The Fox

‘Still they would not stop. Then they tested their biggest H-bomb deep underground. They triggered an earthquake measured at over six on the Richter scale. That completed the implosion of the mountain of Punggye-ri.

‘Simultaneously, the North Korean economy began to collapse, like the mountain, due to the economic sanctions imposed by the outside world after they expelled the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is when, last year, they hit upon the ruse: we will publicly destroy Punggye-ri if you will ship us the grain and oil we need. And the West has fallen for it.’

At this point the Prime Minister interjected:

‘How do you know all this?’

‘It is all in the public domain, if you know where to look. There are men and women in the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies, RUSI for short, who spend their lives studying every detail of the strategic dangers, worldwide. It pays to consult them.’

‘Then why has the West fallen for a scam?’

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sp; ‘Actually, Prime Minister, it is the USA in the form of the State Department and the White House that has fallen for it.’

‘I repeat, why have they fallen for it?’

‘Because, Prime Minister, they have chosen to.’

Sir Adrian had spent his working career as a civil servant in one of the most rigorous disciplines that exists – secret intelligence. He was convinced that most politicians and far too many senior civil servants possessed personal egos of Himalayan proportions. Such vanity could permit self-delusion with little harm done other than the expenditure of huge sums of taxpayers’ money to no purpose. Government waste is a fact of life. But if you indulge in self-delusion on a covert mission in the heart of an enemy dictatorship, you can end up very dead. The reason he was prepared to work for Marjory Graham was because he knew she was a rare exception to the rule of ego.

‘Oh dear, do you really think so little of us, Adrian?’

‘In 1938, I was not even born. I was a 1948 baby.’

‘And I ten years later, in 1958. Your point?’

‘In 1938, we had MI6. The Americans had not yet founded the CIA. And the USA was plunged in isolationism. But our agents were active in Nazi Germany. They knew about the first concentration camps – Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald. We discovered what they were, where they were, what went on inside them. We reported back. No one wanted to know.

‘We reported that Hitler was laying down the keels for warships that a peace-loving Germany would never need. Again, no one in London wanted to know. We discovered new Messerschmitt fighters were rolling out at two a day. We reported this. Downing Street once again turned its back.

‘A gullible Prime Minister listened only to the appeasement-fanatical Foreign Office. Hitler, he allowed himself to be convinced, was an honourable gentleman who, once he had given his word, would abide by it. But day by day the Führer was breaking every term of the Versailles Treaty of 1918, every pledge he had ever made. And it was all provable.’

‘Adrian, that was then, this is now. What is your point?’

‘That it is happening again. The world’s leading Western power has decided to delude herself that an oriental monster of proven savagery will convert into a peace-loving partner in exchange for a bit of rice. It is another triumph of self-delusion.’

Mrs Graham replaced her coffee cup and gazed across the green fields of England, so far from the gutted mountains of North Korea.

‘And this mountain …’

‘Punggye-ri.’

‘Whatever. It really has no value?’

‘None at all. It is no longer a testing site. What they will be dynamiting in front of the applauding world is already little more than rubble. The site is no longer fit for purpose. But, they have others. And, in any case, at the moment, they do not need to do any more tests. They have stocks enough to threaten the civilized world.

‘Destroying Punggye-ri is not a problem. But they do have two other problems. There is not much point in having nuclear bombs if you cannot deliver them on target many miles away, even thousands of miles away. Their biggest intercontinental ballistic missile is still not strong enough to deliver their smallest thermonuclear warhead. They are seeking to miniaturize the warhead and increase the ICBM. Eventually, they will succeed.

‘The Hwasong-15 missile will be improved to carry their thermonuclear warhead, making it capable of reaching not the American island of Guam but any point on the entire US mainland. When that is done, they will not need to ask for favours; they will demand them. Or else.’

‘So, if the public destruction of an already-destroyed mountain is nothing but a sideshow, what do they really want?’

‘A sort of bridging loan, Prime Minister. Many millions of tons of grain, billions of gallons of fuel oil. Except that a loan should be repaid. This would never be repaid. So it would be … a gift, to be set against good behaviour. So long as it lasts, meaning so long as it suits. For years, China has been North Korea’s saviour. But President Xi is running out of patience. Hence the desperate wooing of the White House.’

‘And if the North Korean dictator does not get this “bridging loan”?’

‘Then Kim Jong-un runs into problem number two. Unlike our Foreign Office, I take the view that pudgy little Kim is much weaker than he seems. All we ever see are vast squadrons of strutting, goose-stepping, ultra-trained and ultra-fanatical loyalists in Pyongyang. But only the million privileged loyalists are allowed to live in the capital – well housed, well fed, well employed. Only these, carefully selected, are allowed to appear before Western cameras. Plus, the 200,000-strong ultra-loyal army, the praetorian guards, who would die for him and his regime.