Fighting Pax

“Oh – I was thinking back to when we first got here.”

The man clapped his gloved hands and shuddered inside his overcoat.

“All those months ago,” he said. “When you piled out of those wagons. It was like something from Oliver! I almost started singing ‘Consider yourself’ and giving you my Artful Dodger.”

He gripped his lapels and did some nimble footwork. Maggie laughed.

“More like an Artful Codger nowadays, mind,” he chuckled.

“I wish I’d seen you back when you were performing,” Maggie said. “I bet you were amazing.”

Gerald Benning put his arm round her. He never really spoke about his show-business past, but somehow word had got around the children here, probably via Martin, and they liked to ask him questions about his former life. Gerald always answered with good humour, but usually steered the conversation around to other things and asked them about themselves. He thought it was important to remind them, especially the younger ones, what their world was like before all this had happened.

He got them talking about the little aspects of that time, the simple things that they’d forgotten: family holidays, best birthday presents, favourite movies and songs, names of pets and who they’d sat next to in school. He didn’t promise them that, one day, those things would return and everything would be as it was. That would have been cruel. They wouldn’t have believed him anyway. But those memories told them they weren’t just refugees dependant on the charity of a suspicious nation, and that there had been goodness and love in their lives, and they shouldn’t hate their parents for rejecting them. It wasn’t their fault. Dancing Jax was to blame.

Maggie smiled at him. “God knows what we’d have done without you,” she said. “All these months, stuck away up here with less freedom than we had in the camp and nothing to do, day in, day out, but snipe and bitch. We’d have probably killed each other by now. I was ready to strangle that Esther first thing today. She’s worse than she ever was. What a spiteful cow; she’s really doing my head in.”

“She’s difficult to like, that one,” Gerald conceded. “And, since she went all limpet-like on Nicholas, he’s developed full-blown annoyingness too. But we’re none of us perfect and you’ve all been through enough to send most people round the twist and back again. Being cooped up here like battery hens doesn’t help. Don’t let it get to you. Rise above it, my dear.”

“You always make it seem better somehow. Even in this miserable place…”

“Titipu,” he interrupted with a wink. Gerald had mischievously christened the mountain base after the fictional town featured in The Mikado, which was a huge insult to their North Korean hosts. There was nothing but enmity between them and Japan, where The Mikado was set.

“See, all the kids call it that now. They dunno what it is, but it sounds funny. You’ve given them something to laugh at, as long as the Generals don’t find out. You make it bearable and keep us busy with daft schemes. Look how you wangled your way into the kitchens to make that birthday cake for Lee last month.”

“He’d have been happier if I’d managed to get him some ciggies.”

“Oh, don’t expect him to show gratitude, he’s never been the demonstrative type, but that meant a lot to him that did. He’s not the same since Charm… since she died.”

“Poor girl,” Gerald said sadly. “That was horrific for all of you. I’d like to have known her. She sounds dazzling.”

Maggie lowered her eyes. “Best friend I ever had,” she said. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her – and my Marcus – and miss them. After all these months, it still hurts.”

“Course it does. And it always will, but it won’t always be as sharp and you’ll remember how good they made you feel more often than the pain of losing them. Takes a long time though.”

Maggie bit her lip guiltily. She had forgotten the Scottish boy, Alasdair. He had lured the Punchinellos away so that the rest of them could escape. They had all heard the ferocity of the gunfire in those dark woods and understood what it signified. His body was probably still in the New Forest, unburied and picked at by birds and animals – or worse.

And then there was Mrs Benedict…

“I should’ve done more to help Charm’s mum,” Maggie said unhappily. “That first week, after she found out what happened, I should’ve…”

“There was nothing anyone could do,” Gerald told her firmly. “Mrs Benedict just couldn’t live with her grief. Not everyone can. Don’t you ever think you could have stopped her. Despair is a terrible thing, the absolute worst.”

He blew on his gloved hands as if to dispel the sadness and the vapour cloud melted into the fog.

“But it’s no use dwelling on the past, young Maggie,” he declared breezily. “‘Turn, oh turn, in this direction,’ as the chorus sing in Patience. Worse things are undoubtedly just around the corner and we’ve got to be ready for them. But, in the meantime, ‘Let the merry cymbals sound.’ We’re not at home to Mr Despair and we’ve got to ensure your friend Lee doesn’t slip down into that dark pit.”

