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  Bykov nodded. ‘I don’t have exact figures, but I understand that a number of qualified Air Force personnel cannot currently be located. And your other question?’

  ‘Why are you bothered? So what if some nation wants to beg, borrow or steal a handful of obsolete interceptors? Remember, the MiG-25’s a forty-year-old design. If somebody had walked off with a dozen of your latest air-superiority fighters I could understand your concern. After all, you sell fighter aircraft around the world, and you’ve supplied that aircraft to a lot of countries – off the top of my head Algeria, Iraq and Syria to name but three – so what’s so special about these sixteen antiquated Foxbats?’

  ‘Let me ask you a question,’ Bykov responded. ‘Why did we build the MiG-25?’

  For a few moments Richter just stared at the Russian. ‘I don’t see where you’re going with this, Viktor.’

  ‘It’s crucial. When you know why we built the aircraft, you’ll know why we’re so worried about who’s got them now.’

  Richter nodded. ‘OK, I’ll play the game. We believe you originally designed the Foxbat to counter the American XB-70 Valkyrie Mach three bomber.’

  ‘That wasn’t in fact the case, but even if it was, the XB-70 project was cancelled well before the first prototype MiG-25 flew. We knew that the Americans had no other supersonic bombers planned, so why did we continue developing the aircraft?’

  ‘Probably to counter the SR-71A Blackbird spy-plane. To catch it you’d have needed a Mach three interceptor.’

  ‘Wrong again,’ Viktor Bykov said. ‘The Blackbird was never a real threat to us. That aircraft carried no weapons: all it could do was take pictures, obtain radar images and measure radiation.’

  ‘So why did you build the Foxbat?’ Richter demanded.

  ‘Let me ask you another question,’ Bykov said, clearly determined to spin this out. ‘In September 1976 a renegade pilot called Viktor Belenko defected to the West from our airfield at Chuguyevka in a MiG-25 and landed it at Hakodate airport in Japan. The American Central Intelligence Agency and the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson took the aircraft totally to pieces before giving it back to us. You heard about that, no doubt?’

  ‘It was before my time, but I’ve read some reports,’ Richter replied cautiously.

  ‘Do you remember what those reports said about the avionics and radar fit?’

  Richter shook his head. ‘Not in any detail.’

  ‘Let me refresh your memory, then, though I didn’t read the same reports that you did.’

  ‘I’m certainly glad to hear that,’ Richter murmured grimly.

  Bykov smiled, then continued. ‘The reports probably highlighted the lack of solid-state electronics in the avionics. Everything was old-style, with valve-driven circuits and equipment, and a massively powerful radar. I’m sure there was a certain amount of self-satisfied chuckling in the corridors of Whitehall and the Pentagon at the poor old Russians and their old-fashioned fighter.’

  Richter shifted slightly in his seat. What Bykov was saying was indeed a fairly accurate paraphrasing of the classified analyses that had circulated in Western intelligence services following the examination of the misappropriated Foxbat by American technical experts.

  ‘It apparently never occurred to anybody to ask why. Why had we used valves instead of printed-circuit boards and transistors? After all, in our other fighter aircraft we used similar technology to the latest American fighters. In fact,’ Bykov added with a chuckle, ‘some of the avionics we used were actually stolen from the Americans.

  ‘Long before we built the MiG-25, we’d perfected solid-state electronics, and we had off-the-shelf components that we could have used in the aircraft, but we didn’t. We took a step backwards and fitted valves, and all that other old-fashioned equipment. So I ask you again – why?’

  ‘Viktor, I have no idea. The Foxbat was your front-line interceptor and—’

  ‘Exactly,’ Bykov interrupted. ‘But what was it intended to intercept? That’s the crucial question.’

  ‘American bombers? B-1s and B-52s, I suppose?’

  Bykov shook his head. ‘To intercept those lumbering giants we would hardly have needed a Mach three fighter, and certainly not a fighter that can reach a ceiling of over thirty thousand metres. Let me give you a clue – EMP.’

