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Fu said: ‘That’s certainly true.’

Kai had done his duty and did not want to argue with them. ‘Excuse me, please,’ he said. ‘If I may, I will leave you older and wiser men to discuss the matter. Goodnight.’

As he left the room his phone rang. He saw that the caller was Jin, and he stopped outside the door to answer. ‘You told me to let you know of developments,’ said Jin.

‘What’s happened?’

‘KBS news in South Korea says the North Korean ultras have taken control of the military base at Hamhung, a couple of hundred miles south of their original base at Yeongjeo-dong. They’ve advanced farther than we imagined.’

Kai pictured in his mind a map of North Korea. ‘Why, that means they now have more than half the country.’

‘And it’s symbolic, too.’

‘Because Hamhung is North Korea’s second city.’

‘Yes.’

This was very serious.

‘Thanks for letting me know.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Kai hung up and went back into the private room. The three men looked up in surprise. ‘According to South Korean TV, the ultras have now taken Hamhung.’

He saw his father go pale. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘We have to tell the president.’

Fu Chuyu took out his phone. ‘I’ll call him now.’

CHAPTER 29

The helicopters flew across the Sahara overnight, aiming to arrive at the gold mine at dawn, a little more than thirty-six hours after Abdul had reported in. Tamara and Tab, as the lead intelligence officers, rode in the command chopper with Colonel Marcus. While they were in the air, dawn broke over a featureless landscape of rock and sand, without vegetation or any sign of the human race. It looked like another planet, uninhabited, Mars maybe.

Tab said: ‘Are you okay?’

Tamara was not really okay. She was scared. She had a pain in her stomach and she had to clasp her hands together to stop them shaking. She was desperate to hide this from the others in the chopper. But she could tell Tab. ‘I’m terrified,’ she said. ‘This will be my third gunfight in seven weeks. You’d think I’d be used to it.’

‘Always with the wisecrack,’ he said, but he discreetly squeezed her arm in a gesture of sympathy.

‘I’ll be all right,’ she said.

‘I know you will.’

All the same, she would not have missed this. It was the climax of the whole Abdul project. Abdul’s report had electrified the forces fighting ISGS in North Africa. He had found Hufra and, even better, al-Farabi was there. He had revealed the role of North Korea in arming African terrorists. He had also discovered a gold mine that had to be a major source of income for the jihadis. And he had uncovered a slave labour camp.

Tamara had quickly confirmed the exact location. Satellite images showed numerous mining camps in the general area, all quite similar from six thousand miles up, but Tab had organized a surveillance flight by a Falcon 50 jet of the French air force, six miles up instead of six thousand, and Hufra was easily identified by the large black square of burn damage caused by Abdul’s gasoline fire. They now understood why the drone search for the bus had failed: they had assumed the bus would head north as the quickest way to a paved road, but in fact it had gone due west to the mine.

It had been a challenge to alert everyone and co-ordinate plans with American and French armed forces in such a short time, and there had been moments when the unflappable Susan Marcus looked almost flustered; but she had succeeded, and they had set out in the early hours of this morning and made a rendezvous in the starlit desert an hour ago.

It was the largest operation yet by the multinational force. The rule of thumb for offensive operations was three attackers per defender, and Abdul had estimated a hundred jihadis at the camp, so Colonel Marcus had mustered three hundred soldiers. The infantry were now in place just out of sight. With them was a Firepower Control Team in charge of co-ordinating air and ground attacks so that no one shot at their own side. The air assault was led by Apache attack helicopters armed with chain guns, rockets and Hellfire air-to-surface missiles. Their mission was to crush jihadi resistance rapidly in order to minimize casualties among the attacking force and the non-combatants in the slave quarters.

The last aircraft in the fleet was an Osprey helicopter carrying medical staff with their supplies plus social workers fluent in Arabic. They would take charge when the fighting was over. The slaves would have to be cared for. They would have health problems that had never been addressed. Some would be malnourished. All would have to be returned to their homes.

Tamara saw a smudge on the horizon that quickly resolved into a habitation. The fact that there was no greenery indicated that it was not a normal oasis village but a mining camp. As the fleet drew nearer she saw a mess of tents and improvised shelters contrasting vividly with the three neatly fenced compounds, one containing the carcases of burned-out cars and lorries, one with a pit in the middle that was obviously the gold mine, and the third with cinder-block buildings and what might have been missile launchers under camouflage covers.

Susan said to Tamara: ‘I think you said that the jihadis go to great lengths to keep the slaves out of the fenced areas.’

‘Yes. They can be shot if they climb fences, Abdul said.’