One other remark rang in her ears, related less happily by Sensei: “…the true master knows no friendship.” He read it to her only once, and regretted it immediately. On this day she felt the truth of it like she never had before. The angel of death can hardly have friends. And the prom, what about Danny? He can hardly have a Valkyrie for his date. It was a sobering thought. But perhaps it was the very meaning of her existence. She smiled ruefully.
Miss Park’s clothes fit better than the fatigues she took from the soldier back in her first cell, especially the shoes. And it felt good to have socks. She folded his clothes and went out to find the children.
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Chapter 23
Assessing the Carnage
Anthony didn’t know who would come through the red door. Li Li took her cue from whatever emotion she could glean from his face. He held her close, behind some fuel tanks a dozen or so yards away, and tried to keep her calm. He had never been so frightened, but he didn’t let her see it.
When the door finally opened, after what seemed like an eternity to the children, and Emily emerged, Li Li shrieked for joy and ran to her, prefiguring the emotions Anthony felt as well, following right behind her. Emily crouched down with her arms spread wide to catch her. He slid into her embrace next to Li Li, both crying and giggling at once.
~~~~~~~
“C’mon guys,” Emily said, after a few moments. “We have some stuff to take care of before we go home.”
Given all the bodies, there weren’t a lot of places to put the kids. She led them back to the barracks room in the main building.
“Anthony, see if there’s anything edible over there,” she said, gesturing to the filthy kitchen at the far end of the room. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Keep an eye on Li Li.”
There was another large room downstairs with more bunks, but no sign of anyone alive. The first two men she fought were there, piled against the wall, gaping crusty wounds in their heads. Miss Park’s handiwork. The only door led into the ring. When she pushed through against the weight of a body lying in the way, she saw the full reality of what had transpired there less than an hour earlier. More than a dozen men, most mangled, some smashed, all dead. More lay on the raised walkway, including General Park. He was one of only two in here she had killed, though she had meant the knife for his daughter.
The door opposite led to her first cell, down the corridor and through yet another door. Her steps echoed as she walked. Here, too, all dead. She hadn’t done all the killing here either. They had been shot as they lay on the floor where she had left them. The only one she had killed was the big Russian. She heard a rustling coming from the other Russian, the one who lay paralyzed by the bench. He was dead, a bullet hole in his forehead. Shivering behind him in his underwear, otherwise very much as she had left him, was the little man whose clothes she held under her arm. She coaxed him out and helped him dress.
Communication was difficult. She spoke no Korean and he spoke no English or Japanese. She led him out to the barracks room, where the children were eating some brown bread with butter. With a scrounged pencil stub and a bit of paper she wrote the characters for “Help” and “Carry,” then led him outside to where Ba We lay. She knew she had to destroy the evidence of genetic experiments here, and that meant not leaving him behind. But he was much too heavy for her to manage on her own. They found the one vehicle with keys, a large SUV with camouflage paint, and hefted him into the rear, wrapped in a dirty canvas sheet. She found a couple of shovels and a broken plank in the yard and tossed them in too.
With the little man’s help, and a good deal of guesswork, she managed to gather any evidence of genetic experiments she could find, any paper records, tissue samples, any computers and made a large bonfire in the middle of the yard. It was important not to leave anything behind that might provide a clue for reconstructing their work here. As they were ransacking the outbuilding for blankets and any medical supplies, the man stood over Miss Park’s body and shuddered. He was clearly frightened of her even in death. Emily covered her with a tarp.
Back in the barracks room, Emily set Anthony to work gathering as much food and water as they could into a cooler she had found. They improvised ice packs from stray plastic bags and whatever ice was in the refrigerator. It was going to get cold tonight. She needed to keep the children warm and fed. And they couldn’t stay where they were. They were going to have to live out of the SUV for a while.
