The Target

by David Baldacci

  As she passed it Chung-Cha nodded silently. She relied only on herself. She trusted only herself. No one here had to tell her that. She didn’t need a monument shooting into the sky to make her believe that.

  There was the also the Arch of Reunification, one of the few that featured Korean women. Dressed in traditional Korean garb, they held between them the map of a united Korea. The arch straddled the Reunification Highway, which went from the capital city all the way to the DMZ.

  Symbolism again, she knew.

  Chung-Cha had two notions on reunification. First, it would never happen, and second, she didn’t care if it did or not. She would not be unified with anyone, north or south.

  Later, she passed the Mansudae Grand Monument, which was an enormous tribute to the memory of North Korea’s founder, Il Sung, and also to his son, Jong Il.

  Chung-Cha passed by this monolithic structure without looking at it. This was a bit dicey on her part. All North Koreans paid tribute here by standing and gazing lovingly at the statues of the two men. All brought flowers. Even foreign tourists were required to lay floral offerings here or else be arrested and/or deported.

  Yet Chung-Cha walked on, almost daring a nearby policeman to stop her. There were limits to her patriotism.

  Towering over the entire city was the white elephant of Pyongyang, the Ryugyong Hotel. It was begun in 1987, but construction funds ran out in 1992. Although construction had restarted in 2008, no one knew if it would ever be completed or whether even one guest would sleep there. For now it was a 330-meter-high monstrosity with nearly four million square feet of space in the shape of a pyramid.

  Interesting central planning there, she thought.

  Her belly grumbling, Chung-Cha entered a restaurant. North Koreans typically did not eat out because it was a luxury most could not afford. If a group did go out, it was usually on state business with the government footing the bill. At times like that the workers would eat and drink prodigious amounts, going home drunk on soju, or rice liquor.

  She had passed other restaurants offering typical Korean fare like kimchi—spicy pickled vegetables that every Korean woman knew how to make—boiled chicken, fish, and squid, as well as the luxury of white rice. She kept going past all of these and entered the Samtaesung Hamburger Restaurant, which served burgers, fries, and shakes. Chung-Cha had often tried to reconcile in her mind how a restaurant serving what would be recognized around the world as American food could exist here when there was not even a U.S. embassy located in Pyongyang because the two countries did not have official diplomatic relations. An American citizen in trouble here had to go crawling to the Swedish embassy, and even then only for medical emergencies.

  She was one of the few patrons here, and all the others were westerners.

  She ordered a hamburger rare, fries, and a vanilla milk shake.

  The waiter looked at her severely as though silently admonishing her for eating this Western garbage. When she showed him her government ID he bowed perfunctorily and hurried away to fill her order.

  She had chosen a seat with her back against the wall. She knew where the entrances and exits were. She noted anyone moving in the space, whether it was toward or away from her. She didn’t expect trouble, but she also anticipated that anything could happen at any time.

  She ate her meal slowly, chewing her food thoroughly before swallowing. She had endured starvation for well over a decade. That hollow feeling in your belly never left you, even if you had ample food the rest of your life. Her diet at Yodok had consisted of whatever she could find to eat, but mostly corn, cabbage, salt, and rats. At least the rats had given her protein and helped to stave off diseases that had killed many other prisoners. She had become quite adept at catching the rodents. But she liked the taste of the burger better.

  Chung-Cha was not fat and never would be. Not so long as she was working. Maybe as an aged woman living somewhere else she would allow herself to grow obese. But she did not dwell on this prospect for long. She doubted she would live long enough to grow old.

  She finished her meal and paid her bill and left. She had one place she wanted to go. Something she wanted to see, although she had already seen it before. Everyone in North Korea probably had.

  It had been recently moored on the Botong River in Pyongyang to become part of the Fatherland Liberation War Museum. This was so because it was a ship—a truly unique ship. It was the second oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy, after the USS Constitution. And it was the only U.S. naval vessel currently held by a foreign power.

  The USS Pueblo had been in North Korean hands since 1968. Pyongyang said it had strayed into North Korean waters. The United States said it had not. The rest of the world used twelve nautical miles out to sea as the demarcation for international waters. However, Pyongyang did not follow what other countries did and claimed a fifty-nautical-mile boundary. The Pueblo was now a museum, a testament to the might and bravery of the homeland and a chilling reminder of the imperialist intentions of the evil America.

  Chung-Cha had taken the guided tour, but she did so with a perspective different from other visitors. She had read an uncensored account of the sailors aboard the Pueblo. This was an unheard-of thing in her country, but Chung-Cha’s work often carried her out of North Korea. The sailors had been forced to say and write things that they did not believe, like admitting to spying on North Korea and denouncing their own country. But in a famous photo of some of the seamen, they surreptitiously had been giving the finger to the North Korean cameraman and symbolically to their captors while seemingly just clasping their hands. The North Koreans did not know what a raised middle finger meant and asked the sailors about it. To a man they said it was a Hawaiian symbol of good luck. When Time magazine had run a story exposing the truth of the gesture, the sailors were reportedly severely beaten and tortured even more than they already had been.

