In the Shadow of the Sun

by Anne Sibley O'Brien

  “They’ve got Simon, they’re on the bridge in Dandong,” Daniel said. At her look of panic, he added, “Don’t worry, the Chinese will hold them. We’ll be able to get there in time.”

  Mia started to breathe.

  “Daniel, what about Dad? Do the North Koreans still have him?”

  His face sobered. “Yes, he’s still being held. But he’s in good health and being treated well, and we’re doing everything we can to arrange his release.”

  Then they were driving away from the Wall. Mia collapsed against the seat. A tidal wave of disappointment flooded over her. She hadn’t realized until that moment, when she heard the hard truth, how much she’d been holding on to the impossible hope that Dad would have already been freed. That somehow he’d be waiting for them in China.

  They sped along a country highway by the river, a siren blaring from the roof. Everything seemed to be out of Mia’s hands now. She was completely wrung out, a leaf being carried along on a strong current.

  She tried to sort out the tangled maze of thoughts and impressions in her brain. One question was on top. She took a breath to gather her courage.

  “Daniel — what’s going on? How come you’re here, in China?”

  “I’m an aide for Senator Ashton, Mia. The chair of the committee overseeing North Korean affairs. I was there to meet with MPS officials, to see how the DPRK was doing with food distribution.”

  So Simon had been right. Daniel wasn’t just some ordinary tourist. Daniel’s eyes were on the road. Mia concentrated on hearing him over the noise of the siren. “I have some contacts … on the inside. One of them is someone who arranged to let you escape, at the roadblock. He’s part of a faction that’s opposing hard-liners like Colonel Pak.”

  “That’s what Simon and I guessed! You mentioned them, at the Mass Games.”

  He nodded. “When those people got information about you, they passed it along to me.”

  Mia sat up. “Information about us?”

  “You were seen, and reported, several times in Pyongyang, the last time at the West Pyongyang train station. There were some confusing reports after that. My contacts sometimes got leaks from Colonel Pak’s side as well. Then I received word of your capture — that was MPS, extracting you from the clutches of Colonel Pak — and your convenient ‘escape.’ ” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “That roadblock was a showdown between the two factions.”

  Another point for their detective work; she and Simon had guessed that part correctly.

  “Colonel Pak must have had other reports of your whereabouts, which is how those soldiers managed to be so close behind you. But I didn’t get any of that information, so I had no idea where you were. We didn’t expect that there was any way you could possibly make it across the border. But you’d gotten to Sinuiju, so it made sense to stay nearby, waiting until we heard more.”

  It was chilling to think how often they’d been seen and reported. But not because of Soon-ok, not because of Mr. Shin, or they would’ve been caught much sooner. Mia hugged the knowledge to herself. Despite the danger she and Simon had exposed them to, their friends had not betrayed them.

  They were careening through busy city streets now. Traffic scattered to let them through. The car screeched to a stop at a tall, official-looking building with Chinese flags on either side of a wide stairway. Daniel dashed out of the car, calling to Mia to stay put.

  She waited in the car with the driver for a long time. Too tired to move, too anxious to breathe.

  Then there was Daniel, walking out of the building.

  Beside him was Simon.

  Mia jumped out of the car and ran to her brother. They grabbed each other, laughing and whooping and jumping around. Daniel and the soldiers stood grinning at them.

  “You’ve got it, the phone?” Simon asked into Mia’s ear. She smiled up at him, patting the pocket where it lay against her stomach. He raised both hands and she slapped them.

  “We did it! I can’t believe we did it!” Simon kept exulting, with a little exuberant swearing on the side.

  Then Daniel was dialing his cell phone and saying, “I’ve got them both, Kay, they’re safe.”

  “Mom!” Mia screeched. Daniel handed her the phone, and she was crying again, “Mom, Mom! It’s me! We’re okay! We’re in China, we’re with Daniel!” and she heard, “Oh, Mia!” and then Simon took the phone, his voice cracking, not even bothering to wipe the tears on his cheeks.