The girl agreed. “He’s not about to join your choir though,” she told Gerald. “I don’t know how you roped the rest of us into it either. My voice is never going to be mistaken for Adele’s. And then there’s the music lessons you do, way more popular than Martin’s boring maths classes. You really do keep our spirits up, not to mention the stuff you coax out of the guards for us. I’ve no idea how you manage that. I can’t get a smile out of the surly buggers.”

“I let them slay me at chess,” said Gerald, waving the compliment aside. “They’re mad about it. Now, glad you mentioned the choir because I’ve decided it’s going to be Christmas carols all this week – and not just the obvious ones. There’ll be no jingle bells, Batman smells or shepherds’ socks from you lot. Let’s show these gloomy Titiputians what they’re missing.”

“They’re not going to let us sing Chrimble songs, are they? I thought you said they were anti the whole thing in a mega way?”

“Oh, they are. Before this madness happened, the South Koreans used to put lights round a tower near the demilitarised zone so it looked like a Christmas tree and this bunch always threatened to fire rockets at it. They didn’t want their hoi polloi getting any fancy ideas. So what we’re not going to do is tell them we’re singing carols. I know some lovely old ones that aren’t too specific and I can tweak the words in others. They won’t cotton on; they’ll just think we’re doing our usual practising. I might even get the interpreters and guards joining in – now there’s a challenge. If I could get them to warble a wassail, or ‘The Coventry Carol’, that would be my Christmas present to myself. How hot do you think their Latin is?”

Maggie laughed. “About as good as mine – which is non-existent.”

“Fab, I might see if we can get away with a bit of ‘Quem Pastores’. That should fox them.”

“Feels weird talking about Christmas here where they don’t believe in anything but the party and their precious leader,” the girl murmured. “I used to love it: tinsel and telly, parties and the food – specially the food. I used to really wind up my stepmum by pigging out. Seems like another life now; so much has happened since.”

Gerald gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You’ve grown up, that’s what’s happened to you,” he said. “You’ve realised you don’t need to live up to anyone’s expectations but your own. That stepmother was a monster, trying to make you anorexic, and, of course, you being you went and did the exact opposite – you barmpot. But look at you now. How much weight have you lost since you got here? Not that you needed to: you were lovely as you were. The other kids have managed to put some on, but you must’ve trimmed down by a couple of stone at least.”

Maggie looked back into the fog. “I didn’t need to be big any more,” she said. “And, one thing the camp taught me, there’s a better chance of survival if I can run a hundred metres without collapsing. That’s why I jog up and down here every morning; besides, there’s not much else to do.”

“Yes,” Gerald agreed. “And the running isn’t done with yet. This place has lasted much longer than I expected. Austerly Fellows must be saving it for the very end.”

“When do you think that will be?”

“Not long now.” He turned to glance back at the female soldier who had followed him out on to the terrace and gave her a cheery wave. Their ever-watchful hosts were never far away. “They’re extra nervy lately,” he muttered, just loud enough for Maggie to hear. “Haven’t you noticed? There’s rumours about all kinds of things happening near the demilitarised zone in the south. Quite a lot of them have families back there you know; you can learn a lot whilst twiddling with your bishop.”

“If they ever find out you’re picking up the lingo, you’ll be in serious trouble.”

Gerald grinned. “I’m not about to give myself away,” he said. “And my best teacher is General Chung’s youngest daughter, little Nabi. It’s just a game to her. Besides, I’m only picking up the odd word here and there, although the Korean for ‘piano’ is exactly the same as ours. Who’d have thought that? But, from what I gather, there’s been books smuggled in across the frontier and unnatural creatures have been sighted in the woods there.”

“It’s started then,” Maggie said flatly. “Soon it’ll be the helicopter fly-pasts with readings over loudspeakers. Not that they need them in Pyongyang: the whole place is wired up to that annoying PA system. But where do we go from here? There’s nowhere left to hide. We’re trapped in the last corner of the world. What’ll happen to us then?”

