by Ron McMillan
‘Just a feeling.’
Emotion blurred her eyes. She swallowed it, and paused before answering.
‘I came down here to escape from Seoul for a few days, too.’
‘If you feel like talking about it – ’ I left the sentence unfinished.
She forced a smile. ‘Don’t tell me – you’re not running to any sort of timetable either. Compared to your mess, mine’s nothing, but I still don’t know which way is up.’
I sat down. She would tell me in her own time.
‘Ten years ago, when I left to go to university in Canada, I was sick of Korea and tired of my parents’ never-ending struggle in their funny little missionary world. I was a teenager, and I just didn’t get it.
‘So in Vancouver I put all that behind me. I went apeshit – from one extreme to the other. Shed my virginity even before the jet lag wore off, so drunk I have no idea who the lucky guy was. Got into the whole party scene and spent four years drinking and smoking and popping pills while I scraped a degree in Finance.’
‘Just your run-of-the-mill student existence.’
‘I suppose. Then, very first interview after graduation, I walked into a job with a downtown brokerage. Perfect, I thought. Not for me, the missionary life of sufferance and self-denial. Inside a year I was in the Dealing Room, making obscene amounts of money. Huge bonuses, expense accounts, club memberships – the whole grubby shebang. Ski weekends in Aspen, canary yellow Porsche Cabriolets – two of them; I wrote one off, out of my mind on tequila. A string of messy relationships. Partying almost non-stop, with a personal trainer to keep me fit enough to handle ten-hour days of screaming down telephone lines to New York and London and Hong Kong and Tokyo.
‘I don’t know how I managed it, but I lasted six years in that cesspit. I was never for a minute really happy, but in that screwed-up world, the illusion of contentedness is expressed in dollars, and I was making plenty of those.
‘About six months ago, something snapped, I walked away, and two days later I was on a plane. I hadn’t been back to Seoul in nearly ten years.’
‘Knowing Vincent and Jemma, they welcomed you with open arms.’
‘Not so much as one word about the prodigal offspring.’
‘And that was six months ago?’
‘After a few weeks I drifted back into doing little things with the church, until I was at it almost full-time. It’s unpaid, but that doesn’t matter. I saw a few morons come away from years in a broker’s seat with nothing but credit card bills and a terminal coke habit, but I wasn’t one of them.’
I sipped at a bottle of mineral water, wishing it was beer, while Rose leaned back against the tree, finger and thumb kneading the middle of her forehead.
‘Compared to what you’ve – ’
‘Don’t go wishing for problems to compete with mine.’
She sighed. ‘I’ve enjoyed working for the church these past few months. Maybe it’s what I needed after years steeped in materialist bullshit, but try as I might, I can’t go along with the whole Christian thing any more. I can’t worship God again any more than I can worship money.’
‘I bet your parents could come to terms with that.’
‘Maybe, but I’ve been going out with a lovely guy I met at the church, a missionary too, training to be ordained.’
Here we go, I thought.
‘Last week he proposed to me.’
‘And Vincent and Jemma love the sound of that, do they?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘It’s just that, well how the hell can I be in love with the guy?’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Francis Kim. He was born in Korea, moved to Canada when he was a kid. He’s a lovely guy but we hardly know each other so, almost overnight I’m in this old-fashioned dating situation with a guy who wants to marry me. Francis is so straight. He doesn’t drink and if he’s feeling really romantic he might hold my hand softly – but never without asking me first.’
‘So?’
‘Now I don’t have a clue what way to turn. I’m in love with a guy who has hardly touched me. Maybe this is just another obsession to get me over the jadedness of the past few years.’
‘Why not just drag Francis into the sack and fuck his brains out?’
She gave me a withering look of the sort that women reserve for creatures of the opposite gender.
‘You just don’t get it. It’s not about sex. It is about having the guts to follow my heart instead of my fears.’
I had no answer to that.
‘There’s more. Francis wants to stay in Korea, work for the church, help his own people. And I don’t know if I can handle the idea of being my Mum.’
We packed up the remains of the picnic and headed down in silence, my conscience nagging at me the whole way. Rose was in a situation where her instincts cried out at her to follow her heart. I had never entertained such a thought in my life. I always figured that a conscience was a bit like the human appendix. Everybody had one, but it was surplus to requirements.
She made me realise just how casually I had disregarded Jung-hwa, not only this week, but ever since I broke up with her and moved back to London. In ten years I had written her a couple of letters, letting the lack of responses offer me the easy way out – either she wasn’t interested, or she didn’t merit the effort in the first place.
Since getting back to Korea I had revelled once again in wild and wonderful times with her, but in the last couple of days she was never foremost in my thoughts.
Chapter Thirty
At the postage-stamp field overlooking the bay the farmer and his boy were gone, toil over for the day. Ankle-deep in soft soil and secured to a post by a length of golden-brown hand-made rope, the ox chewed slowly on a pile of brittle yellow straw. Next to the straw sat a shiny red plastic bucket full of water, as incongruous as a Ferrari in downtown Kabul.
Rose stopped just before the yogwan car park.