  ‘EMP? You mean electromagnetic pulse?’ Richter frowned.

  ‘Exactly. Add EMP to valve-based avionics and a Mach three interceptor with a thirty-kilometre ceiling, and what do you get?’

  For a moment, Richter said nothing, his mind making connections that looked less and less attractive the more he thought about them. Then he looked back at Bykov.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

  ‘“Oh, shit” is right,’ Bykov agreed. ‘The Foxbat was built for one role only. It was designed to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles in their terminal phase – that’s why it’s so fast and flies so high – after detonation of one or more nuclear weapons. The EMP from a nuclear blast will fry solid-state electronics, but it has no effect on valve-based systems, and that’s precisely why we fitted them. The Foxbat was designed as a post-nuclear exchange survivor. So the obvious conclusion is—’

  ‘The obvious conclusion,’ Richter interrupted, ‘is that whoever’s got your aircraft is planning on an exchange of nuclear weapons, and is intending to survive that exchange by using your Foxbats to take out the inevitable retaliatory nuclear strike in its terminal phase.’

  Chapter Seven

  Tuesday

  T’ae’tan Air Base, North Korea

  ‘Is this all he had on him?’ Pak Je-San demanded, staring down at the collection of objects arranged on a wooden table in front of him. He’d already looked with displeasure at Yi Min-Ho’s bullet-riddled body in the mortuary next door.

  ‘Yes, sir. We thoroughly checked the ledge he was using as an observation point, and there was nothing else there. We also surveyed the entire surrounding area, including the spot where the spy was killed, and found nothing further.’

  Pak picked up the notebook and read the entries carefully: all related to a handful of F-5 fighters. That was exactly what he’d expected, for as soon as he’d heard about the possible landing of a spy near Suri-bong he’d ordered all operations involving the MiG-25 interceptors to cease. Opening the hangar doors to attract the South Korean agent’s attention while the patrol ambushed him had been, he thought, a master-stroke. But he hadn’t anticipated the Kyocera satellite phone, and that was a worry because it meant that the spy might possibly have disclosed what he’d seen emerging from the secure hangar.

  But Pak doubted if the intruder had enough time. He’d spoken to the chung-wi who’d led the patrol, and then to all of his men individually, about the exact sequence of events, and the timing didn’t seem to work. He knew exactly when the hangar doors had opened, and when the lieutenant had ordered his men forward. There would then have been a short delay while the tractor was hitched to the aircraft, and another before any part of the MiG-25 could have been visible from the hillside opposite. Then the spy would have had to first identify what he was seeing, switch on the Kyocera, wait until it had locked on to a satellite, enter the number, and then wait for his contact in South Korea to answer.

  As far as Pak could estimate, all that would take an absolute minimum of two minutes, but the chung-wi had assured him that two minutes after the hangar doors had slid open the spy was already dead. At worst, he might have got through to his contact in South Korea, but he’d certainly had no time to pass on a detailed report.

  But whatever had happened, there was nothing else he could do about it now. The spy was dead and whatever knowledge he had gathered had died with him. Pak had obviously reprimanded the lieutenant for resorting to killing the man – if taken alive they could have used a variety of sophisticated techniques to loosen his tongue – but at least he hadn’t escaped, and now the final stages of their operation could begin.

  The North Korean Air Force wa
s still flying the antiquated Shenyang F-5 at T’ae’tan but, as Yi Min-Ho had discovered, only a few of the old fighter planes now remained there. All the Ilyushins had already been redeployed to the forward bases at Nuchonri and Kuupri, located on the west and east coasts respectively, just north of the DMZ.

  Pak wondered if the South Korean spy had noticed the lack of aircraft movements. In fact the F-5s were there simply as camouflage, something to park on the hardstandings whenever one of the American spy satellites was due to pass overhead.

