Star of the North

by D. B. John

  Behind the governor the members of the mission followed in single file: a Wall Street Journal commentator known for her acerbic views on the president’s foreign policy; the governor’s executive aide, who kept her boss’s insulin in her handbag; two State Department East Asia policy experts, both Asian American men in their forties wearing identical Tom Ford sunglasses, and an NBC cameraman assigned to Chad Stevens. So far, only Stevens, whom she wouldn’t trust with a child’s ice cream, had been friendly.

  They were escorted through the deserted terminal building to a cursory customs check, the purpose of which was to relieve them of their cell phones and all communication devices, which would be returned upon departure.

  Through the window she looked at the gleaming US Air Force Gulfstream IV. Its cabin door had closed and its turbines were beginning to spin. Without taking her eyes off it she said, “I think we should all stick together …”

  “Good idea.” She hadn’t noticed Stevens standing next to her. “Me, I hate traveling alone.”

  “Geepish.”

  A uniformed customs officer was jabbing his finger at the laptop in Stevens’s open Samsonite case.

  “Geepish!”

  “He thinks it’s got GPS,” Jenna said.

  “Tell him it’s just a goddamn laptop and I need it for my job.”

  A cortège of cars waited outside. In the lead was a vintage black Lincoln sedan with the flags of the USA and the DPRK on the hood. The governor was led to the first car. Internal security goons she guessed were Bowibu stood about in black leather jackets. She saw Chad Stevens being ushered into the car behind her, and the others into the cars behind his.

  The next thing she knew she was alone in the back seat of a Nissan Maxima with a driver and a security agent sitting in front. The cortège set off at a funeral pace, following the Lincoln sedan.

  I’m alone in a hostile country without protection.

  Glancing behind, she could make out Chad Stevens’s large head in the car following hers. He waved. Incredibly, she was in the mood for that bourbon and Coke.

  Jenna asked the two in front if she could listen to the radio.

  The pair exchanged a glance. The security agent turned the dial. An exuberant female voice filled the car. “… announced yesterday at the Kangsong Steel Complex, where the workers themselves kindled the torch of a new revolutionary upsurge that is spreading nationwide …”

  The road was no wider than a country lane. The cortège passed a village of whitewashed huts with hip-and-gable tiled roofs, which had looked picturesque from a distance, but close-up were wretched, as if the inhabitants shared their homes with livestock. At the village entrance stood an enormous stele displaying the Kims, father and son, in a mosaic of colored stones. The same portrait had hung in the arrivals building. She’d been in the country half an hour. Already she felt there was no psychic space to escape them.

  The cortège picked up speed as it entered the city outskirts along a dead-straight, tree-lined boulevard running between endless regimented apartment towers. It looked like one of Kim Jong-il’s movie sets, or a vision of the future from the cosmonaut era. Electric trolley buses whirred past; here and there was a Mercedes-Benz with a military chauffeur, tinted windows, and a three-digit license plate.

  On both sides of the boulevard, crowds were assembling on the sidewalks outside each tower. Hundreds of citizens in drab clothing were forming into lines five or six abreast and setting off into the low morning sun, marching to work in columns behind leaders holding red flags.

  And something strange was happening to the voice on the radio. It was becoming amplified and ambient, an echo that seemed to boom beyond the car and into the chill air between the buildings. It took Jenna a moment to realize that the same voice was being broadcast from loudspeakers on lampposts at intervals of every hundred meters or so.

  “… a new high-speed battle for production, comrades! Let us all show socialist solidarity with the heroes of the Kangsong Steel Complex by working the same extra hours …”

  She dropped her head back on her seat.

  Welcome to Pyongyang.

  31

  Hyesan Train Station

  Ryanggang Province, North Korea

  Something was in the air. Mrs. Moon could not explain what. A power outage had silenced the loudspeaker, which seemed to heighten the tension everywhere. She felt it in her joints, the way rheumatic people feel a storm coming. The morning was overcast. Gauzy clouds obscured the sun, giving a sulfurous tint to the sky. The station was subdued, as if people were walking on tiptoe.