  Six former All-Star members of the National Basketball Association arrived in Pyongyang today for a series of exhibition games.

  Leader Kim Jong-un’s well-known fondness for basketball has led to an ongoing international exchange that many observers call “sports diplomacy.” In the past, individual celebrities who traveled to the authoritarian country were criticized for propping up the dictatorship and ignoring human rights abuses. Recent sports delegations have included some State Department officials, however, who have been able to use the opportunity to hold informal talks with their North Korean counterparts, aimed at lowering tensions between the DPRK and the US.

  This basketball delegation is likewise thought to include some diplomats, raising speculation that any talks might include the status of detained American aid worker Mark Andrews, who has been held in the DPRK since October 2.

  In a surprise development, American aid worker Mark Andrews of Food for the World was released from detention and allowed to return to the US with the NBA All-Stars delegation.

  Andrews was arrested in October while touring North Korea and accused of “hostile acts against the republic,” allegedly for meeting with members of opposition groups. North Korean officials had previously threatened to put Andrews on trial with the likelihood that he would receive a lengthy prison sentence, but he was unexpectedly released during the visit of the basketball stars. Sources attributed the sudden move to informal talks held between unidentified US and North Korean government officials.

  Andrews’s wife, Kay Andrews, and his teenage son and daughter, who accompanied him to Pyongyang in October but were not detained with their father, met him at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City.

  NOVEMBER 30

  “Hey, Dad.”

  Mia placed a glass of tomato juice and a bag of tortilla chips on her father’s desk and slung her backpack off her shoulder onto the floor of the den.

  Dad pulled his eyes from his laptop and swiveled in his big chair to envelop her in a hug.

  When he’d gotten home six days before, he’d seemed tired but unhurt. He said he’d been treated well enough, kept in a couple of rooms that were more like a hotel suite than a prison. Plenty of food, even exercise breaks. Round-the-clock minders. The hardest part had been the endless interrogations and the demand that he write long confessions of crimes he hadn’t committed. His biggest fear had been that something he said might get one of his North Korean colleagues in trouble. He’d assumed all along that Mia and Simon were safe in Daniel’s care and back home in Connecticut within a few days. Mia was glad to hear he hadn’t been worried about them too.

  For the past week, he’d been mostly resting and recovering, when he wasn’t meeting State Department officials for debriefing.

  Mia and Simon had had a few days home with Dad, over the Thanksgiving break, but now they were back in school.In the hallway between classes, Mia texted — “Hi, Dad,” “xoxox,” “<3,” any silly thing — just for the relief of seeing his response come back. He really was home. Safe.

  Dad turned to the screen and Mia draped herself over his back, her arms folded over his shoulders.

  “How was your day?” he asked.

  “Okay. We’re reading this book set in Cambodia in English Lit, about somebody who survived the genocide. Some of the kids were saying it was too disturbing.”

  The first objection had come from Kyle Herland. “Do we really have to read this stuff?”

  Then the girls started chiming in. “It’s really upsetting,” Oakley James said.
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br />   “I’m getting nightmares,” Amanda Turner whined.

  Ms. Tapley let them go on awhile. Mia sat there until she couldn’t stand it anymore. Until listening without saying anything felt like agreeing, which felt like some kind of betrayal.

  She raised her hand.

  “Mia?” She saw surprise in the tilt of her teacher’s head as Ms. T turned to her.

  “We need to know about it,” Mia said. “Even if it’s upsetting. Especially if it’s upsetting. Because it really happened. Avoiding it is like pretending it didn’t happen.”

  And it’s still happening, she thought. If not in Cambodia, in North Korea. No, that might open a dangerous door. She was still figuring out what was safe to say.

  “Thank you, Mia,” Ms. T said, a weight in the phrase that showed she really meant it. She held her eyes for a moment.

