The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  Comrade Buc approached. “Afraid of flying?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jun Do said.

  The engines began to ramp, and the plane wandered toward the far end of the runway.

  “I’m in charge of procurement,” Comrade Buc said. “This plane’s taken me all over the world—to Minsk for fresh caviar, to France for brandy straight from the caves. So don’t worry about it going down.”

  “What am I doing here?” Jun Do asked.

  “Come,” Comrade Buc said. “Dr. Song wants you to meet the Minister.”

  Jun Do nodded and they approached the front of the plane, where Dr. Song was speaking to the Minister. “Refer to him only as Minister,” Comrade Buc whispered. “And never speak to him directly, only through Dr. Song.”

  “Minister,” Dr. Song said. “Here is Pak Jun Do, a bona fide hero of the Democratic People’s Republic, no?”

  The Minister shook his head dismissively. His face was stippled with gray whiskers and hanging clumps of brow obscured his eyes.

  “Certainly, Minister,” Dr. Song continued. “You can tell the boy is strong and handsome, yes?”

  The Minister conceded this with a nod.

  Dr. Song said, “We will all spend more time together soon, perhaps?”

  The Minister shrugged and gave a look that said maybe, maybe not.

  That was the extent of their discussion.

  Walking away, Jun Do asked, “What’s he a minister of?”

  “Petroleum and tire pressure,” Dr. Song said, and laughed. “He’s my driver. But don’t worry, that man’s seen just about all there is to see in this world. He’s strong. His only job is to say nothing on this trip, and to enact the yes, no, and perhaps at the end of my questions. You caught that, yes, the way I guided his response? This will keep the Americans occupied while we work our magic.”

  “Americans?” Jun Do asked.

  “Didn’t those drivers tell you anything?” Dr. Song asked.

  The plane pivoted at the end of the runway and began to accelerate. Jun Do braced himself in the aisle.

  Comrade Buc said, “I do not think our hero has flown before.”

  “Is this true, have you not flown?” Dr. Song asked. “We must get you a seat, then, we’re about to take wing.”

  With mandarin formality, Dr. Song ushered them into seats. “Here is the safety belt,” he said to Jun Do. “A hero may wear one or not, as he wishes. I am old and have no need for safety, but Comrade Buc, you must apply the belt. You are young, you have a wife and children.”

  “Only because of your great concern,” Comrade Buc said, and fastened the belt.

  The Ilyushin rose into the western wind, then banked north so that the coast was to starboard. Jun Do could see the shadow of the plane shuddering on the water and, beyond, the blue expanse of the sea. He did not see the water upon which he fished the seasons with the Captain of the Junma, but instead the currents that took him on missions to Japan, every one of them a struggle. The worst part was always the long trip back, listening to the abductees down in the hold, yelling, banging around as they struggled to get free of their ropes. He looked around the cabin, imagined a kidnap victim strapped into one of these seats. He imagined dragging away an American, then spending sixteen hours with him inside this plane.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong man for your job,” Jun Do volunteered. “My file perhaps suggests I’m an expert kidnapper, and it’s true, I led a lot of missions, and only a couple of the targets died on my watch. But I’m not that man anymore. These hands, they tune radio dials now. They no longer know how to do what you want them to do.”

  “So forthright and earnest,” Dr. Song said. “Don’t you think, Comrade Buc?”

  Comrade Buc said, “You chose well, Dr. Song. The Americans will swoon for such sincerity.”

  Dr. Song turned to Jun Do. “Young man,” he said. “On this mission, it is your words, not your fists, that you will employ.”

  Comrade Buc said, “Dr. Song is headed to Texas to lay some groundwork for future talks.”

  “These are the talks before the talks,” Dr. Song said. “Nothing formal, no delegation, no pictures, no security men—we are merely opening a channel.”

  “Talks about what?” Jun Do asked.

