time, we are not committed to proceeding, yet our military will be significantly strengthened.’
‘At a cost,’ Kim interjected.
‘Agreed, comrade, but perhaps not as much as you might expect. We would have to pay in American dollars, because that’s the only currency likely to be acceptable. But because of the nature of the financial transactions, the money would not be deposited in a bank, so we can seed all the payments with counterfeit notes, reducing our total outlay by as much as twenty or thirty per cent. Already the Bureau holds significant amounts of forged currency – mainly “superdollars” – that could be utilized.’
‘Has anyone any further questions?’ the leader asked softly, after a few moments’ silence. Nobody responded. ‘Very well. Wait outside while we discuss your proposal further.’
Fifteen minutes later, Pak Je-San was called back into the room, to see only two men now sitting at the table – the leader himself and Kim Yong-Su.
‘You have our approval, Pak, therefore proceed at once. You are authorized to use the funds currently held by the Bureau – both genuine and counterfeit – to achieve your objectives, but you are to keep an accurate accounting. This operation is to be considered highly classified and you will not discuss it with anyone else. All the agents you recruit are to be told only enough to allow them to achieve their immediate objectives. You will report direct to Kim Yong-Su at least once every month for the remainder of this year, and subsequently once a week until the operation is concluded.’
And that, Pak Je-San thought to himself as he left the building, was the only real problem. He had no doubts that he could achieve exactly what he had promised, but reporting to Kim Yong-Su was something he had not anticipated, and did not look forward to.
Because of all the members of the North Korean government he had ever met, Kim Yong-Su was the only one who frankly terrified him.
Chapter One
Present day, Monday
One of the standing jokes about the venerable C-130 Hercules transport aircraft – colloquially known as a ‘Fat Albert’ – is that Lockheed solved the noise problem by putting it all inside the fuselage. After the long flog south to Meknes from Lyneham via Gibraltar, Paul Richter fully appreciated the point. It was incredibly noisy in the back of the Herc: a constant, nerve-jangling, whining roar that penetrated all too easily through the headset he was wearing. It was better in the enormous cockpit, and he could now see why the two loadmasters stayed up there with the pilots instead of occupying the pull-down seats that lined the cavernous hold.
In front of him, and clearly visible even with only the red ‘night-vision’ lights illuminated, were two open long-wheelbase Land Rover Defender 110s, lashed down along the centreline of the hold and facing aft towards the loading ramp. Known as ‘Pink Panthers’ or just ‘Pinkies’ from the strange shade of camouflage paint SAS vehicles had sported during the Second World War, these two had been specially prepared for this one particular mission, their engine and chassis numbers removed, and all their identifying marks stripped off. They were fitted with diesel engines, long-range fuel tanks, water containers, emergency rations – though nobody expected to have time to eat anything – ruggedized satellite navigation systems, and plenty of ammunition for the half-inch Browning M2 machine-guns. They were also carrying Mark 19 40-millimetre grenade launchers and Milan anti-tank missiles.
The 47 Squadron Special Forces Flight aircraft had lifted off from Meknes, with full tanks, just under an hour earlier and headed east at about ten thousand feet. Now, Richter realized from the angle of the floor and the popping in his ears, it was in a steep descent.
‘Border in ten,’ the pilot declared laconically over the intercom, and the Hercules began turning to port, as it levelled at just over two hundred feet. Eleven minutes later, the pilot spoke again: ‘Welcome to Algeria, gentlemen. We’re now in breach of international law, and things are about to get bumpy.’
Richter grinned at the man sitting next to him. ‘Here we go again,’ he said, almost at a shout.
Colin Dekker smiled, but didn’t respond. Short, wiry and compact, like a lot of SAS personnel, he was a captain in the Royal Artillery and the commander of Troop 3, D Squadron, 22 Special Air Service Regiment. He was also in overall charge of this mission, and was using a pencil torch to examine a high-definition satellite photograph of their objective. It was force of habit rather than any particular need – the eight SAS men had studied all the available maps and photographs when they’d been given their briefing back at Hereford, and they’d had plenty of time to remind themselves of the route and terrain during the flight south to Morocco. But Dekker was a professional, and professionals check everything repeatedly.
The last time Richter had worked with the Special Air Service had been in France, with appalling penalties for failure. This operation, in contrast, was low-risk and relatively straightforward. As the briefing officer – a lanky bespectacled desk jockey from Vauxhall Cross – had put it: ‘Fly in, take a look and fly out. A piece of piss.’
It had sounded so easy in the Hereford briefing room, but both Richter and Dekker knew – from intimate personal experience – that the simplest operation could, and frequently did, turn to rat-shit in the blink of an eye. So Dekker was checking the photograph again, looking for anything they might previously have missed.
The pilot hadn’t been kidding about the flight. Richter didn’t know if it was heat rising from the desert or wind shear or something else, but the Hercules was bouncing violently as it tracked east. And the hard turns the pilot kept making didn’t help either. For obvious reasons, the route into Algeria had been carefully plotted to bypass all military establishments, and even every settlement the satellites had identified, while simultaneously having to stay at low level to keep below radar cover. The result was a flight path like the meanderings of a drunken snake, the pilot barely ever able to fly straight and level, but twisting constantly to avoid one potential hazard or another.
‘I’m going up-front,’ said Richter, leaning across to Dekker, who nodded that he’d understood.
Richter unbuckled his seatbelt, stood up and inched his way forward. There was no need, operationally or otherwise, for him to visit the cockpit, but the truth was that, like many qualified pilots, he was a lousy passenger. He knew the two men in the driving seats had been picked from the cream of the Royal Air Force for the Special Forces Flight, but he’d still rather be flying the aircraft himself.
He pulled open the cockpit door, surprised as before at how spacious the Hercules’ flight deck was, and how quiet it was compared to the noise at the rear. The co-pilot, a senior flight lieutenant, glanced back to acknowledge him, but the pilot didn’t take his gaze away from the view through the cockpit windows, as he pulled the Hercules into yet another turn to starboard.
‘Problem?’ Adam Johnson asked.
‘No,’ Richter shook his head. ‘I just felt like a change of scene. It’s not a lot of fun back there. Where are we just now?’
The co-pilot pointed to the screen of the navigation computer on the console located between the two seats. ‘Right here. We’re about forty-five minutes from Ain Oussera flying in a straight line, or around ninety minutes on our selected route.’
Richter gazed through the windscreen at the terrain a bare two hundred feet below them. The moon was low in the eastern sky but illuminated the landscape reasonably well, and what he could see of it didn’t look inviting. The word ‘desert’ tends to conjure up images of golden sand dunes extending in gentle waves to a cloudless blue horizon, but the Algerian desert was very different. It was fairly flat, which was the good news, but the ground was studded with rocks that cast long shadows in the moonlight. It looked like the kind of surface where Richter would have thought twice about landing a helicopter, far less a seventy-ton fixed-wing aircraft, even one optimized for rough-ground operations.
‘Are you going to be able to land safely on that crap?’ he asked.
‘On that, no,’ Johnson replied, ‘but the area the eyes in the sky have located for us is fairly clear of rocks. We’ll do a pass over it first, just to check, and if it looks OK we’ll put the Herc down.’
‘And if it isn’t?’
‘We’ll opt for Plan B, head on to the second landing area, and try there. It’ll mean a longer drive for you and
