Star of the North

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Star of the North Page 7

by D. B. John


  A uniformed female secretary stood at her desk as he approached. She smiled at him and he felt pathetically grateful. She raised a finger, indicating for him to wait a moment, gave a tentative knock on the paneled door, and opened it ajar. “Sir, Lieutenant Colonel Cho Sang-ho is here for you.”

  There was a grunt from inside and she opened both doors onto a large, brightly lit office that smelt of wood polish. A man of about fifty was standing behind a desk, shuffling papers.

  “Come in, Comrade Cho, come in,” the First Deputy Minister said, without looking up. The red flag of the Workers’ Party stood on one side of the desk like a theater curtain, and the Father-Son portraits watched from the wall above him. In a glass cabinet to the left were the sacred revolutionary texts in pristine volumes; to the right, three tall, net-curtained windows looked down onto the sparse lights of Kim Il-sung Square.

  Cho entered slowly, conscious of his blind spots to the left and right.

  The First Deputy Minister nodded vaguely toward a side table with an old silver samovar and china cups. “Pour yourself some tea.”

  Two other men were present in the room, seated in heavy armchairs facing the desk. Neither turned to greet him but Cho recognized the tailored Mao suit of the First Party Secretary, sitting with his legs crossed. He was holding a cigarette up near his face at an angle, like a Japanese capitalist in the movies. The other man was the Minister himself, his head a wizened and turtle-like protrusion between the epaulettes on his shoulders. Instinctively Cho made a rapid appraisal. He was fairly sure he could discount the two in the armchairs, even the Minister, who was brought out only for state occasions. The real power in the room was the man behind the desk, the First Deputy Minister. He wore a simple brown tunic without insignia, and carried the absolute authority of Kim Jong-il.

  Cho poured some tea and felt the eyes of all of them on his back. An intense concentration pervaded the room. He sensed they had just been discussing him.

  “Take a seat.”

  Once Cho was seated the First Deputy Minister walked around the desk and sat on the edge directly in front of him, drumming his fingers on the wood, and giving him a hard, evaluating stare. He had the face of an apparatchik—thinning hair, thick black eyebrows, and steel-rimmed glasses that magnified his gaze, like a crafty owl.

  “Your superior, General Kang, is no longer with us,” he said with finality. Cho felt a sweat break out on his back. “We have therefore decided to entrust you with his mission to the West.”

  Cho’s mouth might have slackened dumbly in shock because the First Deputy Minister frowned. “It’s not a mission we’re assigning lightly, I can tell you that.” The voice carried an edge of cynicism. “It pertains to a matter of grave national importance. There is no room for error. The question is: are you up to the task?”

  Cho was sitting upright on the edge of the chair and balancing his tea on his knee. He would have preferred to stand. He heard himself say, “It would be my honor and duty to serve to the utmost of my abilities, sir.”

  The First Deputy Minister swatted away the formulaic remark. He exhaled thoughtfully and folded his arms. “My colleagues here think you’re too green and, at thirty-three years old, too young. You’ve never dealt with Westerners before.”

  “I speak English to a decent standard, sir.”

  “Ye-es,” he turned and glanced at the papers on the desk and Cho spotted a photo of himself upside down. It was his own file, he realized, retrieved from the Central Party Complex, where secret files on all citizens were kept. Their entire lives were in there: names of childhood friends, weaknesses for alcohol or gambling, infidelity, any remark they’d once made that could be construed as disloyal. “English will give you an edge with those jackals and bastards. I should also tell you that your family connections have been an important factor in considering your candidacy …”

  “My family?” Cho felt his heart become buttery and faint.

  The First Deputy Minister walked back to his chair, took a cigarette from a walnut box on the desk, and lit it from an enormous brass table lighter.