‘I think we should get you out of this place.’
We. I liked that.
‘You do?’
‘The police are on the lookout for a single male. They will run a check on every yogwan in the country.’
She was right. One phone call and the local cops would have their very own potential murderer to visit.
‘We can move into a min-bak.’ She meant a Korean Bed & Breakfast, but without the breakfast, a rented room in a private home. ‘A couple travelling together won’t ring so many alarm bells.’
‘You sure about this?’ I raised both hands, palms out. ‘Hands off, I promise.’
She laughed. ‘They’d better be. Francis takes his Tae Kwon-do first degree black belt next month.’
I could probably kick the shit out of Francis with my hands in my pockets, but for once in my life that was never going to happen.
At the yogwan we went to our rooms to pack up. I was thinking about a quick shower when Rose banged on my door.
‘Quick, switch on the TV.’
I flicked the television on and lifted the door latch. Rose pushed past me and changed the channel to a Korean news bulletin of a press conference already under way. While studio voices discussed the proceedings, the view swung around for the shot of themselves that media people love, the one that says ‘look how many cameras are here; we must be important’, before switching to a forest of logo-emblazoned microphones. Peering out from behind them, looking small but defiant, sat Naz.
Speaking through an interpreter, she dealt calmly with a barrage of questions and waited patiently whenever the shouts overlapped to become an impenetrable din. Beside her, squirming like he had soiled his pants, sat the man who yesterday told me to give myself up, Eric Bridgewater of the British Embassy.
Bobby must have called her at the studio when I went missing and, as usual, Naz had taken the bull by the horns and headed straight to the airport. No wonder I couldn’t get through to her in London. With me being off the map and the stor
y coming off the boil, the moment the Press picked up on a friend of Korea’s Most Wanted arriving, they would have been after her like hungry dogs. It was typical of Naz that she saw how to put this to her – and my – advantage by putting a human face on the story.
‘When was this?’
‘It’s live. From Seoul. She flew in today, and first thing she did was call a press conference. The woman’s got balls.’
Onscreen Naz calmly announced that if anyone had any information that might help, to contact her at the Hyatt.
‘Maybe this is my chance.’
She looked at me, confused.
‘You wondered about the videotape, and how important it might be, and why Schwartz is so determined to get his hands on it. What if I get the tape to Naz, and let her find out?’
I switched on the purple phone and keyed in the number of Mr Cho’s mobile. The connection went through instantly, and I listened to the electronic ring tone repeat itself over and over. Just when I was about to hang up, a bleep sounded, and I heard Mr Cho.
‘Yoboseyo.’
‘Mr Cho it’s me.’
‘I see.’
‘Is this a good time to talk?’
‘I will call you back.’
I disconnected, and within a minute the purple phone jingled its pop song ring tone.
‘Hello?’
‘OK, this telephone is better. Nobody can listen.’
Mr Cho the dark horse was playing cautious, and I was glad.
‘Did you know that my friend Naz is in Seoul?’
‘I saw her on television.’
‘I need to ask you a favour.’
‘No problem.’
‘It could be a big problem.’
‘Tell me about the favour.’
‘That package I left with you. The police are looking for me, but they are also looking for the package, and other people are, too. Bad people. I might have put you and your family in danger.’
‘Only I know where it is. Don’t worry.’
Just like that. Don’t worry.
‘You are sure?’
‘I said, don’t worry.’
‘I’ve been wondering why the other people are so serious about finding it. Now Naz is in Seoul, maybe she can look at the tape for me and get it to the British Embassy if it can help me.’
‘You want me to give it to Naz?’
‘Do you think you could get the package to her without anyone else knowing?’
‘I can do that. Will I give her this telephone number?’
Rose and I finished packing and slipped out of the yogwan separately. Forty-five minutes later and after a brief stop at the tiny village post office to send letters to Seoul and London, we sat in a bus that rattled as the driver threw it around the twisted ribbon of hilly blacktop connecting Haekumgang to the rest of Geoje island and beyond. We had a short wait for a connecting bus to the mainland and soon after crossed the bridge over the narrow coastal strait. Rose made some enquiries of a chubby woman with the burnished copper tan of a farmworker.
‘She says there’s a coastal village a few miles outside Tongyeong, well-known for its seafood and full of min-bak rooms for rent. She’ll tell us when to get off.’
‘Great.’ My mind was elsewhere, running through the events of the past hours. Earlier, I had been cheered by the thought that at last I was taking positive action, rather than being forced from one calamitous error to the next. I was delighted by the arrival of Naz in Seoul, but it had also made me ashamed. While I ran away and achieved next to nothing, she confronted my problems head-on. Now I had an opportunity to seek control by getting the videotape to her. Mr Cho could arrange that without raising any suspicions, no matter how closely anyone was watching Naz. ‘What have you got to lose?’ was Rose’s reaction. That was when it hit me.
‘Oh fuck. Oh no.’
‘What?’
‘The videotape. I know Mr Cho can get it to Naz, but what then? What if Schwartz guesses that Naz has it? For all he knows, I asked Naz to come to Seoul for the tape.’
