Darke Mission (10 page)

“We still have a problem though,” Harris pointed out. “The MAKO makes a noise and though it's kind of mini-stealth it's not invisible. We can't get close to the Borei in that, in fact, we can't cross the exclusion zone perimeter in it.”

Mark O'Neill nodded.

“We're going to have to use the dinghies,” said Harris, using the popular term for the F470s.

“Most of it works,” commented O'Neill. “The two we have on the ship can easily carry the nine of us. They're compact when stowed, easily inflated in under two minutes and can handle high seas. It doesn't have any weapons but we'll all be armed anyway so that's OK. Its maximum payload is 1,250kg, so four/five in each, indeed maybe even all nine of us in one works,” elaborated the Commander. “The problem is the speed of the dinghy and the distance we need to travel. If the
Zumwalt
drops us 100km off the west coast then we may be able to go another 40 km or so closer in the MAKO. The
Zumwalt
has the lockout chamber needed to put us silently in the sea. That still leaves us 60km offshore, or about 37 miles. If the sea's calm enough and with our calculated payload, the F470s can manage a surface speed of around 18 knots or 21 mph. It'll need to be at night time, so possibly somewhat less.”

“That means we'd be in those little rubbery fuckers for about two hours,” highlighted Evan Harris, proud of his sharp calculation, but concerned for his 5ft 11in, 85kg frame.

“It does indeed,” said O'Neill having mentally checked the arithmetic, “but we don't have any other choice, buddy.”

* * *

Commodore Woo-Jin Park and Commander Kun-Woo Moon of the Korean People's Navy had different logistics on their minds. The Commodore knew that around 110 of the KPN's finest were going to descend on Haeju in a couple of days. The naval base did have accommodation quarters but only to a decent maximum of around forty. Commodore Park had already commissioned the building of temporary accommodation but as these had to be assembled in a hurry they were of the pre-fabricated Portakabin variety. This would be acceptable for one or two nights for the bulk of enlisted men, but the officers would need to be housed in Haeju City. In total, this would be around thirty personnel except for Commander Moon whom Park had invited to stay at his house. Suitably spread across the Haeju hotel and local guest houses this number of naval officers would not arouse any special interest among the local population. They were so used to naval comings and goings in the city that not an eyebrow would be raised. In North Korean society anyway, eyebrow raising and ear-pricking were not recommended, if you valued your freedom, limited as it was.

Commander Kun-Woo Moon was based in Rason, a major naval operating and training centre on the East Coast. He was around thirty-eight years old, 5ft 10in and well known to Vice Admiral Goh. He was ambitious and he was also competent and had no black marks on his record. Moon had served aboard several of the KPN's submarine fleet including the Sang-O class and the midget Yono class. He was Goh's selection to oversee the logistics of crew assembly for the Borei submarine. This was no simple task. The crew had been carefully selected by the Vice Admiral and Lieutenant Commander Gok Han-Jik. Moon had not been party to the details of the mission at hand, Goh and Gok gave very little away. However, pure deduction from the sheer numbers and some of the specialities requested of the crew led Moon to believe that an important submarine mission was underway. Further, deduced Moon, the crew he had been asked to assemble and transport to Haeju was way in excess of that needed for the KPN's flagship Sang-O II class sub. Something was afoot. He didn't ask questions of Goh and Gok, but he would find out, he told himself.

His immediate orders, however, were to get the requested submariners to Haeju. He had located the whereabouts of all of his targets and their collection and transportation were both in hand. Commodore Park of the Haeju Naval Yard had been most helpful regarding accommodation, especially his kind offer to house him in the Commodore's private quarters. Yes, thought Moon, I'll have everybody there by my 24
^th
March deadline. Then I'll find out what all the fuss is about.

* * *

NGA Officers Reynolds and Eagles had settled in quickly to their embedded positions at the CIA's premises in downtown Seoul. This was one buzzing city with a population of over 11 million or 26 million if you include the entire metropolitan area. They were located in the Gangnam district, made globally famous by the singer Psy's ‘Gangnam Style', a year or so back. Stylish it was, with its cool shops, heaving clubs, healthy food restaurants and expensive schools. If they had been normal single twenty-five year old women they'd be having a whale of a time. They weren't. They were NGA officers on a top secret mission and guests of the local CIA Chief, or Korean Liaison Officer to give Jim Bradbury his official title. The external façade of the offices fitted in perfectly with the district, all big windows, mood lighting, vibrant décor. Nominally, a tailored travel agent for the privileged, PAU Travel it was called, Personal And Unique. They were located not far from Gangnam station, did a reasonably healthy business in travel arrangements for the locals and generally did not attract unwanted visitors.