  When they were released in December 1968, eighty-two of them walked single file across the Bridge of No Return in the DMZ. One sailor had not walked across. He had died in the initial attack on the ship, the only fatality of the incident.

  Chung-Cha finished the tour and made her way back to land. She looked back at the ship. She had been told that the Americans would not decommission the ship until it was returned to them.

  Well, then it would never be decommissioned, she thought. North Korea had very little. And so they never gave anything back that they had taken. After the Soviets had left and North Korea had its independence it was as though it was this little country against the world. It had no friends. No one who truly understood it, not even the Chinese, whom Chung-Cha considered to be among the wiliest race on earth.

  Chung-Cha was not a religious person. She knew no North Koreans who were. There were some Korean Shamanists, others who practiced Cheondoism, some Buddhists, and a relative handful of Christians. Religion was not encouraged since it could be a direct challenge to the country’s leaders. Marx had had it right, she thought: Religion was the people’s opium. Yet Pyongyang had once been known as the Jerusalem of the East because of the Protestant missionaries who had come in the 1800s, with the result that over a hundred churches had been erected on the “Flat Land.” That was no more. It was simply not tolerated.

  And to her it did not matter. She did not believe in a benign higher being. She could not. She had suffered too much to think of a heavenly force in the sky that would let such evil walk the earth without lifting a hand to stop it.

  Self-reliance was the best policy. Then you alone were entitled to the rewards—and you alone bore responsibility for the losses.

  She passed an open street market and stopped, tensing for a moment. There was a foreign tourist not five feet from her. It was a man. He looked German, but she could not be sure. He had his camera out and was about to take a picture of the marketplace and the vendors.

  Chung-Cha looked around for the tour guide who must accompany all foreigners. She did not see any such person.

  The German
had his camera nearly up to his eye. She shot forward and snatched it from him. He looked at her, stunned.

  “Give that back,” he said in a language that she recognized as Dutch. She did not speak Dutch. She asked him if he spoke English.

  He nodded.

  She held up the camera. “If you take a picture of the street market you will be arrested and deported. You might not be deported, actually. You might just stay here, which will be worse for you.”

  He paled and looked around to see several Korean vendors staring at him with malice.

  He sputtered, “But why? It’s just for my Facebook page.”

  “You do not need to know why. All you need to do is put your camera away and go and find your tour guide. Now. You will not receive another warning.”

  She handed him back the camera and he took it.

  “Thank you,” he said breathlessly.

  But Chung-Cha had already turned away. She did not want his thanks. Maybe she should have just let the crowd attack him, let him be beaten, arrested, thrown in prison, and forgotten about. He was one person in a world of billions. Who would care? It was not her problem.

  Yet as she walked down the street she thought of the man’s question.

  But why? he had asked.

  The answer to that was both simple and complex. An open street market said to the world that North Korea’s economy was weak, its traditional stores few in number, and thus the need for vendors in the street. That would be a slap in the face to a leadership acutely sensitive to world opinion. Conversely, an abundance of goods at a street market, if seen by the rest of the world, could result in international food aid being reduced. And since many North Koreans were barely surviving, that would not be a good thing. Pyongyang was not representative of the rest of the country. And yet even people here starved to death in their apartments. It was part of the so-called eating problem, which was very simple. There was not enough food. This was why North Koreans were shorter and lighter than their brethren to the south.

  Chung-Cha did not know if either of these explanations was true. She only knew that these were the unofficial explanations for why the simple act of taking a picture could have such horrendous consequences, in addition to the fact that North Koreans did not like to have their pictures taken by foreigners. And things could get violent. The perpetrator would be arrested. That was reason enough never to leave your tour guide’s side while in North Korea.

  Our ways are just different because we are the most paranoid country on the face of the earth. And perhaps we have good reason to be. Or perhaps our leaders want to keep us united against an enemy that does not exist.

  She didn’t know how many other North Koreans had such thoughts. She did know that the ones who had publicly expressed them had all been sent to the penal colonies.

  She knew this for a fact.

  Because her parents had been sent to Yodok for doing that very thing. She had grown up there. She had nearly died there. But she had survived, the only one of her family to do so.

  And her survival had come at a terrible price.

  She had had to kill the rest of her family to be allowed to live.

  Chapter

  15

  ROBIE LOOKED AT REEL.

  Reel studied the floor.