Standing on the roof of the Quonset hut at dusk she could see over the walls of the compound. There was no town visible, not even a village. In one direction she could detect the dim glow of a town on the other side of some hills. In the other direction the lights of a much larger city glimmered across a large body of water. From what she could remember of the maps Connie showed her, she guessed they were on the southeast shore of Avacha Bay, opposite Petropavlosk. The bay was really an enormous natural harbor with a second, inner harbor on the south side formed by a jutting peninsula. They must be on the north side of that peninsula, just outside Vilyuchinsk. Security would be high at the submarine base, which was probably why the Koreans had located the compound there. They must have been operating under the informal protection of someone with influence in the Russian navy. A smaller town associated with the base, Ribachiy, had its own tiny harbor. She might check there for any suitable boats. Otherwise, they would have to get to the other side of the bay, which would take at least an entire day of driving.
A second problem: as large as it was, Avacha Bay can freeze in a hard winter. She hoped enough of it was unfrozen by now. It also meant that a night transit was probably unwise, since they wouldn’t be able to see surface ice.
For now they had to find a place to bury Ba We where he would never be found. Connie’s maps had suggested the surrounding area was only sparsely populated. That meant few paved roads. She hoped the SUV could manage whatever terrain they might find. The further his grave was from any human traffic the better.
Emily brought Anthony and Li Li to the SUV, while the little man loaded everything into the back, as far from Ba We as he could manage. Anthony scrambled into the back seat, anxious to get moving as quickly as possible. Li Li was reluctant to get in. Emily picked her up to help her in. She squirmed and squealed, unable to make herself understood. When she began to cry Emily put her down and crouched next to her. What was troubling her? She pointed to the Quonset hut with an urgent, pleading look in her eyes, and kept repeating the syllable “doll.” Emily really didn’t want to take her through the red door again just to retrieve a toy, not with Miss Park’s body in the middle of the floor. But she seemed so determined, and Emily didn’t have the heart to ignore the demand of a frightened child. At least the body was covered.
She gave Li Li her hand and let herself be led away. At the far end, past the cages, she pointed to a dingy cabinet. The door was broken, probably knocked off its hinges when Miss Park crashed into it. There was nothing inside. Li Li cried out “Dol,” as if she were calling to some one. But there were no other living souls in the compound besides the four of them. Li Li kept crying out the name.
Emily thought she heard something scrabbling behind the cabinet. Was it a mouse? She noticed some dirt on the floor along the base. The concrete slab of the floor came to a ragged edge several inches shy of the wall on this end. There were signs of scraping. Then it dawned on her. She hurled herself against the cabinet, pushing as hard as she could. It didn’t budge. She might have to get the others to help. One last heave, some trapped wood splintered and the whole cabinet caved in. Finally, it fell away from the wall and, through a narrow gap, she saw him.
“Dol Swae!” Li Li shrieked with delight.
At first he was just a large pair of dark eyes. Emily met his gaze, curious at first, but also frightened. Was this the other voice she had heard? Was he another brother? He looked at Li Li and grunted. He couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. He must have found a way to hide himself behind the
cabinet a few days ago. There was a little burrow just large enough to hide in. Had he dug it himself, or just found an old nest? When Emily threw Miss Park against the cabinet, the impact must have wedged it against the wall more tightly than he could undo. He was filthy, covered in dirt and dust, and who knows what else. His dark hair was matted and tangled. He looked like some sort of wild child. Emily reached in for him, but he refused, recoiling wordlessly even deeper into his hiding place.
Li Li stepped in front, cooing his name and gesturing to him. Finally, with a good deal of reluctance he came out to her. She gave him the enthusiastic hug of a small child, pressing her face up against his. When she jumped into Emily’s arms he grabbed her leg and howled. Emily put her down and held out her hands to both of them. He wouldn’t take it, but he took Li Li’s and she took Emily’s. They emerged from the red door just like that, a chain of hands.
