‘Did they have contact with their North Korean controllers?’
‘They must have, but I was never aware of it. Except once, and that involved me. A man came to visit when I was ten years old; they said he was a distant cousin. We had supper together and then my parents left me alone with this man. He asked me lots of questions – about school, and what subjects I liked, and what sports I played. But he asked me another question that seemed odd at the time. If I had to choose to obey my government or my parents, which would I pick? Most South Korean children would have said their government – that’s what I mean about indoctrination. But I said my parents. He seemed very pleased by this.’
After that Park knew he had been selected to play a role, but he didn’t know what it was and his parents wouldn’t tell him. Like all parents, they wanted him to do well, and the first step was to succeed in school; but behind their aspirations for him lay an unspoken agenda, which he associated with the ‘cousin’ who had asked him all the questions.
Fortunately, Park Woo-jin was a clever child, already three years ahead of his classmates in mathematics by the age of twelve. He had taken to computers like a fish to water, and graduated from university with highest honours.
‘Did you know by then who your parents were working for?’
‘Yes, and I knew that the torch had been passed on to me. After all, there wasn’t much either of my parents could tell the North Koreans – it was made clear that this was to be my responsibility. The instruction came that I should try and find a post with the military.’
That proved easy enough – listening, Liz realised that the Korean military would have been delighted to have a programmer with this young man’s skills, especially as many of the gifted young computer experts were flocking overseas in droves to make their fortunes in America’s Silicon Valley.
Fearful he would do the same, and impressed by his talents and his diligence, the military had promoted Park Woo-jin rapidly, and he was cherry-picked after only five years’ experience for a plum secondment to the Pentagon. He had passed the positive vetting process without a hitch, and passed it again when the Americans had had him checked. The North Koreans had done well with the false documentation of his parents. He did not know who his parents really were or what had happened to the people whose identity they had adopted. But the process must have been watertight as he passed all vetting with no problems.
He’d enjoyed his stay at the Pentagon, especially since the North Koreans had asked nothing from him, perhaps deciding there was no point in risking his exposure when he was operating at only mid-level in the Defense Department But when the opportunity for a second secondment had come his way – to the UK’s Ministry of Defence – everything had changed. He’d been contacted and encouraged – no, told – to apply, and when he’d landed the post, had been given a controller who’d insisted on regular meetings. His contacts with North Korea’s Intelligence Service had been very limited until then – in Washington he’d met an Embassy employee on only two occasions – but once in London there had been drops of information and sometimes weekly meets.
‘With the man in the photographs?’
‘Yes.’
‘We know him as Dong Shin-soo. What’s his real name?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t call him anything.’
‘Where is he based?’
‘I don’t know but I think it must be somewhere nearer than Pyongyang. In Europe maybe.’
‘How did he contact you?’
‘He sent an encoded email, with a time and place embedded. Sometimes I did not meet him. When I had information, I would pass it by a drop, as you photographed me doing it in St James’s Park.’
‘What did he want you to do?’
‘He wanted me to gain access to a project being run at a separate site.’
‘Did you know what the project was?’
‘No.’
‘Or where it was located?’
‘No. I only knew the prefix used as an identifier for its network. But access was forbidden, and for a while I thought it would be impossible to get in.’
‘But you managed.’
Park Woo-jin gave a wry smile, recognising that his success was what had landed him here. ‘I left what is known as a trailer. It lets all sorts of information flow through it, then when it sees what it wants, it grabs it. In this case the network identifier tipped it off.’
Liz imagined a fish waiting for food where the river narrows and the water funnels between two rocks. The fish was checking out the bits and bugs floating above its head until finally it saw the fly – Hugo Cowdray’s email – it had been watching for and rose to grab it.
‘Did you know what was in the code you managed to extract?’
‘No. It was heavily encrypted. It would take more than one person to break that kind of code. That’s not my speciality.’
‘But you gave the code to your controller here in St James’s Park?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what did he do with it?’
‘How should I know?’ Park Woo-jin protested, and Liz found his reaction too immediate to be contrived.
‘It must have been very valuable to have you take such a risk. For years you were operating under heavy cover – you said yourself you rarely met anyone from the North Korean Intelligence Service. Suddenly you’re meeting them frequently, and you’re given a critical task. Didn’t you wonder what it was all about?’
‘Of course I wondered. But I assumed it was a weapons system of some sort, and besides, there was no point in me poking my nose into things that didn’t concern me.’ He realised the absurdity of what he had just said, and smiled sadly. ‘I mean, it wasn’t worth the risk.’
Liz felt a pang of sympathy for this young man who, if he was telling the truth, had never had much of a chance. If he was telling the truth… To be sure of that, his story would have to be assiduously checked in three countries.
Just to satisfy herself, she asked out of the blue, ‘Have you ever been to Marseilles?’
He looked at her as if she were mad, and shook his head. She was sure that part of his story was true. Park Woo-jin was a pawn, not a king.
Chapter 48
From Toulouse Martin and Isobel drove north on a near-empty motorway towards Cahors. Both of them were a little on edge, not sure what the raid the following day would bring.
They stayed the night in a village about four miles from the commune, in a bed and breakfast run by a gay English couple who said they’d settled in this part of France because the English had not invaded en masse.
At dinner, eaten at a long farmhouse table, another guest mentioned that her grandmother had once had friends who’d lived nearby. ‘The place was called Le Barbot,’ she said.
One of their hosts laughed. ‘That must have been a long time ago. She wouldn’t want to see it now. It’s still there but it’s falling to bits. It’s been occupied for a few years now by a kind of commune. Apparently the owner’s an old lady who lives in Paris. They rent it off her but she never comes down here.’
‘How do they support themselves?’ asked Martin, reaching for his wine glass.
‘Nobody knows for sure; perhaps one of them is rich. They grow their own vegetables and keep chickens and a few cows, but beyond that, who knows?’ He turned to the guest who had first mentioned the place. ‘I wouldn’t advise calling in there – they don’t like visitors. There’s a chain on the gate and the postman has to leave letters in a box at the top of the drive. For communards they don’t seem particularly peaceful. The last time anyone tried to have a snoop around, they were run off the property.’