by Alana Terry
“You swear that no man in China had his way with you?” the officer inquired.
I shook my head.
Apparently unsatisfied by my answer, the man glared at one of his junior officers. “Get me a pregnancy test.”
The room spun. If I had the power, I would kill before giving up the life within me. But how could I protect my baby against four armed men?
A guard thrust a plastic cup into my hand. One of the junior officers gawked at me with an open mouth. I looked questioningly at the interrogator.
“Pee in it,” he snapped. I glanced at him and at the men surrounding me and realized that he expected me to do so right there in the middle of the room. My throat stung with the bitter taste of humiliation. I began to pull down the pants to my prison uniform when the officer bellowed to his subordinates, “Faces to the wall!”
I was surprised by this gesture of decency. Grumbling in protest, the three junior officers turned their backs to me. My interrogator stared at them, his teeth clenched so tight that the veins of his neck throbbed from underneath his collar. When I was finished, I handed him the cup. “Four minutes,” he declared and dipped a plastic stick into it. “Four minutes to tell us if you are a lying whore.”
The junior officers turned to face me again and passed the time by making more crude jokes. I was certain that the head officer was my only safety from their savage lusts.
The thought crossed my mind that the interrogating officer might offer me his protection in exchange for certain favors. I no longer had a husband, and I didn’t expect God to intervene to save me. After all that I already endured, half an hour with this brusque stranger seemed a minimal price to pay for my child’s welfare. I tried to catch his eye.
After a few minutes, the head officer cleared his throat. “You’re not pregnant,” he stated. I tried to conceal my surprise. The junior officers looked disappointed. I breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving, but reminded God that my interrogation was still far from over.
Behind Closed Doors
“…False prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” Matthew 24:24
The interrogating officer walked in wide circles around me, his hands clasped behind his back. Each time his boots stomped on the floor, the picture of the Dear Leader that hung on the wall shook slightly.
“Your records show that you are a religious traitor,” he said. I knew this subject would come up. My Christian past was the reason that I was transferred to the auspices of the National Security Agency, instead of being sentenced by the People’s Safety Agency in Onsong like a common border crosser.
I survived the repeated questionings in Onsong without giving too many direct answers about my Christianity. Although I admitted to having a religious heritage, I was never forced to make a statement one way or the other regarding my current faith practices or beliefs. I knew that my time of questioning under the National Security Agency wouldn’t be so lenient, and I didn’t yet know how I would answer my interrogator.
“Did you have contact with Christians in Jilin?”
“No.” This was an easy enough question, which I had already lied about several times.
“You didn’t go to church? Talk with a missionary? Seek out a Christian safe house?”
“No.”
The interrogator leaned close to me. “Then how did you find the family who sheltered you?”
I didn’t have a ready answer. It was the cross on the door that identified the home as a safe house, but I couldn’t mention this.
“The wife saw me hiding in a copse of thorn bushes,” I stammered. “She said she would help me.”
“What was her name?”
I made up some reply, certain that the pseudonym I just gave would be reported to the Sanhe police back in Jilin Province.
“And her family? Were they Christian?” The officer licked his upper lip, covered by coarse stubble.
“They weren’t religious.” I shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to appear unfazed.
The officer leaned so close to my face that I felt his prickly chin hairs against my cheek. “If it wasn’t for sex and it wasn’t for God, then why did they decide to help you?”
I was speechless. Why would any non-Christian risk life and personal safety to help an illegal immigrant? “I don’t know.” I flushed. The officer looked amused.
“Look at the Christian pig,” he commented to his subordinates. “She doesn’t even realize that her own Bible teaches her not to lie to governing members of the Party.” He clucked his tongue at me.
“Tell us, Christian pig,” he prodded, his voice dripping with scorn. “Do you believe in Jesus?”
“Yes,” I replied, although my answer was more of a rebellious reaction to the interrogator’s goading rather than a proclamation of true faith or boldness.
“She admits it!” the officer gasped in mock alarm. Then he turned to his junior guards and winked. “And you know how I like to have my way with these young Christian sows.” The officers all laughed. “Now leave me,” he ordered them. “I want to show this Christian slut what we do with her kind around here.”
Still chuckling, the junior officers left the room. “Make sure you save some for us,” one called behind his back.
“We’ll be having some Christian pork for dinner tonight,” another chuckled.
Once the door slammed shut, leaving me alone with the officer, I gritted my teeth together and held my breath, reminding myself that I could endure anything as long as my child remained safe.
“I know you’re pregnant,” the interrogator remarked. All the blood drained from my head, leaving me even dizzier, and I unclenched my fists. The officer held up the stick form the pregnancy test. “I just didn’t want to give away our little secret.” His smile was twisted, his voice saccharine.
Any pretense of boldness vanished. “Please, Sir,” I begged, “I’ll do anything. Whatever you ask. But promise that you won’t hurt my child.”
“Child!” the man spat. “What right do you have to bring a bastard brat into the world?”
