Free Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) by Frank Gardner Page A

destined to hurt people he loathed, the Politburo, whom he considered to be barely human.
    In paranoid totalitarian regimes, it is often said the further a person rises up the greasy pole of power, the more they need to watch their backs if they want to survive. In Ceauşescu’s Romania of the 1980s, children were encouraged to report their parents if they suspected them of ‘anti-state views’. In pre-invasion Iraq, it was often said that President Saddam Hussein had the uncanny knack of being able to tell if a member of his regime was plotting against him, even before that person had decided to make his move. And so it was in North Korea.
    They came for Dr Mun that same day, right at the end of his shift, dragging him from the lab, still in his white coat, even as he loudly proclaimed his innocence. His fate had been sealed the moment the colonel had picked up the phone that afternoon to the feared State Security Department. Now Mun was destined to disappear into the gulag, where there was every possibility he would end up on the wrong side of the reinforced glass in that dreadful human laboratory. Yet even now, in his darkest hour, he remained professional. As they bundled him into the Black Crow, the van used to transport political prisoners, he begged them to tell him just one thing. Had the radioactive caesium been safely secured? ‘Please,’ he sobbed. ‘You don’t know what this stuff can do. The people must be protected.’
    A blow to the back of his head from the butt of a pistol nearly knocked him unconscious. ‘No talking!’ they screamed. But the arresting officer could not resist a final verbal blow. ‘Do not fear, Comrade Mun. Your colonel has been a loyal citizen. All seven hundred and fifty grams have been secured. They will be used as evidence against you at your trial.’
    ‘Wait! Only seven hundred and fifty grams?’
    ‘Silence!’ Another crack of the pistol butt and for Dr Mun it all went dark.

Chapter 9
    AT FIRST LIGHT they filed out to the flight line, Luke, the lawyer and their Colombian police pilot – black leather flying jacket, reflecting shades and hair slicked back, smooth and shiny, across his scalp. Luke took an instant dislike to him.
    ‘Pacific swallows,’ remarked Friend, who was dawdling on the tarmac to admire the birds that swooped and dived in the early-morning sun, catching the midges that hovered above the grass. ‘Reminds me of home.’
    ‘We’ve only been gone a day, John.’
    ‘I know, I know. Just saying.’
    One by one, they clambered aboard and strapped themselves in for the three-hour hop from the capital to the Pacific coast. It all started so well, the pilot brimming with confidence, flashing a winning smile beneath his aviator shades. Squashing his tall frame into the Cessna Caravan eight-seater, Luke discovered that the police plane was so small he could touch both sides of the fuselage with his fingertips. The top of his head brushed the cabin roof. There was a brief and noisy commotion in the back as the ground crew struggled to find space for Friend’s suitcase. Then they were off, swerving once to avoid a pool of rainwater then taking off west into the wind, lifting clear of the runway with the sprawling, tin-roofed
barrios
of Bogotá spreading out beneath them.
    Twenty minutes later it felt like a rough ride at Alton Towers Amusement Park. The tiny aircraft was pitching and yawing, buffeted by the Andean thunderstorm that swept in over the
cordillera
. Battered by rain, the windscreen had only one wiper working, intermittently. The pilot unbuckled his seatbelt and half rose out of his seat to peer through the gloom outside. He sat down, turned to Luke and grinned, still wearing his redundant sunglasses. In the seat behind, Friend heaved twice into a plastic bag. This, said Luke to himself, is not the way I want to go out.
    But then the storm clouds of the high Andes gave way to the hot, humid river valleys of Cauca province. A river twisted below,