Darke Mission (39 page)

“Look, Commodore, word will begin to spread that we have lost a nuclear submarine that most people in the world, including our enemies, did not know we had. The enlisted men can be made to believe that it was a training exercise that went horribly wrong, but for the officers here, at the dock, that would be a hard one to swallow. Sunwoo's usefulness had run its course and Moon was a bit of a blabber mouth. The supreme leader could not risk either of them giving their take on events.”

Park was listening but protesting nothing, often the best policy when talking to a high ranking officer in the secret police, especially on a night when one of your submarines went AWOL.

“Gok was both the officer in charge of the submarine's upcoming mission and the supreme leader's cousin. Having a submarine stolen from under your nose was probably a necessary and sufficient condition for our leader to order Gok's death. He was also family so that meant that his crime of negligence was multiplied tenfold. Kim Jong-un did not want Gok to cross his threshold ever again.”

Park felt that he had been given a truthful rendition by Lee as to the motivation behind his fellow diners' murders. The logic and rationale in some cases may seem a bit retarded, Park thought, but they were gone and Park needed to spend most of the forty-five minute drive to Pyongyang ensuring that his report was as comprehensive and loyal as was humanly possible.

Major Lee and Commodore Park made their way to the SSD's awaiting car. The naval officers that had been stationed in Haeju City had been summoned to the docks and the most senior of them put in charge of getting order from chaos, taking any witness statements from the submariners who had been awakened by the explosions and, generally trying to restore a semblance of normality. The quiet man opened the front passenger door for Park. He got in and Major Lee got into the driver's side. The quiet man was seated directly behind Park. The Commodore felt very uncomfortable with this arrangement. He had seen enough to realise that there was a non-zero probability that the rear passenger's next move was to garrotte or strangle him. The anxious Commodore had not needed to concern himself with that outcome. The quiet man had fulfilled his kill quota, for this evening at least.

* * *

Victor and his thermal lance had cut open a large rectangular hole in the central bank's main vault. It had taken eighteen minutes and created a huge mess of empty oxygen bottles, burnt out tubes and random pieces of molten metal dotted along the floor. Through the gaping hole, JJ and his team could see the side walls lined with safe deposit boxes, another, smaller vault at the back end of this room and, slap, bang in the middle of the room trays of gold bullion, stacked three levels high. Each tray had 104 bullion bars on it. The bars were gleaming in the artificial light, it was a magnificent sight.

Before entering North Korea, its capital and its central bank vaults, JJ had no reliable estimate of how many bullion bars would be there. North Korea did not supply data on its reserves to the World Gold Council or the IMF. His guesstimate was made on intel regarding North Korea's gold mining capabilities and likely gifts and payments from China and Russia. Given the intensity of the gleam from the shiny metal bars before him JJ may have underestimated Kim Jong-un's gold wealth.

“No time for gold gawking,” directed JJ. “Lily, Iceman, get loading onto those pallets. Jim, you and I will take the first few up in the lift. Victor, great job, take a breather and then help. Make sure there is no more than one tray full of gold on each pallet, we can't afford to damage the lift.”

Everybody got to work straight away. The bars were heavy but the adrenalin was pumping and the first few pallet runs, from vault to ‘Toblerone', then ‘Toblerone' to pallet, lift and up to the van, went smoothly. Ethel stayed in the van as look-out. Kwon and Ji-hun loaded the gold into the van. Victor's good work had given the team a full three hours to accomplish the transfer of the gold from vault to van. JJ knew it was barely enough time.

“I'm glad we don't need to push this fucking pallet very far,” bemoaned Jim Bradbury as he and JJ rolled the gold only a few feet from the vault to their conveyor system.

“Yeah, it's a bleedin' nightmare, Jim,” replied JJ. “Nobody better challenge me to arm wrestling, I've got jelly arms already and we're not even halfway through.”

“We've been going for an hour and a half JJ, that's halfway isn't it?”

“It's halfway in allocated mission time, but tight on target gold acquisition.”

“We couldn't really put more gold on each pallet run, JJ,” highlighted Jim correctly. “We won't be able to push it and the elevator might not take it,” correct on his second observation as well. “How adrift of target will we be when time's up?”

