11.
THE TEACHER
Betty Ogden came from Yorkshire, grand-daughter of one of the last owners of a wool-combing mill in Bradford, where her father had worked. When Grandpa decided to sell up, her father moved to Ireland to work in synthetics. She had decided to stay at home. She liked Yorkshire, and wasn’t at all sure she would like County Kildare. A small flat on the outskirts of York, initially funded by her father was better, in her view, than a few acres in rain-filled Naas which is where her parents had settled.
There was no explaining it, but she had a natural aptitude for languages. Learning them, speaking them, reading them and writing them. It didn’t run in the family. Her father was an engineer by background and degree, a fighter pilot while on a short-term commission in the RAF, who now loved nothing better than fiddling with clocks.
Her first holiday abroad with her parents was great, but when asked afterwards, she said she hadn’t really enjoyed it. Sure, the beach and the weather were super, but she hadn’t enjoyed it. She had no idea what the people were talking about.
Next time a holiday abroad was mentioned, she got the books out of the library, and by the time they arrived, was all-but fluent in French. She enjoyed the holiday much more this time, because she felt more like being at home.
From then on, she studied languages.
Betty Ogden had always worked for the Foreign Office, since the time she had graduated. They were always looking for brilliant linguists, and that’s what she was. Not only that, she had qualified as a teacher, as well.
She had many different jobs after she started at the F.O., as they tried to find the right permanent role for her. Not that she minded that. It gave her a feel for what she might eventually want to do with her career as well. So far, she had enjoyed it in all the departments she’d been put in.
They had tried her out as a translator at first. Attending conferences abroad was her favourite – she discovered that she enjoyed travelling, and meeting people. The subjects were often boring though, as well as some of the speakers, who tended to drone on without ever really coming to the point. Meetings about technical issues were often the most difficult. They really tested your vocabulary, as well as your understanding of the subject being discussed.
Translating documents was often interesting, too. She had quite good keyboard skills, but it was something of an art reading in one language and typing in another. She was quite sure much of the information she handled was not supposed to be in our hands. Documents secretly copied at embassies or by spies out in the field. Highly classified, a lot of that, but she had a top level security clearance.
Which was why she had ended up at Bourleywood House.
It was one of those secret Government locations that nobody knew about. A grand house hidden away in the Cotswold countryside, it was owned by the National Trust. The grounds were open to the public, and so were parts of the house at certain times of the year.
Other parts of it never were.
They were the parts used by several Government departments for all sorts of undercover operations. Betty Ogden never quite knew the extent of the activities which went on there, but she did know it was often operated as a safe house. It was used as a secret hiding place for those who needed to be kept out of the public view, like defecting foreign spies, and others whose lives might be under threat for one reason or another. Some people even went there to be given a completely new identity.
Its main use was for training. Top Secret briefings were held there, in special secure lecture rooms where it was impossible for anyone to overhear or see what was going on. The military, and particularly the Special Forces, used it often. Anti-terrorist training, escape and evasion, interrogation techniques, and things like that.
And there was a language school there, too.
That’s where Betty Ogden went.
It always surprised her how many people working for the Government needed to speak and/or read a foreign language who couldn’t just be sent to a technical college or go to night school. They were usually people who ended up being where they weren’t supposed to be, she decided.
Sometimes, even, they were people who had ended up in this country who weren’t supposed to be here, but who needed to speak the language fluently to be of any use to us. All sorts of people; military, diplomatic, business – it didn’t matter. They were foreigners who had decided they would rather be here than there, and who we had decided we would rather keep than send home. They had been ‘turned’, as the idiom had it.
Betty Ogden had two main roles. She taught English to foreigners, and, more interestingly, taught a foreign language to individuals sponsored by the Government, who were due to serve abroad. Usually under-cover.
She specialised in languages of the Far East, including Cantonese and Korean, but not Japanese. A girl from Japan did that.
She had not been at Bourleywood for long before someone decided that she should travel a bit. So she was given a special vetting, and eventual recruited into MI6.
They had in mind a special assignment for her, and there weren’t that many people around in the Foreign Office who they thought would be capable of successfully completing it.