  “I agree with Mia.” That was T.J. Now Mia was the one who was surprised. “We should pay attention when bad things happen, even if we don’t feel like it. If we don’t, then people keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over.”

  “That reminds me of a line from the play Death of a Salesman,” Ms. T said. “Terrible things happen to one of the characters, ruining his life. One of the other characters speaks out, saying his tragedy can’t be ignored: ‘Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.’

  “ ‘Attention must be paid.’ ” She let the line hang in the air for a moment. “Here’s the reason I think it’s important to read books like the one I’ve assigned: If other people had to suffer through something so horrific, the least we can do is listen when they tell their stories. To pay attention. To bear witness.”

  Mia had been holding those phrases in her head all day. Attention must be paid. To bear witness.

  It was like what she and Dad did together now. After school — and sometimes in the middle of the night, when she woke to the sound of him moving around downstairs — they read everything they could find online that might give them a clue about what was happening in North Korea.

  “Anything new?” Mia asked.

  “No sign of personnel shifts in the ministries.”

  They especially watched for any news about the State Security Department, SSD, which Mia thought of as Colonel Pak’s group, and the Ministry of People’s Security, MPS, which she thought of as the scarred man’s group. They were the ones who gave Mia and Simon the phone and let them steal their car.

  Dad scrolled through blogs, analyses, and news stories. Mia read with her chin on his shoulder.

  The front door opened, then banged shut.

  “Hey, Squeak. Hey, Dad.” Simon passed the door of the den and headed for the stairs.

  “How was debate practice?” Dad called, but Simon was already out of range.

  Since they got back, Simon had thrown himself into getting caught up with his schoolwork, his debate team, soccer. He didn’t talk a lot about what had happened to them, but Mia didn’t need him to say anything. Sitting across from each other at the dinner table or passing in the hall on the way to their rooms, their eyes would meet. So much in one look.

  “The story of your disappearance,” Daniel had told Mia and Simon while they were still in China together, “is that when your father was detained for questioning, the two of you were taken to a safe location, then flown home. No one knows that you made it out by yourselves — no one except me, several other US government officials, your mom, and certain DPRK officials.”

  Outside of their family, their experiences had to remain completely confidential. People’s lives could be at stake.

  She and Simon walked around all day, every day, with all that inside, not being able to talk about it. They were, for each other, the only other person in the world who understood what they’d been through. And what they were still going through.

  At first Mia had felt weird around Alicia and Jess, keeping all those secrets. Simon had lent Mia his phone for a day so she could show them photos of the monuments and talk about the first two days of the tour. But she couldn’t share anything real about the biggest thing that had ever happened to her. It created a distance between her and her friends, but only Mia knew it was there.

  In a strange way, it had helped when Dad was still being held in North Korea. Mia didn’t have to pretend then that she was fine. She could be worried or distracted or frustrated — all of which she was, a lot — and they thought they understood why.

  Then one afternoon, the third week after she and Simon got back, Mia and Alicia and Jess were crammed into their usual seat in the back of the school bus.

  “Okay, Mia, spill,” Jess said.

  Mia stared. How had Jess figured out that she wasn’t telling the truth about the trip?

  Then she realized that Jess was just referring to their old game, what her friends called the “Weirdest Thing Mia Observed Today.” Jess often said when she opened her detective agency, she was going to hire Mia to collect evidence.

  “Okay,” Mia said, keeping her voice low. “Jacob Weintraub never has anything to write with. He’s always borrowing other people’s pens or pencils. He chews on the ends as he uses them, then he gives them back. So if he borrows a pen from you, tell him to keep it.”

  Alicia, who had a huge crush on Jacob, burst into laughter. Mia couldn’t help laughing too.

  In that moment, somehow, it got okay. Mia could hold the weight of everything she had experienced in North Korea. And at the same time, she could be there on the bus, being silly with Alicia and Jess.

