“The authorities in my country would not have thought twice about it,” responded Choi sadly. “They have developed barbaric ways for making people talk.”
“That is not the way we do things,” responded Cooper. “You are free to return home, or you are free to stay here if you wish. It’s your decision.”
“I cannot imagine living in such freedom and in such a civilised country compared with my own. But I shall not stay. I know you understand the reasons,” he said.
Cooper nodded.
“I know what you are thinking,” Choi said. “But I shall not stay.”
Cooper felt almost guilty as he switched off his recorder.
***
Jack Salisbury, Head of the Joint Intelligence Organisation, wasn’t at all sure about this. He had read the briefs thoroughly – twice in fact – but wasn’t at all sure that what was being proposed was the best thing to do.
Not sure at all.
But he had to be sure. There was no one else to ask – no one that mattered, anyway. He certainly wasn’t about to approach Ministers or civil servants who didn’t understand these things, or even his ultimate boss, the Cabinet Secretary. He was a civil servant with too much else to worry about, and who was prone to ‘consult wider’. That was the last thing Salisbury wanted. The fewer the people who knew about this, the better. In the old days, there would have been the Head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and the Head of Intelligence Analysis, to offer a view.
He now held all three jobs.
So it was his decision.
“I hope you haven’t told your Permanent Secretary,” he said to General Pearson- Jones, who was at the meeting he had called.
“Not yet, but it had crossed my mind,” replied the General.
“Don’t then.”
“We may need to tell more people when we have decided what to do,” said Sir Geoffrey Sefton, Head of MI6, who was also there, “but for the time being, the fewer the people who know about this, the better.”
“Absolutely,” said Salisbury.
He scratched his balding head, as if for inspiration.
“There seems to be no doubt whatsoever that we need as much information as we can get about this collaborative project between the North Koreans and the Chinese. So far, we have picked up very little, apart from satellite images of increased activity. We now have, however, in this country, the one man who could tell us everything, and who - um - on the face of it, seems half prepared to talk.”
“But not to stay,” Sefton reminded him.
“Exactly.”
Salisbury leant back in his chair, eyes closed.
“This may seem to be - er - shall we say, perverse,” said Salisbury, almost apologetically, “but I believe the option of forcing Dr. Choi to stay, which I understand your people favoured,” he glowered at Pearson-Jones, “to be quite the wrong option.”
“I agree it could be counter-productive,” admitted the General, “but it is – was – an option.”
“I gather you also discussed sending Special Forces after him?”
“They are on stand-by.”
“With what object in view?” asked Salisbury
“Our thinking was that once Choi had returned to his own oppressive environment, he may become even more inclined to get away from it and to join us. Our chaps would have been there to aid his defection and return.”
“These men who are on stand-by,” quizzed Salisbury. “Are they nuclear scientists or diplomats or trained negotiators, or - um - I mean no offence, just simply soldiers?”
“They are both fluent Korean speakers, one himself a defector; but only soldiers.”
“But they do know what Choi looks like?”
“Certainly they do. They have photographs, they have watched video footage of him, and they have seen him in the flesh in Oxford,” the General looked at his watch, “and now at Heathrow.”
Salisbury shook his head, and turned to ‘C’.
“I don’t know about you, Geoffrey, but my view is that Choi could well be of more use to us within Korea, rather than out of it.”
“My view exactly. If he stayed here we would undoubtedly learn a lot about the work so far carried out, and perhaps about future plans, but then we would learn nothing further. He would soon be out of touch and out of date.”
“Quite so,” agreed Jack Salisbury. “And it would all be from memory. Not much in the way of figures, or data in any great detail, no plans, no technical drawings, etc. etc.”
Salisbury clasped his hands behind his head.
“If, on the other hand, he can be persuaded to help us from within, shall we say, he can keep us up to date with progress as well.”
“And he has already indicated that he might well be prepared to help us, as you put it, ‘from within’,” said ‘C’. “He asked my chap Lee Cooper how he could get word to us if he needed to, as you will have seen from the briefing.”
“And Cooper said that contact could be arranged.”
Salisbury shuffled his papers.
“Ah!” he said. “Here it is. ‘If that is what you want, then we shall arrange it’ is what Cooper said.”
“And Choi said, ‘Then do it.’”
Jack Salisbury stood up, stretched, and looked at his feet in thought.
“Good man, your Cooper?”
“Excellent,” replied Geoffrey Sefton. “He quickly developed a good rapport with Choi, to the extent that they almost became friends.”
“Pity we can’t send him into North Korea then, really.”
Salisbury grinned.
“But I understand that you already have a small band of – shall we say – ‘helpers’ in the country?” he asked Sefton.
“Some. Loosely organised, but in touch.”
“With one another and with us?”
“Yes.”
Salisbury ambled across to look out of his Cabinet Office window at the night-time lights of Whitehall. After a moment, he turned to face the other two men.
“Here’s what I suggest then, General.”
Pearson-Jones knew that this was no suggestion – it was a decision.