“Anything that comes flying into this airspace won’t last long,” Gerald reminded her. “The Marshals are itching to launch their missiles as it is, specially Tark the Shark. He’s a blood-soaked devil, that one, and just back from the south. He’d have pressed every red button already, given half the chance. That’s probably why the Chinese haven’t tried the old helicopter routine around here. They’re only thirty or forty kilometres behind these mountains don’t forget. No, I think Mr Fellows is going to try a different approach. After all, we’ve got the two things he desperately wants.”

“Lee and Martin.”

“Yes, Lee and Martin. For two very different reasons.”

They fell silent and huddled together, facing the featureless mist.

Gerald and Maggie had clicked the moment they met and greatly enjoyed one another’s company. The fact he was almost seventy years old and she only fifteen didn’t matter. She was not only the granddaughter he had never had, they were also firm friends and laughed at the same things.

“Time to go,” he announced presently. “Martin and I have got another of those useless coffee mornings with the big hats in half an hour. Get in out of this cold and tell everyone choir practice at the usual time later. Oh – and remember: ’tis the season…”

“Fa la la la la,” she sang after him as he departed along the terrace, followed by the female soldier.

Maggie turned back to the fog. The last time she had sung a Christmas carol had been back in the camp, over the fresh grave of a young boy killed by one of the Punchinello’s spears. Maggie was ashamed to realise that she couldn’t even remember his name now. Too many faces had gone from her life. But one she would never forget belonged to a girl called Jody. She shuddered in horror whenever she recalled what Dancing Jax had done to her. Jody had been caught between the two worlds. Here her eyes turned to blue glass, while in Mooncaster she had become a hollow glass rabbit, filled with a virulent plague. The memory of that would haunt Maggie for as long as she lived.

“Which probably won’t be too much longer,” she murmured softly.

Peering into the thick white vapour, Maggie thought over what Gerald had said, about the creatures sighted in the far south. What if others had started to creep across the nearby Chinese border? The wooded valleys and mountain slopes could already be crawling with them, invisible in the concealing mist. This disturbing thought caused her to jump away from the wall and she hurried back inside the military base. The metal door clanged shut behind her.

3

IT WAS ONLY marginally less cold inside the mountain. Martin Baxter was waiting on the concourse, behind the main entrance. It was a huge imposing space, where five of the key tunnels converged. The facility was so large and rambling it required transport to travel from one area to another, and each of those routes was wide enough to accommodate two lanes of traffic. One of the tunnels even had rails laid down to convey heavy equipment and munitions. The walls of this man-made cavern were bare rock and the lighting was basic and functional, connected by hanging wires and cables.

Dominating the central area was a scaled-down version of the twenty-metre-high bronze statue of Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang. Even though it was smaller, this was still seven metres tall. With its right arm outstretched, it looked as though it was directing the vehicles driving around it. Above the entrance to each passage hung the red starred flag, and the same design, with its blue borders, had been worked into the mosaic floor.

The first time Martin had set eyes on this impressive interior, it reminded him of early James Bond movies, with those amazing sets of the villain’s lair designed by Ken Adam. The geek in him had gone a step further and couldn’t help imagining daleks gliding around, instead of the old jeeps and bicycles that the base used, and robot Yeti lumbering around outside. But he hadn’t mentioned that to anyone. Only Paul, his partner’s twelve-year-old son, would have appreciated it. But Paul had been one of the first victims of Dancing Jax and was now part of the Ismus’s entourage, together with Carol, the boy’s mother. Martin missed them both desperately.

That morning he was agitated and annoyed. These weekly meetings with the Generals were pointless. They never listened to what he had to say and barely concealed their contempt at his presence. Since the rescue of the children from England, absolutely nothing had been accomplished. He couldn’t understand it. They wouldn’t even discuss a campaign against the Ismus. Their policy was to wait and gather as much information as they could, which, more often than not, they didn’t share with him. Martin decided that today he was going to get some answers. They owed him that much. He wasn’t just anybody. He was the thorn in the Ismus’s side, the man who had denounced him from the start, who had spent the best part of a year trying to warn the rest of the world.