  It was nearly midnight a week into their stay here. After their psychological vetting they had undergone more physical endurance tests, each more difficult than the last. They had been given a bit of food and water and then brought back here, sweaty and tired and increasingly depressed. Over the next days they had been worked relentlessly and had dropped exhausted into their bunks for a few hours of sleep before they were hustled from their beds and it all started up again.

  Tonight, they had gotten off relatively early. And so this was the first real time they had been able to speak to each other since the first day.

  “How did your shrink session go?” asked Robie, finally breaking the silence in their tiny shared room.

  “Great, how about you?” she said sarcastically.

  “We spent a good deal of the time talking about you, actually.”

  She looked up at him and then stared over at the nearest listening device.

  She glanced back at him and mouthed, Here? Now?

  He looked around the room and noted the video cameras that they both knew were embedded in the walls. He flipped up the mattress so that it leaned against his back, effectively shielding him from view. Then he motioned for her to sit on the other side of the bunk and face him. She did so, staring at him curiously.

  Then he began using sign language. He had been taught this, as had Reel, he knew, because silent communication was often very useful in the field.

  He said in sign, “Marks is Evan Tucker’s person through and through. Can’t believe we’re intended to survive this place. Do we make a break for it?”

  Reel thought about this and signed back, “Gives them a great excuse to kill us with no repercussions.”

  He signed, “So we sit tight?”

  “I think we can survive this.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “We recruit Marks to our side.”

  Robie’s eyes widened. “How?”

  “We suffer together.”

  “You’ve been bitchy to her so far. How can you turn that around?”

  “I was bitchy to her for the very reason that it would allow me an opportunity to turn it around with credibility. If she thinks I hate her, it could work. If I had started out nice, she would have been instantly suspicious.”

  Robie still looked dubious.

  Reel signed, “What other option do we have?”

  “None,” he signed. “Except die.”

  At that moment the door burst open and a half dozen armed men came in. Robie and Reel were shackled and then hustled out of the room. They were hurried down one long hall after another. They were being moved so fast neither Reel nor Robie could get a handle on which direction they were going.

  A door was thrown open and they were pushed inside. The door slammed shut behind them and other hands grabbed them. Reel and Robie were lifted off their feet and each was placed prone on a long board.

  The room was dimly lighted but they could still see each other, being only inches apart. They both knew what was coming. They were strapped to the boards. Then the boards were tipped back. Their heads were submerged in a large bucket of icy water. They were held there nearly long enough to be drowned.

  When they were lifted free from the water, their feet were kept elevated. Next, a thin cloth was placed over their faces and icy water poured over it. The liquid quickly saturated the cloth and then filled their mouths and noses. The gag reflex was nearly immediate. They coughed and spit. More water was poured. They coughed and gagged. More water was poured. They both retched.

  The cloth was lifted and they were allowed to snatch three or four normal breaths before the cloth went back on. The water was poured again, with the same result. This process was repeated over the next twenty minutes.

  Both Reel and Robie had vomited what little was in their stomachs. All that was coming out now was bile.

  They were kept on the boards with the cloth over their faces. Neither knew when the water would start up again, which was all part of the technique. No training in the world could really insulate you from the terrors of waterboarding.

  They both lay there gasping, their limbs pressing against the restraints, their chests heaving.

  Normally, interrogation would start now. Both Robie and Reel knew this, but they each wondered what sort of interrogation they would be subjected to.

  The lights dimmed even more and both of them braced for what might be coming next.

  A voice said, “This can stop; it’s up to you.”

  It was not Amanda Marks. It was a male voice neither of them recognized.

  “What’s the price?” gasped Reel.

  “A signed confession,” said the voice.

  “Confessing what?�
�� said Robie, spitting retch from his mouth.

  “For Reel, the murders of two CIA operatives. For you, aiding and abetting her. And also to a count of treason.”

  “You a lawyer?” sputtered Reel.

  “All I need is your answer.”

  Reel’s next words made the man chuckle. He said, “I’m afraid that is physically impossible for me to do to myself. But that’s an answer in itself, I suppose.”

  Twenty more minutes of waterboarding occurred.

  When they came back up for air the same question was posed.

  “This will stop,” said the voice. “All you have to do is sign.”

  “Treason carries the death penalty,” gasped Robie. Then he turned to the side and threw up more bile. His brain was about to explode and his lungs felt seared.

  Reel interjected, “So what the hell does it matter?”

  “It does matter. You’ll be given lengthy prison terms, but you won’t be executed. That’s the deal. But you have to sign the confession. It’s all prepared. You just have to sign.”

  Neither Robie nor Reel said anything.

  The ordeal went on for twenty more minutes.

  When it finished, neither of them was conscious. This was one drawback to this form of torture. The body just shut down. And there was no purpose in torturing an unconscious person.