“Please,” I implored, “just tell me what you want me to do. Only let me keep my baby.”
The officer stared at me, his forehead hardened with wrinkles. “Very well,” he finally replied, spitting again on the ground. “You said you’ll do anything?”
“Anything.” I clenched my teeth and braced myself for whatever was to come.
“Tell me you are not a Christian.”
“I am not a Christian.” The words came out of my mouth with astonishing ease.
The officer glared at me, shaking his head. “You are a liar, and you are a coward.” He yanked my arm and pulled me toward a closet door.
“What are you doing?” I gasped.
“Taking you away from here,” the man snarled, his breath heating up my cheek, his fingernails digging into my flesh. “You’re going back across the border. To safety.”
Deliverer
“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit.” Luke 6:43-44
We sped along in an armored National Security Agency van. I was dressed in the clothes of a wealthy Korean. The interrogating officer instructed me how to answer anyone who stopped us for questioning.
“Your name is Lee Hae-Won. You are my sister. Never married. You live in Musan and are visiting me for the week.”
“And your name?”
“Just call me Brother,” he snapped.
As we drove away from the jail, I tried to make sense of the past two hours. Brother – whoever he was – coerced me to renounce my faith, but he apparently planned in advance to rescue me. I glanced at the National Security agent out of the corner of my eye, trying to figure out what he really was. If he was taking me to safety as he claimed, his actions in the interrogation room were not only baffling, but unpardonable.
“Why so quiet?” Brother asked after we drove for some time. We w
ere headed toward the Chinese border. No one stopped us for questioning.
I was quiet.
“Aren’t you going to thank me for saving you?”
“Thank you,” I mumbled. Regardless of who he was or what he did in the interrogation room, this man saved my child’s life and perhaps even my own.
“It’s not the gushing gratitude I would have expected.”
I stared out of the van’s windshield.
“Perhaps you’re angry that your deliverer wears the uniform of a National Security agent?”
I remained silent.
“You want to ask me something,” the officer pressed. “Don’t you?”
Brother would continue to pester me until I gave in. “You are a … a believer?”
“Would I be risking my life for you if I weren’t?” Brother kept his eyes on the road ahead of us.
“Then why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Force me to deny my faith.”
Brother shrugged. “Perhaps to show you what you’re truly made of.”
This officer’s secrecy and uncanny composure were unsettling. Even if Brother was a Christian, how was I supposed to trust him? Either he was prone to vicious fits of rage and violence in spite of his faith, or he was such a convincing liar that I couldn’t ever feel safe in his company.
“If I recall correctly,” Brother defended himself, “I didn’t force anything upon you. You begged for me to spare your child. Said you’d do anything.” His voice rose to a sugary falsetto as he mimicked my pleas in the interrogation room.
“You left me no choice.” I crossed my arms and turned my face away from my rescuer.
“It’s a serious offense to deny the Savior,” Brother chided.
It’s a serious offense to force people to deny the Savior shot through my mind, but my teeth clenched shut before the inflammatory words escaped.
“‘Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me,’” Brother continued. “Or am I misquoting that particular verse?”
Perhaps it was my own wounded pride, or the guard’s familiarity with the Scriptures, that broke my brittle self-restraint. “And what about the passage that warns if anyone causes a believer to sin, he would be better off to have a millstone tied around his neck and be thrown into the sea?”
I wondered if I just signed my own death sentence, as well as my baby’s. Brother only clucked his tongue. “You might want to find some less macabre verses to quote from time to time,” he sighed with a shrug of his shoulders. “But at least now I know that the Bible I gave your father when you were barely toddling was put to some use.”
I nearly gagged on my own retort. The Korean officer turned in his seat and grinned at me. Still managing to keep his eyes partially on the road, he tipped his head in a feigned bow.
“Brother Moses,” he announced. “Your humble servant.”
Unveiling
“Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” Isaiah 53:3
“Moses?” I could scarcely utter the name, which had been so sacred in my childhood memories.
“You’ve heard of me, I see.”
I felt nauseous. “You’re a guard?”
“If you’re talking about the uniform, I admit the color doesn’t suit me.” Moses’ lip turned upward in a lopsided grin. “Nevertheless, I find this shade of green much more flattering than that olive color they wear across the border. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“But … you’re Korean,” I somehow managed to stammer. “I always thought you were Chinese.”
Moses shrugged. “I left my Chinese passport at home today.”
“But even the Chinese think you’re one of them!”
“Do they?” Moses gasped. “I hadn’t heard. Is there anything else I should know about myself?”
It seemed impossible that this coarse, sarcastic officer was the same hero I once venerated.
“Did Father know?”
“Know what? That I’m a guard? Of course not,” Moses declared. “I’m no fool.”
“Then what exactly are you?”
Moses chuckled. “I’ll allow you to answer your own question. Who would you say that I am?”