  The real activity at T’ae’tan centred on the four newer, closely guarded aircraft shelters where Pak had so far assembled twenty-four MiG-25 interceptors, mostly from Russia, but two from Iraq, one from Algeria, another from Iran, and the remaining four from India. And it wasn’t just the aircraft themselves. Over the last three years he and his most trusted associates had bribed, suborned or blackmailed air force officers and NCOs from a number of foreign nations, and he now had a full maintenance team living in the curtained rooms of the new building almost adjacent to the hangars, as well as armourers and pilots. It also housed a virtually full inventory of spares and enough munitions to make the secret squadron of Foxbats a viable force.

  The personnel enlisted had all been very well rewarded to change their allegiance – though not as handsomely as they believed because of the number of ‘superdollars’ included in their handouts of cash – and had all been promised substantial bonuses upon successful completion. Pak well knew that his government had no intention of honouring such a commitment. A bullet in the back of the head was a lot cheaper than a bonus of any size. The risk of loose talk was why all these foreign military personnel were accommodated here in the remote airfield at T’ae’tan rather than in Ugom or any other town.

  Pak was now awaiting only the final two aircraft, and imminent delivery of the remaining munitions – the forty-eight R-40T air-to-air missiles which would bring his total arsenal up to one hundred and sixty-three. Known to NATO as the AA-6 Acrid, this is an essential component of the Foxbat’s high-level interception system: a Mach 4.5 missile with a thirty-kilometre range and carrying a seventy-kilogram high-explosive fragmentation warhead. Coupled with the Foxbat’s high-level capability and its immensely powerful Saphir-25 radar – NATO reporting name Fox Fire – it proves a highly effective weapon against high-flying, high-speed targets.

  The Acrids were currently travelling by sea from Varna in Bulgaria, and would route through the Suez Canal to Bandar Abbas in Iran – the former Shah’s premier naval base – and from there they’d be flown direct to T’ae’tan itself. And once those had arrived, everything needed would be in place.

  Office of the Associate Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia

  Following the events of 11 September 2001, there was a major shake-up in the American intelligence organization, a community still reeling from shock at the destruction of the Twin Towers and the attack on the Pentagon. And more so from what many perceived to be a series of inexcusable failures of intelligence collection and analysis.

  One of the major changes was the creation of an entire new bureaucracy: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Its function was to integrate and analyse all intelligence – domestic, foreign and military – and assess its impact on both homeland security and American interests abroad. With the creation of the ODNI, the post of DCI or Director of Central Intelligence – the head of the CIA and the most senior intelligence community post in the United States – had ceased to exist.

  This was a pity, because Walter Hicks would probably have made a very good DCI. He’d been the Director of Operations (Clandestine Services), and acting DCI, when a crisis had arisen that took America to the brink of thermonuclear war. His handling of the emergency had impressed the President. When the previous incumbent had retired for genuine health reasons as opposed to Washington-speak ‘health reasons’ – a euphemism for either sexual misconduct or some form of financial irregularity – Hicks had indeed been promoted, but not to the post of DNI. That job had gone to a career diplomat, probably because the White House didn’t trust a professional spook to regulate or represent the interests of other professional spooks.

  Instead, he’d become the new Associate Deputy Director of the CIA, and he wasn’t much enjoying it. Hicks had always been a hands-on, let’s-kick-some-ass kind of guy, and his enhanced salary didn’t entirely compensate for having to be politically correct at all times and talk nicely to time-serving politicians demanding information that he personally didn’t think they had any right or need to know.

  Since his appointment, his already sparse fair hair had begun receding to the point where he was seriously considering shaving his head completely. He had even sold his forty-five-foot catamaran because he no longer had any spare time to sail her.

  So it was with a certain sense of relief that he noted Richard Muldoon’s name showing up in the appointments diary on his computer. He knew Muldoon well enough to realize that the gangling Head of the Directorate of Science and Technology – nobody had suggested changing the name of that particular section of the Agency – wouldn’t bother him with anything trivial.

  ‘Take a pew, and grab a coffee, Richard. What’ve you got?’

  Muldoon put the file he carried on the conference table and helped himself from the coffee pot – he sometimes thought Hicks should simply take his caffeine intravenously and save all that messing around with cups and beans and percolators – then sat down opposite the ADD.