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Chapter 24
A Grave in the Woods
Once everyone was stowed, wrapped in a blanket and given bread and butter with jam and some bottled water, they set out. The dirt road leading from the gate joined up with a roughly paved two-lane road. They followed this south and east for a few miles, past a few cultivated fields but mainly through what looked like virgin forests. After about a half an hour she found a dirt turnoff. It wasn’t exactly a road, but it looked like it might continue beyond the first rise. They were heading into the hills, climbing and dipping as they went along. The underbrush encroached on their path rubbing the side of the SUV, finally screeching along the paint. One last rise and they found a small sheltered clearing. No lights were visible in any direction. Maybe this was far enough.
The two of them dug by the orange parking lights while Anthony kept an eye on the now exhausted children. The ground was soft, unfrozen, dark forest soil, probably the result of some ancient volcanic eruption. The digging went faster than either of them expected. She wanted the hole to be deeper, as deep as they could make it, preferably six feet. She would have to settle for what they could manage, which was about up to her chin. With an enormous effort they hauled the body out of the back, cradling it in its canvas sheet, and lowered it into the hole.
She retrieved the board she had saved and handed it to the little man along with a knife. They sat next to the hole. She gestured at it and said “Ba We.” He scratched a couple of characters she didn’t exactly recognize. In response to her puzzled look, he pointed to a huge rock protruding from the top of a nearby hill and visible in silhouette against the darkening sky. “Ba We,” he said. So that was how they thought of him, a rock or a mountain, impenetrable, impervious. Well, that was certainly not an inaccurate description. But it wasn’t enough to put that on his grave. He wasn’t just a thing. Or at least, in some sense, he was her thing. She took the board and scratched the characters for her family name above the others. He looked at them with the same puzzlement she had felt just before. She placed one hand on her chest and said “Tenno,” then dropped the board into the hole next to his body. The marker was just for Ba We and herself, not for anyone else to find.
She felt someone watching her. It wasn’t a threatening presence. More curious, even feral, perhaps just the local fauna attracted to the lights of the SUV. But that’s not what it was, or who it was. The little boy approached, put his hand on her shoulder and peered down into the hole. He knew who was down there, she could feel it. She whispered “Ba We” to him. He crawled onto her lap and placed his head against her chest. They sat like that for the next half hour while the little man pushed the dirt back into the hole. When everything was done and concealed as much as they could make it, she put Dol Swae back under his blanket in the SUV.
The little man looked at him and repeated his name: “Dol.” Emily smiled and said “Dol Swae.” He turned to her and shook his head. “Dol,” he said. He saw her puzzlement and picked up a small stone lying nearby. He held it out to her and repeated, “Dol.” She looked at him and shook her head as she said “Not Dol Swae?” He shook his head and said “Dol” one last time. Dol seemed to mean stone or pebble, as if the guards meant he was a little Ba We. At least, that was her best guess. It was a worrisome thought, that he might grow up to be as lonely and remorseless as Ba We.
Emily didn’t want to move just yet. It was too early in the evening to return to the town. People would still be up and about, and she didn’t want to encounter anyone. They stayed there in the forest for a few hours and let the children sleep. They would need to be rested for the journey, and she still needed to locate a suitable boat. The engine idled to keep them all warm.
~~~~~~~
The little man stared at her in awe, almost afraid to make a sound. She seemed so different now. Who was she? Just a few hours ago she was just a poor defenseless girl about to be ravaged by the toughs he had been lumped in with. Then suddenly, magically, she was an avenging angel, maiming and killing practically with the speed of thought, destroying anyone in her path, the fires of hell flashing from her eyes. She spared him, standing over him with eyes still smoking, demanding his clothes. He thought he was going to die at any moment.
When the guards came to finish anyone still alive, he concealed himself behind the paralyzed man and awaited his end. But she came back, brought him his clothes, took care of him and the children. Everyone was dead when he came out of the cell. How? She buried the clone, gave him her name. Had she defeated him too? He had always seemed so powerful, so fierce, so invincible. How had he died? The bullet wounds were obvious. But who would have shot him? He was the Colonel’s great secret. She would never have allowed it, that malignant, enigmatic woman. And yet, there he was in the grave, and she lay unmourned under a rude sheet on the floor of the Quonset hut, obviously beaten to death. Had this girl done it all?