A tinny voice barked and crackled from the tannoy system and went echoing through the tunnels. The language was Korean, but it was so distorted that, even if it had been in English, Martin wouldn’t have been able to understand what was said. Just the usual announcements and orders of the day, he supposed.

A veteran jeep pulled up alongside. The North Korean war machine was a curious hotchpotch of new technology and relics of the past. Although it had almost a thousand missiles trained on South Korea, possessed ZM-87 laser weapons, was nuclear capable and had an active space programme, most of its other arms and vehicles dated as far back as World War Two.

An even younger female soldier than the one that had been shadowing Gerald was at the wheel and a grim-looking guard with an AK-47 sat beside her. She directed a stony-faced expression at Martin and the former maths teacher clambered in beside Gerald who was sitting in the back.

“Piccadilly, please, cabbie,” Gerald quipped. “And don’t go the long way round or you won’t get a tip.” These trifling games were what got him through his time here. Life inside this mountain was barely tolerable, so he embraced every opportunity to tickle it along. At times his teasing attitude infuriated Martin, but the children adored him for it.

The girl betrayed no sign she had heard and drove on. Her name was Chung Eun-mi, eldest daughter of General Chung Kang-dae.

When he first arrived in the country, Martin’s irrepressible sci-fi self had noted that, just like the Bajorans in Star Trek, here the family name preceded the individual name.

Conscription at seventeen was mandatory for everyone, but, for Eun-mi, there was no other possible path. This was a vocation. It was her life’s dream to wear this uniform. She was everything her father could have wished for in a son. Perhaps, if she had been a boy, their relationship would have been different.

Eun-mi was passionately loyal to the state, determined to devote herself to the People’s Army, and strove to be the best in all she did, pushing herself to the limit at the expense of everything else. She had trained harder than any cadet in her unit, could strip a rifle and put it back together faster than the rest and was fluent in Russian, Mandarin and English. She and her young sister, Nabi, had been assigned to the Western refugees, to serve as interpreter, guide and companions. Maggie and the others knew they were also reporting back everything that was said. Well, perhaps not Nabi, who was only six and, unlike Eun-mi, appeared to enjoy spending as much time with the English children as she was allowed.

Gerald had grown very fond of little Nabi and had learned many Korean words from her, but he had no such affection for her older sister. Those beautiful yet flinty features gave nothing away. However, he could see the disgust glittering in her eyes whenever she addressed him or the others. Like everyone else in the country, she had been raised to distrust the West and she, being a General’s daughter, magnified that into rabid hatred. She genuinely considered these Europeans to be an inferior race and would’ve preferred to have been given other duties away from them, but she was fiercely obedient and it never occurred to her to even think about questioning her orders.

As the jeep skirted the bronze statue, Eun-mi and the guard bowed respectfully until they passed into one of the tunnels. Martin and the others were only permitted access to a small fraction of the base. Dormitories and an exercise area had been allocated for them in the medical centre. Everywhere else was forbidden. The personnel they were allowed contact with were also restricted and they ate in their own separate refectory. Even some sections of the medical centre were out of bounds and doors to mysterious rooms were either locked or heavily guarded, or both.

The room where these weekly meetings were held was located in the northernmost section of the base. It was one of the most secure areas, where intelligence was gathered via spy satellites, and row after row of computers were manned round the clock by teams of hackers leaching data from foreign security systems. Neither Gerald nor Martin saw any of that. They were always guided from the jeep to the meeting room without deviation and, once inside, weren’t allowed to leave, not even to use the toilet. Once the meeting was over, they were shepherded straight back to the jeep again.

Gerald always found this journey interesting. The installation was constantly bustling with activity and the ting-a-ling of bicycle bells. He wondered what everyone did, and why they were in such a hurry the whole time. Whatever it was, they were very serious and intense about it. Sometimes he tried to make the guards laugh, but the most he had achieved was a triumphant grin when they checkmated him.

The jeep came to a stop before a set of red double doors, blocked by two hefty sentries bearing the familiar Kalashnikovs.

“A wandering minstrel I,” Gerald sang softly to himself as he got out, waving a hanging wisp of exhaust fume away from his face. The ventilation system had broken down again in this tunnel. That was the third time since September.