Jim Bradbury had been the KLO for over three years. He was a career CIA officer, spoke Korean fluently and so far had no reason to use his specialist CIA combat training or wet work skills. He had been instructed by no less than Fred Goss, the Director of Central Intelligence, to give Reynolds and Eagles every assistance. Bradbury did not know the details of why the NGA ladies were there but they were set up in a secure room near the back of the PAU shop, and had a fully kitted out listening post and high level computer systems in with them. He was smart enough to know they'd be listening to North Korean electronically transmitted traffic but it had to be more than that as that task was down to his team already in situ.

Jim Bradbury was pleasant enough. Nearly 6ft tall, forty years old, thinning blond hair with an unfortunate widow's peak. He hailed from Phoenix, Arizona and had not lost much of the local drawl.

“Good morning,” he greeted politely, if not warmly, Reynolds and Eagles.

“Hi Jim,” they responded. They'd acclimatised to the somewhat humid weather and had the night before eaten Korean at a swish restaurant close to the Bongea Temple. Eagles was quite impressed by Reynolds' ability to order in Korean, though some rustiness must have set in, as they got cold peas, not warm cauliflower, with their dinner. After the pleasantries, Eagles and Reynolds got hunkered down in their room. It may have looked like the officers had a big slice of the National Security Agency's $40 million a year electricity bill solely for eavesdropping, but in truth, they had a lot less. The room was set up to intercept emails, phone calls, internet messaging, and any relevant communication along the electromagnetic spectrum. In addition, the NGA officers had been given specially augmented laptops that could download and manipulate satellite images from the CIA's KH-12 satellite in the sky.

The KH-12's predecessor, the KH-11, was the first reconnaissance satellite which had a resolution of 800 x 800 pixels. It was a K-11 image, so clear, that it allowed ultimate precision bombing of the Zhawar Kili compound in Afghanistan. This camp hosted Taliban and al-Qaeda personnel. The picture was impressively detailed. It allowed Richard Beck, a geologist at the University of Connecticut, to inform the US Department of Defense that he could identify the rocks in the background of a bin Laden propaganda tape in 2001. The images over North Korea being studied by Reynolds and Eagles were even clearer. The satellite images, although real time, were not continuous. The K-11 and K-12 satellites are in sun synchronous orbits, on two planes. Shadows help define ground features so western plane satellites photograph the ground in the morning hours and eastern planes observe the ground in afternoon hours. The images of North Korea presently being studied by Eagles and Reynolds were from the morning of 22
^nd
March. They knew that Commander O'Neill and his team on
USS Zumwalt
were still a couple of days away from the Gulf of West Korea, but the point of no return for Operation Philidor Defence was looming and they needed to be on their mettle.

“What do you think, Danni?” asked Carolyn studying the area around the KPN's east coast fleet near Wonsan.

Dannielle Eagles looked closer and then looked again. “There seems to be more largish vehicles in this image than the one we looked at yesterday, especially around the naval complex, just here,” pointed out Dannielle.

“Yeah, I see it,” said Carolyn chewing on some Double Red gum that she'd picked up from a local supermarket. “Do you think they're crewing up for the Borei? We know they couldn't possibly man it solely with the seamen on the west coast, not enough of them with the required skill set.”

“Could be,” said Dannielle. “The images shot around Haeju at the same time did not reveal much more activity than the previous day. There are three big trucks with trailers in the yard, but no significant increase in daily traffic. There's some construction going on, but that's it.”

“The trucks are probably carrying the Bulava SLBMs, Danni, so we will need to let Kermit know that by the time he gets there the Borei will likely be fully weaponised.”

Dannielle nodded and set about sending Commander O'Neill a high level encrypted message with that information.

“Do you know what bothers me, though, when I look at today's image of the Haeju base?” said Carolyn with a suitably quizzical look on her face.

“What?” asked Dannielle.

“These images are as sharp as a rapier's point. I mean pixilation of 1,000 x 1,000 are the bee's knees, the dog's bollocks, and the—”

“I get the picture,” interrupted Dannielle, keen to hear what was troubling her friend.

“Well, the outline of the Borei is less sharp now than when we first spotted it in Springfield, and it's less sharp than the first image we received when we set up here. We know it's there and we know it hasn't been eaten by Formosan termites…”

Carolyn looked up at Danni and, in unison, they blurted out: “Stealth!”

Just as the two NGA officers were preparing another encoded message for Mark O'Neill, there was a knock on the door of their operations room. Carolyn's gaze was focused on her screen. Dannielle opened the door but the man standing in the doorway looked right past her and fixed his grey-green eyes on Carolyn.

