Darke Mission (21 page)

“And you think that's enough for him to do this truck-enhancing task for you?” pressed Gil, unconvinced.

“Harold's team are subcontractors to McLaren. They're allowed to do other jobs, as long as they don't clash with McLaren's F1 activities. Provided they're fully funded Harold and his boys can utilise McLaren's facilities except the wind tunnel and any engineering machinery earmarked solely for the F1 team. While we may need to drive these trucks fast from Pyongyang to Seoul I doubt that wind tunnel testing is needed. Nearly all the key McLaren technicians are with the F1 team in Australia. That's a lucky break for us because Harold and his mechanics, electricians, engineers etc. can work on our trucks unencumbered and legitimately,” concluded JJ.

“Does Harold know why we want the trucks changed, enhanced and disguised?”

“No,” responded JJ. “He trusts me and he knows he and his team are to be paid well enough not to ask. The disguising of the Volvo trucks to look like Chinese FAW trucks may raise the odd eyebrow and if and when Vincent Barakat has his sunbeds ready to install that will raise a few questions. We'll cross those bridges when they appear. In the meantime, Harold will probably go along with the plan or the abridged version as he knows it.”

JJ parked up at the back end of the McLaren Technology Centre. He could see the Volvo trucks and tankers in the far distance and in the near distance a smiling Harold McFarlane was striding his way.

“Hi Harold,” said JJ extending his hand. Harold McFarlane was in his mid to late fifties, about 5 foot 9 inches, stockily built with short almost snow white hair.

“JJ!” he exclaimed clearly happy to see his old buddy, to the extent that he gave the Scot a big man hug, not the usual mode of man to man greeting of his generation. “How are you, you crazy Jock?” asked Harold. “Done any motor racing or are you just a desk bound old fart now?” Harold's sense of wicked humour had clearly not dissipated with age.

“I'm fine Harold. It's really good to see you too. No more racing for me I'm afraid but I've been dragged away from my old fart desk job for a bit.”

JJ enquired about Harold's two daughters. They were well and thriving so all was good in the McFarlane household.

“Harold, this is Gil Haning,” said JJ introducing the Oriental lady at his side. “She's my PA, even aide-de-camp on this exercise, totally trustworthy and sharp as a tack.” Gil quite liked her job description; at least it was better than nanny to my teenage son.

“Nice to meet you Harold,” said Gil.

“You too Gil,” replied Harold. “Let's go over to my garage.” Garage was what he euphemistically called the super high tech structure they were all now headed for. “I've got a few of my guys in there. We've nothing much to do at the moment so your job is very welcome. I wasn't too sure about what you wanted apart from some enhancement to these Volvo trucks, so let's grab a coffee, have a chat and take it from there.”

“Great,” said JJ. “Just the ticket.”

As Harold and JJ imbibed some decent cappuccinos from the McLaren coffee bar and Gil had a fruit juice, JJ unveiled his cover story. It was not vastly adrift of the version told to Vincent Barakat but with a few geographical tweaks here and there. As far as Harold and his team were concerned JJ's company needed to transport some precious cargo from the capital of North Korea to the South. Volvo trucks normally decaled would attract a little too much attention in the DPRK but Chinese trucks were all over the place. JJ told Harold he was concerned about hijacking or even being ripped off by North Korean border officials and that an inspection of the lorries' load would be less automatic if the carriers had the logo and paintwork of often seen Chinese trucks. Harold nodded away at this story. He was no geopolitical aficionado but he knew that North Korea was some kind of secretive society and their leader something of a nut job.

“That's fine JJ,” said Harold. “You sent through the dimensions of the Chinese trucks and photographs of their paintwork, logos and decals. We can do the disguise on the Volvo trucks fairly easily. The Volvo cabs are a little squarer than the FAW ones but nobody is going to really notice. I guess the North Korean security forces won't have a first class degree in tractor shapes!”

Harold laughed out loud and Gil and JJ followed suit, albeit a little quieter. Harold was probably right but who the hell knew what the North Korean military knew and didn't know. It was an unknown unknown.

“From your email, JJ, I got the impression there was something else?” said Harold enquiringly.

“Yes,” replied JJ, reaching into his slim leather briefcase. “There's these.” He handed Harold a very detailed set of schematics. Harold had a brief glance.