  “We know your brother’s slated to be chief of staff to our Dear Leader’s youngest son,” he said sucking hard on the cigarette. His dark eyes fixed on Cho. The smoke came out with the words, which he spoke carefully. “In time, though we hope that day is distant, it will be useful for us to have a trusted contact so close to the Successor …”

  A tingle spread across Cho’s scalp, as if a mystery had been spoken. He had never heard anyone speak of the succession. Such a notion was dangerous because implicit in it was an acknowledgment that the Dear Leader was mortal, whereas the Party taught that the Leader’s life was a continuous series of blessed miracles, unmatched by all his people’s mortal lifetimes put together. Even in death, he would not die.

  The silence seemed to mark Cho’s admittance to a secret circle.

  Then the First Deputy Minister said, “We’re sending you to New York to open negotiations with the Yankees.” A patch of hot pain erupted on Cho’s knee, where he splashed scolding tea. “Your objective is to screw them for as much cash and material aid as you can get.”

  “The leadership needs hard currency,” the First Party Secretary said, leaning forward to tip his ash into a thick glass ashtray. “Urgently.”

  Finally the Minister himself piped up to say how much hard currency was needed. Cho thought he’d misheard the old man. His mind was struggling to keep pace. Astronomical sums of dollars. Make-believe numbers. How on earth would he persuade the Americans to agree to such a thing?

  “Any questions?” the old Minister said.

  Cho’s mind was blank. Finally he said, “What leverage will I have?”

  The First Deputy Minister glanced at the other two and something secret passed between them. “You’ll have something to bargain with. You don’t need to know for now.”

  The men stubbed out their cigarettes. All four got to their feet. Cho stood to attention. The First Deputy Minister walked back around the desk so that three of them stood in a line facing Cho, and raised a sheet of paper ceremonially.

  “Our Dear General’s order will now be communicated …” In a high, sonorous voice, Kim Jong-il’s written command to negotiate with the Americans was formally issued to Cho. The Word was spoken, and he felt his life changing.

  They shouted, “Long live the General!”

  Then they dismissed him.

  As he was leaving the room the First Deputy Minister said, “By the way, Cho, you’re promoted to full colonel. Congratulations.”

  Cho watched the unlit streets of the capital slip past the backseat window as he headed home. He was in the grip of so many roiling emotions he could barely hold on to a single thought. He felt a mixture of oppression and elation. To be sent on a mission to the Yankees signaled an exceptional level of political trust in him. So much so that he felt a surge of hope—that he had nothing to fear from the Bowibu’s investigation into his family background.

  Poor Kang. All those painful English conversations for nothing. Did they take his daughters, too?

  The car turned into a street behind the twin towers of the Koryo Hotel. After a few yards it reached the striped barrier at the compound’s main gate. Two helmeted policewomen of the Ministry of People’s Security shone their flashlights on the license plate and into the car, and saluted smartly when they saw Cho’s face. The gate slid sideways and the car purred along a curving road lit by tiny spotlights set into the stone curbs. Late-blooming egret flowers winked in the glare of the headlights. The car stopped in Courtyard 5 and Cho said goodnight to his driver. A nightingale trilled in the branches of the gingko trees. On his Nokia the time was just after midnight.

  He leapt up the stairs with the adrenalin singing in his chest. His wife would not mind being awakened when he told her his news. He opened the door of his apartment and his blood froze. A pair of polished boots was on the floor of the vestibule. A murmur of voices was coming from the living room. With panic
rising inside him like gas through a liquid, he silently removed his shoes and crept into the darkness of the hall, straining to hear. Then he threw open the door onto the brightly lit living room. Yong-ho was standing there with his military coat hanging from his shoulders. He grinned broadly at Cho and opened his arms to embrace him.

  “I thought you’d want to know straight away, younger brother …”

  He was holding a bottle of Hennessy Black cognac and had just given a bouquet of pink azaleas to Cho’s wife, whose eyes were puffy with sleep. She was holding them to her nose, trying to look pleased. He took two glasses from the lacquered cabinet.

  “The investigating officer called me in person,” he said, uncorking the bottle and splashing shots into the glasses. “It’s better than we could possibly have imagined.”

  “What is?”

