The Devil's Playground Read online

his head, ignoring the pretty young girl at his side for a moment O had looked Rob dead in the eye and said, "You're MI6."

  The statement caused Rob to choke on his whiskey. He looked at O for second before calmly answering.

  "Do I really look like bloody James Bond to you?" he had asked with a smile.

  O had narrowed his eyes again. Then smiled warmly.

  "No."

  "MI6, indeed," Rob had said in mock disgust as he had leant over and kissed the pretty Chinese girl at his side to move the discussion on, earning a giggle and covering of her mouth in return. "I am just a humble servant," Rob added drawing on a reference he had made earlier over dinner as he took another sip of whiskey.

  "Yes, I like that," O had answered as he looked in his glass. "A humble servant," he had repeated with a belly laugh and a thump on Rob's back.

  Little did Rob Ashley know as he stepped into the shower in that hotel room that morning in Beijing to help clear his mind before he flew home that the meeting and the bonding session he had shared with the man he called O would come back to haunt him five years later in the most dramatic of circumstances and change the destiny of South East Asia forever.

  1

  Pyongyang

  The "Bravest Comrade," otherwise known as the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim-Jong Se, the latest incumbent of his family to rule North Korea, was in his element.

  On either side of him in his bed, helping him to relax, two pretty girls no older than eighteen used their tongues seductively all over his thickset body. The girls had been drawn from the harem of young girls, known collectively as the 'The Gippeumjo,' a collection of women maintained by his father before him and his grandfather before that for the sole purpose of providing pleasure and entertainment for high-ranking officers of the regime.

  It had been a busy day for him.

  It had begun with a visit to a factory that had been built with some partners from Sweden to make luxury jeans for export and then followed by an inspection of a military unit made up of helicopter pilots on their return from active service in Syria where they had been supporting the regime in its fight to death with insurgents. Inspection completed, he had lunch for two hours with the commanders of the unit.

  The real reason for his mental tiredness though wasn't because of any physical exercise, nor was it caused by the endless smiling for the cameras of state media or for that matter from the numerous the shaking of hands he always endured. Instead, what had tired him so much was the meeting that afternoon that had lasted four hours with the new Head of "Room 39" of the North Korean secret service,

  He had known the head of the unit, forty-six year-old O-Su-Lee, since he had been a young boy at boarding school in Switzerland. During that time, Kim had grown up trusting him with his life, something that in this year alone, he had needed because of the several assassination attempts on his life that had been made.

  Yet it seemed to the "Bravest Comrade" that since his friend's promotion to replace his father, O had started to become more and more reluctant to deliver on his personal requests, often inventing excuses for not delivering on them and worse still bringing up matters that quite frankly bored him to death. The meeting just this afternoon had been one such example.

  At the meeting, Kim started proceedings by asking O how the purchase of his new yacht from England had been proceeding. He wished he hadn't!

  "Bravest Comrade, the yacht cost is very high-well over the US$20,000,000," O had answered evenly. "We are working on it, but I am afraid the purchase and transportation are proving very difficult due to the Sanctions."

  "I want it here by next month or heads will roll," Kim had responded disappointedly. The yacht was meant to be a surprise for his wife as a reward for giving him a son, to follow on from the daughter she had produced. He did not want another disappointment.

  "Yes, Bravest Comrade," had been the reply from O before he had swiftly moved the briefing on to that of the purchase of genetic rice from a lab in Pakistan that could be used in severe drought conditions. That briefing was followed by, worse still, a two-hour lecture on a batch of high yielding cabbage seeds that had been proved very successful in the previous year's planting. Despite being bored to tears, Kim had listened politely to his friend's presentation. After all, it was his duty.

  "How much?" Kim had asked after O closed down his PowerPoint presentation.

  "Five million dollars from the emergency fund," O had answered quickly, referring the name of the physical cash slush fund that was used for all the purchase of luxury goods and travel for Kim and his family.

