Page 218 of Never

‘He’s known for a while that he had prostate cancer, but he refused treatment and told only a few people. Now it’s gone to his lungs and he has to be treated in hospital.’

This explained a lot. Specifically, it accounted for the smear campaign against Ting and, by association, against Kai himself. Someone who wanted Fu’s job had been tipped off in advance and had tried to discredit the leading candidate. The villain was probably the domestic intelligence chief, Vice-Minister Li Jiankang.

Fu was a typical old Communist, Kai thought. The man is dying, but he’s still plotting. He wants to make sure his successor is someone as rigidly orthodox as himself. These people don’t stop until they drop.

How much danger was Kai in, personally? It seemed a trivial question when Korea was on the brink of all-out war. How can I be vulnerable to this kind of crap, he asked himself, when my father is vice-chairman of the National Security Commission?

His personal phone rang. Yawen left the room and he picked up. It was General Ham in North Korea. ‘Supreme Leader Kang is fighting for his political life,’ he said.

Kai thought Kang was probably fighting for his literal life too. If the South Koreans did not kill him, the ultras probably would. But he said: ‘What makes you say that right now?’

‘He can’t defeat this rebellion. He’s fought them to a temporary standstill, but he’s running out of weapons, and they have the upper hand. The only reason the rebels haven’t yet wiped out the remaining government forces is that they think the South Koreans are going to do the job for them.’

‘Does the Supreme Leader know that?’

‘I believe he does.’

‘So why is he provoking a war with South Korea? It seems suicidal.’

‘He thinks China can’t afford to let him lose. You’re going to save him. That’s a fixation with Kang. He believes you’ll have to send him reinforcements – you have no choice.’

‘We can’t send Chinese troops into North Korea. It would embroil us in a war with the US.’

‘But you can’t let South Korea conquer North Korea.’

‘That’s true too.’

‘Kang thinks there’s only one way for this to end: you will help him hold off South Koreaanddefeat the ultras. The more he’s damaged, the greater the pressure on China to come to the rescue. That’s why he doesn’t think he’s being reckless.’

Kang felt invulnerable. Anybody who called himself Supreme Leader might convince himself of that delusion.

Ham said: ‘He’s not crazy. He’s logical. He can’t fight a long slow war – he doesn’t have the resources. He must make a big win-or-lose gesture. If he wins, he wins. And if he loses, you have to save him, so he wins again.’

That was true too.

Kai said: ‘Does he have any missiles left, after the attack on Sino-ri?’

‘More than you’d think. They are all truck-mounted. After he fired those six at Jeju, he sent all the launchers away from the bases and hid them.’

‘Where the hell do you hide those trucks? The small ones are nearly forty feet long.’

‘All over the country. They’re parked in places where they can’t be seen from above, mostly in tunnels and under bridges.’

‘Clever. Makes it almost impossible to hit them.’

Ham said: ‘I have to go, sorry.’

‘Take care of yourself,’ Kai said, but Ham had already hung up.

Kai reflected sombrely on the conversation as he made a note of its details for the record. Everything Ham said made sense. The only way to avoid war now was for China to restrain North Korea and the US to restrain the south. But it was easier said than done.

After a few minutes’ reflection, he thought he saw a way to nudge the Americans. He decided to try it out first on a member of the Communist old guard. He phoned his father. He would talk about something else, then slip his idea into the conversation.

‘You’re a friend of Fu Chuyu’s,’ he said when he got through. ‘Did you know he’s dying?’

There was a hesitation that told him the answer. Then Jianjun said: ‘Yes, I found out a few weeks ago.’

‘I wish you’d told me.’