Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (12 page)

BETWEEN THE EAST
Pyongyang Market and the giant triple statue of the Workers’ Party Monument lies the district known as Munsin-Dong. Amid the uniform white tower blocks and the smaller green-roofed office buildings of the North Korean capital sits a discreet organization called simply Bureau 121. Unheard of until recently, the unit has achieved a certain notoriety in foreign intelligence circles. It is widely believed to be the nerve centre of North Korea’s cyber-hacking industry, a nationwide enterprise employing at last six thousand people and absorbing more than 10 per cent of the country’s military budget.

It was not the job of Bureau 121 to record what happened to the disgraced scientist Comrade Dr Mun and his family. Those details were written down, with clinical precision, by another government department. The confessions, the trial, the sentencing and the transport to the labour camp, all recorded and logged in the annals of North Korea’s disappeared. But in the week following his arrest the morning shift at Bureau 121 noticed something unusual: there had been a spike in online communications between an IP address, an internet user in South America and another inside their country. The team on duty traced it to the Pang Sang Un People’s Defence Unit on the outskirts of Pyongyang. This could be serious, a matter of national security. But should they report it or should they back off?

The unit leader, Comrade Goh, was summoned and for several long minutes he stood behind them, leaning over their shoulders and peering through his spectacles at the streams of code and intercepted messages. What puzzled him most was that they were not written in Korean but in English. Why would anyone be communicating in English from inside the People’s Defence Unit? This was a hard call to make, career-wise. Get it wrong and he didn’t want to think about what might happen to him and his team. Eventually, without saying a word to his colleagues, Comrade Goh straightened, removed his spectacles, went to his glass-sided office and closed the door. They saw him pick up the phone and speak, nodding vigorously.

Thirty minutes later there was a commotion in the corridor, the sound of booted feet running down the linoleum. A dozen men from the State Security Department, the dreaded SSD, burst into Bureau 121 and ordered everyone to stand up, away from their consoles. Nothing was to be touched. A photographer moved among them, walking right up to each analyst, letting his camera flash go off right in their faces, catching their anxious expressions, recording their reactions as he methodically worked his way through everyone in the room. Inside Comrade Goh’s office three of the men from the SSD sat him down and fired a stream of questions at him in quick succession.

‘Why did you not report this earlier?’

‘When did you first discover this?’

‘How long have you been monitoring this interaction?’

Goh, an academic by training, was as bewildered as the rest of his team. Surely, he protested, he had done the correct and patriotic thing by calling it in at once. Could he venture to ask what this was all about? Then perhaps his team could assist in the investigation. The men from the SSD turned away from him and conferred among themselves. ‘The reason we are here,’ announced the lead investigator, ‘is that the IP address you told us about belongs to a
taejwa,
a senior colonel.’

‘But that is why I called you!’ exclaimed Comrade Goh. ‘We could see that the online traffic was originating from inside the
People’s Defence Unit. Did I not do the right thing? If not, I am humbly sorry.’

‘You acted as you should,’ replied the SSD team leader, ‘but now we must begin a thorough investigation. We will need all your team to work with us on this.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ protested Goh. ‘Surely you can put these questions to the colonel himself.’

‘That is no longer possible.’ The three men from the SSD looked at each other. In the paranoid regime, this was a potentially dangerous situation for all of them and they knew it. ‘It is not possible,’ repeated the investigator, ‘because yesterday Colonel Kwon Gangjun deserted his post.’

The cyber team leader’s jaw dropped.

‘Yes,’ continued the investigator, ‘this running dog of the capitalist West has defected. We believe he has left the country by ship. He was last observed in Hungnam port.’

SECURE, CONFINED, FRUSTRATED,
Luke was totally unable to sleep. It was one in the morning, and in his bunk at the Francisco Santander police commando base, watching a spider crawl across the ceiling, he was still wired from what had happened the previous night. Shooting his way out of a kidnapping was not something he felt particularly proud of, although all day the Colombian officers had nodded respectfully to him. Even the cleaner had asked to shake his hand. But clearly there was a contract out on him from the cartel so he was going to have to up his personal security a notch.

