The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 Read Online Free Page A

the last somnambulant effects of the dream.
    He picked up the telephone and dialled a Chinese number. He held a brief conversation with the man at the other end of the line, checking that the transporter with the eight luxury cars had crossed the border successfully. It had, and it was due to arrive in the city tonight, around nine, right on schedule.
    He made himself a gin and tonic from the minibar. Cheap Chinese gin, tonic that barely retained any fizz. He took the drink to the window and looked down from the thirteenth floor. The roads were virtually empty. The sky, usually so full of the vapour trails from passing jets, was clear. He stared for a long time. Moranbong Park was half a mile away, and Milton remembered it from his last trip: its host of pagodas, clouds of blossom and the people spreading picnics, drinking rice liquor and singing sentimental folk songs. Red flags fluttered at road junctions. Statues of the Kims could be seen in public places, arms raised aloft in victory that was so pyrrhic as to be a horrible joke. The enormous, clawed finger of the Ryugyong Hotel, designed as the tallest in the world when construction started twenty years earlier, still stood unfinished. An attempt to trump the upstart South, it stood instead as a permanent reminder of the North’s failure.
    He allowed his thoughts to wander a little. He had an appointment to keep. Two people that he did not know would be waiting for him in the park. His instructions were to leave the hotel after dinner. He was not, under any circumstances, to lose his tail. All he had to do was to be certain to arrive at eight.

Chapter Six
    JOHN MILTON took a single table in the restaurant and ate pansanggi , a collection of small dishes including grilled beef, brined fish and boiled cabbage. He ate at a leisurely pace, flicking through a translated copy of the Workers’ Newspaper that he had collected from a rack in the lobby. There were no obvious signs of surveillance, but Milton was sure that the staff were keeping an eye on him. He thanked his waitress and left a ten-euro note as a tip, collecting his overcoat and walking brusquely across the foyer and straight for the exit. He knew that he would leave confusion in his wake; foreigners were not generally allowed to wander the streets without a chaperone. He emerged into the chill air and set off quickly at a fast walk.
    It was busy outside: workers went on and off shift at the hotel, factory hands hurried for the busses that would take them to their flats on the outskirts of the city, a few cars and lorries made their way along the roads. Milton did not look back, but he knew that he would immediately be followed. He looked in the window of a small department store and saw one man hurrying after him determinedly. He did not see the large black Mercedes detach itself from the hotel’s parking lot, but he heard its engine as it accelerated and overtook him. He turned to see the man in the passenger seat staring at him through the window of the car, and for a moment, he had the grim premonition that he was about to be detained. He had considered the possibility and had decided that he would run, but the chances of successfully making his appointment would be remote. Most likely he would be captured and swallowed up into the vast bureaucracy of the intelligence service, eventually emerging into a gulag—a kaolin mine, a re-education camp—from where he would never escape.
    He crossed the road at the entrance to the park, his muscles twitching and his gut watery with nerves, but the order for him to stop did not come.
    The park contained many significant monuments, including the Pyongyang Arch of Triumph, where he was to make his rendezvous. The broad avenues were sparsely populated, the occasional jogger passing by or couples strolling towards him, arm-in-arm, idling the evening away. Milton had no need to check his tail. He knew they were there and that they would stay with him for as long as he let