  Twenty rice cakes were arranged in her nickel bowl. Her backside was numb from sitting on the ground. She was starting over from scratch, from the very bottom, but she would manage somehow. The team of Bowibu investigators had accepted her bribe of the refrigerator and removed her name from their list, but she knew it was only a temporary reprieve. They’d be back. With luck she’d have her canteen again in a year or two, and could afford to keep paying them off. These thoughts pinged on and off in her mind, like faulty lights, agitating her. Or perhaps it was just this unnatural tension. She wished something would happen to break it.

  Kyu was sitting opposite her on a crate, flicking a plastic lighter beneath his pipe. He cocked his head, like a dog hearing a faraway bark.

  “You feel it, too?” he said.

  32

  Ministry of Foreign Affairs

  Kim Il-sung Square

  Pyongyang, North Korea

  Cho sat in an armchair in the First Deputy Minister’s office, buttoned up in a new uniform with the medal on his chest. He felt like a phony actor in a war movie, with the Ministry’s senior staff grouped behind him as extras, all in their best, with shoes polished and decorations glinting.

  The First Deputy Minister was pacing, tea in hand.

  “Our main opportunity will come during tonight’s banquet, after several toasts of soju.” A complicit laughter spread about the room. “That’s when we feed our Yankees a side dish of threat, a main course of disinformation, and a dessert of sweet promise. Let’s send the old man home thinking he’s got peace in his pocket …”

  Their task, as far as Cho could tell, was not to defuse tension at all but to keep it nicely managed. Not that any of this mattered to him now. The Yankees were in the country for twenty-two hours. He doubted the Bowibu would wait that long. He suspected they’d arrest him as he left the banquet later this evening, his role over.

  The First Deputy Minister paused to sip his tea and stare owlishly through the tall windows into Kim Il-sung Square.

  “We must envelop our enemy in a fog to prevent him from guessing our plans …”

  Fog, lies.

  Like a compass finding north, Cho’s mind returned to his family.

  He had told his wife everything, and he was still smarting from the pain. They lived the privileged life of the elite. She had never known disgrace. She had never known Cho as anything other than a dutiful husband and as a doting father to his son. Now, he had to live with her knowing the truth: that his ancestry was stained. That his blood carried a crime so grave that he would be removed from society altogether, though he had no idea what that crime was. Her reaction morphed through disbelief to shock to endless crying in the bedroom. Was he sure? She kept asking him, and although he had no evidence to give her he was absolutely sure. He said over and over how sorry he was, but he had no words to comfort her. He was the problem. The next day, he sensed her shrinking from him, already severing the tie that bound them. The day after that, she turned cold toward him. Feelings of betrayal and regret were showing in her face. She was regarding him anew, as someone else entirely. He couldn’t bear to look at her. The stigma had been passed on in the son she had borne! Cho asked her to take Books to her parents’ dacha in Wonsan on the east coast while he filed for divorce. And as the acute danger to Books began to dawn upon her, she became desperate to dissolve the marriage, urging Cho angrily, saying her family would pay whatever bribe
it took to hasten it. She and Cho were clinging to this hope: that divorce, and her family’s connections, would save their son.

  Cho had arranged their travel permits himself. That had been the worst moment: seeing Books for the last time, saying good-bye to him on the platform of Pyongyang Station as if Appa would be joining them in a few days’ time for a winter vacation. Books had asked him to remember to bring his puzzle book, and Cho had to turn away to hide his emotions.

  His own life was over, and he was surprised by how lightly he wore it. He examined this feeling, this lightness in the face of death, wanting to know its source. Perhaps somehow, in his heart, he’d always known it could come to this. Its happening was a relief, and gave him unexpected courage. And with this courage a black smoke rose inside him, a desire to commit an act of vengeance.

  He had brooded over this for several days, but when an unexpected opportunity arose, he did not hesitate.

  He owed it to truth, to the future. He owed it to Marianne Lee.

