The Midas Legacy (Wilde/Chase 12) (41 page)

This one was not yet ready to leave its birthplace. But it had siblings that were.

Parked at the line’s end were three enormous trucks, Chinese lumber transporters adapted for military purposes to avoid the arms embargo. Each vehicle had sixteen wheels, spreading the weight of a hefty hydraulic lifting system designed to raise its cargo from its horizontal bed to the vertical. They were TELs – transporter erector launchers, built to ferry ballistic missiles by road and fire them without the need for expensive and easily targeted silos.

And these were loaded. Each TEL bore a missile. ‘Shit,’ said Eddie as he stared at the weapons. ‘Those are ICBMs!’

Kang stopped, his subordinates all following suit. ‘You know our weapons?’ he asked with evident suspicion.

‘Call it a hobby,’ the Englishman replied with what he hoped was a disarming smile. He decided not to mention that his knowledge of missiles came largely from SAS briefings, where he had been taught to identify the weapons of hostile powers for the purposes of sabotage. ‘That looks like a modified Scud first stage with a copy of a Russian sub-launched missile on top of it. Just a guess, mind.’ He smiled again.

Kang’s scowl confirmed he was probably right, but the North Korean was not about to admit that his country was reliant upon second-hand designs. ‘You guess wrong. That is
our
latest missile, the Hwasong-15.’

Eddie shrugged. ‘I’ll update Wikipedia.’

Nina had noticed something about the missiles – not just the ones still under construction, but the completed articles on the TELs. Or rather, the
incomplete
articles. The tapered nosecones were abruptly truncated at the tip, looking like empty bullet casings. ‘They’re missing something.’

Eddie had spotted it too. ‘Yeah, looks like you haven’t put the warheads on ’em yet.’

Kang’s small smile was both unexpected and alarming. ‘They will soon be ready. Now come.’ He set off again, his men falling in behind him. Nina and Eddie exchanged concerned glances, then followed.

They continued around to the far side of the blockhouse, seeing more of the colossal space. Across the cavern were ranks of huge cylindrical tanks marked with red warning symbols; the missiles could be fuelled for launch before being loaded on to the TELs. The group’s destination was closer by, however. A large opening in the floor housed a trio of elevator tracks that descended deeper into the bowels of the mountain. A chain-link fence was the only barrier around the gaping chasm, the two waiting elevator cars open-topped cages with folding metal gates. ‘I guess North Korea isn’t big on workplace safety,’ Nina muttered.

A soldier hurried ahead of the two officers to open the gates of one car. Kang and Bok entered, the translator gesturing for Eddie and Nina to join them. A couple of the other troops followed them in, the remaining soldiers entering the second car.

The elevator was manually operated, the first soldier closing the gates and going to a control board to take hold of a large brass lever. He pulled it, and the car began its lumbering descent, the cables shrilling alarmingly. The second car followed on the parallel track. A stifling breeze gusted up from below, the shaft providing ventilation as well as access.

Rough rock walls slid past, opening out some eighty feet below to reveal another subterranean floor. This was not as large as the first, though still cavernous in its own right. More production lines were at work, some producing the microlight aircraft they had seen above, others an assortment of heavy weapons. Facility 17 was operating at full tilt to build up the North Korean war machine.

Bok saw Nina’s trepidation. ‘Impressive, yes?’

‘Seen bigger,’ Eddie replied, dismissively and truthfully.

The major smiled with all the charm of a rattlesnake. ‘But we have a lot more to show you.’

Nina’s worry grew stronger still. North Korea was revealing its military secrets to two foreigners – one of whom was a citizen of its most hated enemy. Even if they believed she was purely motivated by financial greed, it seemed unlikely that such a show would be given without consequences.

A new floor rolled by, markedly smaller, with several tunnels leading out of the main space. It was home to another assembly line, but this was not currently in operation, the machinery covered by dust sheets. There was still plenty of activity going on out of sight, however: an endless clinking and hammering of tools on stone. Down one of the tunnels she glimpsed a conveyor belt carrying stones towards the cargo elevator she had seen earlier. The rubble dumped in the forest was excavated from here – by hand, there being no noise from drills or jackhammers. Nina didn’t even want to imagine how many unfortunates were being forced to expand the underground base.

But her own concerns quickly returned as the lowest level came into view below. The air was now unpleasantly hot, banks of whirling fans at the shaft’s foot forcing it upwards. Whatever was going on was producing a lot of waste heat.

The car stopped. The other elevator arrived alongside it and everyone filed out. The three Kims, larger than life, watched them beatifically from a wall.