“If you agree, of course, Geoffrey.”
‘There you are’, thought Pearson-Jones. ‘A decision to be agreed, not a suggestion.’
“What I suggest,” he repeated, “is that you send in your chaps at some time – no great rush – when they are fully trained and briefed. I suggest that you, Geoffrey, and your man Cooper, do the briefing. Their mission,” he turned to the Head of Defence Intelligence, “will NOT be to persuade the man to return here as a defector. It will be to make the contact promised by Cooper, and to keep in touch discretely. If he should decide to return, they will be there to facilitate those arrangements. Similarly, if he wishes simply to pass on information in some form or other, they will be able to put him in touch with others who can act as a conduit between him and us.”
He turned to Sir Geoffrey Sefton.
“They will also need to be in contact with your group already over there. I leave that to you to arrange. In the event that such a person should be needed, do you have – how shall I put this? - an agent, shall we say, who can speak their language and who would be able to collect any – um – briefing material.”
“Yes. I do. As it happens one of my best men is a Far East specialist, and fluent in the Korean language.”
“Available?”
“In a few weeks, perhaps.”
“Name?”
“Maurice Northcot.”
“Where is he now?”
“Officially, in Warsaw.”
“Unofficially?”
“Jakarta.”
“In that case, I also suggest that he is present at the briefing with our two – er – soldiers.”
Head of MI6 nodded.
“And is my suggestion acceptable to you, General?”
“An excellent idea, if I may say so. I believe, though, that the men’s Commanding Officer should also be present.
”
Salisbury grinned. He turned to ‘C’.
“And your Head of Section 7, too. What’s his name again – James Piper?”
Sir Geoffrey Sefton nodded.
“Agreed, then. Get on with it, good luck, and keep me in touch. We need what Choi has to offer, so let’s go and get it.”
***
As the meeting broke up, Salisbury turned to Sefton.
“A moment, if you would. Something else I wanted to discuss with you, if you can spare the time.”
He turned to the others as they left.
“A different topic,” he assured them, with a smile.
As the door closed behind them, he looked at Sefton.
“Perhaps not quite true,” he said. “Same topic, but a different approach.”
He walked across to his bookcase.
“Scotch?” he asked, taking out the decanter and two glasses.
He poured two generous helpings.
“Good malt, this,” he commented. “You need more than one sip, especially at this time of night.”
He returned to his desk, and sat down heavily, with a sigh, before raising his glass in salute.
“Brave chaps, those in the SAS,” he said. “But this is not exactly what they’re trained to do.”
He savoured the Scotch.
“More the sort of thing your chaps do, Geoffrey. It’s the sort of thing they’re good at.”
Sefton nodded, and Salisbury leant forward.
“Brave chaps,” he repeated, “but they will fail.”
Sefton nodded again. “I’m afraid you’re right.”
“So let’s talk about plan ‘B’.”
He sipped his malt whiskey.
“You already have people on the ground? In North Korea?” he asked, seeking confirmation.
“We do. Not many, but a start.”
“Any one working over there – in that country above all others – is also brave. Who are they?”
“Mostly local people who are disaffected. One or two of our own, who we have inserted.”
“Inserted! But not in the dark by dinghy launched from a submarine, I would guess, which is what the Army will probably do.”
“No. We can be more subtle than that.”
Salisbury leant back and looked at the ceiling.
“I wonder now, y’ know, if we should stop them going.”
“To be blunt,” said Sefton, “I would rather risk new people than my existing network, fragile though it is.”
“If they are caught? The new chaps?”
“At best, death by firing squad.”
“Newly arrived chaps would probably be at most risk, do you think?”
“Probably.”
“Would it make much difference if they were civilians, rather than military?”
“Probably not, except in terms of regime’s propaganda machine. What had you in mind?”
“Perhaps leaving the Army and joining the Foreign Office as diplomats. Temporarily, that is – until they got back.”
“Spies are spies.”
“True.”
“Frankly, Jack, I would rather not risk my organisation already in place.”
“What is their role?”
“Watchers and listeners, couriers, people smugglers.”
“Across the border?”
Sefton nodded.
“So they could help any new chaps get out when the time came?”
“Yes.”
“Without submarines or drama of that sort.”
Sir Geoffrey Sefton nodded again.
After another sip of his Scotch, Jack Salisbury said,
“Right. We’ll let them go, and hope for the best, for their sakes. We promised Choi we would keep in touch, so let them at least do that if only to build confidence. But Choi is not going to come back here with the information which we so desperately need, so we shall have to go and get it and bring it back ourselves.”
He turned to the Head of MI6. “And that means your people, Geoffrey, so let’s talk about plan ‘B’.”
5.
THE RENDEZVOUS
Lee Cooper went with them to the airport to see them off. He had been there to meet them when they arrived, and had spent a lot of time with them since. Especially, when he could, with Dr. Choi Shin. So it was obvious that he would be there to see them off.