“Hi Princess,” he said.

As she turned around Carolyn's quizzical look had in an instant transformed into a jaw dropping pose that could only be captured by the very best Manga cartoon artists. “Dad!” she eventually exclaimed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I'm a man with a plan, Cally,” said JJ Darke.

Three weeks before arriving in Seoul, JJ had been seated in the waiting area with his A6 notepad and black rollerball pen. He was sketching a diagram. It was entitled ‘The Non-Linearity of Bladder Fullness'. Along the horizontal axis there were three key points of time, zero, R and P. The vertical axis represented fullness of bladder in millilitres. In the guts of the graph there was a 45 degree straight line drawn from the axis which represented the hypothetical optimal path of bladder fullness. The second line was more parabolic after a linear start, and was labelled actual path of bladder fullness. At time zero JJ drinks 250ml of still water. At time R, radiotherapy is scheduled. JJ is ready for it. At point B, bladder is optimally full. At time P, roughly twenty minutes after time R, radiotherapy is well late and bladder is supra-optimally full and ready to burst. The shaded area between times R and P, where the actual path of bladder fullness deviates exponentially from the hypothetically optimal path, needs to be avoided. Today it has not been avoided. JJ hands his diagram to the manager of the radiotherapy department, tells him in a mumbling incomprehensible fashion, to shove his treatment for the day and then heads rapidly to the nearest toilet for a pee of some force and length.

It's absolute crap being diagnosed with prostate cancer, thought JJ, but there it was. Warren Buffett has it and Sir Michael Parkinson was diagnosed with it in July 2013, but these two members of the great and good fraternity were in their seventies and eighties. JJ was forty-three.
WTF!
kept going through his mind. He soon found out what a PSA score of 23 meant after visiting his G.P. It meant, literally, get your arse down to a specialist for a biopsy, then an MRI scan and get it seen to. So, off he went down to a private consultancy on the King's Road. The specialist, Mr Mark Wright, was meant to be a leading light on men's cancers and had invented some futuristic robotic cutting implement that meant you were less likely to die if they wheeked out your prostate. Leading light or not, getting snippy snippy up your butt, bleeding away from it, and then having to take antibiotics of such a size and strength that they'd kill a Clydesdale horse, is no fun. You needed the antibiotics just in case the biopsy procedure gave you blood poisoning. “If that happens,” said Mr Wright, “then just call 999 and get an ambulance to take you to A&E immediately.” Great, thought JJ, at that point still feeling somewhat sorry for himself. Not only was there a bunch of murderous evil cancer cells trying to kill him, there was a chance that the procedure for finding out exactly how murderous might fuck you up anyway.

The good news didn't end there. A PSA score can be whatever it wants to be, but it's only a marker. It tells you that probably something's up if it's over 2, but it doesn't tell you for sure and it doesn't tell you how far up the something's up may be. In JJ's case it was well up. His Gleason score was 8 to 9 in four cores of the prostate. That was bad. Assuming you had to have prostate cancer, you'd want your Gleason score to be under 4. Essentially, JJ's prostate was being devoured by cancer. Mr Wright said surgery, even by his state-of-the-art robot arm, was out. Although the prostate is about the size of a walnut, the surgeon specialist said to think of it as a small orange. If all the wee cancer bleeders were inside the orange peel then surgery may be the answer: cut it out and wave sayonara to the scunners. If the cancer had munched through the outer peel and was either sitting on top of it or had gone metastatic into other parts of your system then surgery was out. It was out because the procedure itself may accelerate the spread of the cancer.

After the biopsy, the MRI scan and then another scan called a Choline PET scan, where you had to drink some radioactive tracer stuff and not hug small children for twenty-four hours, the multi-disciplinary team (MDT) at the Royal Marsden Hospital on the Fulham Road concluded that JJ's cancer was ‘locally advanced'. This meant that the cancer cells were sitting on top of the orange peel, getting ready for even more action. Dr Paul Van den Berk, the head of the MDT and now JJ's Consultant Oncologist, said that hormone treatment combined with radiotherapy was more or less the only option. The good doctor wasn't certain that a random, cheeky, cancer cell or three had gone to JJ's lymph nodes near the pelvis but they may have, so Dr Van den Berk said he was going to blast these nodes with radiotherapy too. He had helped develop a new, fast, painless radiotherapy procedure. The patient turned up for a few days, got zapped, left, kept calm and carried on.

“Not for you, Mr Darke,” said the white South African who was a little bit older than JJ. “Your cancer is too advanced for that procedure. However, the Choline PET scan showed up where the hot spots of cancer were and it has not gone metastatic. We need to get a move on, to treat you, before it does.”