  Yesterday morning Cho’s colleagues had been called to an unscheduled meeting on the top floor. He was not invited. As soon as they’d gone he put his head out of his office door and glanced up and down the corridor. None of the Bowibu agents who had been keeping a watch on him, dressed as cleaners, clerks, and maintenance men, were anywhere to be seen. He had a minute, perhaps. Two at most. The office next door belonged to a colleague named Captain Hyong. Cho slipped inside and closed the door.

  With his heart thrumming in his ribs, he tried to steady his breathing.

  Section 915, Yong-ho had said. The Seed-Bearing Program.

  He picked up Hyong’s desk phone to the Ministry’s main switchboard and felt his mouth go dry. “Put me through to Section 915 of the Organization and Guidance Department.”

  The phone was answered immediately with the speaker giving name and rank.

  “Lieutenant, this is Captain Hyong of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Cho said, trying to sound relaxed and superior. “We require the data you hold on a woman named Lee Soo-min, a Korean American brought here in 1998.”

  A grudging pause filled the line. “We don’t share information about a classified program with another ministry unless—”

  “This could give us a crucial advantage in our talks with the Yankees tomorrow. Do I really need to refer this up to the Leader in person?”

  Another pause on the other end. “One moment.”

  Cho heard a muttered discussion in the background.

  The lieutenant was back on the line. “A Korean American, you say?”

  “You heard me. Mixed race. African American and Korean.”

  Cho heard something being tapped into a computer keyboard.

  Hurry.

  Holding the phone he glanced again into the corridor and saw two of his Bowibu tails conferring at the far end. Evidently they had just realized he was not in the meeting with the others. One of them turned and began to approach.

  Please, come on.

  It was at that moment that a document at the top of Captain Hyong’s in-tray caught his eye. It listed the names of the American peace mission delegates, with a few intel details about each. His eye went straight to Marianne Lee. He saw the words … is almost certainly the former academic at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, named Dr. Jenna Williams …

  The lieutenant was back on the line. “I’ve found a Williams Soo-min, the only name that matches that racial profile … Name was changed to Ree Mae-ok. Entered the country by naval submarine at the Mayangdo Naval Base on June 23rd 1998, along with one South Korean male aged nineteen …”

  Cho’s head was spinning. So it’s true … “Quickly, please, where is she held?”

  “The Paekhwawon Compound, just north of the city. That’s a strict invitation-only zone …”

  Cho was about to hang up when the lieutenant said, “Should we send over the file?”

  Cho left Captain Hyong’s office casually, in full view of his Bowibu tail, dangling Hyong’s desk stapler from his hand as if he’d just popped in to borrow it.

  That evening at home he sat in the dark in his study for a long time, picturing the eighteen-year-old Soo-min, disorientated, terrified as she arrived in his country, staring about at her new surroundings, thinking herself in a waking nightmare. How would he give this information to Marianne Lee, real name Dr. Jenna Williams? Jenna. It was a question of timing, opportunity … And was that all he was going to do? Tell her what he’d learned? He felt himself breaking out in a sweat. Cho Sang-ho, you are no coward. Surely you can—

  “Any questions?”

  Cho was jolted back into the room.

  The First Deputy Minister was scanning the faces of his staff through his thick glasses. His eyes settled on Cho.

  “Cho, after the talks you will wait for the Yankees at the Yanggakdo Hotel and escort them to the banquet. And remember,” he said, addressing the room at large, “if a Yankee asks you about the heightened security presence in the city, you are to reply that it is a ‘routine annual drill.’”

  What heightened security?

  Cho returned to his desk to get his speech. This would be his most shameful part of all: he was to be a ventriloquist’s dummy for words written by the Party. He turned into the corridor and passed one of his Bowibu shadows pretending to polish a glass door. For some reason a number of staff were hurrying in the opposite direction. Suddenly his shoulder collided with one of the junior diplomats and the man’s papers scattered over the floor.

  “Comrade, slow down,” Cho said.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Everyone was on edge. Were they so jumpy about the Yankees’ visit? He’d noticed it in the meeting. The way the First Deputy Minister kept peering nervously through the windows into the square.

