The Revisionists

by Thomas Mullen

  The way they traded sticks for carrots and back again was disorienting. And he was sick of their belittling tone. “I haven’t done anything illegal or—”

  Everyone laughed again. Leo sat there and tried not to let his face turn any redder than it already was. The SUV leaned as gusts blew along the ravine.

  “Leo, allow me to explain a few things about how your world will exist from this moment forward. You, your employer, and your nonexistent client will cease and desist from whatever you’re doing and will henceforth pretend you’ve never heard of this diplomat. Never even heard of South Korea. You can’t find Asia on a map, understood? Failure to obey these instructions will affect you so unbelievably adversely that I’d like to pause here for a moment of silence while you imagine it.”

  Leo didn’t grant the man his silence. “I’ve been threatened by old men in suits before.”

  “And the last time it happened, if memory serves, they followed through on their threats and kicked your whistle-blowing self out of the Agency. Next time you give someone a reason to follow through on their—”

  “I wasn’t a whistle-blower.”

  “That’s not the word on the street. And you’re lucky that information wasn’t made public. You could have been prosecuted, Leo.”

  “I did not leak that story.” His hands were fists in his lap. “I filed official reports through official channels voicing my concerns about what was happening. When my superiors ignored the reports, I went a rung higher. That might piss off bureaucrats like you, but everyone on the ground knows it’s how things get done. The black-sites story hit the press two months later, the Agency needed someone to blame, and they chose me. If they’d had any evidence I’d leaked anything, yes, I would have been prosecuted. But it wasn’t me.”

  “I think you found his soft spot,” Good Cop said to Shotgun.

  “They had the best people in counterintelligence investigating me. So either you believe it when I say it wasn’t me or you think I’m the most brilliant spy in the world for leaking a story like that without leaving a trace.”

  They seemed to ponder that a bit. Or maybe they’d just wanted to get a rise out of him and were already through having their fun.

  “All right,” Shotgun said. “Maybe I do believe you. And maybe I will tell you, out of the utmost professional courtesy—which a green-tag like you does not deserve, even if you weren’t a whistle-blower—that the Korean diplomat you have been tailing is an asset. And that your surveillance of him, which evidently isn’t all that good, will cause him to panic and stop the helpful stream of information he’s been providing to us. Which is why we are humbly requesting, in the nicest possible way this time, that you stay the hell away from him so you don’t jeopardize our valuable relationship.”

  Leo thought this over. He could see his chagrined expression in the rearview but still couldn’t glimpse his interlocutor.

  “You could have gotten around to saying that a lot faster.”

  “And if you were still a case officer, I would have. I just gave you much more than you’re entitled to. Now, hopefully, you’ll never see that strange individual again, and you’ll never even need to remember this conversation. But if you should see him, you will refrain from contacting him and will instead call us.” On cue, the silent man to Leo’s right handed him a business card. It had nothing but a phone number on it. “Understood?”

  “Sure.”

  The silent man got out of the car and motioned for Leo to follow him. Leo was almost out when Shotgun said, “You really didn’t leak that story, did you?”

  “No. Not that anyone cares anymore.”

  “How long did you work at the sites?”

  “That’s classified.” It felt good to turn it around on him. “But long enough. Long enough to figure right from wrong.”

  “That’s funny. In my experience, the more you do this work, the less you can figure those two terms out.”

  “I guess you and I are different types of people.”

  “Apparently. Good-bye, Leo.”

  Leo exited, and the man who’d been sitting beside him on the right patted him on the shoulder, smiling somewhat tauntingly. “Sorry to interrupt your jog. You can resume it here.”

  The guy got in the car, which pulled back onto the parkway. Leo memorized its Virginia plates, knowing it was probably worthless to do so, then tried to replay the conversation in his head. But he kept focusing on the whistle-blower taunts. Which, he realized sadly, was exactly what they’d wanted: He was so angry and had expended so much energy defending himself that he couldn’t remember everything they’d said earlier about the diplomat and the mystery man. If they’d accidentally given anything away, if there had been any subtle slips, he’d been too worked up to notice.

