by D. B. John
Something in Ryu Kyong’s kindness had encouraged Cho. He felt drawn to the man, not only because he was puzzled by the contrast between his civilized demeanor and his role here, as a jailor for enemies of the state, but because in that cragged, humane face he imagined he’d seen a profound understanding, a knowledge of him. It was the face of an uncle he could confide in.
As the pages filled, Cho became possessed by an all-consuming thought: that every word he wrote was the truth. He had devoted his life to the Great Leader and the Dear Leader. He had been hardworking and motivated by their teachings. He had shone with that most prized of all virtues: loyalty. He had even acquired that revolutionary virtue that was never mentioned but which was just as important: self-deception. What had he to confess? His career was spotless, his life blameless. He would surely be exonerated, and so would Yong-ho. Somehow, Ryu Kyong would see this. Cho could not be held guilty for the crime of some unknown ancestor, any more than he could help the shape of his ears.
He paused for a minute. What was this crime that had ruined his life, decades after the act? He had no idea, but as it had almost certainly been committed before he was born, he tried to think whether there were any clues in his earliest memories.
He remembered the aura of love surrounding the nurse who had cared for him at the orphanage in Nampo, a large villa that had been a rich ship-owner’s home before the Revolution. He remembered singing “We Are Happy” from the heart. The first words he had learned to write were “Thank you, Great Leader Kim Il-sung, for my food.” He had bowed to the great man’s portrait almost before he could walk. He had grown up in the sunlight of that smile. And as deep as his love was for the Leader, so too was his hatred for his country’s mortal enemy: America. The teachers had seen to that.
He recalled, so vividly as he wrote, the day his life changed forever, when the children had crowded to the windows to see a gleaming black Volga bringing a man and woman from Pyongyang. He was four years old. He and Yong-ho were called out of their class and invited to recite a poem for the visitors in the director’s office. The couple had laughed delightedly and treated them with great affection, giving them candies and juice from a hard-currency store, and the director crouched down to the boys’ height and told them they were blessed with great good fortune: “This man and lady are your parents. They have come to take you home.” Cho remembered his confusion and happiness. From that day on, his life had been charmed. His new home was a large house in the Mansu Hill neighborhood of Pyongyang, where he and Yong-ho had their own bedrooms. Their father, a professor of languages at Kim Il-sung University, and their mother, a political instructor for the air force, had obeyed the Great Leader’s call to adopt orphans. But they were also generous and caring, having no children of their own, and treated Cho and Yong-ho as their sons. Gradually his memories of the orphanage became hazy, and he even forgot he’d ever been there, remembering this fact only at odd moments in adolescence as his curiosity about the world sharpened. When once he’d asked his mother about his origins, she became someone he didn’t know. “The past is the past,” she’d said, in a tone she had not used with him before. “Never ask that question again.”
At age eleven his head was shaved and he was enrolled in the elite Mangyongdae Revolutionary School. He excelled at soccer, Mandarin, and English, encouraged by his father; Yong-ho at basketball, physics, and mathematics. At university Cho studied hard—to study well was an act of devotion to the Leader—and relished his military service, which appealed to his sense of hierarchy and discipline. The proudest day of his life was being accepted into the junior diplomatic corps, where he quickly made his mark as a negotiator—his mix of tact and tough talk winning valuable trade concessions for his country and easing a succession of swift promotions.
Cho wrote exhaustively, unaware of time passing.
His dinner went cold on the tray. He had not even noticed the guard bringing it. Through his window the sun had begun to set, filling the room with a citrus-red light, and the security lamps in the yard blinked on.
He described meeting his wife-to-be at a mass dance in the May Day Stadium. She had given him the flower from her hair, which had scandalized her friends. Her family had a strong revolutionary background, and her beauty had entranced him. To make a good political match was fortunate; to fall in love too was an exceptional blessing. Not until the arrival of their son, after two years of trying, did their feelings for each other change. It was as if all their love had transferred to the newborn. His wife attended to Books’s ideological education, and something in the task had hardened her, made her cold.