Kang waited for the group to assemble before leading the way through a set of double doors. Beyond was a short corridor. He exchanged words with a man in a captain’s uniform, then nodded and dismissed him. The young officer disappeared into a side room occupied by several other soldiers. The colonel continued on to the end of the passage, where a pair of metal sliding doors emblazoned with strident warnings in Korean blocked the way. He swiped a keycard through a reader and the barrier rumbled open. ‘In here,’ he said.

Nina and Eddie followed him into a large, softly lit control room. It resembled that of a power station, banks of monitoring equipment lining the walls and large boards covered with indicator lights showing the status of numerous systems. The hardware’s styling was dated, the moulded plastic panelling straight out of the 1970s, but a cluster of flat-screen monitors and a brace of laptops showed that at least some of the systems were up to date. Several technicians in white coats stood and bowed respectfully to the facility’s commander. Behind them, a bank of windows overlooked a large subterranean chamber, though from where she stood, Nina couldn’t see what lay below.

Kang spoke to a senior technician, then faced the Westerners. Bok stood beside him with an air of malevolent anticipation. The soldiers spread out behind Nina and Eddie, blocking the exit. ‘All right,’ said Eddie, ‘what’s all this?’

‘We’ve brought you the Crucible, just as we promised,’ Nina said, trying to sound confident. ‘So you can keep to your side of the bargain and give us our money.’

‘There will not be any money, Nina,’ said a new voice. ‘Not for you.’

Eddie and Nina whirled – to see Fenrir Mikkelsson entering the control room. The soldiers’ guns snapped up, all aimed at the couple.

‘I think,’ said Eddie as he took in the line of weapons, ‘this definitely qualifies for a “buggeration and fuckery”.’

‘
I
think,’ Nina replied, ‘that’s a fucking understatement.’

38

Mikkelsson strode triumphantly to Nina and Eddie. Sarah and De Klerx appeared behind him. ‘You were not expecting me to be here,’ said the Icelander. ‘You thought I had flown on to China, yes?’

‘Something like that,’ Nina replied. ‘I can’t imagine there are many places to spend ninety million dollars in North Korea.’

‘The gold will become far more valuable soon. I stayed here because I suspected you had survived to inform the United Nations and the IAEA what I had done. Since that meant they would be looking for me, remaining in the one place they cannot search was very much to my benefit. Did Olivia also survive, by the way?’

‘She did.’

‘What a shame.’

Sarah whispered something to him. She was pale and drawn, eyes red-rimmed with dark shadows beneath. ‘Yes, soon,’ her husband said with dismissive impatience, before addressing Eddie and Nina again. ‘Another reason I chose to remain here was because there was a high probability you would approach my hosts with some foolhardy proposal to sell them the second Crucible as a ruse to recover the first.’

‘You think we came here as a
ruse
?’

He smirked. ‘Come now. I imagine Howard MacNeer played upon your patriotism and your desire to save the world yet again. He is as predictable as he is dull-minded. No doubt he had Oswald to support him. Poor Oswald, I shall miss him. A good friend, but he was always a diligent follower of policy, never a man with the determination to make it.’

‘We came here of our own accord,’ Nina insisted.

Mikkelsson turned his gaze to what she held in her hand. ‘The Crucible. I assume there is a tracking device artfully hidden in the case? But I doubt it will be able to transmit through a hundred metres of solid rock.’ He took it from her and placed it carefully upon a desk.

Nina decided to play out her deception for as long as possible. ‘There’s nothing in it but the Crucible. We came here to sell it to someone who could actually make use of it.’

‘Thanks for letting us know they were interested, by the way,’ Eddie added.

‘If you can profit from it,’ Nina went on, ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t too.’

Mikkelsson’s response was a mocking shake of the head. ‘Oh, Nina. You are not a good actress – I imagine that is why the producers of your movie did not ask you to play yourself. After all those times you insisted that you would not take your seat in the Legacy because you did not want money, you did not
need
money . . . now you expect me to believe that you have turned mercenary overnight?’ He tutted. ‘Even your husband, whom I know used to
be
a mercenary, could not have convinced me. He is too much of a white knight. And giving North Korea the power to build an unlimited number of hydrogen bombs would not be the act of such a man.’

‘So what kind of man does that make you?’ Nina demanded.

‘A man who sees through the hypocrisy of the United States, and its puppets at the United Nations,’ he replied. ‘The longer I worked for the IAEA, the more I realised that I was being used. The assertion that nuclear weapons are a destabilising force is a myth, a lie. The US works tirelessly to prevent others from developing what it already has, in numbers sufficient to wipe out the population of the world several times over. It is not interested in peace, only in preserving its own hegemony.’

‘So letting a bunch of nuts like North Korea have nukes is
good
for world peace?’ asked Eddie sarcastically. ‘No offence,’ he added to Kang and Bok. ‘But you’re pointing guns at me, so I reckon that entitles me to gob off.’