JJ, never one for volunteering for anything medical that wasn't absolutely necessary, asked him how long he'd live if he did nothing. JJ had been reading up on prostate cancer and there were plenty of stories about men not knowing they had the cancer, or having it but dying from old age or a heart attack or something else.

“Four to five years,” said Dr Van den Berk. There weren't any add-ons by the straight talking doctor. No ‘maybe longer'. So there it was. JJ was down for three years of hormone treatment to kill off his testosterone and radiotherapy every day for two months, barring weekends and bank holidays. This approach to treating prostate cancer is the starve and burn option. The injection of hormones into your lower abdomen every three months is meant to starve the cancer cells and the radiotherapy is meant to burn them while they're starving. JJ was still in his emotional down phase about the whole issue but the mental picture of ugly black cancer cells, screaming in agony, writhing in torment, vaporising out of his system did make him feel that justice was being carried out on these criminal body invaders who had clearly entered without permission.

JJ decided not to tell Cyrus or anyone at MAM about his condition or treatment. Although Cyrus was probably old enough to handle it, he had lost his mum at a young age. He was getting on well at school and JJ didn't see any advantage in letting him worry that he might be an orphan soon. If all went royally pear-shaped then, ignoring normal actuarial probabilities of death, JJ still had four to five years, by which time Cyrus would be nearly twenty and set on his life path, whatever that would be. JJ did tell Gilian. He knew she would keep stum about it and that she would be alert for any material information lying around that might give away this secret. In the same way as you can have white lies and black lies, this was a white secret, not a black one. Keeping MAM out of the loop was a decision arrived at via a different thought process. There appeared to be no reason why JJ could not continue working. His routine normally involved his getting in around 7am and leaving at 4 or 5pm. As he took his work home with him at least as far as monitoring the markets and MAM's investments were concerned, nobody bothered when he left.

JJ had scheduled his radiotherapy appointments for 4.30pm every weekday. The process itself took about thirty minutes, with less than a quarter of that lying on the radiotherapy table, shirt up, pants down and flaccid willie out and about for all the world to see. He could walk from the Royal Marsden to his house in Markham Square in seven or eight minutes, so he'd still be in before 5.30pm. Cyrus wouldn't notice anything unusual and his work responsibilities would not be undermined.

By the time JJ had the presence of mind to deliver his non-linearity of bladder fullness diagram to the radiotherapy department's manager, his course of radiation treatment was about half way through. He had settled into the routine. In the radiotherapy department, which was a floor below the department of nuclear medicine – Jings, thought JJ, what the heck goes on there – the three linear accelerator machines more or less in constant use were named Carlyle, LA3 and Joe Ford. For the vast majority of his sessions JJ was scheduled for Joe Ford, named after a pioneering and much loved Consultant in radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden and St. George's Hospital. The treatment room itself was all Blake's 7 spacious, bright, with a big whirring, round, flying saucer thingy above the narrow table bed you lay on. The type of radiotherapy delivered by Joe Ford was called RapidArc. The whizz kid radiotherapists use computer imaging to dial in the angle of the beam, the dose rate, and the leaf speed, all intended to target the cancerous cells supremely accurately and leave alone the healthy tissue surrounding them. The program is specific for each patient and uses 3-D volume imaging to get it down to pin-point precision. The only potential flaw in this truly amazing procedure is that the efficacy of the laser hits also depends on the patient's bladder being nearly full (comfortably full in the hospital staff's lingo), and being in the same state of fullness every session and as it was at the imaging practice run undertaken a couple of weeks before treatment began.

JJ took all this precision seriously. Each day, exactly forty-five minutes before his scheduled treatment, he'd drink precisely the same amount of still water, ensuring he had emptied his bladder beforehand. The taxi from MAM's offices to the Royal Marsden was normally around fifteen minutes. JJ was always on time for his appointment. There were several young radiotherapists organising the patients for the various machines. They did a great job. Sometimes patients would emerge looking a bit wappit but JJ seemed to be lucky. He wasn't meant to feel a thing as he was being radiated and he didn't. At the beginning it was a bit embarrassing given the state of half undress he was in, but he got used to it. When he first went to the Joe Ford room, the elevator music playing was Phil Collins; god it was awful. He provided ‘The Killers' and ‘Queen' CDs to the radiotherapists and the eight minutes or so he was lying on the table were now at least musically credible.

