The Revisionists

by Thomas Mullen

  She and Lastri held each other’s hands, deciding through their tears that a sprint past the gauntlet of popping glass was a better risk than standing there and being sliced to death over time. They ran, thankful for the thick-soled shoes their mother had insisted on buying them instead of the more fashionable sneakers they’d pleaded for. They ran, the bottles blasting at their ankles and backs but not, fortunately, landing on their heads. Then they were out of the alley, turning right, because they knew the neighborhood better, and they still hadn’t learned (but were in the process of learning) that just because you know a place doesn’t make it safe.

  Later they would hear about the rapes all over the city, what happened to the women and girls that the mob caught.

  So, they were lucky. The rioters decided that since the girls had escaped, they would turn their attention to the store itself. They torched it, burning Sari’s mother alive.

  She had heard stories afterward, that their mother had stood outside the store calling names at the crowd, throwing the store’s canned goods at the rioters, doing whatever she could to deflect their attention and rage away from her children. Those stories hadn’t made much sense to her, and then she’d blocked them out for a while. Later, she’d thought about them again, imagined her mother like that, hurling cans of water chestnuts and waving a broom before being chased into the building, where maybe she thought she was safe, until she saw them coming with torches and gasoline.

  Later in life, when people in Korea commented on Sari’s deeply suspicious nature, when confused friends and frustrated beaux told her she didn’t quite seem all there, she told herself she needed to find a way to let go of all of that. To stop expecting the tsunamis to rise up. To let herself trust life a little, and not assume everyone who looked at her was plotting ways to take advantage. When Hyun Ki Shim interviewed her for the nanny position, and she’d been a bit put off by his wife’s brusque manner, she told herself to turn off her internal alarms, to take this chance.

  And here she was wandering the streets of America (Virginia, Leo had called it) with an arm still sore from her employer’s blade.

  She walked into a convenience store and wandered the few aisles. The cashier was darker-skinned than she, maybe Pakistani, and he watched her every move. The immigrant knew his kind, knew she was unmoored and confused and in possession of little cash. So she dropped the pretense and walked up to him, mimed a telephone call. He said something to her that she didn’t understand. Then he held up a box containing a new cell phone, which she imagined cost more than the twenty dollars she’d stolen from Leo, so she shook her head. He put the phone away and instead produced a phone card.

  She handed him the bill and he frowned. He put the card back and gave her one of a different color, along with nine dollars and some coins for change. She started to ask another question, unsure how to ask it, but he read her mind. He pointed down the street, held up two fingers, and motioned to the right. She nodded thanks.

  Following his directions, she found a pay phone. It was just outside a parking garage and across the street from a grocery store; the noise made it a bad place to call from, but she didn’t know where else to go. She had no idea how to use the card, let alone an American pay phone. But she knew Lastri’s number, as well as the international code for Korea, so she tried a few times before getting it right. Finally she heard an unfamiliar ringing sound, the pulse different from the American one she’d heard when calling Leo.

  It would be morning in Seoul; Lastri would already be on her way to work, unless she was running late, or was sick or fired. Sari prayed that one of these minor misfortunes had befallen her sister.

  “Hello?” It was her sister’s voice, in their adopted language of Korean.

  “It’s me, it’s Sari,” she said, speaking in Bahasa again.

  “Sari! The world traveler finally calls!”

  She hadn’t called either of her sisters since leaving—the Shims wouldn’t allow it, and Sang Hee said she’d check the phone records and would know.

  “How are you?” Sari asked.

  “Fine. You know. How about you? America’s too exciting for you to check in with your sisters until now?”

  “No, I’m… I’ve been having a hard time here,” Sari started, and whatever she tried to say next got caught in the tightness of her throat.

  “What did you say?”

  The connection was bad and there were weird delays, making them speak over each other or wait at the wrong times, but still—it was her sister, it was someone other than Leo speaking her language for the first time in months.

  She tried to tell her sister what had happened, at least vaguely. That her job was a bad one, her employers cruel. Had Lastri received any money in the mail?

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They said they would send some of my pay to you.”

  “No, nothing.” There was another voice in the background, one of her roommates maybe, or perhaps Lastri was out in the city chatting on a sidewalk. “Wait, hold on a second.”

  Lastri didn’t seem to notice how choked up her younger sister was, due to either the pauses and fuzz of international telephony or her own distractedness. Sari had been on the verge of sobbing, but she held it in. She wasn’t sure if her sister was boarding a bus or kicking a boyfriend out of bed while Sari stood here gripping a receiver that didn’t seem to realize how important this call was.

  Leo had told her she wouldn’t be able to call her family any more once she was settled in the new place, at least not for a very long time.

  “Sorry, I’m back. I have to go to work, though. Can you call later?”

  She and Lastri hadn’t been very close their last year in Korea. There had been a boy, a mutual crush; neither had won him and each had blamed the other. Besides, Lastri was always spending her free time with her older friends, and the kid sister was not welcome. They’d spoken less and less. A ticket to a job in America had seemed a welcome diversion from Sari’s stunted life in Seoul.