  All he really knew was he was a long way from home.

  He was not terribly surprised to find two voice mails from Bale when he finally made it to his apartment. “Where are you that you aren’t answering your cell? Call me immediately.”

  Leo’s shins and knees were throbbing; he felt light-headed and was famished—it had taken him nearly two hours to make it back home, jogging partway and walking when he couldn’t jog any farther. He hadn’t been dressed warmly enough for the drop in temperature at sundown, and he felt fevered, his skin cold but his insides overheated.

  It was past nine o’clock. He chugged two glasses of water, then called his boss.

  “Where have you been?” Bale asked.

  “Running an impromptu marathon.”

  “Well, I just got the translations back from the files on her laptop.”

  “Great.” So the second flash drive from Sari was indeed from Sang Hee’s computer—she’d done a good job. But he was surprised Bale would call him with this rather than tell him in person.

  “No, not great. Her correspondence turns up nothing, and the only documents she has in there is a fucking novel. Or a memoir, or whatever you call them. What’s the difference? It’s this tear-jerking bullshit story about a poor woman in North Korea who gets sent to a labor camp and loses her family, blah blah blah. Jesus. The guys who translated said Oprah would love it. What the fuck? Why did I let you con me into spending all this time and money to get some analysts to read an Oprah book?”

  He’d never heard Bale like this. Disappointment would have been an appropriate response, but this was more.

  “I never said I knew what would be on it,” Leo said. “You’re the one who said she was a person of interest, so—”

  “Do not even think of pointing a finger at me, Leo. This was your initiative, and it’s failed.”

  “Understood. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” He said that while expecting Bale to reel himself back in, say, No, no, it’s not over yet, but Bale didn’t.

  “Me too. We wasted time and you put yourself out there to this maid, but it’s over now. I want you to stop all contact with her, immediately. You never met her, and you certainly never promised her anything.”

  “Isn’t that being a little hasty?” He hadn’t yet decided if he was going to tell Bale that the diplomat was an Agency asset. “So the info on her laptop wasn’t interesting, but maybe there’s something else, something in hard copy or on her husband’s computer that—”

  “No and no. I let you follow a hunch, and now I’m following mine: it’s over. Return your energies to the assignment you’re supposed to be focusing on.”

  Bale hung up.

  Leo collapsed into a chair, way too exhausted to even begin sorting this out. Those men had dumped him far from home not just to be cruel but to buy themselves time, so they could lean on Bale while Leo was gone, and so Leo would be too tired to make sense of this. His pride hurt a lot worse than his feet.

  But if those men really were CIA, wouldn’t Bale have said as much? Leo, we’re stepping on someone’s toes. Short, sweet, cryptic. Why all the drama?

  He hated them all. All the people who got in the way of his simply trying to do some good. The constant
reminders that there were things he was not allowed to know, and that if he ever brushed up against that knowledge, he would be severely punished. He wanted to tell them all to fuck off. He wanted to hear Sari’s voice, see her face. She wasn’t his asset anymore—well, fine. Then maybe he could help her now the way he should have from the beginning. Maybe it had been fated this way.

  His phone rang. The caller ID said it was one of the Latino grocery stores on Mount Pleasant Street. He’d never set foot in it—wrong number?

  But somehow he knew. Maybe because he was thinking of her, maybe because he knew the place was just down the street from the diplomat’s house. Maybe because grocery stores would, for the rest of his life, always make him think of her.

  “Hello?”

  He was right. “Leo, please, please help me.” She was panicked and out of breath. “Please.”

  23.

  Sari had been washing dishes when it started. A bedtime story about a camel who wishes he could learn how to fly had lulled Hana to sleep, and miraculously neither of the twins had woken yet. Sari had almost come to enjoy washing dishes at night, because at least no one was crying or demanding anything of her, and she could stand in one place and let her mind go blank.