Cho’s wrist was aching. He paused and stretched for a while. In the yard a lone guard paraded with a rifle, back and forth, never varying his pace, and when Cho’s writing resumed he seemed to find the rhythm of the guard’s footsteps. He was nearing the end of his testimony, concluding it with his triumph in New York. How could he have succeeded in that mission if not by drawing on his lifelong hatred for the Americans? On the boundless reserves of love he had for his country?
He dared not write more. He could not commit to words the profound disillusionment that had begun in New York, the feelings for Jenna that he would not even admit to himself, the secrets he had betrayed to her, and yet … he did not rule out talking about them to Ryu Kyong.
When a guard came with his breakfast on the second morning, Cho told him that he had finished. Soon afterward Ryu Kyong appeared.
“You have rested, I hope,” he said.
“Yes.” Cho stood up straight, a novice in the presence of a wise abbot.
“Good. We have many hours of work ahead of us, you and I.”
He again looked into Cho’s face, and an intimacy passed between them. You are in good care, those eyes seemed to say.
Cho handed him the written pages with a deep bow.
A day went by, then another, and Cho began to lose track of time. He slept a lot, dreaming of his wife and Books, picnicking with them in sunlight beneath the trees of Moran Hill Park. He ate three good meals a day and felt himself putting on weight. He was taken for a half hour’s daily exercise in the yard, and looked with curiosity at the two other inmates exercising, until a guard barked at him to keep his eyes lowered.
After three, maybe four days, Cho was shaken awake by a guard. He sensed, from the stillness of the place, that it was after midnight. He was led down one flight of stairs, then another, to a long corridor in a concrete basement, with steel doors leading off to each side. At the end of the corridor he was shown into a room so dark he could not gauge its dimensions. Two pools of light revealed a wooden chair, which he was told to sit on, and a table with a lamp. Damp concrete walls and rusted iron gave off a chill that made Cho shiver. Still groggy from sleep, it took him a moment to realize that Ryu Kyong was sitting at the table, reading, and Cho recognized his own handwriting. For what seemed like an age the two of them sat in silence, as Ryu Kyong turned the pages in the small circle of light, occasionally nodding. When he reached the end, he threaded his fingers together on the table and sat upright, so that the shadows fell down his face. His voice resonated in the cavernous dark.
“Cho, to get to the heart of this matter I need your help. I can’t do it without you. Are you willing to work with me?”
“Of course,” Cho said. A faintly ominous feeling crept over him.
“For the past few weeks I’ve watched you. I’ve wanted to get to know you.” He folded his arms and leaned back, so that his face was in complete darkness. “This is a very grave case. A twenty-man Special Mission Group was set up to investigate your real family, handpicked by the Leader himself, of which I was one. That’s how seriously we’ve taken this, Cho, but it was worth it. You were worth it. It took some digging, but we uncovered the truth in the end.”
“The truth?” Cho’s voice had no substance to it.
“You see, nothing you’ve scribbled here explains how you and your brother, both of you grandsons of an executed American spy �
�”
What?
“… came to worm and lie your way into such trusted positions.”
Ryu Kyong got up and sat on the desk facing Cho.
Cho was too astounded to speak. His mind scrambled to recall what Yong-ho had been told about their real family. When he found his voice he managed to say, “I … never knew my real father or grandfather.”
Ryu Kyong smiled with regret and looked down, almost as if he felt embarrassed on Cho’s behalf. “Your birth records showed that you were born into a heroic bloodline, grandsons of a decorated veteran. You might have got away with that, too, if we hadn’t contacted the veteran’s family to arrange a little get-together for you. His grandchildren denied all knowledge of you. That’s when we started investigating in earnest, and sure enough, your birth record had been forged.”
Cho had a sinking feeling. The hope he’d invested in his confession was collapsing, built on sand.
