mountain slopes could already be crawling with them, invisible in the concealing mist. This disturbing thought caused her to jump away from the wall and she hurried back inside the military base. The metal door clanged shut behind her.
IT WAS ONLY marginally less cold inside the mountain. Martin Baxter was waiting on the concourse, behind the main entrance. It was a huge imposing space, where five of the key tunnels converged. The facility was so large and rambling it required transport to travel from one area to another, and each of those routes was wide enough to accommodate two lanes of traffic. One of the tunnels even had rails laid down to convey heavy equipment and munitions. The walls of this man-made cavern were bare rock and the lighting was basic and functional, connected by hanging wires and cables.
Dominating the central area was a scaled-down version of the twenty-metre-high bronze statue of Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang. Even though it was smaller, this was still seven metres tall. With its right arm outstretched, it looked as though it was directing the vehicles driving around it. Above the entrance to each passage hung the red starred flag, and the same design, with its blue borders, had been worked into the mosaic floor.
The first time Martin had set eyes on this impressive interior, it reminded him of early James Bond movies, with those amazing sets of the villain’s lair designed by Ken Adam. The geek in him had gone a step further and couldn’t help imagining daleks gliding around, instead of the old jeeps and bicycles that the base used, and robot Yeti lumbering around outside. But he hadn’t mentioned that to anyone. Only Paul, his partner’s twelve-year-old son, would have appreciated it. But Paul had been one of the first victims of Dancing Jax and was now part of the Ismus’s entourage, together with Carol, the boy’s mother. Martin missed them both desperately.
That morning he was agitated and annoyed. These weekly meetings with the Generals were pointless. They never listened to what he had to say and barely concealed their contempt at his presence. Since the rescue of the children from England, absolutely nothing had been accomplished. He couldn’t understand it. They wouldn’t even discuss a campaign against the Ismus. Their policy was to wait and gather as much information as they could, which, more often than not, they didn’t share with him. Martin decided that today he was going to get some answers. They owed him that much. He wasn’t just anybody. He was the thorn in the Ismus’s side, the man who had denounced him from the start, who had spent the best part of a year trying to warn the rest of the world.
A tinny voice barked and crackled from the tannoy system and went echoing through the tunnels. The language was Korean, but it was so distorted that, even if it had been in English, Martin wouldn’t have been able to understand what was said. Just the usual announcements and orders of the day, he supposed.
A veteran jeep pulled up alongside. The North Korean war machine was a curious hotchpotch of new technology and relics of the past. Although it had almost a thousand missiles trained on South Korea, possessed ZM-87 laser weapons, was nuclear capable and had an active space programme, most of its other arms and vehicles dated as far back as World War Two.
An even younger female soldier than the one that had been shadowing Gerald was at the wheel and a grim-looking guard with an AK-47 sat beside her. She directed a stony-faced expression at Martin and the former maths teacher clambered in beside Gerald who was sitting in the back.
“Piccadilly, please, cabbie,” Gerald quipped. “And don’t go the long way round or you won’t get a tip.” These trifling games were what got him through his time here. Life inside this mountain was barely tolerable, so he embraced every opportunity to tickle it along. At times his teasing attitude infuriated Martin, but the children adored him for it.
The girl betrayed no sign she had heard and drove on. Her name was Chung Eun-mi, eldest daughter of General Chung Kang-dae.
When he first arrived in the country, Martin’s irrepressible sci-fi self had noted that, just like the Bajorans in Star Trek, here the family name preceded the individual name.
Conscription at seventeen was mandatory for everyone, but, for Eun-mi, there was no other possible path. This was a vocation. It was her life’s dream to wear this uniform. She was everything her father could have wished for in a son. Perhaps, if she had been a boy, their relationship would have been different.
Eun-mi was passionately loyal to the state, determined to devote herself to the People’s Army, and strove to be the best in all she did, pushing herself to the limit at the expense of everything else. She had trained harder than any cadet in her unit, could strip a rifle and put it back together faster than the rest and was fluent in Russian, Mandarin and English. She and her young sister, Nabi, had been assigned to the Western refugees, to serve as interpreter, guide and companions. Maggie and the others knew they were also reporting back everything that was said. Well, perhaps not Nabi, who was only six and, unlike Eun-mi, appeared to enjoy spending as much time with the English children as she was allowed.
Gerald had grown very fond of little Nabi and had learned many Korean words from her, but he had no such affection for her older sister. Those beautiful yet flinty features gave nothing away. However, he could see the disgust glittering in her eyes whenever she addressed him or the others. Like everyone else in the country, she had been raised to distrust the West and she, being a General’s daughter, magnified that into rabid hatred. She genuinely considered these Europeans to be an inferior race and would’ve preferred to have been given other duties away from them, but she was fiercely obedient and it never occurred to her to even think about questioning her orders.
As the jeep skirted the bronze statue, Eun-mi and the guard bowed respectfully until they passed into one of the tunnels. Martin and the others were only permitted access to a small fraction of the base. Dormitories and an exercise area had been allocated for them in the medical centre. Everywhere else was forbidden. The personnel they were allowed contact with were also restricted and they ate in their own separate refectory. Even some sections of the medical centre were out of bounds and doors to mysterious rooms were either locked or heavily guarded, or both.
The room where these weekly meetings were held was located in the northernmost section of the base. It was one of the most secure areas, where intelligence was gathered via spy satellites, and row after row of computers were manned round the clock by teams of hackers leaching data from foreign security systems. Neither Gerald nor Martin saw any of that. They were always guided from the jeep to the meeting room without deviation and, once inside, weren’t allowed to leave, not even to use the toilet. Once the meeting was over, they were shepherded straight back to the jeep again.
Gerald always found this journey interesting. The installation was constantly bustling with activity and the ting-a-ling of bicycle bells. He wondered what everyone did, and why they were in such a hurry the whole time. Whatever it was, they were very serious and intense about it. Sometimes he tried to make the guards laugh, but the most he had achieved was a triumphant grin when they checkmated him.
The jeep came to a stop before a set of red double doors, blocked by two hefty sentries bearing the familiar Kalashnikovs.
“A wandering minstrel I,” Gerald sang softly to himself as he got out, waving a hanging wisp of exhaust fume away from his face. The ventilation system had broken down again in this tunnel. That was the third time since September.
The soldier next to Eun-mi took her place behind the wheel and drove off. The girl spoke to the sentries and they stood aside to let the three of them pass.
“And I shouldn’t be surprised if nations trembled,” Gerald continued in a low, lilting murmur. “Before the mighty troops, the troops of Titipu!”
The
