killed. That way, our families would be spared.”
“And you really expect me to arrange all this? Even if I believed half of what you have told me, there’s no way I could fix all this.”
“But you said you have friends. Perhaps one of them could arrange for us to meet one of your secret agents or a Government official who could help.”
“But look again at the visiting card I gave you. I am a junior manager in a small local company, not the King of England or anything. What makes you think any of my friends are in a position to help you?”
“Please let us meet again, perhaps somewhere different, to discuss this more.”
Maurice thought for a moment.
“OK then, if you can get away safely, we’ll talk some more. Ring me when you think you can get away, and I will suggest somewhere different, away from here.”
“Thank you a thousand times. I knew I could trust you, but please do not repeat anything I have told you. There are spies everywhere.”
‘If only you knew,’ thought Maurice.
They shook hands, and Choi Yong left.
As he did so, Maurice Northcot turned off his recorder, and made his way back to MI6 Headquarters in Lambeth.
11.
THE TEACHER
Betty Ogden came from Yorkshire, grand-daughter of one of the last owners of a wool-combing mill in Bradford, where her father had wo
rked. When Grandpa decided to sell up, her father moved to Ireland to work in synthetics. She had decided to stay at home. She liked Yorkshire, and wasn’t at all sure she would like County Kildare. A small flat on the outskirts of York, initially funded by her father was better, in her view, than a few acres in rain-filled Naas which is where her parents had settled.
There was no explaining it, but she had a natural aptitude for languages. Learning them, speaking them, reading them and writing them. It didn’t run in the family. Her father was an engineer by background and degree, a fighter pilot while on a short-term commission in the RAF, who now loved nothing better than fiddling with clocks.
Her first holiday abroad with her parents was great, but when asked afterwards, she said she hadn’t really enjoyed it. Sure, the beach and the weather were super, but she hadn’t enjoyed it. She had no idea what the people were talking about.
Next time a holiday abroad was mentioned, she got the books out of the library, and by the time they arrived in France, was all-but fluent. She enjoyed the holiday much more this time, because she felt more like being at home.
From then on, she studied languages.
Betty Ogden had always worked for the Foreign Office, since the time she had graduated. They were always looking for brilliant linguists, and that’s what she was. Not only that, she had qualified as a teacher as well.
She had many different jobs after she started at the F.O., as they tried to find the right permanent role for her. Not that she minded that. It gave her a feel for what she might eventually want to do with her career as well. So far, she had enjoyed it in all the departments she’d been put in.
They had tried her out as a translator at first. Attending conferences abroad was her favourite – she discovered that she enjoyed travelling, and meeting people. The subjects were often boring though, as well as some of the speakers who tended to drone on without ever really coming to the point. Meetings about technical issues were often the most difficult. They really tested your vocabulary, as well as your understanding of the subject being discussed.
Translating documents was often interesting, too. She had quite good keyboard skills, but it was something of an art reading in one language and typing in another. She was quite sure much of the information she handled was not supposed to be in our hands. Documents secretly copied at embassies or by spies out in the field. Highly classified, a lot of that, but she had a top level security clearance.
Which was why she had ended up at Bourleywood House.
It was one of those secret Government locations that nobody knew about. A grand house hidden away in the Cotswold countryside, it was owned by the National Trust. The grounds were open to the public, and so were parts of the house at certain times of the year.
Other parts of it never were.
They were the parts used by several Government departments for all sorts of undercover operations. Betty Ogden never quite knew the extent of the activities which went on there, but she did know it was often operated as a safe house. It was used as a secret hiding place for those who needed to be kept out of the public view, like defecting foreign spies and others whose lives might be under threat for one reason or another. Some people even went there to be given a completely new identity.
Its main use was for training. Top Secret briefings were held there, in special secure lecture rooms where it was impossible for anyone to overhear or see what was going on. The military, and particularly the Special Forces, used it often. Anti-terrorist training, escape and evasion, interrogation techniques, and things like that.
And there was a language school there, too.
That’s where Betty Ogden went.
It always surprised her how many people working for the Government needed to speak and/or read a foreign language who couldn’t just be sent to a technical college or go to night school. They were usually people who ended up being where they weren’t supposed to be, she decided.
Sometimes, even, they were people who had ended up in this country who weren’t supposed to be here, but who needed to speak the language fluently to be of any use to us. All sorts of people; military, diplomatic, business – it didn’t matter. They were foreigners who had decided they would rather be here than there, and who we had decided we would rather keep than send home. They had been ‘turned’, as the idiom had it.
Betty Ogden had two main roles. She taught English to foreigners, and, more interestingly, taught a foreign language to individuals sponsored by the Government, who were due to serve abroad. Usually under-cover.