Yet it wasn’t this that was keeping him awake. It was the notebook and, specifically, the North Korean connection. What, in Heaven’s name, could link a Colombian drug cartel with that isolated and unpredictable Cold War relic? Nothing good ever comes out of North Korea, he reflected. If they’re not test-firing their latest ballistic missile or banned nuclear device they’re busy flogging Scud blueprints around the Middle East and harassing exiled dissidents. A Colombian narcotics–North Korean partnership?

The only person alive, Luke realized, who could possibly shed some light on this was Fuentes. He had to find him before the cartel’s thugs did. The odds on this happening were not good, but by the morning he had an idea where to start.

As soon as dawn broke, grey and misty, over the camp, Luke was rapping on the door of the base commander’s office. He was already up and an orderly let him in. ‘Señor Luke!’ Commander Rojas beamed. ‘Perhaps we should call you “Tirofijo” – Marksman! Two of those
putas
dead and one in custody. Nice going! Maybe I keep you here and make you an instructor! Coffee?’

‘Please.’

The commander went to a table where someone had left a jug and some cups, and poured
café tinto
for them both. He was tall for a Colombian, and well built, with alert, darting eyes. Halfway across the room, with a cup in each hand, he stopped and smiled again. ‘You’re looking at my tracksuit, right? It’s the morning run in twenty minutes. I take the men out every day. They expect me to set an example. You should come too.’

‘Maybe I will,’ said Luke, ‘but the reason I’m here is that I have a favour to ask.’

‘Tell me.’

‘If I wanted to go for a drink tonight . . .’ began Luke.

The commander threw his head back and laughed. ‘
Dios mio!
My God, you British have
cojones
! You want to go out partying again already? After what just happened?’

Luke held up his hand and laughed with him. He could see how that must have sounded. ‘Hear me out,’ he said, when they had both calmed down.

Commander Rojas sat down at his desk, folded his hands and gave him his full attention.

‘If I was Señor Benton,’ continued Luke, ‘and I wanted to meet someone in a public place near my hotel, somewhere I’m not going to attract a lot of attention, where would I go?’

The commander was nodding before Luke had finished his sentence. He opened a drawer, rummaged around, closed it, then opened the one below it until he found what he was looking for:
Mapa turístico de Tumaco.

‘We had a guy from the US Drug Enforcement Administration here on the base for a month last year,’ said Rojas, unfolding the map. ‘Man, he wanted to see everything. And I mean everything!
OK, so here’s your hotel, El Paradiso . . .’ The two men leaned over the city street map as the commander traced a route with his finger. ‘And I’m guessing your Señor Benton could walk, if he felt like it, to this place here, Las Olas del Mar.’

‘The Waves of the Sea?’ said Luke.

‘Exactly. Very popular at weekends, close by the beach, great margaritas.’

‘So if I wanted to check it out this evening could you provide a discreet security escort? You know, you’re there but you’re not there, if you catch my drift?’

‘It will be our pleasure. This is our
especialidad.
We even teach this on a course here to our friends from Honduras and Guatemala.’

Outside the window the grey mist of dawn had turned to a fine drizzle. Luke noticed a solitary figure pacing up and down near the parade ground, holding up an umbrella. ‘Chadwick & Partners’ read the logo. ‘For All Your Legal Solutions.’ It was Friend and he seemed to be lost in thought. Luke left Rojas’s office and went out to catch up with him. ‘Sleep all right, John?’

Friend whirled round, then relaxed. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Not really, no. But I’m glad I’ve bumped into you because I’ve got something to tell you. I have to fly up to Bogotá this afternoon and sort out the paperwork for the repatriation of Benton’s body. I’m afraid that means you’re on your own down here. I know you can take care of yourself, but just . . .’ He tailed off.

‘Just don’t go slotting anyone else?’

‘Precisely. Look, um, I’ve been thinking. About that second source inside the cartel that you mentioned.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well . . .’ Friend was shifting uncomfortably now, giving Luke the impression he rather wished he hadn’t broached the subject after all ‘. . . obviously, there’s nothing I can tell you but, um, I wouldn’t entirely steer you away from it.’

Luke stared hard at him, his earlier suspicions confirmed.
He’s been told something. And I haven’t. So I’m down here working this thing with one hand tied behind my back.

‘Look,’ said Friend. He could see how this was going down with Luke. ‘Why not talk to the Cousins?’