“We found the civil registry officer who’d forged the record, and we twisted the story out of him quickly enough. He had been bribed handsomely, it seemed, by your biological mother, to make it appear that she gave birth to you and your brother illegitimately and that the father was of a Class A bloodline. Now, why did she do that?
“The Bowibu, in fact, had a file on your mother. Thirty years ago she was caught trying to change your father’s record—your real father’s record—to say that he had died in a workplace accident. For that, she was sentenced to an indefinite term of penal labor. A courageous woman, your mother. Twice she took a big risk to protect your future, give you a clean start in life. But what was she covering up?
“Her file led us to your father’s. Your biological father …” Ryu Kyong leaned over to retrieve a file from a briefcase next to the desk, and put on a pair of reading glasses. “… was Ahn Chun-hyok. Caught attempting to flee the country by motorboat in October 1977. Sentenced at a people’s trial. Executed at his workplace, the Chollima Shipyard in Nampo, in front of the workforce, in November 1977—a month before you were born. Your mother omitted to mention that to the orphanage when she abandoned you and your brother.”
Cho’s mind was in uproar. He put his hands to his head.
Ryu Kyong spoke softly. “Did we agree you could move?”
Surprised, Cho stilled himself.
“Oh, but Cho, it gets better … Your father’s file led us to the identity of your grandfather, Ahn Yun-chol.” He folded his arms and began to pace around the table. “He was a colorful piece of riffraff, by all accounts. Some sort of itinerant healer and shaman, a petty capitalist hawking his mystical services along the thirty-eighth parallel during the war. The American army recruited him to carry messages to their advance units near Pyongyang, probably in return for money. After our victory over the Yankees his treachery was exposed. He was executed as a spy in 1954.
“Grandfather and father both executed traitors. That’s an impressive lineage, Cho. It’s one of the worst cases ever passed to me. I can tell you that the Leader was personally very upset. He has ordered your department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to undergo a three-week revolutionary struggle to cleanse itself of your infectious influence. Your former colleagues have been demoted.” He waved his hand as if that were hardly worth mentioning. “The question that interests us is how you and your brother got away with it for so long.”
Ryu Kyong rested his hands on top of the chair. He was watching Cho intently now, watching his inner turmoil play out on his face, giving him time to come clean. But all Cho could say was, “I am innocent. I’ve never heard of these men until now.”
The interrogator shook his head vaguely, as if Cho were a kid caught stealing but pathetically trying to deny it.
“We’ve established your treasonous bloodline, beyond any doubt. What we must know now … is how your grandfather’s espionage mission was passed on to you, and what his instructions were.”
Cho stared at Ryu Kyong. “You can’t possibly be serious—”
“How did your American spy grandfather pass on his mission to your father and to you? Was it a written instruction?”
Despair and disbelief were overcoming Cho like a virus. “This is nonsense!”
Ryu Kyong gave a small smile and sighed. Then he flicked a glance into the darkness behind Cho, and Cho became aware for the first time of another presence in the room. A chair scraped back. Leather creaked. His arms were grabbed and his hands handcuffed tightly behind the back of the chair. His stomach turned to ice.
The interrogator turned on a switch. A set of dim spotlights illuminated a stained concrete wall on which rusted manacles and hooks hung from an iron rail.
He resumed his seat with his hands knitted in front of him on the table. In the tone of someone of infinite patience, he said, “How did your American spy grandfather pass on his mission to you? What were his instructions?”
Cho felt caught in a dimension that made no sense. Truth, logic, reason had been turned upside down and inside out. Could they honestly believe he’d been acting on the orders of an unknown grandfather and a father who’d both died before he was even born?
“No one gave me instructions. I have nothing to say. I never knew my biological fam—”
The blow struck his right ear. His vision went blank, and a high, tinny noise rang through his head. He doubled over, trying to jam his head between his knees. He had never felt such a searing, explosive white pain. He whined through his teeth, on the verge of blacking out. His brain was paralyzed. When he looked up, breathing heavily, his eyes were streaming.