  “The subject doesn’t matter,” Dr. Song said. “Only the posture. The Yankees want a few things from us. We want things as well—high among them is that they halt the boarding of our fishing vessels. You know we use fishing boats for many important tasks. When the moment is right, you will tell the story of your friend being thrown to the sharks by the U.S. Navy. The Americans are very civil. A story like that will have an impact on them, especially the wives.”

  The stewardess brought Dr. Song a glass of juice and ignored Jun Do and Comrade Buc. “She is a beauty, yes?” Dr. Song asked. “They comb the entire nation to find them. Young men, all you care about is pleasure, I know, I know. You can’t lie to me. I bet you’re salivating to meet a CIA agent. Well, I can assure you they don’t all look like the beautiful seductresses in the movies.”

  “I’ve never seen a movie,” Jun Do said.

  “You’ve never seen a movie?” Dr. Song asked.

  “Not a whole one,” Jun Do said.

  “Oh, you’ll have those American ladies eating out of your hand. Wait till they see that wound, Jun Do. Wait till they hear your story!”

  “But my story,” Jun Do said. “It’s so improbable. I hardly believe it myself.”

  To Comrade Buc, Dr. Song said, “Please, my friend. Will you bring us the tiger?”

  When Buc was gone, Dr. Song turned to Jun Do. “Where we are from,” he said, “stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.” Here, Dr. Song took a sip of juice, and the finger he lifted trembled slightly. “But in America, people’s stories change all the time. In America, it is the man who matters. Perhaps they will believe your story and perhaps not, but you, Jun Do, they will believe you.”

  Dr. Song called the stewardess over. “This man is a hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and he must have juice.” After she raced to get it, he said, “See?” Shaking his head, he said, “But you try explaining all this to the central bunker.” Here Dr. Song pointed downward, and Jun Do knew he was indicating the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il himself.

  Comrade Buc returned with an ice chest. This he handed to Jun Do. “The tiger,” he said.

  Inside was a slab of meat wrapped in a dirty plastic bag. Sprigs of grass clung to the meat, which was warm to the touch.

  Jun Do said, “Perhaps some ice would be called for.”

  Dr. Song smiled. “Oh,” he said. “The Americans, I can see their faces now.”

  “Tiger! Imagine their response.” Comrade Buc was laughing. “I would love to,” he said in English, “but I had tiger for lunch.”

  “Looks delicious,” Dr. Song said. “Too bad I’m on a leopard-only diet.”

  Comrade Buc said, “Wait till the Minister gets in on the act.”

  “The Minister would like to cook it personally, yes?” Dr. Song said. “The Minister insists all the Americans must partake, yes?”

  Jun Do looked at the cooler, which bore a red cross. He’d seen a cooler like it before—it was the kind they used to get the blood to Pyongyang.

  “Two things about the Americans,” Dr. Song said. “First, their minds are fast, and they puzzle over everything. You must give them a riddle to redirect those minds. So we offer them the Minister. Second, they must have moral superiority. They don’t know how to negotiate without it. Always their talks open with human rights, personal freedoms, and so on. But the tiger changes all that. Their horror at the notion that we would casually eat an endangered species will immediately put them on high ground. Then we can g
et down to business.”

  In English, Comrade Buc said, “Here, Senator, let me pass you the platter.”

  “Yes, Senator,” Dr. Song said. “You must have seconds.”

  They laughed until they saw Jun Do’s face. “You do understand,” Dr. Song said, “that in this cooler is only cow flank. The tiger part is only a story. That’s what we’re really serving them, a story.”

  “But what if they eat it?” Jun Do asked. “If they believe it is tiger, yet out of a wish not to offend, they eat it and feel morally degraded, won’t they take it out on you in the talks?”

  Comrade Buc turned in anticipation of Dr. Song’s response.

  “If the Americans use their senses and keep their heads level,” Dr. Song said, “then no tiger story will fool them. They will taste that this is cow. But if the Americans are just toying with us, if they don’t plan on seeking the facts and negotiating seriously, then they will taste tiger.”

  “You think if they believe the tiger story,” Jun Do said, “then they’ll believe my story.”

