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 meeting room was another space designed to impress. 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