James Barrington - Foxbat

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.

Pyongyang, North Korea

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 so-ryong was telling him.

‘We think it might be an attempt to land an agent, sir.’

‘Where, exactly, so-ryong ?’ Pak was now fully awake.

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 ?’

‘There’s a lot you don’t understand about this situation, so-ryong . I know exactly why they landed their man where they did, and I know where he’s currently heading.’

Aïn Oussera Air Base, Algeria

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, he reckoned, be a big enough gap for him to climb through.

He checked his equipment to make sure everything was properly attached, then seized the sides of the opening he’d created, and pulled himself up. He wriggled through the gap and lay flat on the roof, checking all around him before moving on.

At that moment Colin Dekker was still looking in the wrong place, at the nearer edge of the roof, but he now spotted Richter within seconds of him emerging. He nudged Wallace and gestured towards the hangar.

‘Alpha and Bravo, look sharp,’ he said into his microphone. ‘Spook’s just climbed onto the roof. Let me know if any of the guards spot him.’

Beside him, Wallace trained his sniper rifle on the roof of the hangar, pinpointed Richter through the scope, then dropped the muzzle of the weapon so that it would cover the sentries on the ground.

‘Spook. I’m moving forward towards the gantry,’ Richter said softly. He was confident that the roof would take his weight – having seen the immensely strong steel skeleton supporting it – and now his biggest concern was to avoid making any noise.

He stayed in a crouch, just in case any of the guards looked up: the sight of a man standing upright on top of the hangar in the moonlight would bring an instant burst of fire from the ground. Not only would he be less noticeable on all fours, but it would also enable him to spread his weight more evenly on the rooftop.

The panel he’d forced open was close to the front of the hangar, so it took only a couple of minutes, even moving slowly and with the greatest care, for him to reach the lighting gantry. From the satellite pictures, the structure had looked fairly substantial, but Richter guessed that at least some of its apparent width was actually shadow, because when he stopped directly above the main doors and looked down, the gantry seemed incredibly narrow.

He glanced over the edge of the high building, looking straight down. The guard was visible below, leaning back against the main entrance doors, a cigarette burning in his mouth, and his rifle slung over one shoulder. The advantage for Richter was that human beings are very limited in their normal field of view: most regard the world at eye level and below, and rarely bother looking up. The bad news is that people in some occupations, pilots and professional soldiers in particular, are trained to look up, and if the guard below did so while Richter was crossing the gantry over to the adjacent hangar, he’d be a sitting duck.

Stepping back from the edge, Richter murmured into his microphone. ‘Spook. I’m starting across now.’

‘Alpha One. Roger that.’

The gantry wasn’t going to get any wider however long he hesitated, so Richter took a deep breath and lowered himself onto it. He deliberately ignored the guard below, and also the two sentries standing in front of the target hangar, because clearly there was nothing he could do about them. If any of them spotted him, the first he’d know about it would be a bullet. He concentrated on moving steadily and silently, taking care not to kick against anything – a floodlight or the gantry itself – or trip over the cables, and focused, instead, on getting to the far end.