“I've been trying to keep count while pushing the stuff. We've been loading 104 bars on each pallet, it's taken us three minutes to get from the pallet, via the ‘Toblerones', to the van. By the time we're back down to the vault room Lily, the Iceman and Victor have another pallet ready so there's no loss of time there. I reckon we've done around 3,000. Kwon and Ji-hun are struggling to keep pace with the gold delivery; the bars are piling up on the ground. They will need help near the end, for sure,” said JJ.

“That doesn't solve our problem, though, does it, JJ? We're still going to be short by dawn.” Three in a row of correct observations by the KLO, but no light bulb moment as yet. “I wonder how they got down here in the first place?” asked Jim.

JJ did not respond immediately though Jim's question had triggered a train of thought in the Scot. This particular train did not yield a robust conclusion, but it did yield a course of action. “Let's ask Ji-hun,” said JJ, hoping that the moaner's response was close to JJ's thinking.

Jim and JJ were quickly in the back of the Sprinter van. “Kwon, ask Ji-hun how they moved around the gold and other heavy objects in the vault level. We need a concise answer. The clock is ticking.” The urgency in JJ's voice was plain to hear. Ji-hun responded swiftly to Kwon's question.

Deep cover translated. “He says they use small fork lift carriers. They're housed in a back room at the far end of the vault floor. The west wing of the building isn't finished yet and the contractors have been allowed to keep them there temporarily.”

“Anything else we should know?” asked JJ.

“No,” said Kwon, taking his lead from Ji-hun's head shake.

JJ and Jim bounded out of the van and back into the service lift with his pallet ready for another load of gold. “That should do the trick?” said Jim, looking at JJ with questioning eyes.

“Maybe,” replied JJ. “The fork lifts will help Lily and the Iceman get the gold from the ‘Toblerones' faster but even if they fit in this lift, which they probably do, the extra weight would mean that we could transport fewer gold bars on every trip. It's touch and go Jim.”

When the pair reached vault level, Jim went in search of the fork lifts, while JJ went to help Lily, the Iceman and Victor load the gold onto the pallet and ‘Toblerones'. The two helpful Koreans were visibly flagging now, each human action slower than an hour ago, sweating away and generally looking a bit floppy.

“Victor,” said JJ, signalling for the safe cracker to join him. “I need your help. We have a problem. The short of it is we may not have enough time before breaking light to get the gold we need up top. Any bright ideas?”

“How much is 3,000 gold bars in money that I would understand?”

“Well…” began JJ engaging his mental arithmetic cells, “each bar is 12.5kg in weight, at yesterday's closing COMEX price gold was around US $1,800 per ounce or US $60,000 per kilogram. Each bar is therefore worth $750,000 so approximately $2 ¼ billion for a load of 3,000.”

Victor was somewhat impressed by the old man's mental agility. He'd have done it quicker on his tablet calculator he ventured but then again he didn't know the price of gold to begin with. Victor was mulling over this information. JJ wanted to say ‘chop chop' but he refrained. The young safe cracker had done his job, this was like overtime.

“I don't know if this is the answer or not…” said Victor, inadvertently adding a few more degrees of anxiety to JJ's mental stress, “but do we need to steal just gold? Would cash do?”

Would cash do, pondered JJ. “It would Victor but I didn't see any cash lying around. We don't have time to check all the safe deposit boxes. What are you thinking?”

“I'm thinking that the smaller vault at the back of the room is where any cash is. Since the security management of this bank clearly thought that the main vault door was impenetrable they skimped a little on this one. It's a single combination four digit lock, no timer, no trip alarm and substantially fewer unlock combinations than Big Bertha here.”

“Can you burn through the door quickly?” asked JJ, warming to Victor's thought process.

“No,” he replied immediately. “I've no tubes left for the lance. They were all used up getting in here.” JJ was about to look miserable again but Victor continued. “However, I do still have my guile and listening equipment. If I can't unlock that door in under ten minutes then I'm not Albert Spaggieri's grandson!” he exclaimed, triumphantly.

“Great,” said JJ. “Get on it and let me know when you're through.”