  “Our real family name is Hwang. The records show that our real grandfather was killed in September 1950 in the Battle of Busan. He was posthumously decorated for holding off the Yankees to the last bullet while his comrades escaped …” Yong-ho punched Cho’s chest and gave a loud whoop. “To the last bullet! We’re the grandsons of a martyr! That practically makes us demigods, younger brother. And it gets even better. Our real father was a highly respected general in the air force until his death ten years ago.” He pushed a glass into Cho’s hand and clinked it with his own. Cho saw that his brother was already quite drunk. “Didn’t I tell you this wouldn’t be a problem?” He downed the drink with a wince.

  After the momentary elation he’d felt on hearing this news, Cho felt his smile faltering. This didn’t make sense.

  “Elder brother … if we were born into such a family, why were we put in an orphanage?”

  Yong-ho shrugged. “Our father must have taken a mistress. Wouldn’t have been unusual. And we’re the offspring. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. Our blood’s clean. And it comes from a Class A war hero.”

  Cho stared unseeingly about the room as he absorbed this second bombshell of the night. He held a vague, imagined image of his real mother, whose face his mind’s eye could not see directly, but she was there in the periphery, in the shadows of a bamboo forest at dawn, a mythic figure. Now he pictured her tearfully delivering her baby boys to the state orphanage. What terrible choices had been forced upon her?

  Yong-ho settled into an armchair, lifting the neat creases of his trouser legs. “The investigating officer wants to wrap this up. The Party’s keen to announce my appointment. And listen to this: they’re offering us a little celebration to introduce us to the brothers and sisters we’ve never met.”

  “We have brothers and sisters?” Cho said in a daze.

  Suddenly he felt relief wash over him like warm spring water. He looked up at the Father-Son portraits on the wall and the faces gazed back at him, full of power and enigmatic calm. The relief he was feeling made him generous. “Are you hungry? We have Swiss cheese in the refrigerator, and there’s a jar of Iranian caviar.” Without a word, Cho’s wife turned and went to the kitchen.

  Yong-ho poured them both another cognac. He brought a bottle whenever he visited, and Cho wondered, not for the first time, what his brother was worth. Just one of those bottles fetched a hundred American dollars on the black market.

  “And now I have some news for you,” Cho said, suddenly eager to please his elder brother.

  “You’re off to light a fire under the American monkey’s ass,” Yong-ho said, belching as the spirit went down. “You’re a braver man than me.”

  “You know?” Cho put his glass down.

  “Heard about it this afternoon. Congratulations. But between you and me, younger brother, your General Kang had been falling out of favor for a long time. He had to go.”

  Cho was stunned. In some way he couldn’t fathom, he felt foolish, and offended on Kang’s behalf.

  Yong-ho ate the cheese and biscuits ravenously, barely thanking Cho’s wife, who made a point of saying she was going back to bed. For a rail-thin man he always had a good appetite. He brushed the crumbs from his mouth. Then, remembering something, he reached for his attaché case and took out a large padded package, sealed with thick masking tape.

  “I’m giving you this now for safekeeping. Lock it away somewhere secure until it’s time for your trip. When you arrive in New York give it to Ambassador Shin in person.”

  Cho gave him a quizzical look.

  “It’s just admin.” Yong-ho cleared his throat. “And some funds. He’s expecting it.”

  Cho took the package. It was oddly weighted, like a rice sack. Yong-ho was skillfully avoiding his eye. A worrying thought crossed Cho’s mind, but once again the secrecy of Yong-ho’s work hung between them. Cho could not pry.

  As Yong-ho took his leave and wished his brother goodnight, they embraced tightly, but beneath the affection Cho sensed, in some way he couldn’t have explained, that a gap had opened between them.

  At the door, almost as an afterthought, Yong-ho said, “That package, younger brother. It goes in the diplomatic pouch, not your luggage. Understand?”