‘They provide security,’ said Mikkelsson. ‘The threat of mutually assured destruction kept the peace for fifty years.’

‘Except for, y’know, little things like the Korean War,’ Nina pointed out. ‘The Vietnam War, the Gulf War . . .’

‘Precisely! Small wars, proxy wars, held in check by the Soviet Union and its own arsenal. The global balance of terror was maintained. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, America believed it had the power to act unchecked. And look at the result! An arrogant giant could stamp freely all over the world – until it stepped on a wasps’ nest and was stung. Then, in its blind pain and rage, it caused more damage and chaos than its enemies could ever have wished. New tyrants rose, freedoms were destroyed, countless innocents died, because there was no deterrent. But this’ – he gestured at whatever was beyond the windows – ‘will bring back that deterrent.’

‘And what
is
this?’ said Eddie. ‘It’s pretty retro. Looks like we’re on the set of
Space: 1999
.’

Bewilderment from the Koreans, but Mikkelsson gestured for Nina and Eddie to join him at the windows. Warily, they did so, the soldiers’ guns tracking them. ‘This is North Korea’s newest and largest particle accelerator,’ he proclaimed.
Circular tunnels led out of each side of the large chamber below. Running through them was a thick tube of polished metal, its slight curvature hinting that it formed a loop several hundred metres in diameter. The accelerator was supported by a series of heavy-duty braces almost buried amongst a dense tangle of pipework and wiring: housings for the powerful electromagnets used to guide the particle beams.

Protruding from the accelerator directly before the control room was a set of heavy hinged panels, opened and closed by hydraulic pistons. They were currently in the former position, revealing that the accelerator passed through the shielded box. A large metal framework was mounted on tracks so it could be rolled towards the metal tube – which split into two, one branch continuing uninterrupted while the other had a gap in it. That surprised Nina, whose research had told her the particle beams needed to be contained in a vacuum to be brought almost to the speed of light.

A partial explanation came when she saw what was inside the framework.

The Crucible.

The larger of the two crystal spheres squatted within a high-tech copy of the cage that had formerly held it. The whole arrangement, particle accelerator and all, was nothing less than a man-made version of the natural nuclear reactor high in the Himalayas; once the accelerator was running at full power, the Crucible – containing uranium rather than mercury – would be slid into the beam’s path to trigger the transmutation process. Nature was being duplicated in steel and concrete.

Mikkelsson could tell that she had understood its purpose. ‘Yes, they have replicated the Midas Cave.’

‘How’d they do it so fast?’ Eddie asked. ‘You only just gave them the bloody thing!’

The Icelander chuckled. ‘Did you think I make everything up as I go, like you? I have planned this for some time. The accelerator had already been built; the Koreans intended to use it to transmute uranium to plutonium, ironically enough. But the Crucible will let them do so far more quickly and efficiently. I told them the principles after the discovery of the Secret Codex provided a way to find the Midas Cave. I intended to use my security clearance and friendship with Oswald to read the IHA’s files with the intent of locating the cave myself, but you, Nina, saved me the trouble. Once you described the Crucible in detail, I quickly designed an articulation frame to hold it. They have done a very good job of modifying the accelerator to accept it. It works perfectly.’

It took a moment for the full import of his words to sink in. ‘It’s already
working
?’ said Nina, shocked.

‘You are just in time for a demonstration,’ Mikkelsson replied.

Kang straightened proudly. ‘We have plutonium for two warheads. Now we make three.’

‘Uh-oh,’ muttered Eddie. ‘I just remembered how many warheadless missiles they’ve got parked upstairs.’

Kang issued an order. The technicians went to their stations, two scurrying down a flight of steps to a lower level. A series of confirmations as instruments and readouts were checked, then the lead technician, with a degree of ceremony, pressed a switch. The lights flickered and a low thrumming sound echoed up from the chamber below, rising gradually in pitch and volume.

‘The accelerator is building up power,’ said Mikkelsson, peering at the monitors. ‘When it reaches four teraelectronvolts, the particle beam will be redirected from the main loop down the branch’ – he pointed at the tube with the gap – ‘and into the Crucible. Once the intensity is high enough to trigger a neutron burst, the uranium will be transmuted into plutonium.’

Eddie eyed the system. ‘Should I have brought my lead-lined underpants?’

‘The panels form a radiation shield. After the uranium sphere is in position, the shield will be closed. We are quite safe.’ As he spoke, the two technicians came into view below. They were pushing a trolley, on which sat an orange-sized sphere of a dull grey metal. Despite its small dimensions, it was obvious from the men’s movements that it was extremely heavy. ‘Uranium-238,’ Mikkelsson went on. ‘In itself, useless as nuclear fuel or for nuclear weapons. But it can be converted into plutonium-239. By normal means it would contain a large number of undesirable contaminants, such as plutonium-240.’

