Immediately the door swung open and he stepped inside the hangar. Quickly he pushed the door closed behind him, the latch clicking back into place.
‘You can relax, Dave,’ Dekker murmured into his headset microphone, after he watched Richter disappear. ‘He’s inside now.’
Beside him, Wallace eased the sniper rifle off his shoulder and rested the butt on the ground, while the front of the weapon was still supported on its bipod. ‘Just remind me, boss. How’s he going to get himself into the right hangar?’
Dekker still didn’t take his eyes off the scene in front of him. ‘He’s got a plan – but it all depends on what he finds in there.’
Inside the hangar, three hundred yards away, Richter was beginning to hope that he hadn’t wasted his time. In the light from his torch he could see three aircraft: two MiG-25PDS, the up-rated export model of the Foxbat interceptor; and a two-seat trainer, the MiG-25U, probably belonging to the 110th Escadron de Chasse, if the Six briefing officer had got it right. But Richter had no interest in the fighters: he was looking for something much smaller.
The thing about hangars is that they’re very large and tall, designed to accommodate one or more aircraft while they’re undergoing maintenance, and to facilitate this work they need banks of powerful lights mounted high up. Since lights periodically need their bulbs replacing, what Richter was looking for was the cherry-picker hoist, or whatever the Algerians used to do this. What he was hoping now was that they kept one in each hangar, rather than rely on a single hoist shared between them.
Then he saw it, tucked back against one wall: a standard electric-powered cherry-picker with controls in the cradle itself. The only problem was that it probably didn’t have the height for him to reach the very top of the building, but that wouldn’t matter. Up there, Richter could see a latticework of girders supporting the gently curved roof of the hangar and knew that if he could at least reach the top of one of the steel side-pillars, he could climb up the rest of the way. So as long as he was quiet, the guard outside shouldn’t hear anything, but if the cherry- picker was fitted with a petrol engine, he’d just have to do it the hard way.
Moving the contraption was an unnecessary risk, so Richter left it in position, climbed into its cradle, and ran the beam of his torch over the controls. Fortunately, they looked simple enough. He flicked on the master switch, shifted the joystick lever forward, and the cradle began to move upwards and, to his relief, almost silently. As he neared the top of the side-pillar, he adjusted the elevation angle slightly so that the cradle stopped, virtually at its upper limit, right beside one end of a steel rafter.
Shining his torch across the underside of the roof, he observed that its structure was strong and simple. The main support was a single central steel beam running all the way from the front to the back of the hangar, with about a dozen girders positioned like ribs on either side of it, and additional longitudinal supports to carry the roof panels.
He calculated it would necessitate a fifty-foot climb – at about a fifteen-degree upward angle all the way, and hanging upside down underneath the rafter, in order to reach the central supporting span.
Richter secured a webbing strap to the harness he had already strapped around his torso, looped it over the rafter and clipped it to the D-ring. That would now be his safety line. Then he pulled on a pair of custom-made leather gloves with yellow mesh webbing on the palms and fingers, designed to provide the maximum possible grip, checked that all his equipment was secure, grasped the rafter with both hands and swung his feet up, digging his heels into the recessed sides of the steel beam.
Immediately he could feel the strain on his arms and legs, and knew he had to get this climb over with as quickly as possible. He reached out with his left hand, grasped the central beam, about six inches beyond his head, and repeated the manoeuvre with his right hand. Then he slid his feet along the beam in the same direction. It was slow, hard work, but every time he completed these three movements, he was another foot closer to his objective.
And, he consoled himself, coming back it would be downhill all the way.
Almost in the centre of the city of Pyongyang stood a plain six-storey concrete building. Like most of the other structures in the vicinity, it carried no sign or logo to enlighten the curious about what activity might be carried on inside it. Here, as elsewhere in North Korea, curiosity was not encouraged, and anyone considering just walking in would get little further than the double doors of the entrance. The armed guards posted there would guarantee that.
This was the headquarters of Central Committee Bureau 39, a deliberately innocuous title obscuring the fact that the organization was the hub of North Korea’s government-sponsored drug production and smuggling network. The building now appeared almost deserted, lights burning only in the entrance hall, and in the one office currently occupied.
After Pak Je-San’s proposal had been accepted, he’d worked with Kim Yong-Su – not an enjoyable experience – in putting a number of procedures in place to ensure that all details of their operation remained totally secret. Approving his suggestions, Kim had then issued instructions to the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Those orders, in turn, had filtered down through the various levels of command, their content becoming progressively less informative as they descended, until at the very bottom level every troop commander and radar officer had received little more than the briefest possible instructions and a telephone number.
But that was enough. The call from the radar-watch supervisor at Pyoksong reached the switchboard at Bureau 39 headquarters, and was automatically diverted to Pak’s phone because tonight, not unusually, he was sleeping in his office.
The call had awoken him from a deep slumber, and on answering it he was somewhat confused. He hadn’t expected to be disturbed, but if anyone was going to call him, it was likely to be someone from Russia. So it took him a few seconds to grasp what the
‘We think it might be an attempt to land an agent, sir.’
‘Where, exactly,
The major carefully explained where they’d lost contact with the radar return, some three kilometres off the coast.
‘Projecting the track, sir, we think the vessel must have made landfall somewhere to the south of Suri- bong.’ He started to say something else, then broke off with a muttered apology as something distracted his attention. In a few seconds he resumed his report. ‘I’ve just been advised by one of my staff that the contact has reappeared on radar, and is now heading south-west. We believe it’s a small powerboat, and that it’s currently returning to its parent vessel.’
‘Which is what?’ Pak asked. ‘A submarine?’
‘Not likely so close inshore, sir, and we’ve already provisionally identified the larger vessel as a fishing boat with South Korean registry. It’s sailed out of Inchon on the same route about a dozen times over the last month, and our patrol boats have already checked it twice. We could intercept it before it gets back to Inchon.’
‘No, that vessel is unimportant. Even if we did stop it, we would find nothing of interest on board, and our action would just warn Seoul that we know what they’re up to. We must forget the fishing boat and concentrate on finding the man they’ve dropped off.’
‘I don’t understand. Why would they infiltrate a spy
‘There’s a lot you don’t understand about this situation,
Richter reached the steel centre span of the hangar and swung himself up onto it. There was just enough space between the beam and the roof panels to allow him to crouch down. His arms and legs were trembling from the strain of the climb, and he needed a few seconds’ respite before tackling the next phase.
He looped his safety strap around the beam, out of the way, then tested the roof with his gloved hand: it was made from corrugated iron panels. Taking the collapsible jemmy from his pocket, he extended it and eased the point between two of these panels and pulled gently. With a faint creak, the lower one gave slightly. He repositioned the tool and applied pressure again, and this time it lifted far enough for him to see the sky. It would,