  Dr. Song shrugged. “Yours will certainly be the tougher meat to chew,” he said.

  One of the young men on Comrade Buc’s procurement team came forward with three identical watches. Comrade Buc took them. “One for the Minister,” he said, and handed the others to Dr. Song and Jun Do. “They’re set to Texas time. Everybody gets the same one. It sends a message to the Americans about Korean equality and solidarity.”

  “What about you?” Jun Do asked. “Where’s your watch?”

  Comrade Buc said, “Oh, I’ve got no business in Texas.”

  “Sadly, Comrade Buc won’t be joining us,” Dr. Song said. “He has another mission.”

  Comrade Buc stood. “Yes, I should go prepare my team.”

  The stewardess passed by with hot towels and handed one to Dr. Song.

  “What do I have to do?” Comrade Buc said after she’d left.

  “She cannot help it,” Dr. Song said. “Women naturally respond to the allure of an older gentleman. It is a fact that only an older man can truly please a woman.”

  Comrade Buc laughed. “I thought you always said only a small-statured man can please a woman.”

  Dr. Song defended himself. “I’m hardly small-statured. I have the exact dimensions of the Dear Leader, even my shoe size.”

  “It’s true,” Comrade Buc said. “I procure for the Dear Leader. They are two of a kind.”

  Jun Do took a window seat as they flew north over Sakhalin, Kamchatka, and the Sea of Okhotsk, where the Captain had been imprisoned, somewhere down there in the blue. They outran the sunset by flying north, into perpetual summer light. They stopped at the Russian Air Force base in Anadyr to refuel, and all the old pilots came out to marvel at the sight of an Ilyushin Il-62, which they concluded was forty-seven years old. They ran their hands along the belly of the plane and talked about all the problems that were corrected in later versions, and everyone had a hair-raising story about flying them before the remnants of the fleet were shipped to Africa in the late ’80s. The tower operator came forward, a large man, and Jun Do could see the places he’d once had frostbite. The tower operator said even the Ilyushin’s replacements—the early Antonovs and Tupolevs—were rare these days. “I heard the last Ilyushin Il-62 went down in Angola in the year 1999,” he added.

  Dr. Song broke into Russian. “It is lamentable,” he said, “that the once great nation that created this fine aircraft is no longer able to do so.”

  Comrade Buc added, “Please know that news of your country’s complete collapse was met with sadness in our nation.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Song said. “Your nation and ours were once the world’s twin beacons of communism. Sadly, we now bear that burden alone.”

  Comrade Buc opened a suitcase of new U.S. hundred-dollar bills to pay for the fuel, but the tower operator shook his head no.

  “Euros,” he said.

  Indignant, Dr. Song said, “I am personal friends with the mayor of Vladivostok.”

  “Euros,” said the tower operator.

  Comrade Buc had another suitcase, it turned out, this one filled with European money.

  As they were departing, Dr. Song told the pilots to make a statement. They rolled the engines hard during takeoff, rattling the airframe in a tremendous display of ascent.

  The Aleutians, the international date line, and nine thousand meters up, the crisp outlines of container vessels against a stippled, green-white sea. The Captain had told Jun Do that off the east coast of Japan the ocean was nine thousand meters deep, and now he understood what that meant. Witnessing the vastness of the Pacific—how impossibly monumental that you could row across it!—he understood how rare his radio contacts had been.

  Where was the arm of the captain of the Kwan Li? Jun Do suddenly wondered. In whose hands were his old dictionaries right now, and what person shaved this morning with the Captain’s brush? In what tunnel was his team now running, and what had become of the old woman they’d kidnapped, the one who said she would go willingly if she could take his picture? What could the look on his face have been, and what story did the Niigata bartender tell of the night she drank with kidnappers? The Second Mate’s wife suddenly came to him in her canning-line jumpsuit, her skin glistening with fish oil, her hair wild from steam, and that rustling yellow dress enveloped him, took him deep into sleep.