  She had now sent two flash drives in the recycling to Leo. She managed to get at Sang Hee’s computer late one night, after the mistress had gone to bed drunk and left her laptop on in the living room. It had been in sleep mode, and no password was required to start it up again. Sari looked over her shoulder every few seconds as she moved as much data as she could. She left the laptop exactly as she found it.

  Sang Hee had spoken only a few words to Sari since the night she’d told her about North Korea. She seemed even quieter than usual, as if she were ashamed of what she had disclosed. Sari had seen little of the diplomat, who had been working late for much of that week.

  As she washed dishes now, she heard them yelling in their bedroom. She turned off the water and walked down the hallway. As if the two sensed her, their voices grew quiet. She remembered, last night or the one before, waking up to the sounds of something similar and then falling back to sleep. She’d thought it was a dream, but perhaps not? They always acted so formal in each other’s presence—at least, when Sari was there to observe them. It was disturbing to hear them like this.

  Five minutes later, Sari was almost finished with the dishes, and Hyun Ki came downstairs. She didn’t say anything and kept facing the sink, though the window in front of her displayed his reflection. Without greeting her he took a highball glass from the cabinet, then went to the liquor cabinet. He opened the freezer door and she heard the music of ice cubes dancing in his glass. They both drank a lot, Sari noticed, and they seemed to be picking up the pace of late.

  She heard him pull up a chair and sit at the kitchen table. She couldn’t see his reflection from here.

  “Leave the dishes for the morning,” he told her.

  “I’m almost finished,” she said. But she still had to clean the counters, and take the trash out to the garage, and make up some bottles for the babies’ overnight feed.

  “I want to be alone. Go to bed.”

  She shut off the faucet. This only meant she’d have more to do in the morning, when the kids were awake, or in the middle of the night. But at least she could go to bed early. She untied the apron and put it away, then left the room without looking at him. She felt him watching her.

  She was nervous around him. Leo had even asked if he had ever touched her, which bothered her, as it confirmed her fears that such a thing was indeed a possibility. And then that recent night, when he’d stroked her arm… She had wanted to sleep with her door shut that night, but Sang Hee had long ago ordered her to keep it open so she could hear the twins, even though she had a baby monitor by her pillow. Each night after, she lay in bed wide-eyed for a good while.

  So on this night, after being sent away from the kitchen, she hurriedly brushed and washed, then got in bed. Wearing her sweat clothes, the blankets pulled to her chin. She could hear the occasional clink of new ice in his glass. Light from the kitchen kept the hallway brighter than she wanted, so she closed her door almost all the way.

  She had a harder time than usual falling asleep. The forced-air heat switched on and off sporadically, and the accompanying change in air pressure nudged her door the slightest bit open or shut. The light from the hallway crept closer, then backed up, then crept closer again.

  * * *

  She wasn’t sure what time she was roused. It happened softly, almost delicately, fingertips light on her cheek. Dreams melting off of them. Her eyes were open, yet everything was dark. Her mother had been visiting her again, and Sari heard her voice.

  “Shhh.”

  No, that wasn’t her mother’s voice. She tried to sit up, but the hand slid over her lips and jaw, holding her there. She couldn’t see him. He had closed the door.

  Then he was climbing into the bed, her small twin bed, pressing her into the wall. She could smell the whiskey on his breath. His other hand was on her belly, searching for the bottom of her sweatshirt. He’d taken the covers off while she was sleeping.

  Get away from him, her mother said. The dream still lingering, none of this seeming real. Get away from both of them, now.

  He moved his hand from Sari’s mouth to support himself as he tried to get on top of her.

  “Go away,” Sari said, pulling her knees together and pushing at his hand. She was whispering too. Maybe she should yell? What would happen? But what would happen if she didn’t? “Please.”