They wanted someone to go to North Korea, as a specialist teacher working for the British Council, which had managed to install five teachers from England in various institutions. She was destined to serve at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
Students were always a good source of information, and could even be persuaded to work for British intelligence sometimes, if they were judged to be worth the effort. As Burgess and Maclean had shown while at Cambridge, universities and colleges were fertile recruiting grounds.
In the end, she served there for just over a year, and it was while she was there that she had met Choi Yong.
In fact, it was why she had been sent there – to meet Choi Yong.
It seemed that Yong and his close friend Lee Kwang-Sun were both very keen to visit England – not America – and to learn more about the country as well as improving their grasp of the language. Their main subjects were nuclear physics and computer science, but they were also regular students at her English classes.
It was Yong they were after, but Lee Kwang-Sun was also the sort of person she had been sent to ferret out. It was difficult, though, for her to speak privately to individual students. The university authorities frowned upon it, and tutorials on a one-to-one basis were banned in the case of ‘foreign’ lecturers. Nevertheless, Yong and Kwang-Sun had frequently sought her out for a quiet chat, and they had managed to have some quite ‘useful’ conversations before one of the university security people inevitably noticed, and moved them on with a sharp admonition.
The whole place was run on military lines. The university buildings were surrounded by a high fence, and entrance to the compound was through a guarded security gate. Uniformed guards patrolled the inside of the campus, and there were ‘minders’ everywhere, keeping watch on both students and tutors alike. There was always one with Betty Ogden during her lessons, to ensure that she did not in any way stray from her central remit of teaching the English language, and nothing more.
There were no female students at Pyongyang University. The parents of all the students were high ranking officials, who were nearly all servants of the government in one form or another, either from local or national administrations, or from the military. It was an honour for their sons to be selected to attend the University, as it meant they had been picked out for similar high ranks in the future.
The family of Choi Yong had all been scientists or engineers, which is why he was following in their footsteps with his nuclear physics studies. Two of his relations had actually been abroad in connection with their work, but they were among a privileged few.
One, Uncle Dr. Choi Shin had even been to America. He did not enjoy his visit, and on his return tended to agree with the party propaganda. It did not seem to him to be a good place, and he disliked the arrogance of its people.
He had also been to England, however, which he had found altogether more agreeable. Indeed, he had almost concluded that it would not be a bad country to live in, and had encouraged his nephew Yong to make a visit if ever he had the opportunity.
Yong’s uncle knew that escape from North Korea was virtually impossible and was not to be contemplated. He would never be allowed even the opportunity because of the importance of his work, and if he tried to defect and was caught, he knew that every last member of his family, even distant relatives, would be executed or severely punished in a barbaric labour camp. But that did not stop him secretly yearning for the opportunity to present itself.
What had convinced him even more strongly than ever that the country in which he lived and worked was not the wonderful and peace-loving place he had always been led to believe, was the very work in which he was involved. He realised how incredibly dangerous it was if his country was ever to become more successful in his field of science, as a nuclear physicist working on weapons development.
Thanks largely to the massive support given by their Chinese neighbours, the North Koreans had already been able to test three rather crude and dirty nuclear weapons, and were pushing ahead at all speed to make improved warheads. He was able to see through the smokescreen of the official propaganda, and realise the horrifying consequences to his country if the dictatorship ever managed to launch an attack on America or any of its allies. He knew that the nearest of these was in South Korea, and that the North already had missiles capable of reaching Seoul. He had a feeling that the Chinese were using his country as a tool to carry out some of their research for them in return for food and other aid, and that the Great Leader Kim Jung-un was too blind to realize what was going on. If only half of what he had heard about America was true, then it was inevitable that his country was already targeted by the vastly superior weapons in the US armoury.
He had discussed all this several times, discretely, with his nephew Yong.
“I shall never be able to leave this country again,” Uncle Shin had told Yong, “but you could, and should, if you get the chance. I’m not saying you should leave for ever, to enjoy a better life, but you should at least see what better there is to be had away from this place.”
All this explained why Choi Yong had been so keen to befriend Betty Ogden. Who better to arrange, if such a thing was ever to be possible, for him to visit England?
All this also explained why London had so conveniently planned for Betty Ogden to return there as an English specialist at Westminster University, home as it was to so many visiting foreign students from around the world.