Once again, he was able to short-cut the usual system. The party arrived well after the obligatory check-in time, went quickly through passport control, immigration and baggage checks, and all the other tiresome administrative and security requirements which go into the business of getting from land-side to air-side at any airport. Eventually, they went directly on to the parked aircraft on the apron, and the North Korean scientists, after their final farewells at the foot of the aircraft steps, were the last to board the waiting plane. They had already exchanged gifts – small souvenirs of one kind or another – during their lunch earlier in the day.
Before they left, the scientists had hinted that they might prefer to travel by British Airways, or even by KLM, or Lufthansa, or SAS as far as Beijing, but their Embassy had decided that, as they had to go via Beijing and change on to an Air China flight anyway, they may as well go all the way from London by Air China.
There were no direct flights to Pyongyang from anywhere except Beijing, which is the major transport hub for entering North Korea, even by train or bus. There are a few connecting flights from Vladivostok in Russia, and Shenyang in Northern China, but nobody in their right mind changed at Beijing to make the onward flight by Air Koryo, which was the only alternative Korean operator from there into Pyongyang. Their aged Russian Tupolev and Ilyushin aircraft had a notorious safety record, especially in bad weather into Pyongyang’s Sunan International Airport, which did not even have a basic instrument landing system installed.
So it was not only safer, but also cheaper and quicker to go direct by Air China from London via Beijing– only 14 hours, or thereabouts.
That meant no more European food or French wine for the visitors.
Choi and Cooper had no chance for a last minute private conversation, either on the way to Heathrow or before they boarded the aircraft, but it was not really necessary. They understood each other.
For his part, Dr. Choi was almost convinced that he should share his secrets with the West in order to avoid a nuclear holocaust. Cooper and his colleagues in the British scientific and intelligence community, on the other hand, were equally confident that Choi would eventually be willing to pass on vital information about the North Korean and Chinese nuclear weapons programmes.
The problem for one of them was delivering it, for the other getting it.
***
Kang Soo and Park Yon, the two Special Services soldiers selected for the mission into North Korea, and had already started preparations for it. They soon realised that it could well be a one-way trip for both of them.
They were at Bourleywood House in the Cotswolds. It was used for that sort of thing, even though parts of it were open to the public. It was, after all, owned by the National Trust, so it said on the notice board outside. At least, those parts that the public could visit were.
The rest was owned and managed by the Government, and used by the Foreign Office, the Police, the armed services, and other parts of the establishment which needed somewhere secret to work. There was a language school, where you could learn anything, there was a medical facility which helped give people who needed it a new look and a new identity, an interrogation centre, were one could learn not just how to interrogate others, but also how to resist interrogation in the event of capture by, shall we say, those less civilised than ourselves, - and so on. It was that sort of place, which also operated as a safe house for those who needed safety and protection.
Kang and Park did not need new identities, although they were given a Kim Jung-un haircut, in the style of the ‘Supreme Leader’. The interrogation resistance training was not just essential, but unpleasant.
They were briefed in detail about some of the techniques used by the paranoid regime they were about to enter, many of which horrified them. The skilful application of a hot iron can induce anybody to say anything.
It was obviously best not to be caught, so they were given an intensive spell of escape and evasion training away from their Hereford barracks. Not even the Welsh mountains or the harshest terrain that Scotland or Bavaria could offer would properly prepare them for the mountainous countryside of North Korea. Not that being caught by German paratroopers was in any way pleasant, even though it was only training.
So far, in spite of all the intense training, they still had no clear idea where in North Korea they would be operating.
Neither, at that time, had anybody else to be honest.
***
The SAS intelligence team was working flat out, pouring over satellite images, maps and photographs, with their colleagues from MI6.
The problem was that Dr Choi Shin had two addresses. Not that they had either of them as it happened, but they knew he had an apartment which he shared with his nephew, within the Yongbyon nuclear research facility, which was his main base, and that he also had what he had described as ‘somewhat austere’ accommodation at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The two places were about as far apart as you could get. The Nuclear Scientific Research Centre which was his real home was to the south of the country, about 90km north of the capital Pyongyang, while the nuclear test site was in a desolate, mountainous region in the north east.
This posed several difficulties for those planning the operation. They had to decide where they were most likely to be able to track down the Doctor, which was the safest area for the two men to operate in, and, perhaps equally important, which was the easiest to get them to. They also had to bear in mind how easy it might be to get them out, if and when they needed to.
It was one thing getting them into the country – there were several options in fact – but quite a different problem getting them out again. It may, indeed, prove impossible to do so, in which case Soo and Yon would be on their own, and probably for a very long time.
It was debated whether to send one soldier to each location, but eventually it was decided that their chances of success, and indeed survival, would be greater if they worked together, at least initially.
Another major factor was that they could achieve little if anything unless they were able to make contact with the existing small and, it had to be said somewhat shaky, organisation already in place. And that organisation was at its strongest the further south you went, especially near the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) which ran along the 38th parallel border with South Korea.