  Korean school had been different as well. She’d needed time at first, just to adjust to being at home, but by early November, she told Mom she wanted to go back. She felt awkward walking in, but it turned out she was the only person there who’d ever been to North Korea. Her teachers and classmates were fascinated by every detail she shared, and asked a lot of questions. Despite all the things Mia had to keep secret, she found a lot to say, and everyone expressed concern about Dad, who was still being held in the DPRK. It seemed so strange, so upside-down, being the one at language school who knew the most about something Korean.

  In class, new Korean phrases took on greater meaning when Mia imagined speaking them to Mr. Lee, or Soon-ok, or Mr. Shin’s mother. She was still working at a beginning level while the others were advanced, but now she didn’t mind asking a couple of the girls — Hannah Lee and Grace Jung — for help understanding something. She thought someday she’d invite them to a sleepover at her house and they could watch K-dramas and K-pop videos together.

  On her third Saturday back at school, she came out of the building and found her mother waiting in the car as usual. Mia slipped into the passenger seat but left the door open to hold her mother’s attention. She had something she was determined to say.

  “Mom, next week I want you to come inside,” she said, facing her. “There’s a nice area with a couch where you can sit and work while I’m in class.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to bother anyone,” her mother said. “Can you close the door? We need to get going.”

  “Just a second. I’m trying to tell you something. You wouldn’t be bothering anybody. I just want you to be there. I don’t want Korean school to be some strange thing I go off and do all by myself.”

  Her mother put one hand to her forehead. “I’ve got so much on my mind, with your father —”

  “Mom, I know,” Mia said. “But I’m not asking a lot. Just do your phone calls or whatever, but stay here at the church. Meet these people. Okay?”

  Her mother sighed. Her hand came down. “Okay, I’ll try.”

  The next week Dad had come home, and of course there’d been no trip to Stamford. But Mia could tell that things were going to be different. Because she was different.

  The first few days after Dad had gotten home, they’d had so much to talk over. Mia and Simon wanted to know all about what had happened to Dad, and he wanted to know all about what had happened to them. Daniel visited once, and Mia and Simon had a long list of questio
ns to ask.

  “Why did the guys who caught us want us to escape? And why didn’t they just drive us to the border?” Simon had demanded. “Why did we have to go through the whole charade of stealing the car?”

  Daniel had explained that the Ministry of People’s Security agents understood just how disastrous holding not just an American aid worker but his kids would be for North Korea’s image. But helping them too directly would have been treason, and no one could have protected his contacts from the consequences.

  More questions: Why did the Ministry of People’s Security give them the phone? Who put the pictures on it? Did they really think it would work to get the pictures out? Mr. Lee had told Mia not to open the package until they got out of the country. Was he part of the plot?

  Dad and Daniel speculated that it was a plan by the MPS to embarrass the SSD, just as Mia and Simon had guessed. On the other hand, Dad’s arrest might have been a setup by SSD to expose MPS. There could be moles and double agents in both ministries. Neither Dad or Daniel had any knowledge of Mr. Lee’s role.

  Everyone agreed that there was appearance and there was reality, and they’d almost certainly never know exactly what the truth was. Lots of questions, most without answers.

  But gradually, Mia realized, she could get an answer to the question, the one that had been on her mind throughout the whole trip.

  On a Sunday night, when Dad had been home four days, she’d finally gotten the courage to ask. The entire family had gathered in the living room, talking events over.

  “Dad. I saw you. The first night. You sneaked out of your hotel room, down to the first floor, where you met with someone. And what I want to know is, what was really going on? Why did we go to North Korea? For real?”

  Dad sighed, like someone putting down a heavy load. He told them he’d gotten messages from North Korean colleagues that this would be a good time to visit. It had seemed like a perfect opportunity to accomplish two things: to be in North Korea when he might be able to make a crucial connection, or support some small shift to get more food to the people who needed it, and to bring his children on the tour.