It had not, after that, been too difficult to arrange for Choi Yong and two of his colleagues to follow her there to further their studies in London.
With a disaffected Uncle working on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, Yong would be a good catch if he could be landed.
***
Because Betty’s job at the University was full-time, it was the weekend before they could all get together. Not that weekends were ever anything special to people in the intelligence world. One day was much the same as any other. The only real difference today was that they were in casual dress. That meant that James Piper was not wearing a tie for a change, but it was his office after all.
“Thanks for coming in,” he said, as his secretary brought in mugs of coffee. “There are questions to ask about our three students from North Korea, so we hope you can help with some answers, Betty.”
“If I can, of course. Things seem to be moving forward at last,” she said. It was almost a question rather than a statement. “I’m interested to know how things are going from your point of view, after so much effort trying to get you to meet them,” she said to Maurice Northcot, the only other person present.
“Thanks to you,” Maurice replied, “I’ve met all three of them once, and since then had two further meetings with Choi Yong while you were at Stratford.”
“Good move, that, getting the other two away,” commented James. “But communicating with you is proving a problem which we need to address today, among other things.”
Betty nodded. “I can appreciate that,” she said. “But I can’t use normal methods, like personal mobile phones. I dare not risk blowing my cover.”
“Quite. But now this operation at last appears to be underway, it’s important that we can keep in touch, and get hold of you when we need to.”
“Agreed; and I may need to contact you, too, although the whole thing could be complicated by the fact that I spend so much of my time in a classroom or doing tutorials.”
“Do you have any sort of timetable for your work at the University?” asked Maurice. “Are there times when you can be contacted more easily than others?”
“Yes, there are, although always subject to change of course. It’s that sort of job, unlike a normal school with a regular curriculum. I’ll email a work schedule to both of you,” promised Betty.
“That’s helpful. And you have the secure mobile phone, which we shall use from now on. If for some reason you can’t speak, say so and ring us back as soon as possible.”
“Weekends and evenings are probably the best times for us to make contact, and for me to talk quietly to our two targets. But ring any time, and hope for the best.”
“Good. Keep the Satcom with you and live at all times from now on, then,” ordered James. “Now, there were a couple of things earlier on which puzzled us, and we still don’t properly understand.”
“For a start,” said Maurice, “Yong left me a message to ‘meet again’, written in his native script. How could he possibly know I could read Chŏsongŭl, or was he just guessing? It put me in a difficult situation, not knowing whether or not you had told him.”
“He doesn’t know. I have certainly never mentioned you to him at all. He has no idea that we are in any way connected, or that between us we engineered your first meeting. As for his message, I think he was just flying a kite. After all, you did tell them you were interested in North Korea and would like to learn more about it from them. Perhaps he suspected that he and his colleagues were being set up and was just checking you out. He’s very bright young man, is Yong.”
“Why would he suspect the meeting was anything other than a coincidence? I was just a complete stranger who happened to sit at their table to eat my lunch.”
“It was their first time out of the confines of the University, don’t forget. They were all bound to be a bit on edge, especially as they had their minder Cheong Sung with them.”
“He could prove to be a bit of a handicap, that fellow,” said James. “We’ll talk about him later.”
“I’d like to know how you found out about our second meeting, and managed to get the others out of the way to Stratford,” said Maurice.
Betty looked at James, her Head of Section.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but I arranged for their room at the lodgings where they are staying to be bugged. Perhaps I should have asked you first.”
“Who did it?” demanded James.
“Len Ellis,” she replied.
“Another smart move,” replied James with a grin. “He’s one of our best technical officers, as I’m sure you know.”
“He got proper authority, since he had to break in to do it,” said Betty. “It’s just that we didn’t ask you first.”
“Forget it,” said James.
“It would be useful to have a feed off that, so that I know what’s being discussed,” said Maurice. “It would save you having to pass on anything interesting.”
“I’ll get Len to fix that.”
“To my office will be fine. Is it audio or video as well?”
“Just audio. Len didn’t have time to do both, and there didn’t seem to be any point anyway.”
“What’s been the tone of their general chat recently,” asked James. “Anything interesting?”