The day of the diagram though had gone a bit awry. He had had a tough day at work, just managed to get a cab and was sitting in the waiting area, about five minutes before his 4.30pm due time. One of the radiographers, a fairly pleasant Welsh girl called Bronwyn, popped her head out of the wooden double doors leading to the treatment rooms and said, “Mr Darke, are you ready?” She did this every day she was on duty at that time. Of course he was bleedin' ready. He was born ready, drank ready and his entire daily schedule had been shaped to have him ready for this moment of radiation joy. On diagram day though, Joe Ford wasn't ready. About fifteen minutes had elapsed since Bronwyn had asked her question. JJ's willie was throbbing by now, his bladder was bulbous, and a pee was imminent. Of course, if he pee'd then the game was up, no RapidArc radiotherapy for him. He'd need to hang about for another forty-five minutes to an hour post pee and drink more water to allow his bladder to get to its equilibrium fullness state again. Even then, he couldn't be sure he would be seen. The treatment rooms were busier than Heathrow Terminal 5 on an August weekend. There would be holding, stacking, circling delays. Who's to say he wouldn't need to pee again! It was too much for him, the diagram needed to be drawn and the radiotherapy manager needed to be given it. JJ left that day without treatment. Luckily for him, the doctors thought it was OK and they'd just add a day to his schedule. Great.

The next day when he went to the Marsden, his diagram was the talk of the department. One of the radiotherapists, Richard, a tall olive skinned Liverpudlian, who always defended putting Luis Suarez in his Fantasy Football team, despite the wee Uruguayan's vampiric tendencies, asked if JJ could turn his graphical presentation into a mathematical formula. Apparently Richard was studying for an advanced radiotherapy qualification and his thesis was to be on the behaviour of the bladder over the period of a linear accelerator radiation course. JJ said sure, and wondered how he could inveigle Yves-Jacques into this task without giving the game away. JJ was also a bit sheepish because he was all girded up for a verbal battle with the staff about his diagram and somewhat twee moaning given the time pressure they were under. Instead, they all thought it was either funny or informative. These guys were high quality and doing a real job. JJ behaved himself after that and fully appreciated that these young radiographers were doing the best for him that they could.

While all this radiation and white secrecy was going on, JJ had tried to be as committed to his son and his work responsibilities as best he could. He sincerely believed that Cyrus had not noticed the difference in either their relationship or their pastimes. That was good. He also seemed not to have tweaked the curiosity of any of his work colleagues which in such a den of gossip, innuendo and blatant untruths, was quite some feat. JJ had also been a bit lucky on the markets front, as they were on the quiet side and certainly displayed no repetition as yet of the Greek chaos.

The one area where a few rumblings and mumblings had occurred was in his initial meeting with Neil Robson, Financial Secretary to the UK Treasury. JJ had tried to put Neil off after replying to his email on that fateful Friday, but Neil was a northern lad and not easily put off. He was born in Middlesborough and was the MP for the Conservatives key constituency in that town. He had wide responsibilities in the British government, including financial stability, bank lending, the regulatory Financial Conduct Authority and the EU budget. His remit also included supporting the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeffrey Walker, on many issues including international finance. JJ always thought it amusing that not too long after President Barak Obama had called the coalition's first Chancellor ‘Geoffrey' at a G8 meeting in Northern Ireland instead of his name which was ‘George' the Prime Minister had dumped George for Jeffrey, albeit spelt differently.

JJ and Neil Robson had joined MI5 at the same time, more or less straight from University. While JJ had studied at Glasgow and Warwick, Neil had gone to Cambridge and then to the London School of Economics. Neil's educational path was more well-trodden as far as spies and spooks were concerned but even the security services had to have the odd provincial every now and then. Neil and JJ were virtually the same age. JJ was taller, more athletic and, in his arrogant moments, probably thought smarter as well. Neil had a devious, dark side that may have helped him accelerate through the ranks of MI5 a little bit quicker than JJ. They were both recruited as intelligence officers. JJ had been on only four field missions by the time he left MI5 but Neil had at least a dozen before he resigned. JJ and Neil were never the best of friends. JJ thought Neil was a bit sleekit, never apparently helping his colleagues and often rumoured to have stabbed a few of them in the back, metaphorically speaking. Neil liked politics, journalists, cricket, and any sleazy activity going. None of these were on JJ's radar so, outside work, there was little to talk about. JJ sensed there was a grudging mutual respect though. He assumed Neil was very proficient on his field missions. For a start, he came back from them, and he kept getting selected for more. Neil seemed to appreciate JJ's research and analysis, they kept him out of some tight spots. Still, they were like a couple of cage fighters who didn't relish being the one to engage first, for fear of letting their guard down. That was all history. Neil Robson was now in his dated but comfy surroundings in HM Treasury on Horse Guards Road and, JJ assumed, not out in the field topping random bad guys.