“What are they?” he asked, never having seen the like before. “They look a bit like… like long sunbeds,” Harold ventured.

“You wouldn't be the first to say that my friend,” said JJ, meaning friend not the opposite. “For the moment, let's call them super sunbeds but we need them installed in the tankers of the trucks in a very specific way made from very specific materials. The raw parts will be with you in the next thirty-six to forty-eight hours along with detailed instructions on how to assemble them. Once assembled, they need to be attached, permanently, two sunbeds in each tanker to the ceiling of the tankers. On the roof of the tankers we need sizeable and numerous perforations to allow cooling but they need to be less than fully visible.”

“OK,” said Harold not knowing just at that moment whether it was a 100% OK or one of those OKs you utter just because you don't want to hear anything else. “Anything else?” Harold asked with reticence.

“Yes Harold,” said Gil. “If anyone was to, let's say want to look inside the tankers from the outside we'd like them to think they were looking at crude oil or some kind of fuel. This means that any peepholes, for want of a better word, would need to be camouflaged so that the appearance of the liquid inside was dark, like crude oil. Furthermore, the liquid that will be inside the tankers has no odour. We need it to smell like crude oil. Sour crude oil has an abundance of sulphur in it and stinks like rotten eggs. Sweet crude oil has much lower levels of sulphur and a much more pleasant smell. We need something inside the tankers but not in the liquid itself that smells like sweet crude oil.”

“What,” asked Harold, “like those pongy air fresheners that hoons like to hang from their muscle car mirrors?”

“Yes,” Gil and JJ said in unison.

Harold took a few moments to look at the diagrams of the sunbeds. Then he looked at Gil and JJ then back to the diagrams. “You say we'd be working with carbon fibre and other refractory materials?”

JJ and Gil both nodded. Harold had another look at the diagrams, stroked his imaginary beard, and looked up again at Gil and JJ then said, “We'd need to test the strength and durability of the tankers and these sunbed thingies would need to be attached to the floor of the tankers as well as the ceiling otherwise their stability at speeds of over 20mph would be compromised.”

JJ indicated his approval. Harold piped up again. “We can paint and augment the tractors, build these sunbeds, attach them to the tankers securely, disguise the appearance of what the true liquids are in the tankers and make them smell nice,” he said feeling all pleased with himself. “When do you need this task completed by JJ?”

“ASAP Harold, and definitely no later than one week from today,” said JJ.

Harold pondered. The F1 team would be away for the next full week and Harold and his team were not opposed to hard work and overtime. It was possible. “It will cost you JJ,” said Harold hopefully.

“£60,000 now for you and your team over and above materials costs, for you to distribute as you see fit. A further £60,000 on our return to the UK,” said JJ swiftly.

Harold didn't need to have a calculator app on his phone to realise that amongst six of them that would be £20,000 each for a week's work. That was a big chunk of money and would be most welcome.

“You were never as stingy as your nationality was made out to be JJ,” said Harold happily. “You're on.”

JJ and Harold then Harold and Gil shook hands and they all stood up to leave. JJ would contact Vincent Barakat forthwith re the status of the mini furnaces. By the time the Volvo cabs were repainted, re-decaled and made to look like the Jie Fang FAW trucks the sunbeds materials would hopefully be at McLaren ready for assembly and installation. As JJ, Gil and Harold were walking through the car park towards JJ's Carrera 4S, the former getting some light hearted abuse for turning up at McLaren in a Porsche, Harold stopped walking.

“JJ,” he said. “One final thing. The liquid you're going to have in the tankers it's going to be a bit hot isn't it, given that your super sunbeds are in fact induction furnaces?”

“Yes Harold,” replied JJ. “Maybe more than a bit hot.”

“How hot?” asked Harold, for the first time looking anxious.

“About 1,000 degrees Celsius,” replied JJ.

“Woking, we have a problem,” responded a worried Harold McFarlane.

* * *

While they were driving back down the A3 to London, Gil at the wheel, JJ was on the phone to Vincent Barakat. The young French scientific researcher and his team had been working flat out on JJ's project. The mini furnace parts would be ready that night and they would be on transporters the next morning. JJ told Vincent where the transporters should go and all was well.