“Yong and his buddy Lee Kwang-sun find it difficult to talk privately between themselves since Cheong Sung is always around,” reported Betty. “He is already proving a nuisance by just being there, and he is a proper zealot, utterly devoted to the Great Leader and to his country. I had the utmost difficulty in persuading them all that they really should get out to meet ordinary people. Their written English is OK, but their spoken English totally lacks idiom, which they will only ever learn by mixing with others. They don’t even mix with other students. As you know, it took Cheong ages to be convinced, and then even longer to convince their embassy people, but their movements are still very restricted.”
“By the embassy or by Cheong?” asked James.
“Cheong.”
“He’ll have to go!” Maurice was only half joking. “But you can’t help wondering why he keeps them under such close scrutiny. Does he have some reason to suspect that they might defect?”
“Always possible, I suppose,” replied James.
“I shall need to have several further meetings with Yong and Kwang-sun, together and probably separately as well, and it would be very useful to meet in different places from time to time.”
“It would help their studies, too,” said Betty. “But I doubt Cheong would ever agree, even if he joined them.”
“Him hanging around is the last thing I want. I might just as well not meet them at all if he’s there.”
Head of Section 7 nodded
“If the two of them could get away from Cheong, we could meet anywhere that gives a us bit of privacy – on a river boat down the Thames, for instance, or a stroll in St. James’s Park. That would give them a bit more confidence, too, if they didn’t think they are being followed or could be overheard.”
“I’ll need to think about this,” said James. “But tell me more about Kwang-sun. What can he bring to this party?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” replied Betty, “that Yong is desperate to stay in this country, and there’s no doubt either that he has an Uncle working at a senior level on their nuclear weapons programme. Yong even claims that his uncle has been to this country on an official visit.”
“He has. Such things are possible, but intensely difficult to arrange, under United Nations auspices as part of the reunification and normalisation process following the war between North and South.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Betty, surprised.
“We have the dates, and managed to learn quite a lot about the guy while he was here.” said James. “As a matter of interest, he visited America, too, but wasn’t keen on the place or the people apparently.”
“So we need Yong so that we can keep in contact with his Uncle?”
“Exactly.”
“But what about Kwang-sun?” asked Maurice “Why should we help him? Can he even be trusted?”
“Can any of them,” questioned James.
“There’s a lot more work to be done before we can answer than one,” said Betty. “But I think Kwang-sun is equally desperate to stay here, and for much the same reason as Yong – better life-style, freedom of movement and expression, and a general dislike for the way things are run back home. Like the rest of them, though, he is also frightened by the regime and what it might do to his family if he defects, so he is looking for help to achieve that in a way which won’t arouse suspicion.”
“The question still is, ‘why should we?’ Has he anything to offer in return for his freedom? Can we use him in any way?”
“Kwang-sun claims that his father works at the same nuclear facility as Yong’s Uncle – some sort of technician. Not on the same level as Yong, but another useful contact if he is to be believed.”
“Why does he not just apply for asylum?”
“That would be to put his family at risk, which he wants to avoid. He needs to simply disappear, same as Yong,” said Maurice.
“Just about impossible with Cheong hanging around,” said Betty. “Much of their chat in their room has been about that, and how it might be achieved, with or without your help, Maurice, but they are pinning their hope on you at the moment. And your friends.”
“It’s odd that they should apparently trust me, and believe that I can and will help them. I think it’s very suspicious, personally.”
“Well, I don’t agree,” said James. “Apart from their tutors, you are the only other person they have met, so they have no-one else to turn to.”
“And they must know the teaching staff would be unlikely to help them,” added Betty. “They are University lecturers, not businessmen with a wide range of contacts, which is how they see you, Maurice.”
“If we do decide to help one or both of them stay here, I shall have to admit working for the Government at some time. Probably soon, in my view, if we are to keep him interested.”
“We need to be very sure they are not trying to get in as doubles or sleepers before you do that,” said James Piper.
“I’ve done what little checking I can,” said Maurice, “and there is nothing known about either of them other than what you have reported, Betty.”
“Knowing about Yong’s uncle doesn’t help us decide about Mr. Lee, though.”
“He’s the difficult one, no doubt.”
“Would Yong stay, do you think, if we refused to help Kwang-sun?”