‘Which can’t be used to make a bomb, I’m assuming,’ said Nina.

‘Correct. At least not at the Koreans’ current level of development. Plutonium-240 emits a great deal of harmful neutron radiation, with a high risk of a fizzled detonation, or even a premature one.’

‘Premature detonation’s a big problem for some men,’ Eddie quipped.

The Icelander ignored him. ‘But the Crucible achieves an almost total conversion of uranium-238 to supergrade plutonium-239, with practically no impurities. The ancient Atlanteans had the key to literally limitless power, but not the knowledge to use it. Now we have both.’

The technicians used a small crane arm to lift the sphere off the trolley and carefully lower it into the Crucible. Once it was in place, they quickly retreated. The sound of the particle accelerator had now risen to a shrill whine. A large digital readout in the control room was climbing with increasing speed; Nina didn’t know what it was displaying, but some of the staff were paying it close attention.

The lead technician gave a command. One of the operators pulled a lever, and the panels of the radiation shield edged shut, sealing in the Crucible with a flat bang. Another noise could be heard over the accelerator: a deep rumble of vacuum pumps.

The readout was rapidly approaching five thousand. A technician adjusted a dial, the rate of increase slowing slightly. The man in charge raised a hand, saying something in Korean that the visitors could only interpret as ‘Get ready . . .’

Five thousand – and the lights went out, plunging the room into a darkness broken only by the dim glow of the instruments. The technician barked an order. Another man worked a control. There was the clack of a heavy-duty circuit closing, and the room returned to full illumination. ‘Think you need to fix your fuse box,’ said Eddie.

‘They have switched in the second-stage power,’ Mikkelsson explained. ‘The accelerator is now at its maximum output. The liquid nitrogen cooling system has been brought to full capacity to stop the electromagnets from melting.’

The readings kept rising, the accelerator’s pulsing whine becoming a shriek. Tension was clear on the technicians’ faces as the seconds passed, then minutes. Nina imagined that if something went wrong with the process, the glowering Kang would hold them personally responsible for the failure.

The head technician bent over one of the displays, watching it unblinkingly. He began what sounded like a countdown. The Koreans all held their breath—

A strident buzzer made Nina jump. There was a rush of activity around the room as the techs rapidly worked the controls. The digital readout, which had just topped a figure of twelve thousand, plunged back towards zero as the electrical wail died down.

‘That’s it?’ Eddie asked, moving his cupped hands from his crotch.

‘It is,’ Mikkelsson confirmed. ‘That was the neutron burst.’ He looked over the shoulder of one of the white-coated Koreans at a screen, nodding in approval. ‘I believe the process has been successful. But we shall soon see for ourselves.’

A loud hiss of air came from below as the vacuum inside the radiation shield was breached. The panels opened, a vaporous cloud wafting out. The lead technician’s gaze snapped to a red-painted box on one wall, a radiation warning trefoil stencilled on frosted glass, but it remained unlit. He gave more instructions, his men completing the accelerator’s shutdown procedures while the two who had loaded the Crucible returned to extract its contents. The crane arm descended again, slowly lifting out the sphere.

‘It’s changed,’ said Nina. It was still dark grey, but subtly different in lustre.

‘Pure plutonium-239,’ said Mikkelsson, watching as one of the men ran a Geiger counter over it. The readings were to his satisfaction, and relief. ‘The uranium-238 was cast so it could be fitted straight into an already manufactured warhead after conversion. The North Koreans have a stockpile of such warheads based on proven Soviet designs, simply waiting for their nuclear cores.’

‘And I thought it was
South
Korea that was supposed to be super-efficient,’ Eddie said. ‘So that’s the plan, is it? Crank out a load of nukes, then tell the world, “Better not fuck with us”?’

‘These warheads are not for North Korea,’ Mikkelsson replied. ‘Not the first ones, at least.’

‘Then who?’ asked Nina, surprised.

Kang answered her question. ‘Saudi Arabia.’

That brought a splutter of disbelief from Eddie. ‘What?’ said Nina. ‘
Saudi Arabia?
What the hell does Saudi Arabia want with nukes?’

‘The balance of terror,’ said Mikkelsson. ‘The Saudis want to strengthen their hand against Iran, and Israel. Nuclear weapons will give them that strength. The United States has refused to grant the Saudis access to nuclear technology because of the threat to Israel, but North Korea is willing to supply it in exchange for hard currency – and more importantly, oil.’

‘The Israelis’ll go fucking apeshit!’ Eddie protested. ‘They’ve got nukes of their own, and there are plenty of Israeli politicians who’ve been itching for an excuse to use ’em.’