It was what every supervillain’s war room should look like: oval in shape, with low-level lighting around the walls that accentuated the texture of the roughly hewn rock. A print of a vibrantly colourful, highly idealised and flattering painting of the three presidents, from Kim Il-sung to his grandson, hung in the centre of the longest wall. Sticking with his Mikado theme, Gerald called them the Three Little Maids and, whenever he saw one of these paintings, which were all over the place, sang a line from the song that seemed appropriate.
“Nobody’s safe, for we care for none.”
A large, elliptical table, made from cherry wood, dominated the centre, with a massive TV screen at one end. At least it was warmer in here than out in the tunnels. Three incongruous electric fires, the old-fashioned sort often found in pensioners’ front rooms back in the UK, had been brought in to lift the temperature and all their bars blazed brightly orange.
The Vice-Marshals and Generals were already gathered and waiting; they rose from the table when the two Europeans came in and bowed.
Martin and Gerald returned the bow and cast their eyes over who was present. These fourteen middle-aged men were the most powerful in the country, under the Supreme Leader. The Chief of the General Staff was here, as was Eun-mi’s father, General Chung Kang-dae, who made no acknowledgement of her presence. Then there was Marshal Tark Hyun-ki or, as Gerald called him, Tark the Shark. His sour face was half hidden behind large mirrored sunglasses as usual. He never attempted to disguise his hostility towards the English refugees. Martin despised him.
When they first arrived and Lee’s incredible ability had been thoroughly discussed, Marshal Tark Hyun-ki had demanded they send the boy into Mooncaster, strapped to an atomic warhead. Upon its detonation, everyone on the planet who was under the book’s spell would be wiped out, leaving only this glorious nation in command of a depopulated earth and finally safe from foreign aggressors.
Some of the other officers supported this efficient method of genocide and were only dissuaded when the practicalities were debated. The sudden death of entire populations would have serious consequences. How could they make safe and maintain every nuclear facility, chemical plant, gas field, oil refinery, pipeline and the innumerable other toxic industries around the globe? It would be physically impossible. And what pestilence would billions of unburied human corpses produce? What guarantee did they have that the monsters from Dancing Jax would also be killed?
Marshal Tark Hyun-ki refused to listen to the counter-arguments. He was adamant it was the perfect moment to settle accounts with the hated West. The time of empty rhetoric was over and they would be triumphant.
Lee’s reaction, when he heard what they’d been planning, was nuclear in itself. In ferocious language he yelled that anything he took to Mooncaster was only a copy; the original objects always remained with his unconscious self in this world and so any bomb would blow up in both places. In spite of this raging outburst, it took a phone call from Kim Jong-un himself to dissuade the Marshal. After that, there was no more talk of sending Lee to Mooncaster and the boy had been chained to four guards, day and night, to keep him anchored here.
As a consequence, at these meetings, Tark the Shark’s bow was always the curtest and he showed his displeasure further by never facing the two Englishmen. Ever since his grotesque proposal had been rejected, he had brought his aide along and communicated only through him.
The aide, a good-looking twenty-year-old called Du Kwan, was the one person who smiled when Martin and Gerald entered, but the friendly greeting was not for them. Over the preceding months he had grown to admire the beauty and composure of Eun-mi. He longed to speak to her privately, but such contact was forbidden. He was anxious to declare his affections, but how could such a thing be? Was she even aware of his existence? Her lovely eyes never strayed in his direction; she was focused solely on her duties as interpreter and kept her gaze fixed on the centre of the table. It was making Du Kwan despondent. Just one look from her would bring him joy.
Also present in the room that morning was Doctor Choe Soo-jin, clutching an overstuffed folder. She was due to deliver the report on her findings so far and the results of the tests she had been running. She cast a quick, sly glance at Martin. She also had certain recommendations to make that she would instruct Eun-mi not to translate.
“Good morning,” Martin said in his no-nonsense schoolteacher’s voice.
Gerald scattered friendly smiles left and right. He was always amused by the oversized hats the top brass wore here. They all looked like army pillar boxes and the medals that studded their jackets were like magnified milk-bottle tops.
Everyone sat down and those with briefcases placed them on the table as they took out laptops or files or sheaves of paper. The Chief of the General Staff chaired the meeting and he called on General Chung Kang-dae to relate the most recent intelligence.
Eun-mi’s father opened a file. He was a smallish man and marginally younger than most of the others in there. Under his hat the hair was thinning, but his eyebrows were thick and black like caterpillars. It was not an unpleasant or harsh face, but laughter had been an infrequent visitor to his lips since the death of his wife, soon after the birth of Nabi.
Before he could speak, Martin interjected.
“I need to know what’s being done about the Ismus!” he said firmly. “Where is he, what is he doing and why haven’t we come up with a plan of action to deal with him?”
The officers glowered in surprise and anger. How dare he interrupt? He was only here out of courtesy. He had nothing to contribute. They stared at Eun-mi and waited for her to translate.
The girl did so dutifully. She was also angered by Martin’s outburst. Her role as interpreter meant that she too had interrupted her father and the colour rose in her cheeks as she felt his disapproval.
“All this time and you’ve done nothing!” Martin continued. “Every day you hesitate it gets worse and worse out there. God knows what abominations are crawling through the streets now. If you allowed me access to the Internet, at least I’d be able to see for myself. The one thing I do know is that Austerly Fellows has something far more evil planned than anything we’ve seen yet. The last I heard he was writing a second book, a sequel to Dancing Jax. He may have even completed it by now. When that gets published, what’s happened already will pale in comparison!”
He paused as the girl repeated his words in Korean. When she finished, she dared to raise her eyes and saw the icy fury on her father’s face. She looked away quickly and caught sight of Du Kwan. The aide was smiling shyly at her, giving her gentle encouragement. The unexpectedness of that flustered her. She snapped her attention back to the centre of the table and her cheeks burned redder.
“And then there’s the items the kids brought with them from England,” Martin pressed on, before they could stop him. “Where are they? The wand and the skull? What did you do with them? They should be monitored constantly. And what about the kids in those camps set up in other countries? Why haven’t you done anything to help them escape? There must be hundreds if not thousands of them out there, suffering God knows what, and nothing’s been done.
“Look, you’ve got this boy, Lee, who has this miraculous power to enter the world of that book and not be taken over by it. The Ismus is terrified of him. That lad is the one thing that can turn his madness against him. You should be thanking me for bringing him to you. Using him to our maximum advantage should be our top priority and I don’t mean as a method of bomb delivery. But all you’ve done is kept him chained up like a veal calf since he got here. What sort of a strategy is that?”
The Chief of the General Staff slammed his hand down and called
