‘I hear you!’ Eddie replied. ‘Did you get my Mayday?’
‘Yes, I did. We have told the rescue service, but we are coming to you now. We are on highway thirty-six. Can you hold on?’
‘Yeah, but we’ve got someone in hypothermic shock. How fast can you get to us?’
‘Twenty minutes, thirty minutes? Where are you exactly?’
The Yorkshireman gave their position as best he could. He had just enough time to get an assurance that the rescuers were on the way before the jury-rigged radio went dead. After swearing loudly, he returned to the shelter. ‘Oh God, you’re freezing!’ said Nina as he squeezed in beside her.
‘I feel warmer knowing we’re not going to be stuck out here all night.’ He examined Olivia. ‘How is she?’
‘Not good. She’s asleep… or unconscious.’
‘She’ll be okay.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure. I heard what you were saying to her. She’s family — yours and mine. I’m not going to let her go either. Even if,’ a wry half-smile, ‘she did get us into this bloody situation in the first place!’
‘She can’t take all the blame,’ said Nina. ‘I’m just as responsible. And I’ll make sure she knows that when she wakes up.’ She looked down at her grandmother once more. ‘You hear me? You are going to wake up.’
Eddie put an arm around her. Together they sat in silent vigil until the distant rumble of an engine told them rescue was finally drawing near.
36
‘This is a most grave situation,’ said Oswald Seretse, shaking his head. ‘I cannot believe that Fenrir Mikkelsson would do this. I cannot!’ The outburst, though little more than his raising his voice, was nevertheless the strongest display of emotion Nina had ever seen from the normally unflappable diplomat. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘whatever I believe, the evidence is undeniable.’ He went to the windows, staring disconsolately across Manhattan.
‘I’m afraid so.’ The speaker was a man named Howard MacNeer, a senior official of the US State Department. ‘We lost track of his jet once it entered the commercial air corridor over Russia, but picked it up again in Chinese airspace heading for North Korea.’
‘You couldn’t intercept it?’ Eddie asked. ‘America’s got loads of planes in South Korea.’
‘Intercepting it would have risked starting a war,’ replied MacNeer. There was a world map on one wall of Seretse’s office; he indicated the Korean peninsula, a tiny stub hanging off the eastern edge of China. ‘They never entered international airspace, so we couldn’t touch them.’
‘You could’ve still got a missile lock from hundreds of miles away. Shoot ’em down, and if the North Koreans complain, say you had a weapons malfunction or something.’
MacNeer clucked patronisingly. ‘This isn’t a Tom Clancy novel, Mr Chase. But the jet landed at Tonyong, a military base about forty miles north of the DMZ. It took off again a half-hour later and flew to Shenyang in China, where it’s stayed. We’re trying to track down Mikkelsson and the others there, but haven’t located them yet.’
‘You think he’s in China?’ asked Nina.
‘Would you want to stay in North Korea any longer than you absolutely had to?’
‘Point taken.’
Seretse joined the other official at the map. ‘What is the significance of Tonyong? Why would Fenrir go there?’
‘It’s a North Korean weapons development facility,’ MacNeer answered. ‘It’s underground, built into a mountain — they even dug one end of a runway into it so planes can be loaded without our surveillance satellites seeing what’s going on. There’s been a lot of activity over the past couple of years; more tunnels being excavated, judging from the amount of rubble that’s been dumped nearby.’
‘Big enough to build a particle accelerator?’ said Nina.
‘Maybe. We don’t know for sure — it’s one of the hardest countries in the world to get reliable intel out of. The North Koreans have a nasty habit of imprisoning or straight-up executing anyone they even think might be spying. Most of their big-money facilities have been involved with their nuke programme, and we know where they are, but particle accelerators have multiple uses — including separating enriched uranium-235 from useless uranium-238. We invented the technique as part of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, so it’s not as if it’s a big secret. Considering how desperate they are to build up their nuclear arsenal, it wouldn’t surprise us if the North Koreans have been using every possible method to get fissile material out of their uranium deposits.’
‘And if Mikkelsson’s right about how the Crucible works, they can use it to turn their useless uranium into plutonium,’ she said gloomily. The small Crucible had been recovered along with the three survivors on the frozen lake, and was currently being kept under guard at a secure location pending a decision on what to do with it. ‘They can make the jump from A-bomb to H-bomb.’
MacNeer gave her a bleak nod. ‘The thermonuclear test they did in 2016 was a fizzle, whatever Kim tried to tell the world. But if they start to manufacture plutonium on a large scale, it’s only a matter of time before they have the real deal.’
‘So what’s being done about it?’ Eddie asked.
The two officials exchanged looks. ‘What?’ said Nina, realising the subject had already been discussed before she and Eddie arrived.
‘There has been a proposal by the State Department,’ Seretse said carefully. ‘Or more accurately, US intelligence. However, I suspect you will not like it.’
Eddie made a face. ‘That’s a really good start.’
‘What is it?’ Nina demanded. ‘What proposal?’
Seretse retreated to grant his guest the dubious honour of presenting the bad news. ‘As I said, it’s hard to get reliable intel out of North Korea,’ MacNeer began. ‘It looks likely that Mikkelsson delivered the Crucible to the North Koreans, and they’ve taken it to Tonyong — but we don’t know for sure. We hardly know anything about what’s down there. But what we do know — and this isn’t just the United States talking, but an agreement between the other nuclear powers in the IAEA — is that North Korea cannot under any circumstances be allowed to mass-produce nuclear weapons. Not only would that be a hugely destabilising threat to the world, it would violate the treaty that North Korea itself just agreed to.’
‘A treaty that Mikkelsson convinced them to sign,’ added Seretse. Another shake of his head. ‘What game are you playing, Fenrir?’ he added, almost to himself.
‘Under the terms of the treaty,’ MacNeer went on, ‘there’s a provision that allows direct action to be taken against any nation that wilfully violates the agreement. If North Korea arms itself with thermonuclear weapons, that would definitely qualify as a violation. The US, or any other involved nation for that matter, would be justified under international law in using any means necessary to prevent it.’
‘That sounds more like it,’ said Eddie. ‘So you’re going to send over a few stealth bombers loaded with bunker-busters?’
‘No action can be taken without proof,’ Seretse told him solemnly. ‘Solid proof. After what happened in Iraq with the weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist, the United Nations requires a higher standard of confirmation before it will approve such risky measures.’ He gave the State Department official a hard look.
MacNeer let the implied criticism slide. ‘The thing is, getting that proof is going to be hard, and take a long time. We just don’t have the assets in place. Unless… we recruit some.’