  "But that, will mean I will have to cancel my trip to Macao to see my brother and my sister?" Kim had asked, referring to his half brother and sister who chose to live there instead in Pyongyang.

  "Yes, Bravest Comrade, but we will be able to save 200,000 of our subjects in the Ryanggang Province from starvation next winter," O had replied, referring to the poorest region in the country. A place so bad that the residents during the last famine of just five years ago had resorted to cannibalism by trying to eat the dead bodies in the overcrowded morgue because there were no rats or livestock left.

  "No," Kim had answered.

  He had no love for the people of the region that sat along the border with China, known internally as the "Rust Belt" due to its industrialized city of Hyesan's decrepit and failing factories. In addition, he did not want to make the area's commander, Wonsu Kim Hong Ho, who was in charge of the division that protected the borders and provided the day-to-day security of Korea's secret nuclear testing lab in the region's mountains, a hero for the residents to look up to.

  "My trip to see my family is more important." He said having decided that his two-week trip to Macao for gambling and whoring (under the cover of visiting his older half brother and sister) was more important than the lives of his subjects that nobody cared about apart from his Head of his Secret Service and a Marshal with ambition on his mind.

  "Yes, Bravest Comrade," O answered without a flicker of emotion.

  "I am bored and very tired," Kim said, as he got up from the meeting table to bring an end to their meeting. "I need to eat and take rest," he had added while he had looked at the Patek Philippe attached to his wrist. "And you, my friend, need to make sure that you remained focused on my needs," he had ordered O with narrowed eyes.

  "Yes, Bravest Comrade," O had answered again without emotion or further comment.

  Now, as he felt the mouth of one of the young girl's latch onto his manhood, Kim began to wonder if it were time for another change in his inner circle.

  Nothing but bile and acid filled the mouth and stomach of O as his driver drove past the saluting guards into the residence of the "Bravest Comrade" and it was all caused by the very person he had sworn to protect since he was a boy and worst still by the son who had been selected by his father, him, and his brethren that had made up the ruling elite of The Workers' Party of Korea to lead their mineral rich nation into a new era of prosperity after the disastrous economic policies of the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong II.

  The boy had none of his father's intelligence, wit, charm, or cunning, who despite his economic shortcomings, had still managed to keep the regime afloat with his ability to manage diplomacy with the hated Americans, Koreans of the South and the Japanese through a series of confrontations and the international community as a whole. Something he achieved by using his country's nuclear development and his reputation for unpredictability and provocation as a weapon to get much needed supplies to feed the people to the fore.

  Unfortunately instead embracing his destiny and the structure left to him by his father to O and his late father's disgust, the young man had preferred instead to gorge on the excesses of privilege by inviting so called celebrities, spending vast sums on toys, and using the bodies of the Gippeumjo at will without a second thought as to the plight his people were about to face this winter. Tonight though, that would change.

  The plan
, originally drawn up by his father and the Supreme Leader before they both died, had been five years in the making.

  The plan, called "Humble Servant," a title O had placed on it in honor of a man who had once worked for Sheikh of Dubai, was based on the outline that the man had presented during a meeting with his father and then during the night that followed when he had told O that his country would never be able to escape the vicious circle of the world's NGO's (Non-Government Organizations) until they stopped shouting, gave up the nuclear card, got the world's markets to invest in them, and placed all of their natural resources into one sovereign fund, much like his friend's employers had done throughout the Middle East.

  Probing the Englishman as to how something as so bold as that could be achieved, his friend had then over dinner drawn and explained the process on a napkin.

  "By creating a National Agency to manage the country resources that is free and clear of your Leader, I am afraid," Rob had said as he put down his pen, "is the only way international markets will take your country seriously."

  Ignoring Rob's insult with regard to the Supreme Leader at the time and because he wanted to gather intelligence from him, O had asked him why that was important.

  "Bankers don't like their investments to be run by one man with a reputation for not honoring his agreements," Rob had said. "Nor do they