  He sat at his desk and began reading the speech one last time, but was interrupted by shouting in the corridor. An officer of the Pyongyang Police Garrison was approaching, followed by two orderlies holding boxes.

  “All laptops, cell phones, and flash drives!”

  Colleagues were dropping their phones into the boxes.

  They stopped at Cho’s door. “All laptops, cell phones, and flash drives!”

  Cho tossed his phone in. “What’s going on?”

  “All communications devices to be registered with the Bowibu. Part of the heightened security measures,” the officer said, attaching a sticky label with Cho’s name to the phone. “They’ll be returned tomorrow.”

  Puzzled, he went to the floor’s reception area near the stairs, where there was a newspaper rack displaying all the dailies and weeklies. He scanned the pages of the Rodong Sinmun. It mentioned nothing about heightened security. The only thing that caught his eye was a curiously neutral notice on the first page about “necessary economic measures” that would be announced at midday.

  He listened. The building had fallen eerily still. The desk phones were silent. Cho turned to walk back to his office and stopped. Standing at the far end of the corridor was the figure of a man watching him. He had silver hair and was dressed in a plain black tunic. Cho recognized him at once, the man he’d seen among the deputies in the Supreme People’s Assembly. Instinctively Cho walked toward him, but the man turned and disappeared to the left. Cho thought of going after him, but at that moment he was distracted by another commotion.

  The city’s sirens began to wail, dipping and rising in one district, then another. His colleagues’ faces were showing fear and alarm. All eyes were turned to the windows. Cho had remained calm until now, but that figure in black had unnerved him. He began to feel a formless, shapeless unease. Then a noise outside caused everyone to move en masse to the windows. Across the vast space of Kim Il-sung Square armed troops and police were running. Then they suddenly divided and scattered outward, like two flocks of swallows, clearing a path, and from the left a long, dark-green gun barrel slowly protruded, followed by the clinking and whirring of caterpillar tracks. Cho watched stupefied as a T-62 tank maneuvered into posi
tion in the center of the square.

  He picked up the handset of a telephone on the nearest desk. Dead.

  Behind him came a sound of hurrying footsteps. He turned to see the First Deputy Minister passing in the corridor, with other diplomats of the negotiation team following behind him. He signaled impatiently to Cho.

  “The Yankees are here.”

  33

  Ministry of Foreign Affairs

  Kim Il-sung Square

  Pyongyang, North Korea

  Jet-lagged and disorientated, the members of the American peace mission were led in single file past state news cameras, which were waiting for them outside a large colonnaded edifice near the Taedong River. It looked like a side door, rather than the main entrance on Kim Il-sung Square. A calculated snub, Jenna thought.

  Stevens was alongside her. “Feels like a perp walk, doesn’t it?”

  She could smell the booze.

  They were led through two long halls and into a spacious carpeted stateroom, and were invited to sit along one side of a long mahogany table. On the wall to the left was a vast painted sea scene of blue-green ocean waves crashing, spraying against rocks. Jenna craned her head to take it in. The painting took up an entire wall. She decided it symbolized the regime’s steadfastness in tempestuous times.

  Neither the governor nor anyone in the party had any idea what to expect. The North Koreans were maintaining total control over the visit. The Wall Street Journal reporter took out her compact and made a face as she inspected her lipstick. Chad Stevens’s cameraman was excavating something from his nostril with the tip of a ballpoint. The silence was broken by the governor’s fingers drumming the table, and the distant wail of sirens.

  Without warning the double doors at the far end of the hall flew open. A large delegation marched in, keeping step as they approached. The governor stood up and shuffled around the table to shake hands, but they marched straight to their seats, lined up, and sat down all at once, with the other members standing behind them. The governor, looking foolish, let his hand drop, and resumed his seat, followed by all the eyes in the room. Seated directly opposite him was Colonel Cho, in a white military tunic and a khaki cap. He’d been given a medal in the shape of star. Jenna tried to catch his eye, but his gaze remained fixed on a middle distance. His high cheekbones were sharper, and there were dark pouches beneath his eyes.