  9

  Hôtel Beau-Rivage

  Quai de Mont-Blanc

  Geneva, Switzerland

  “Dr. Williams, hi.” The secretary of state clasped Jenna’s elbow and fixed her with a big blue stare, as if she were being friendly to a large pony. “Fisk speaks highly of your expertise. It’s great to have you on board.”

  Jenna smiled uncertainly. “I don’t think I’ve agreed—”

  “Some coffee in here,” she yelled over Jenna’s shoulder. Her voice was really quite loud. With barely any lowering of the volume she said, “Sit down, both of you.”

  She had slipped her feet into a pair of white hotel slippers, Jenna saw. Her hair was immaculate but she had not finished her makeup and was wearing a faded Wellesley College Athletics sweatshirt. The famous face was both unsettlingly familiar and utterly strange, as if Jenna had never seen her before. The images of her in the media had conveyed nothing of her personal magnetism, or her lack of height.

  The brisk-looking female aide carried in a tray with a silver coffee pot and three cups, which the secretary of state insisted on taking from her and made a fuss of serving the coffee herself. It was a trick of the very powerful, Jenna knew, to make a show of their informality. I may be a higher being, it seemed to say, but see how I am one of you.

  Fisk’s glance at Jenna betrayed a droll mischief.

  “No one has a damned idea what to do about North Korea,” the secretary of state said, handing them the cups, “and that includes the president.” She’d given them a strong black coffee without offering milk or sugar. “Sanctions, isolation, threats, rewards, cash bribes—nothing’s worked. We’re shit out of ideas. That man in Pyongyang is laughing at us. Frankly there’s nothing I’d like better than to ignore him, but last week he launched another rocket, and that I cannot ignore.” She took a sip of her coffee and flashed her eyes challengingly at Jenna.

  Jenna looked to Fisk for help. “I … didn’t know Kim’s technology had advanced so fast,” she said, hedging.

  “I know, right?” The secretary of state shook her head vaguely, marveling at what had become of the world. “A tiny, nuclear-armed communist rogue power, still fighting the goddamned Cold War, now poses a direct threat to Los Angeles.”

  “I’m no military expert, ma’am.”

  The secretary of state leaned closer toward Jenna and seemed to hesitate, as if deciding whether to take her into a confidence. Another trick of the powerful, Jenna thought: making you feel you’re the most important person in the room.

  “I need to know how we deal with a psychopath who spends all his nation’s wealth on rockets and lets his people starve. I need …” She opened her hands in a show of helplessness. “… some insight into his thinking. Some psychology. We’re not dealing with a rational mind.”

  “Not true,” Jenna said. “In a paranoid, twisted way, Kim Jong-il is highly rational. He’s a survivor, playing a poor hand with g
reat skill. His weapons keep him safe from us. Hunger keeps him safe at home. His people think only of where their next meal is coming from, not of rebellion. And he’ll kill as many of them as it takes to stay in power.”

  The secretary of state sighed. “It’s coming down to this: very soon we’ll have to tighten the screws on him even more, or give him what he wants. But what the hell does he want?”

  Jenna had forgotten the resentment she’d felt in the bar. Her mind was sparking with connections. She was thinking of Kim Jong-il. Pudgy, cerebral. Soft spoken with a mild stammer, which was why he never gave a speech in public. Paranoid and capricious. Cold, lacking in empathy. The physical awkwardness of one whose self-loathing had been transmuted into power.

  “What does he truly want … ?” She turned to the window. On the distant peaks of Chamonix, resplendent in white, mist lingered in the sun’s shadow. “In his heart … I’d say he wants the world to revere his late father Kim Il-sung as a charismatic god-king, and himself as the son messiah. I think he wants to reunify Korea and avenge a pure and innocent race that has been invaded and defiled for centuries, by China, by Japan, by America. A war of reunification would be his most sublime contribution to the Revolution. An achievement in honor of his father. A gift to his son. He knows he’ll succeed only with overwhelming power. When he agrees to talk to us it’s only to buy himself time to increase his arsenal. It’s pointless negotiating with him.”

 

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