  She put a hand on his chest, trying to hold him off as he settled on her raised knees. Even though he was a slight man, she realized how easy it would be for him to overpower her. His weight pressed her knees down, so she tightened them again and she heard him grunt as the ridge of his ribs bumped against her kneecaps.

  Then a hand tight at her throat. “Stop fighting. Or it will be worse.”

  But it was impossible not to fight with the hand gripping her like that. Even if she hadn’t wanted to resist, something primal prevented her from letting his hand stay there. She dug the nails of both hands into his wrist. She could see only shapes of blackness moving against the dark background as a bit of city light bled through the window blinds. She imagined her nails tearing out small chunks of flesh. She heard him suck in his breath. Then he hit her in the face. Her knees pushed up against his now-unsupported body, toppling him onto the floor.

  It was even louder than she’d expected. The sound widening somehow, making echoes in this room and in others. She was reacting to everything, unable to think clearly, her arms now covering her chest as she sat up in bed.

  Then the light burst on.

  Sang Hee was in the doorway, screaming at them. Bastard and whore and both of them damned to hell. A white robe was barely cinched around her waist, the pressure from the crutches loosening the belt. Then she hobbled away as suddenly as she’d appeared.

  Hyun Ki slowly rose from the floor, his expression more chagrined than ashamed. As if this had happened a few times before and was just an inconvenience he needed to steel himself against. Sari watched him for a moment, half afraid that he would close the door, lock it this time. Then they heard Sang Hee screaming again. She was in the kitchen, slamming cabinet doors, throwing glasses. The world was exploding, and in between pops Sari heard the twins crying.

  She started to get up, the sounds of the twins’ cries reminding her of her duties, as if this were any other night. If she rocked them back to sleep and did her job, she told herself, maybe it would be.

  She realized she was shaking when she stood. The diplomat stood too, and he turned to her, his face stern, a warning that didn’t need to be voiced.

  The smashing of plates and china ceased, but the silence lasted only a moment, because there was Sang Hee again, screaming at them. Moving much faster than either of them thought a woman with a broken ankle could.

  “You bastard! You rotten disgusting pig!” S
he ran at him and he turned just in time to absorb her blows, deflecting a few with his forearms, evading others.

  His scream was far louder than Sari expected. And at a very different pitch.

  And though Sari was unquestionably wide awake now, she heard her mother’s voice again:

  Get away from her, quick!

  Sari saw the glint of the metal and realized Sang Hee wasn’t hitting her husband but stabbing him. He pushed out against Sang Hee, and her body spun to the side as she pulled the blade out. The next blow was meant for Sari. She raised her arms in time and felt the heat along them. She was screaming now too, they all were, and she heard rather than felt the next strike as Hyun Ki lashed out at his wife, knocking her down. Sang Hee was still holding the knife, but she landed in a heap, the blood-streaked white robe fluttering and opening as if she were some fairy princess crash-landing in the real world.

  Sari didn’t know where she was going, only that she heading down the hallway. She looked into the kitchen, but the shattered glass glittered everywhere, and she was barefoot. Where were her shoes? In the bedroom, with the two of them. She ran to the front door.

  And take his briefcase, too, her mother said.

  “Missy! Missy!” She turned at the sound of Hana’s voice. “Missy, what’s wrong?” The little girl was standing at the top of the stairway in her pink nightie. It was darker here but still Sari could see the tears on the girl’s face. More screaming from the other room, although this time it was only Sang Hee, with Hyun Ki’s quieter voice occasionally snapping at her. Sari could barely hear the twins; they were separated from her by so many crises now.

  She didn’t know what to tell the little girl. You live in a cursed house, and there’s nothing I can do.

  Her hand was on the doorknob when she noticed, amid the neatly arranged shoes, his briefcase. It wasn’t like him to leave it here; maybe he’d intended to work in the kitchen but had been waylaid by his whiskey. Or by the sight of Sari’s backside as she washed dishes. In the middle of all the yelling and crying she heard her mother’s command again, echoing.