Ryu Kyong was not at the table. A match flared, briefly illuminating a dark corner of the room as the interrogator lit a cigarette.
“If you’re hoping to convince me that you’re not an American spy, save your breath.” His posture was relaxed. There was nothing aggressive about him, and yet he had become a master with a dog on a leash, exercising absolute and lethal control. The blow to Cho’s ear had made his words sound like the buzzing of small insects.
Ryu Kyong picked up the pages of Cho’s testimony from the table with the tips of his fingers and set fire to them with a lighter, tossing them into a metal trash can, where the flames momentarily revealed a large chamber with riveted sliding partitions.
“Last month, during your visit to New York, one of our diplomats, First Secretary Ma, was arrested by the Yankees while conducting important Party business. Was it you who betrayed him?”
“No!” Cho’s eyes widened. Ryu Kyong affected not to notice his shock.
“Four nights ago, just before the state banquet for the Yankee jackals, you spent forty minutes alone in the company of one of the female Yankee visitors. You’re sure there’s nothing you showed her, or told her?”
Cho felt his face burning. There was nothing he could say.
“So, then. Let us safely assume you are an American spy, and a traitor. But that still leaves the matter of your confession.”
A feeling of helplessness came over him, a profound weariness. He was trapped in a nightmare in which he was starting to lose all sense of reality, but the process had a crazy transcendent logic on its side.
Ryu Kyong stubbed out his cigarette and looked at Cho as he would a son who after years of wayward behavior was receiving the tough love he’d always needed. “Some water?”
Cho nodded.
He signaled for the handcuffs to be removed and a tin cup of water was put into Cho’s trembling hand. He drank it straight down and the cup was taken from him.
“We’ll speak again,” Ryu Kyong said. “Think carefully about your confession.” He left the room, and Cho heard others, maybe as many as five pairs of boots, entering the room and gathering behind him, staying out of his line of vision. He was too afraid to look around.
The hood was thrown over his head so suddenly he couldn’t even cry out. He was slammed right off the chair and the kicks came from all directions. In his stomach, legs, ribs, head. He was winded and couldn’t breathe inside the rough hood.
Rolling about on the floor, uselessly trying to protect his body, dodge blows he couldn’t see, the kicks rained down with monstrous savagery, in his spine, his testicles, his hipbone, his ankles. He cried out for them to stop, anything if they’d stop. A thudding, dull kick to his temple made him see orange diamonds, and he lost consciousness.
When he came to, he was on the concrete floor of a tiny cell, lit by a humming electric light behind a wire mesh. Only about five feet long and two feet wide, it was impossible either to stand up or lie down. At his feet was a bowl of thin, salty soup, with a few corn kernels floating on the surface, which had long gone cold. He had no idea how long he’d been out, or what time of day or night it was. Almost at once his body began shivering uncontrollably in the subzero temperature, but he could barely move an arm to wrap around himself. His body was a blooming flowerbed of agony, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.
The spyhole in the door moved and an eye appeared. He heard a guard speak to another; the door opened and two of them reached in to grab him by his ankles and drag him out, and he realized then that his ordeal so far had been nothing but a routine softening up, a prelude.
His real nightmare was now starting.
42
O Street
Georgetown
Washington, DC
Christmas Eve
Jenna put the gifts in the car and called her mother to say she was on her way. Christmas was a difficult time of year for both of them, a bleak reminder that they were half a family, and it only compounded the ill humor Jenna was already in.
Fisk had been waiting for her at Andrews Air Force Base when the mission had arrived back from Pyongyang the week before. It was after midnight and she’d been grateful for the ride. But when they’d got into his car and she’d said, “I saw my sister,” he was so surprised that instead of driving her straight home they’d sat in the empty parking lot while she described the drama with Cho, the mixed-race children she’d seen at the villa, and the dossier Cho had given her. “We have a homeland security threat.”