  “Sure.”

  “You’re okay, though? Your exciting American life isn’t too hard?”

  Sari sucked in her breath. “I’m fine. And Kade?”

  “Oh, she’s the usual. New boy, new job. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  She said good-bye and the line went quiet. To Sari, it felt like shucking off an old jacket that didn’t fit right anymore. Leaving her standing there cold, and alone.

  A smartly dressed white couple passed on the sidewalk. Their arms were linked, but they were both having conversations on their cells, as if they were talking to each other on the phones. The woman was beautiful and blond, and looked concerned as she made eye contact with the crying foreigner. Sari could hear them talking as they passed, their two conversations like awkward dance partners, until they turned a corner, disappearing.

  After wiping her eyes so she’d look presentable, or at least not noticeable (she hoped), she walked back to the main road. What should she do now?

  Stop pouting. I didn’t raise pouters.

  It wasn’t like her mother to come to her while Sari was awake. For a moment it made her question herself, wonder if she was sleeping after all, if this was just a long and involved dream. What a wonderful thought.

  I’m not pouting, Mother.

  Don’t expect your sisters to come in and save you. They’re busy enough fending for themselves, you know that.

  Yes, Mother.

  You’re doing pretty well for yourself, all things considered.

  Alone in a city I don’t know, with people trying to hunt me down?

  What did I say about the pouting? I meant that all those things have gone wrong, yes, but you’re still all right. You’re alive, you have food in your belly.

  You always had low standards, Mother.

  I shouldn’t have mentioned bellies. You’re hungry, aren’t you? That American isn’t doing such a great job taking care of you. Maybe you need to do more for yourself. Here, turn right. Walk anothe
r block.

  Where are you taking me?

  You’re hungry, right? Now turn left. From here, you’re on your own. And stop thinking about the riots. It happened. I’m glad it was me instead of you. Okay? So don’t even think about feeling guilty. It defeats the purpose, doesn’t it, if I saved you only to have you mope forever about the fact that I’m gone and you’re alone? That’s why I’m sick of the pouting. Now look, down the street.

  At the end of the block she saw a neon sign in two languages, one of which was Korean. She walked closer—it was a restaurant. And though she was sick to death of that cuisine, she at least would be able to read the menu.

  A gawky, thin Korean girl who couldn’t have been older than sixteen met her at the door and said something in English. Sari asked, in Korean, if she could have a table for one. The girl looked surprised that this clearly non-Korean person spoke her language, but she simply nodded and took her to a table in the middle of the small, dimly lit place.

  Sari could indeed read the menu, and when the girl returned with a blessedly warm cup of tea (would she ever not be cold in this country?), Sari ordered some bibimbap she could barely afford. The girl eyed her for a moment. Her hair was long and she wasn’t pretty, and she seemed to know this and wore a loud shade of blue eyeliner and lots of jangly necklaces and bracelets as if to distinguish herself in other ways. Her black blouse had ridiculous, poofy billows at the end of the sleeves. She must be the owner’s daughter, Sari thought, sneaking in her rebellion where she can.

  “How come you speak Korean?” the girl asked.

  “I used to live in Seoul.”

  “Huh. I was born there. We moved when I was seven.”

  She seemed to be the only waitress, and when a white couple came in, she walked over to seat them. Sari tried not to think about her sisters or the Shims or Leo, tried to just take in the smells and the slightly familiar decorations, reveling in the feeling of being out with a little money to spend. She listened for her mother’s voice, but she seemed to have returned to Sari’s dream world.

  Minutes later, as Sari was eating, the girl stopped by again. She said something in English before remembering that Sari didn’t speak the language, then translated, asking how the food was.

  “It’s great, thank you.”

  “You don’t speak English but you know Korean. Where are you from?”

  “Indonesia. I’ve moved around a lot.”

  “Yeah, everyone here has.”

  “Here America, or here Washington?”

  The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. Kids in my high school, in Springfield, are from all over. I’ve been here almost ten years, which makes me really, really American compared to most of them.”

  Sari wanted to ask the girl if she liked it here, but she realized what a strange question that was. Instead, she asked, “So, you work here but you go to school too?”

  “Of course. It’s not like I’m going to be a waitress all my life.” She didn’t seem to think her comments would insult a slightly older person who worked even more menial jobs than hers.

  “What are you studying to be?”

  “I don’t know. I always thought I’d be a doctor. But then this year we dissected little pigs and it was really, really gross. The insides and stuff.” Then she looked at Sari’s half-finished plate. “Oh, sorry. Bad to talk about. So now I’m thinking lawyer.”

  More customers walked in and the girl smiled before leaving Sari to her dinner.

  Sari had already noticed, on the bottom of the mirror behind the small, unmanned bar, a hand-lettered sign advertising in Korean the need for a dishwasher. She’d had such jobs in restaurants before, not that experience would be necessary. Even in this vast foreign city there were tiny islands she could navigate. She wondered how much danger she was really in, wondered if Leo was exaggerating, if he just wanted to get rid of her. She wondered if that goofy young waitress really would be an American lawyer in a few years.

