‘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 Ceausescu?’
‘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 “Ceausescu moment”.’
‘And that was?’
‘Like the Kims, Ceausescu 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 Timisoara, 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.
The language, of course, was Korean, but that accent did not come from the coast behind the dawn. It came from much further south. The fisherman peered out from under his nets and now saw the pennant flying from the stern: the twin-teardrop emblem of South Korea. They would not see their wives again, but they would not face a firing squad. They had made it, against the odds. They would be offered asylum. The North’s secret police would not have them after all.