“Difficult to say,” replied Betty. “But he’s desperate enough so he probably would.”
“I’m not sure we can risk losing him and especially not his uncle,” said James. “It seems to me we have to plan to keep both. There’s no doubt his uncle is Yong’s trump card, and that he will play it as often as he needs to.”
He thought for a moment.
“When’s your next meeting?” he asked Maurice Northcot.
“Nothing planned,” he replied. “I’m playing hard to get at the moment and raising all sorts of doubts about them and why I should help them. But I have agreed to keep talking, and the deal is that Yong rings me at my ‘office’ when he thinks they can get away from Cheong. I’ve given them my ‘Aspect Management Consultants’ card, so that’s the number he’ll use. Any call will come through to the green phone in my office here.”
James pondered again.
“Something will have to be done about that man Cheong, otherwise they will never be able to get in touch.”
“And they can’t even get away to drop in at The Fitzroy Tavern on the off chance of catching you during your lunch break, either.”
“I shall only go there again if I know they are going to be there. It’s not my favourite pub!”
“Any thoughts about Cheong?” asked Betty.
“Let’s talk this through,” pondered James. “It seems the only way to give Yong and Kwang-Sun any freedom of action is to get rid of Cheong completely, or at least to get him out of the University. I take it he could not be replaced by another student minder, half way through their stay?”
He looked at Betty, who shook her head. “The University Board would never contemplate his replacement at this stage.”
“How is he doing, academically?” asked James. “Any chance of him being chucked off the course and sent home for lack of effort or something”?
“None. He’s doing well in all his subjects, according to colleagues, and is dedicated and hardworking, as his ‘Great Leader’ expects.”
“Why are you keen for him to be sent home, James?” asked Maurice. “There are plenty of other ways of making him disappear, I should have thought.”
“Such as?”
“Well, an accident, say. Fatal, of course, and easily arranged. Even food poisoning or a heart attack or something like that which could kill him off.”
“If he dies in this country, his body will have to be sent back to North Korea, where there’s bound to be an autopsy or post mortem or whatever they do over there, which puts us at risk if we engineer his death in some way. I would much prefer that he went home alive and in one piece.”
“In that case,” said Maurice, “we shall have to engineer some other reason. We can’t expel him from the University on academic grounds, so we shall have to dream up some other means of getting rid of him.”
“Or locking him up here until the future of the other two is settled.”
“Now that’s an idea,” said James. “Trump up some reason to have him arrested and charged.”
“And if we could think up some offence which is serious enough, like drug dealing, we might even get him deported.”
“If he gets sent home in disgrace, he will be condemned to one of their notorious labour camps, probably along with most of his family,” said James.
“I’m not sure I could live with that,” said Betty. “He’s quite a decent chap really, like the other two, and he can’t help being from a different and alien ideological background.”
“There doesn’t seem to me to be any way of getting him out of the country other than in disgrace. Even failing the University academic standards would be seen as a disgrace and him letting down his country.”
“Accident then,” said Maurice.
“For him to have an accident which does not involve the other two seems highly unlikely, given that he is never on his own. There are always three of them, together,” observed James.
“As a matter of interest, Betty,” asked Maurice, “how was it that Yong managed to evade your trip to Stratford?”
“All three were booked to go, but Yong pulled out at the last minute saying he felt ill. And I mean last minute. We were all on the coach.”
“Any other trips planned?”
“Not by me, but other lecturers arrange technical visits from time to time. I’ll see what’s in the diary if you like, in case something comes up which we could manipulate.”
They talked around the issues for half an hour or so but made no progress.
“Divide and rule is all very well,” said Betty, “but these three seem indivisible. The only times they are apart is when they are on individual lectures or tutorials within the University, and then they are normally in the company of other fellow students.”
“How long do we have, as a matter of interest?”
“I’m due back in Pyongyang in about three months,” replied Betty, “and they are due to return with me.”
“We are going round in circles at the moment,” he said. “We could sit here for ever and never come up with anything, so I suggest we call it a day. If anyone gets any workable idea of how to settle this, share it immediately, but it seems to me that finding a solution probably rests with you Betty. You’re in contact with them all the time, and unless you can organise something, nobody ever will.”
“Thanks for nothing.”
***