She specialised in languages of the Far East, including Cantonese and Korean, but not Japanese. A girl from Japan did that.
She had not been at Bourleywood for long before someone decided that she should travel a bit. So she was given a special vetting, and eventual recruited into MI6.
They had in mind a special assignment for her, and there weren’t that many people around in the Foreign Office who were thought capable of successfully completing it.
They wanted someone to go to North Korea, as a specialist teacher working for the British Council, which had managed to install five teachers from England in various institutions. She was destined to serve at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
Students were always a good source of information, and could even be persuaded to work for British intelligence sometimes, if they were judged to be worth the effort. As Burgess and Maclean had shown while at Cambridge, universities and colleges were fertile recruiting grounds.
In the end, she served there for just over a year, and it was while she was there that she had met Choi Yong.
In fact, it was why she had been sent there – to meet Choi Yong.
It seemed that Yong and his close friend Lee Kwang-Sun were both very keen to visit England – not America – and to learn more about the country as well as improving their grasp of the language. Their main subjects were nuclear physics and computer science, but they were also regular students at her English classes.
It was Yong they were after, but Lee Kwang-Sun was also the sort of person she had been sent to ferret out. It was difficult, though, for her to speak privately to individual students. The university authorities frowned upon it, and tutorials on a one-to-one basis were banned in the case of ‘foreign’ lecturers. Nevertheless, Yong and Kwang-Sun had frequently sought her out for a quiet chat, and they had managed to have some quite ‘useful’ conversations before one of the university security people inevitably noticed, and moved them on with a sharp admonition.
The whole place was run on military lines. The university buildings were surrounded by a high fence, and entrance to the compound was through a guarded security gate. Uniformed guards patrolled the inside of the campus, and there were ‘minders’ everywhere, keeping watch on both students and tutors alike. There was always one with Betty Ogden during her lessons, to ensure that she did not in any way stray from her central remit of teaching the English language, and nothing more.
There were no female students at Pyongyang University. The parents of all the students were high ranking officials, who were nearly all servants of the government in one form or another, either from local or national administrations, or from the military. It was an honour for their sons to be selected to attend the University, as it meant they had been picked out for similar high ranks in the future.
The family of Choi Yong had all been scientists or engineers, which is why he was following in their footsteps with his nuclear physics studies. Two of his relations had actually been abroad in connection with their work, but they were among a privileged few.
One, Uncle Dr. Choi Shin had even been to America. He did not enjoy his visit, and on his return tended to agree with the party propaganda. It did not seem to him to be a good place, and he disliked the arrogance of its people.
He had also been to England, however, which he had found altogether more agreeable. Indeed, he had almost concluded that it would not be a bad country to live in
, and had encouraged his nephew Yong to make a visit if ever he had the opportunity.
Yong’s uncle knew that escape from North Korea was virtually impossible and was not to be contemplated. He would never be allowed even the opportunity because of the importance of his work, and if he tried to defect and was caught, he knew that every last member of his family, even distant relatives, would be executed or severely punished in a barbaric labour camp. But that did not stop him secretly yearning for the opportunity to present itself.
What had convinced him even more strongly than ever that the country in which he lived and worked was not the wonderful and peace-loving place he had always been led to believe, was the very work in which he was involved. He realised how incredibly dangerous it was if his country was ever to become more successful in his field of science, as a nuclear physicist working on weapons development.
Thanks largely to the massive support given by their Chinese neighbours, the North Koreans had already been able to test three rather crude and dirty nuclear weapons, and were pushing ahead at all speed to make improved warheads. He was able to see through the smokescreen of the official propaganda, and realise the horrifying consequences to his country if the dictatorship ever managed to launch an attack on America or any of its allies. He knew that the nearest of these was in South Korea, and that the North already had missiles capable of reaching Seoul. He had a feeling that the Chinese were using his country as a tool to carry out some of their research for them in return for food and other aid, and that the Great Leader Kim Jung-un was too blind to realize what was going on. If only half of what he had heard about America was true, then it was inevitable that his country was already targeted by the vastly superior weapons in the US armoury.
He had discussed all this several times, discretely, with his nephew Yong.
“I shall never be able to leave this country again,” Uncle Shin had told Yong, “but you could, and should, if you get the chance. I’m not saying you should leave for ever, to enjoy a better life, but you should at least see what better there is to be had away from this place.”
All this explained why Choi Yong had been so keen to befriend Betty Ogden. Who better to arrange, if such a thing was ever to be possible, for him to visit England?
All this also explained why London had so conveniently planned for Betty Ogden to return there as an English specialist at Westminster University, home as it was to so many visiting foreign students from around the world.