Harold's envisaged problem was that at 1,000 degrees Celsius inside the tankers, the metal of the tanker shell would be extremely hot, including to the touch. There was no concern regarding the melting of the tankers. The ones attached to the Volvo trucks were made of steel. Steel's melting point, at 1,370 degrees Celsius, was higher than gold's, but if any inquisitive DPRK security guard leant against it or had too close a look he'd start to fry.

“Vincent, thank you for your hard work and ingenuity. I will ensure that you and PLP are rewarded as promised.”

“Merci Mr Darke,” said Vincent. “Please keep in touch with the progress of your task.”

JJ knew that was polite French for please remember that you promised PLP further research funds if the mini-furnaces helped in the clandestine transportation of the gold. JJ didn't mind the reminder. Vincent Barakat's work was crucial to JJ's transport plan and he had been on point since they met.

“No problem, Vincent, I definitely will,” replied JJ. “Vincent, if you have a minute, there is one hitch in our plan that I need to run by you. Is that OK?”

“Oui, bien sûr, Monsieur Darke,” responded Vincent defaulting to his native tongue.

“The mini-furnaces are to be placed inside a sizeable steel container as they are to be transported. As you will know, the melting point of steel is higher than that of gold but the external shell of the container will be roasting hot when the furnaces are up and running. Is there any way we can reduce the heat?” asked JJ.

Vincent thought for a second or two, it didn't take him much longer. He was on top of his game.

“Yes, Mr Darke, there is,” he responded. “Carbon fibre is very malleable and can be produced in very thin strips or panels. If you lined the inside of the steel containers with the correct thickness heat resistant formulation then the outside of the container would not feel hot.”

That boy's a fucking genius
thought JJ. “Great, Vincent. Assuming each of the mini-furnaces was running at full blast for, say, up to one hour, can you calculate the optimum thickness the carbon fibre lining needs to be to keep the external surface of the steel container cool?”

“Yes,” said Vincent with no hint of doubt. “I'll get on it straight away and I'll have an answer for you by tonight. Do you need me to order in more carbon fibre, we will have used all of our stock in preparation for the sunbeds?”

JJ told Vincent that would not be necessary, thanked him again and hung up. If Vincent ordered the carbon fibre it would take another couple of days to get it, a couple of days they could ill afford. Once Vincent had calculated the optimum thickness of the carbon fibre and the amount needed, after JJ emailed him the dimensions of the containers, JJ would turn to Harold McFarlane. If you can't get a sizeable lump of carbon fibre at, arguably, the world's most advanced F1 technical centre then you couldn't get it anywhere.

JJ and Gil were now only five minutes away from their house. Harold confirmed that they could access immediately sizeable stores of the carbon fibre used in the F1 cars. Once he had the desired thickness they could prepare and install the lining in the tankers. As Gil was parking up, JJ was running through the transport plan in his mind. Harold and his team would finish their work on time, JJ was confident of this. He would then organise the transportation of the disguised trucks to Seoul. Organising flight itineraries for large trucks was bread and butter for Harold. He'd done it a hundred times at least. There had been GPs in South Korea, at the Korean International Circuit in South Cholla Province, so no one would think anything extraordinary was underway. Admittedly the F1 race would normally be in the British autumn and the circuit was 250 miles south of Seoul, but F1 teams may have wanted to test there early. In any event, the trucks would not be going south to the circuit.

JJ was confident that Vincent Barakat's sunbeds would work, if they actually got that far in this audacious heist. He was also sure Jim Bradbury would provide the two helpful Koreans necessary for the operation and he was sure that Ethel Rogers was the right choice as his number two on the operation. There were still gaps in the plan though.

Ginger had said that she'd found a safe cracker and that a meeting had been set. That still left some known unknowns. Two HGV drivers were necessary, but they'd need to come from either the security forces or underworld. If the latter then there'd be all sorts of risks of reliability, hijack potential, squealing. That problem needed sorted fast. What else needed sorting fast was how were they going to get the gold out of the DPRK's central bank vaults, even assuming they'd got into the vault in the first place. They could not manually load the gold, each bar was quite heavy at over 12kg.They needed maybe 6,000 bars. Even if it took only five minutes, for six people carrying two bars each, to get from vault to truck, that would take over four hours. JJ and his team could not afford to be in the DPRK central bank for that long. Still troubled by these obstacles, JJ opened the door of his house and he and Gil entered.