  31.

  Troy Jones pounded on Leo’s door just as Leo was putting on his jacket to go out and obtain Sari’s papers.

  Leo didn’t know who it was at first. He walked to his bedroom closet, and beneath the hanging oxfords he found the metal case where he stored the gun that he, as a resident of the District of Columbia, was not legally allowed to own. He turned off the safety, fed a round into the chamber, and walked to the door.

  He put his eye to the peephole and saw Troy Jones through the thick glass.

  “What do you want?” Leo asked.

  “There are things I need to tell you.” Jones seemed out of breath, as if he’d run up the stairs.

  “Just you, or you and your gun?”

  Jones didn’t answer at first. “I’m sorry if I frightened you before.”

  The man sounded genuinely apologetic. Leo was leaning with his right hand pressed against the dead-bolted metal door, his gun pointed at the ceiling.

  “How’d you get past the doorman?”

  “I have identification. It isn’t real, but he fell for it.”

  “Whatever you need to tell me, you can tell me through the door.”

  “All right. All right. There’s something that needs to be stopped. Needs to be done, I mean. But I can’t do it. I’m going to tell you, and hopefully it’s something you can do.”

  “Why would I do something for you?”

  “I’m going to give you some information. You’re free to do something with it or not. There’s nothing I can force anyone to do, do you understand? I’m just supposed to protect things. But I think I’ve been protecting the wrong things.” He shook his head as if arguing with himself. The distorted picture Leo could see through the wall-eyed glass made Jones look even more disheveled and confused than he sounded. His hands were at his sides, and by his feet was a black briefcase. His jacket was unzipped. Nothing in the world would convince Leo to open that door. “I know I’m not making much sense.”

  “No, you’re not, Troy.”

  “You know my cover. Interesting. But you don’t understand. Listen. There’s an organization, a network. It’s called Enhanced Awareness. It develops systems, ways to track a population. Intelligence software, filtering methods. Ways to watch people. They sell their services to different countries, both allies and foes. They’re in the process of closing deals with North Korea and Syria, among other hostile nations. The diplomat you’ve been watching is a go-between for North Korean intelligence. You said you were following his wife, but I have no information on her. Nothing in my databases. Enhanced Awareness will make the deal through him, and then these dictatorships will have access to information and methodologies that will allow them to more closely monitor their people—and people in other countries. It will strengthen their belligerent regimes, and something… very bad will happen as a result.”

  Leo tried to fit this into what he already knew. Hyun Ki was a diplomat with family connections in the telecom business, which made him uniquely positioned to close deals between high-tech surveillance firms and government entities. But why work for North Korea, his own country’s bitter rival? He’d even married a woman who, if the stories were true, had lost everything to that Orwellian state. Still, Leo knew that people made stupid or staggeringly selfish decisions; perhaps the money was too good for Shim to refuse, or perhaps he was a North Korean spy who’d married Sang Hee only for cover.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Leo asked.

  “Maybe because I wanted to put your life in danger.” And with that, Jones smiled, his lips skewed and almost leering through the glass. “The last person to know about this was a journalist, Karthik Chaudhry, who’d been tracking Enhanced Awareness and other intelligence contractors. He’d received certain… anonymous tips on the company’s business strategies. You know of Mr. Chaudhry?”

  Anonymous tips from whom, Leo wondered, Jones himself? How else could he know this? “I’ve read the news stories.”

  “Your news stories will never have the full information. Your news s
tories only know that he disappeared. He disappeared on his way to meet a source who didn’t show up, and instead he was met by certain employees of Enhanced Awareness. He will never be heard from again. I was sent here because this is the best opportunity to disrupt the events. Due to some… security breaches, the company almost gets stopped before it can do real damage. But the company also employs some men with experience from your former employer, Mr. Hastings, men who know how to eliminate problems. They eliminated Chaudhry, and later tonight they’re going to eliminate a few more people, including an activist named T.J. Trenton.”

  Leo’s head buzzed with the not altogether pleasant sensation of disparate dendrites connecting from wrong sides of his brain. T.J.? “What exactly are they going to do?”

  “Mr. Trenton and his associates were using a rundown house in Northeast Washington as a home base. The men from Enhanced Awareness showed up, shot them, and distributed enough drug paraphernalia to make it look like a drug buy gone bad. It helps that most of Mr. Trenton’s friends indulge in a lot of marijuana. The D.C. police never thought to question it.”

  “Wait, this happened already?”

  “Y—no, not yet.” Jones shook his head. “In a few hours. I’m using the wrong tense, sorry. It’s a little difficult for me to explain.”

  Leo took a breath, tried to make sense of this. “If this is legit, why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

  “I am doing something about it.” His voice was raised and he glared into the peephole. “I’m telling you.”

  “But why me? You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know a lot about you, Leonard Hastings. You’re in my files. Your future is not bright. This information might change that.”