The soldier next to Eun-mi took her place behind the wheel and drove off. The girl spoke to the sentries and they stood aside to let the three of them pass.

“And I shouldn’t be surprised if nations trembled,” Gerald continued in a low, lilting murmur. “Before the mighty troops, the troops of Titipu!”

The meeting room was another space designed to impress. It was what every supervillain’s war room should look like: oval in shape, with low-level lighting around the walls that accentuated the texture of the roughly hewn rock. A print of a vibrantly colourful, highly idealised and flattering painting of the three presidents, from Kim Il-sung to his grandson, hung in the centre of the longest wall. Sticking with his Mikado theme, Gerald called them the Three Little Maids and, whenever he saw one of these paintings, which were all over the place, sang a line from the song that seemed appropriate.

“Nobody’s safe, for we care for none.”

A large, elliptical table, made from cherry wood, dominated the centre, with a massive TV screen at one end. At least it was warmer in here than out in the tunnels. Three incongruous electric fires, the old-fashioned sort often found in pensioners’ front rooms back in the UK, had been brought in to lift the temperature and all their bars blazed brightly orange.

The Vice-Marshals and Generals were already gathered and waiting; they rose from the table when the two Europeans came in and bowed.

Martin and Gerald returned the bow and cast their eyes over who was present. These fourteen middle-aged men were the most powerful in the country, under the Supreme Leader. The Chief of the General Staff was here, as was Eun-mi’s father, General Chung Kang-dae, who made no acknowledgement of her presence. Then there was Marshal Tark Hyun-ki or, as Gerald called him, Tark the Shark. His sour face was half hidden behind large mirrored sunglasses as usual. He never attempted to disguise his hostility towards the English refugees. Martin despised him.

When they first arrived and Lee’s incredible ability had been thoroughly discussed, Marshal Tark Hyun-ki had demanded they send the boy into Mooncaster, strapped to an atomic warhead. Upon its detonation, everyone on the planet who was under the book’s spell would be wiped out, leaving only this glorious nation in command of a depopulated earth and finally safe from foreign aggressors.

Some of the other officers supported this efficient method of genocide and were only dissuaded when the practicalities were debated. The sudden death of entire populations would have serious consequences. How could they make safe and maintain every nuclear facility, chemical plant, gas field, oil refinery, pipeline and the innumerable other toxic industries around the globe? It would be physically impossible. And what pestilence would billions of unburied human corpses produce? What guarantee did they have that the monsters from Dancing Jax would also be killed?

Marshal Tark Hyun-ki refused to listen to the counter-arguments. He was adamant it was the perfect moment to settle accounts with the hated West. The time of empty rhetoric was over and they would be triumphant.

Lee’s reaction, when he heard what they’d been planning, was nuclear in itself. In ferocious language he yelled that anything he took to Mooncaster was only a copy; the original objects always remained with his unconscious self in this world and so any bomb would blow up in both places. In spite of this raging outburst, it took a phone call from Kim Jong-un himself to dissuade the Marshal. After that, there was no more talk of sending Lee to Mooncaster and the boy had been chained to four guards, day and night, to keep him anchored here.

As a consequence, at these meetings, Tark the Shark’s bow was always the curtest and he showed his displeasure further by never facing the two Englishmen. Ever since his grotesque proposal had been rejected, he had brought his aide along and communicated only through him.

The aide, a good-looking twenty-year-old called Du Kwan, was the one person who smiled when Martin and Gerald entered, but the friendly greeting was not for them. Over the preceding months he had grown to admire the beauty and composure of Eun-mi. He longed to speak to her privately, but such contact was forbidden. He was anxious to declare his affections, but how could such a thing be? Was she even aware of his existence? Her lovely eyes never strayed in his direction; she was focused solely on her duties as interpreter and kept her gaze fixed on the centre of the table. It was making Du Kwan despondent. Just one look from her would bring him joy.

Also present in the room that morning was Doctor Choe Soo-jin, clutching an overstuffed folder. She was due to deliver the report on her findings so far and the results of the tests she had been running. She cast a quick, sly glance at Martin. She also had certain recommendations to make that she would instruct Eun-mi not to translate.