~~~~~~~
Emily turned to him and smiled. She wrote the characters for “escape” and “boat” on her paper and looked at him meaningfully. He took the paper and wrote something she couldn’t quite make out. Part of what he wrote seemed to say “protect.” Was he asking her for protection? He scratched another thing on the paper, this time in western letters, perhaps the only ones he knew. “Holp.” His eyes implored her.
His predicament was easy to see. He couldn’t stay in Russia, but going home was not likely to be safe either. He was young enough that he probably had no family of his own. Was he ready to leave everything behind? She nodded. He let out a long sigh and leaned his head back into the seat. He dozed off a little later. When he woke again it was still dark and they were on the move.
When the SUV came out of the woods and its tires found the road, she turned right. The little man squirmed himself upright and whispered urgently, trying not to disturb the children. It was clear he didn’t want to return to Vilyuchinsk. When she stopped he took up the paper and scrawled a character she recognized: “danger.” Emily didn’t like the idea of taking the long route around the bay. It meant a lot of time exposed on open roads. But Vilyuchinsk meant coming perilously close to a secure military installation. Perhaps he was right. She stared down through the steering column at her feet for a moment and drew a long breath. Then she turned to look at the little man, to let him see that she trusted him. She turned the SUV around and put it into gear, and told herself they would drive as much as possible after dark and rest concealed in the daylight.
The Kamchatka Krai is a long, sparsely populated mountainous peninsula jutting roughly south southwest from the far eastern end of Russia. The southern end, near Avacha Bay, where most of the population resides, is less than a hundred miles wide and dotted with the spent, grey cones of ancient volcanoes. The only route initially available to them followed the southern shore of the bay before veering away into the hills. Smaller roads and dirt tracks led off further south to wander among the forested feet of the higher mountains.
Farm fields in varying degrees of use or decrepitude could be found in the vales and on the hillocks. The soil was clearly rich enough and fertile,
but the growing season was probably too short at this latitude to make farming a reliable employment. Emily pulled the SUV into the trees on the edge of one of these just before ten in the morning. The field lay fallow, cleared but unplowed for at least a year. Once she was satisfied about cover from the sky, she let Anthony take the children to play in the woods. They would have to make toys out of what they could find on the forest floor. But children tend to be quite resourceful in this sort of improvisation.
“Not too far, Anthony, and keep away from any people,” she called after them.
She closed her eyes in the backseat for a short nap. The sun hung low in the sky when she snorted awake disoriented. The light looked all wrong, twilight when it should have been more like noon. Where was Anthony? Where were the children? She pitched forward to search them out, but they were nowhere in sight. The little man leaned in the window and put his hand on her shoulder. He pointed to a fallen log in the shade of the trees. Anthony was showing Li Li and Dol how to throw stones the way Emily showed him just a few days earlier. She watched as the children played harmlessly, with innocent joy, blissfully unaware of any danger now that their big sister was with them. Dol scampered along the log, leaping down on one side only to scramble up the other. He snuck around to surprise Li Li, and she shrieked with delight. He was clearly devoted to her, as if she were the only playmate he had ever known. For her part, she craved the seemingly boundless energy of his attention. It was easy to imagine why. She was a lonely child torn from her mother and kept a prisoner by officious, indifferent strangers. The discovery of this elfin comrade would have provided a delightful release from her fear and isolation.
Emily wondered if he had ever been allowed to play before, if he even knew what play was before Li Li found him. She assumed he was one of the clones, though she didn’t know for sure. He was clearly Asian, probably Korean. The guards must have been familiar with him, since they’d given him a name. She wondered what the full name “Dol Swae” meant, and why the little man was so anxious to shorten it. She felt some sort of bond with Dol, almost like what she discovered with Ba We. This certainly was suggestive. Still she wondered if he couldn’t just be the son of one of the guards, now orphaned. But then how had he ended up behind the cabinet? If he really was a clone, another experiment like Ba We, then she had to keep him safe. And that meant guarding his secret from the world, from everyone, maybe even her own family.
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