Page 128 of Never

‘Not if I can help it. Book me on the next flight back. We can change it if necessary.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Kai hung up and calculated timings in his head. Meetings were held at Ham’s unfinished house, unless otherwise agreed. Kai should be there at about half past nine.

He replied to Ham’s message with one equally terse. It said simply:9.30 a.m.

***

A cold, hard rain was falling on the airport at Yanji next morning. Kai’s plane had to circle for fifteen minutes while an air-force jet landed. Civilian and military terminals shared the runway, but the military had priority – as always in China.

It was only mid-October, but Kai was glad of his winter coat as he stepped outside the terminal and queued for a taxi. As usual he gave the address of the Wumart supermarket. The driver had the radio tuned to a Korean-language station that was playing ‘Gangnam Style’, a familiar K-pop classic. Kai sat back and enjoyed the music.

From the supermarket Kai walked to Ham’s house. The site was a sea of mud and little work was getting done.

‘I’m risking my life by seeing you,’ Ham said, ‘but I’m probably going to get killed in the next few days anyway.’

This was startling. Kai said: ‘Are you serious?’

The question was superfluous. Ham was always serious. He said: ‘Let’s get inside out of the rain.’

They entered the unfinished building. A decorator and his apprentice were working in the grandchildren’s bedrooms, using bright pastel colours, and the distinctive smell of fresh paint filled the house, pungent and caustic, but also pleasantly suggestive of newness and smartness.

Ham led Kai into the kitchen. On the counter stood an electric kettle, a jar of tea leaves and some cups. Ham switched the kettle on and closed the door so that their conversation could not be overheard.

The house was cold. The two men kept their coats on. There were no chairs; they leaned on the newly installed kitchen counters.

Kai said impatiently: ‘What is it? What’s the emergency?’

‘This economic crisis is the worst since the North–South war.’

Kai already knew that. He was partly responsible for it. ‘And…’

‘The Supreme Leader has squeezed the military budget. The vice-marshals protested, and he fired them all.’ Ham paused. ‘That was a mistake.’

‘So now the military is run by a new, younger generation of officers. And…?’

‘For a long time the military has had a strong ultra-nationalist-reformist element. They want North Korea to be independent of China. We should decide our own fate, they say; we should not be China’s lapdog. I hope I don’t offend you, my friend.’

‘Not in the least.’

‘In order to sustain independence they would have to reform agriculture and industry, loosening the constraints of Communist Party control.’

‘As China did under Deng Xiaoping.’

‘Their views have always been muted – if they were openly critical of the Supreme Leader, they wouldn’t be officers very long. Such opinions are always stated in hushed voices, among trusted friends. But that means the Supreme Leader doesn’t always know who his enemies are. And many of the new cohort of leaders secretly belong to the ultra-nationalist tendency. They think nothing will ever improve under Kang U-jung.’

Kai began to see where he was going, and he was worried. ‘What are they going to do about it?’

‘They’re talking about a military coup.’

‘Hell.’ Kai was rocked. This was serious, much more so than a Vietnamese ship near the Xisha Islands, or a United Nations resolution about arms sales. North Korea had to be stable: that was a keystone of China’s defence. Any threat to Pyongyang was a threat to Beijing.

The kettle boiled and switched itself off. Neither man moved to make tea. ‘A coup when?’ said Kai. ‘How?’

‘The ringleaders are my colleagues, the officers at Yeongjeo-dong. They will certainly be able to take control of their own base.’

‘Which means they will have nuclear weapons.’