“Good morning,” Martin said in his no-nonsense schoolteacher’s voice.

Gerald scattered friendly smiles left and right. He was always amused by the oversized hats the top brass wore here. They all looked like army pillar boxes and the medals that studded their jackets were like magnified milk-bottle tops.

Everyone sat down and those with briefcases placed them on the table as they took out laptops or files or sheaves of paper. The Chief of the General Staff chaired the meeting and he called on General Chung Kang-dae to relate the most recent intelligence.

Eun-mi’s father opened a file. He was a smallish man and marginally younger than most of the others in there. Under his hat the hair was thinning, but his eyebrows were thick and black like caterpillars. It was not an unpleasant or harsh face, but laughter had been an infrequent visitor to his lips since the death of his wife, soon after the birth of Nabi.

Before he could speak, Martin interjected.

“I need to know what’s being done about the Ismus!” he said firmly. “Where is he, what is he doing and why haven’t we come up with a plan of action to deal with him?”

The officers glowered in surprise and anger. How dare he interrupt? He was only here out of courtesy. He had nothing to contribute. They stared at Eun-mi and waited for her to translate.

The girl did so dutifully. She was also angered by Martin’s outburst. Her role as interpreter meant that she too had interrupted her father and the colour rose in her cheeks as she felt his disapproval.

“All this time and you’ve done nothing!” Martin continued. “Every day you hesitate it gets worse and worse out there. God knows what abominations are crawling through the streets now. If you allowed me access to the Internet, at least I’d be able to see for myself. The one thing I do know is that Austerly Fellows has something far more evil planned than anything we’ve seen yet. The last I heard he was writing a second book, a sequel to Dancing Jax. He may have even completed it by now. When that gets published, what’s happened already will pale in comparison!”

He paused as the girl repeated his words in Korean. When she finished, she dared to raise her eyes and saw the icy fury on her father’s face. She looked away quickly and caught sight of Du Kwan. The aide was smiling shyly at her, giving her gentle encouragement. The unexpectedness of that flustered her. She snapped her attention back to the centre of the table and her cheeks burned redder.

“And then there’s the items the kids brought with them from England,” Martin pressed on, before they could stop him. “Where are they? The wand and the skull? What did you do with them? They should be monitored constantly. And what about the kids in those camps set up in other countries? Why haven’t you done anything to help them escape? There must be hundreds if not thousands of them out there, suffering God knows what, and nothing’s been done.

“Look, you’ve got this boy, Lee, who has this miraculous power to enter the world of that book and not be taken over by it. The Ismus is terrified of him. That lad is the one thing that can turn his madness against him. You should be thanking me for bringing him to you. Using him to our maximum advantage should be our top priority and I don’t mean as a method of bomb delivery. But all you’ve done is kept him chained up like a veal calf since he got here. What sort of a strategy is that?”

The Chief of the General Staff slammed his hand down and called for silence, flecks of spit flying as he yelled.

“You listen, you learn,” Eun-mi translated rapidly. “You have no voice here. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shows you kindness and good will. You nothing, you Western beggar. This emergency the blame of imperialist weakness. Your peoples dirty and corrupt. You spread sickness over whole world. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will find solution. Wisdom of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un will protect us.”

Martin slumped back in his chair. It was no use: he couldn’t make them understand the urgency. Austerly Fellows was going to inflict something new and unimaginable upon everybody and here they were building sandcastles, believing they could withstand the tide.

The Chief of the General Staff bowed to General Chung Kang-dae. Eun-mi’s father took up his files once more and began his report.

Gerald folded his arms and listened politely. He’d had no idea Martin was going to blow up like that. He should know by now it would be a waste of energy. Nobody could comprehend the horror of Dancing Jax until they had witnessed its effects first hand on people they knew.

General Chung Kang-dae listed the fresh information gathered that week. The poorer African countries were now completely under the influence of the book and powdered minchet was being added to baby-milk formula for the remote villages where missionaries were spreading the words of Austerly Fellows. From the smallest fishing communities in Greenland, to the nomadic tribes of Afghanistan, Dancing Jax was supreme. All fighting, all disputes over territory, drugs, race or religion had been forgotten. For the first time in history, the world was at peace.