  ‘We’ve received Flash traffic direct from National Intelligence Service headquarters at Naegok-dong in Seoul. The request came from Kang Jang-Ho – who’s number two to Bae Chang-Su – but Bae himself countersigned it.’

  ‘I’m pretty busy and you’ve read this file, so just give me the short version.’

  Muldoon was used to dealing with Hicks, and had anticipated him. ‘It’s pretty simple. For the last few months the NIS has been picking up whispers about unusual air activity in and around the south-west corner of North Korea. Unfamiliar aircraft seen flying over the land and occasionally over the Yellow Sea, even the occasional sonic boom, that kind of thing. They sent out surveillance vessels, mainly commandeered fishing boats to allow an element of plausible deniability if they were intercepted, but their observers didn’t spot anything they weren’t expecting.

  ‘The only military airfield in that whole area is T’ae’tan, located right here.’ Muldoon pulled a map out of his file and opened it on the table. ‘It’s one of the closest North Korean airfields to Seoul, so the NIS has always tried to keep an eye on any new developments there.’

  Hicks looked at the chart where Muldoon was pointing. ‘Yes, got it. Carry on.’

  ‘T’ae’tan is known to operate Ilyushin Il-28 bombers and Shenyang F-5 fighters, but what some witnesses reported seeing was nothing like either aircraft. The problem for the NIS was that those witnesses weren’t exactly qualified in aircraft recognition, most of them being fishermen. But they kept getting so many reports they finally decided they needed to check on T’ae’tan and find out exactly what was going on there.

  ‘So yesterday – Monday – they landed one of their agents just about here.’ Muldoon pointed again to the map. ‘His instructions were to trek across country to T’ae’tan and set up an observation point. Then he was to count the number of F-5 fighters and Il-28 bombers he saw and identify any unusual aircraft. He was using a satellite phone to call in reports, and they received his third and last one this morning. It started with the sound of gunfire, then he yelled “They have new aircraft. I’ve seen a—” And then his satellite phone simply went dead, and it’s been off air ever since.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘And they want us to do what, exactly?’

  ‘The next time one of our Keyhole birds passes near T’ae’tan, they’d like us to tinker with the orbit so it’s a bit out of sequence, then take a bunch of pictures to see if we ca
n figure out what’s going on.’

  ‘And will we do that?’

  Muldoon nodded. ‘We don’t have a lot of options, as Oplan 5027 commits us to lending our support to South Korea, and this request falls well within the parameters. So I’ve already confirmed the tasking – and I’d quite like to know what’s going on over there myself.’

  Yongbyon, North Korea

  Yongbyon is a small and unremarkable town located about one hundred kilometres north of Pyongyang. In the mid-1960s the North Koreans established a large-scale nuclear research facility there, and ten years later they began construction of a nuclear reactor on the site. Within a further ten years they’d also erected a reprocessing facility that would allow them to extract plutonium from nuclear fuel, and a separate research reactor rated at five megawatts. The DPRK built other reactors, including a two-hundred-megawatt installation at Taechon, but it was the Yongbyon complex that worried everyone most.

  Estimates prepared by South Korea, America and Japan, based upon an IAEA calculation of the radioactive isotope content of nuclear waste unloaded from the five-megawatt reactor, suggested that by the end of 2004 the North Koreans could have extracted between twelve and twenty-four kilograms of plutonium.

  In fact, they’d extracted rather more than even the most optimistic – or pessimistic, depending on point of view – of the estimates, but hardly any plutonium now remained in the lead-lined subterranean storage room at Yongbyon.

  A modern twenty-kiloton nuclear warhead contains eight kilograms of fissionable material, so most assessments suggested that the DPRK might have enough plutonium to construct two or three nuclear weapons of this size. That assumed the North Korean scientists were constructing a weapon of modern design, using shaped charges known as lenses to initiate the detonation sequence. But no matter what method they were using to trigger the device, they certainly had enough plutonium to build at least one weapon, even if it was the size of a truck, as one Western scientist had sneered.