The strain of my betrayal, capture, and interrogation left me very little patience. I wasn’t about to give this charlatan more respect than he deserved. “I would say that you are a brutal, violent killer who wears the clothing of a wolf, yet calls himself a sheep,” I replied, without either forethought or fear of retribution.
Moses clucked his tongue. “You forget that it was I who saved you,” he replied. “What wrong have I committed against you, righteous daughter, to deserve such wrath?”
“You wear the uniform of the enemy. That in itself is enough. And you also tricked me. I would never have denied my faith if I knew who you really were. Your deceitfulness is the worse hypocrisy of all.”
“Hypocrisy?” Moses asked and then suddenly grew quiet. “Yes, I suppose I am a hypocrite,” he mused, “in that my comrades know nothing of my work for the underground church.”
“Nor would they suspect it,” I mumbled.
“You are referring to my coarse manners? I imagine I don’t come across quite as holy and righteous as you probably pictured me. I’d like to see you survive five minutes as a National Security agent without growing even more cynical and contemptuous than the guard who just risked his life to rescue you. I don’t have the luxury to be refined and sanctified like you.”
“Which makes you both a hypocrite and a liar.” Why had I venerated this impostor when I was a child?
“Well, then, I’m sorry if I am not everything you imagined I would be.” I wasn’t sure if this was also part of Moses’ charade, so I moped for several minutes in silence.
“You think I’m a boor,” Moses finally stated. I didn’t deny it. “You should pity me instead.”
“And why should I pity you?”
Moses ignored my challenge. “Tell me. You were married in Jilin, were you not?”
I raised my head high. “Yes, I was.”
“And is your husband a righteous, God-fearing man?”
“He was until he was killed by the police.”
Moses raised an eyebrow at me, then flicked his wrist in my direction. “And did this righteous husband of yours make sacrifices for the Lord?”
“More than you could imagine,” I answered, immediately forgetting all of Kwan’s shortcomings that seemed so unbearable to live with while he was still alive.
“Tell me,” Moses pressed, “do you believe your husband will be rewarded in heaven for these sacrifices?”
“Yes.” I straightened up in my seat. “I’m sure of it.”
“Good.” Moses snapped his finger. “Thank you. You have given me much hope.”
“What do you mean?” I was weary of this agent’s impudence.
“You see,” Moses explained, “I also make sacrifices for the Lord, sacrifices that many good, upstanding Christian men would not be capable of making.”
“Such as?”
“Such as knowing that fellow Christians are terrified of me,” Moses answered. “Knowing that if they realized who I really was, they would tell me I was wrong to work for the National Security Agency.”
“So you’re defending yourself?”
“If I were not an officer, where would you be right now?” Moses contested. “And what would become of your child?”
I had no answer to give him.
“My position of authority allows me to save dozens of lives a year. And you – you, whom I just delivered – would tell me I’m sinning to keep up my work? I thought Hyun-Ki’s daughter would have more wisdom than that.”
I tried to think of an intelligent reply. “Surely there must be another way.”
“If you tell me what it is,” Moses stated with a wave of his hand, “I’ll happily announce my resignation to the head of the National Security Agency this very night.”
“But the cruelty, the torture … I’m sure you can’t save everyone there!”
“That’s why you should pity me.” Moses remarked, lowering his voice. I didn’t want to think about the implications of his words.
“Then why don’t you quit?”
“Because if I stopped working as a guard, the child in your womb would be dead by now. And so might you.” Again I had no counter to Moses’ arguments. I thought about the woman who bled to death in the Onsong jail.
“Some people would call me a coward,” Moses went on, “because I do not live out my faith openly like your father did. They don’t realize that if I confessed my love for Christ when I was first saved as a young guard, I would be dead. And so would the hundreds of Christians I’ve helped rescue over the past two decades.”
“But couldn’t God have used you in some other way?” As soon as I voiced the question, I realized how naïve it would sound to someone like Moses.
“It’s not what you typically think of as mission work.” Moses stared through the windshield at the road ahead of us. “Even now, I don’t know if my life has done more to further the kingdom of light or the kingdom of darkness. It is God alone who must decide that.”
We drove on in silence.
“The truth about my identity is not common knowledge,” Moses admitted after some time. “I don’t make it a habit to transport prisoners myself.”
“Then why am I here?” I asked. “And why did you tell me who you are?”
Moses cleared his throat. “For nearly twelve years, I’ve lived with the regret that I didn’t act in time to save your father. Every day I hoped you might find a way to escape Camp 22. First I saw the report that said you perished in a fire in the train depot, then I received word from Mr. Kim that you were under his care.”
“You know Mr. Kim?”
“I know Mr. Kim,” Moses replied. “I also know your husband Kwan.”
I was surprised that Moses was so familiar with my safe-house family from Sanhe. “How?”
Moses shook his head. “There are many things I can’t tell you.” As if hearing my unspoken question, Moses added, “Like most believers, your friends think that I am a Chinese citizen. They have no idea what I really am.” The loneliness in Moses’ voice was unmistakable.