  Somewhere over Canada, Dr. Song gathered everyone for a protocol briefing on the subject of Americans. He spoke to the Minister and Jun Do, as well as Comrade Buc’s team of six. The copilot and stewardess eavesdropped. Dr. Song prefaced everything with a preamble on the evils of capitalism and a recounting of American war crimes against subjugated peoples. Then he began by tackling the concept of Jesus Christ, examining the special case of the American Negro, and listing the reasons Mexicans defected to the United States. Next, he explained why affluent Americans drove their own cars and spoke to their servants as equals.

  One young man asked how to behave should he encounter a homosexual.

  “Point out that this is a new experience for you,” Dr. Song said, “as there are no such individuals where you are from. Then treat him as you would any visiting Juche scholar from foreign lands like Burma or Ukraine or Cuba.”

  Dr. Song then got practical. He said it was okay to wear shoes indoors. Women were free to smoke in America and should not be confronted. Disciplining other people’s children in America was not okay. He drew for them on a piece of paper the shape of a football. With great discomfort, Dr. Song touched on American standards of personal hygiene, and then he delivered a mini-lecture on the subject of smiling. He concluded with dogs, noting how Americans were very sentimental, with a particular softness toward canines. You must never hurt a dog in America, he said. They are considered part of the family and are given names, just like people. Dogs also have their own beds and toys and doctors and houses, which should not be referred to as warrens.

  When they finally began their descent, Comrade Buc sought out Jun Do.

  “About Dr. Song,” he said. “He’s had a long and famous career, but in Pyongyang, you’re only as safe as your last success.”

  “Safe?” Jun Do asked. “Safe from what?”

  Comrade Buc touched the watch that Jun Do now wore. “You just help him succeed.”

  “What about you, why aren’t you coming with us?”

  “Me?” Comrade Buc asked. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to get to Los Angeles, buy three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of DVDs, and then get back. Is it true you’ve never seen a movie?”

  “I’m not a rube or anything. I just never had the opportunity.”

  “Now’s your chance,” Comrade Buc said. “Dr. Song has requested a movie about sopranos.”

  “I’d have no way of playing a DVD,” Jun Do told him.

  “You’d find a way,” Comrade Buc said.

  “What about Sun Moon? I’d see a movie starring her.”

  “They don’t sell our films in America
.”

  “Is it true that she’s sad?”

  “Sun Moon?” Comrade Buc nodded. “Her husband Commander Ga and the Dear Leader are rivals. Commander Ga is too famous to punish, so it is his wife who gets no more movie roles. We hear her next door. She plays the gayageum all day, teaching that sad, wandering sound to her children.”

  Jun Do could see her fingers pluck the strings, each note striking, flaring, and losing timbre like a match that burns to smoke.

  “Last chance for an American movie,” Comrade Buc said. “They’re the only real reason to learn English.”

  Jun Do tried to gauge the nature of the offer. In Comrade Buc’s eyes, Jun Do saw a look he knew well from childhood, the look of a boy who thought the next day would be better. Those boys never lasted. Still, Jun Do liked them the most.

  “Okay,” he said. “Which one’s the best?”

  “Casablanca,” Comrade Buc said. “They say that one is the greatest.”

  “Casablanca,” Jun Do said. “I’ll take that one.”

  It was morning when they landed at Dyess Air Force Base south of Abilene, Texas.

  Jun Do’s nocturnal schedule served him now on the other side of the world. He was awake and alert—through the Ilyushin’s yellowed window, he could see that two older cars had pulled onto the blacktop to meet them. There were three Americans in hats out there, two men and a woman. When the Ilyushin rested its engines, they rolled up a metal stairway.

  “In twenty-four hours,” Dr. Song said as a farewell to Comrade Buc.

  Comrade Buc executed a quick bow, and then opened the door.

  The air was dry. It smelled of hot metal and withered cornstalks. Fighter jets, a row of them, were parked at a shimmering distance—they were things Jun Do had only seen in inspirational murals.