‘You mean the CIA?’

Friend winced, as if stung by an insect, and glanced round to see if anyone was within earshot. They weren’t. ‘Yes,’ he continued. ‘I take it they’ve given you a number for the liaison officer on this one? Good. Well, I’d give him a call and hook up if I were you.’ And with that, Friend and his umbrella were gone.

Anyone strolling past the Olas del Mar bar that evening might have noticed several short but well-built men sitting drinking on bar stools. If they had taken a really close look they might have noticed that for all the swigs they took from their beer bottles they never seemed to finish them. Luke’s escorts from the Jungla were very much alert and on duty. He arrived a few minutes after them, having been dropped off nearby, pulled up a bar stool, gave them a cursory nod, as a stranger would, and ordered himself a beer. He was dressed in pretty much the only clothes he had brought with him: beige chinos, dark-blue polo shirt and a pair of grey, springy shoes. ‘Approach boots’, they were called, nothing too military about them but they allowed you to walk for hours and tread softly when you needed to.

Tonight, mid-week, the bar was practically deserted, open on all sides to the damp breeze and the sound of the Pacific surf crashing ashore just down the beach. A young girl in a sleeveless dress was behind the bar, bending over to get Luke’s beer from the icebox. For a moment he was reminded of Elise, though there was probably ten years’ difference between the two women. What would she be doing now? Tucked up in bed, hopefully.

When the girl brought his beer, which was cocooned in a Styrofoam jacket to keep it cold, he asked, ‘Do you get many tourists from Europe here?’

She laughed. ‘None! You are the first for a long time. Why?’

‘Well, my friend from England was here in Tumaco a few days ago. Staying at the hotel just down there. He’s a bit older than
me. He’s, er, missing and I’m trying to find his friend, a
Colombiano.
You didn’t see them here together, by any chance?’

The girl put a hand on her hip and bit her lower lip in thought. ‘When?’ she asked.

‘Five nights ago. About the same time in the evening as now.’

She shook her head and gave him an apologetic look. ‘Sorry, I was off then. Can I get you some
tapas
with your beer?’

‘In a while,’ replied Luke, and pulled out his phone. He should probably check in with Friend.

Two girls walked in, arm in arm and giggling, brushing unnecessarily close to Luke and making eye contact with him as they sashayed to the other end of the bar. They certainly had the attention of his Jungla escorts, he noticed. They wore tight, fluorescent crop-tops, spray-on jeans and rather too much make-up. The girl behind the bar turned her back on them, and when they ordered some green fizzy drink with ice she took her time serving them. Evidently she did not approve. The girls smiled at Luke from across the bar and a thought flashed through his head: would Benton have known them? Would he have . . . ‘When in Rome’ and all that? Surely not. He got up and walked over to them.

‘
Hola, chicas
.’ That sounded pretty tacky. He’d better get straight to the point. ‘Has either of you met another Englishman here, a man a bit older than me?’

They gave him a coy look. ‘It’s no problem,’ said the older one, thrusting out her chin. ‘You can bring him too. Which hotel you in? The Paradiso?’

Luke sighed. He was not easily embarrassed but his cheeks were reddening. He sensed the bar girl staring at him, her disapproval burning into the back of his neck. ‘No. I meant have you seen any other
ingles
here, in this bar, last week?’

Their smiles evaporated. This man was a time-waster. They turned away, bored of him now. Luke exchanged a glance with his close protection team and gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. It was time to move on.

It was as Luke was paying for his beer that a boy came in, a wooden tray suspended round his neck on frayed straps bearing
lottery tickets and sticks of chewing gum. ‘
Loto! Loto millónes!
’ he called. He made straight for Luke, tugging at his elbow and holding out a wad of printed lottery tickets. Immediately there was a hiss from one of the well-built men at a nearby table, telling him to leave the tourist in peace.

Luke had never bought a lottery ticket in his life and he was not about to start now. But the lad was so insistent that he took out some pesos to give him and was about to send him away when he noticed something that made the words die on his lips. It was the pen poking out of the top pocket of the boy’s shirt. It was nothing special, just a cheap plastic giveaway, but the words printed on it were plainly visible: Scarborough North Cliff Golf Club.