While JJ and Victor were having their conflab, Jim had found the small forklifts and he and his Korean colleagues were speeding up the gold transfer from their vault trays to the service lift. They had only forty-five minutes left now to get all the booty onto the van and exit the central bank's car park. JJ was a wee bit happier but how far towards top utility happiness was going to depend on Victor, how he did and what he found. As he was mulling this over, JJ joined Jim again on the pallet run.

“JJ,” said Jim. “I was thinking.”

“Fire away, Jim,” encouraged the KLO's friend.

“You know how I can drive heavy duty trucks since my student days in Arizona?”

“Yes,” replied JJ.

“Well those trucks all had weight limits as to what they could safely and legally carry. I can't do the math in my head, JJ, but this gold is seriously fucking heavy. While, space wise, it'll fit into the Sprinter van at a squeeze, there is no way that van is going to be able to haul all the gold without collapsing where it stands.”

“You're right – up to a point,” replied JJ. “The scoop is this. We're aiming for 6,000 bars of gold, that's 75,000kg in weight. That's seventy-five metric tonnes. A normal Sprinter van's maximum payload is no more than twenty-five metric tonnes. Did you notice my inclusion of the word
normal
Jim?”

“I did,” Jim replied. “Keep going for god's sake.”

“Well, I didn't bring a van with me all the way from England for the good of my health. I could have picked up a Sprinter in Seoul and saved myself the bother. This is no ordinary Mercedes van. It's been tweaked and augmented by one of the best F1 teams in the world. The V6 engine has nearly 400bhp compared with the standard 160bhp, upgraded brakes and a short-shift gear change. More important for us, the van has upgraded suspension, same as a Hummer H3, enhanced torsion bar and titanium leaf springs, front and rear. It also has a false floor. The space between the original floor pan and the one the gold's on is filled with extra Kevlar and aluminium coil springs. This gives additional cushioning and reduces the direct weight to the axles, wheels and tyres. Speaking of those both the wheels and tyres are special order to take the weight. Finally, the coup de beauté, as you would know, Jim, is the axles. Our van has two additional axles, air over hydraulic modified from a Volvo 700. Not only can our van carry the gold, it can shift like The Road Runner.”

“Eight wheels?” queried Jim, the only question he could come up with following JJ's detailed rendition. “I saw only four.”

“The van's been so extensively modified, Jim, you could barely believe it. The additional wheels are housed under the false floor. When needed, they come out like an aircraft's. When they're stored, they lie horizontally and as they come out they go vertical, ready to move. It's fuckin' ingenious, I tell you,” exclaimed JJ, all chuffed on behalf of the brilliant work of Harold McFarlane and his team at McLaren. On their last gold transfer to the van, JJ had instructed Ethel to lower the additional wheels; the van was ready.

As the friends re-entered the main vault room, Victor was standing at the far end, bowing like a lead thespian taking a final curtain call. “Through!” was his only utterance.

“That's beezer, Victor, well done,” said JJ. “Found anything worthwhile?”

“There's a lot of cash, wrapped in plastic and stacked like the gold bars. Different currencies, mainly US dollars, euros, yen and South Korean won.”

Ironic, thought JJ, the DPRK and its supreme leader may philosophically detest the South, the USA and Japan but Kim Jong-un seemed happy enough to hoard their currencies. JJ scanned the piles of wrapped foreign currency in front of him. The US dollars seemed all to be in $100 bill denominations.

“OK,” said JJ. “Iceman, you and Lily come into this vault. Victor go topside and bring Kwon down here. Tell Ethel to watch Ji-hun. When Kwon's here, Victor, you and him take over loading the gold. It won't be for long, we need to be out of here in thirty minutes. Jim, you and I will continue on the pallet run and make sure the gold is stacked securely in the van,” instructed JJ.

Victor took off instantly, clearly there was not a lot of time for congratulations and back slapping, though richly deserved, for his safe cracking skills.

“Lily, Iceman, start taking the US dollars. Load them into Victor's kit bag, it must be nearly empty now with no oxygen bottles, thermal lance tubes and breathing equipment. Make sure his electronic gear is safe. In twenty-five minutes stop loading the cash, take it topside. You can't use the service lift, take the smaller main lift. If the cash fits in our van, great, if not lob it into the one next to us that Iceman hot-wired earlier.”