The alarm in Rose’s expression was the confirmation I did not want.
‘You think you’ve put Naz in danger?’
‘After what happened to Miss Hong? What do you think?’
The farmer woman across the aisle spoke to Rose, and shouted something at the driver. The bus slowed.
‘Tell them don’t stop, that we’ve changed our minds and are going to Tongyeong.’ The bus pulled to a halt in a fishing village that was little more than a row of single-storey cottages facing the shore. Rose called forward to the driver, who shrugged good-naturedly and pulled away.
In Tongyeong, we hurried to the inter-city bus terminal while I tried to raise Mr Cho on the mobile phone. The first three times I dialled, his number was engaged, and I started to panic that something had already gone wrong. On the fourth attempt, I got through:
‘It’s me again.’
‘I will call you back.’
I thumbed the red button, and thirty seconds later, the purple phone rang again.
‘It’s about my friend in Seoul. Did you get that package to her yet?’
‘It was difficult, but yes, she has it now.’
I looked at my watch. He had managed to get the videotape through an air-tight police cordon in under three hours. My fault for telling him it was urgent.
‘I made a mistake. Maybe this puts her in danger. I have to come back.’
‘OK.’ He thought for a second. ‘You remember the first time we met?’
I mulled that over for a moment. ‘Yes.’
‘Go there. Do you take the bus or train?’
‘Bus.’
‘Somebody will come to you.’
He gave me detailed instructions, and I warned him about the new hairstyle and that I might not be alone. Rose signalled that we would travel up together. I told Mr Cho to expect her.
‘No problem.’ He disconnected.
Mr Cho had done it again. I hadn’t even asked for help, and now he was arranging a way into a city full of cops carrying my photograph. I had to get back in time to help protect Naz from Schwartz and Chang, and how I might do that was unimportant. What mattered was doing for Naz what she had always done for me.
Suwon is Seoul’s unwanted bastard son, a satellite town less than an hour from the capital but tucked out of sight of the neighbours. Every big city has them, the urban clans of poor relations, underachievers barely beyond the horizon but best forgotten, tough market towns that cannot, or will not, hide their scars for anyone.
My first ever taste of Suwon was at a Tae Kwon-do tournament in the early 1990s. Much to the bemusement of the rest of the participants, a Canadian friend, Brian, was the only non-Korean contestant entered in the tournament. They stopped grinning when Brian wiped the floor with the biggest Korean in the building to take the heavyweight division title. Only afterwards, when he refused the opportunity to treat the judges to dinner and drinks, did they give the medal to the loser. It was an eye-opening show of small town thinking with a significant touch of racism thrown in for good measure.
As we left the hall, a lean track-suited Korean man took us aside. In English, Mr Cho introduced himself and apologised on behalf of the judges. We rode back to Seoul in a minibus full of fighters from Mr Cho’s gym, several of them sporting new medals, and a friendship was formed that survived today.
Thanks to the manic efficiency of Korea’s inter-city bus network, it took less than five hours before the ancient city walls of Suwon swung into view. Rose and I had spent much of the trip in contemplative silence, and now she was smiling quietly to herself. I gave her a playful nudge.
‘Have you made up your mind?’
‘I think so. God knows I never loved any of the other men in my life, so why back off from Francis?’
‘If you did, you’d forever wonder if you had made the wrong decision.’
‘You might actually be learning.’
Not before time, I thought.
; I saw them first, posters stuck hurriedly at odd angles on the stands next to every bus terminal bay, rough, two-colour things that spoke of rushed production. Two faces to a poster, one a clumsily-altered photograph and the other a pencil drawing. Mine – complete with short dark hair – and Rose’s. I looked sideways. Every fleck of colour had fled Rose’s face. I followed her gaze to the poster, to where her name was mis-spelled, twice. Underneath the pencil drawing it said ‘Rosemarry Daley’.
She pulled hard at my sleeve.
‘Over there. The toilets.’ She dragged me across the hall.
When I came back out, head buried in my hat, Rose was waiting, her hair tied up and back with a red print bandana. She held a copy of a Korean newspaper.
‘Remember the police reward the television and newspapers talked about?’
‘You think somebody has tried to collect?’
‘They know about your new look and they know about me. It must have been our German friend. In the restaurant in Haekumgang, I remember he watched the TV report with interest, even asked me to translate parts of it for him. If he put one and one together, my name was right there in the yogwan register.’
A main exit spat us onto a crowded street. The best thing would be to split up but whoever Mr Cho sent would be looking for two of us, so for now we had to hide behind a hat and a headscarf. His instructions were to exit the bus station and turn right. As we made the turn, I saw a policeman to our left. His gaze passed over us without pause, until he was interrupted by a woman. I recognised her immediately as a fellow-passenger on the bus from Tongyeong.
I found myself staring along her outstretched arm as she yelled into the cop’s ear. The policeman thumbed the button on his radio and started towards us. I gripped Rose by the elbow.
The pavement was thick with pedestrians. I flicked a glance over my shoulder to see him close down on us as he shouted into his radio for support.
Rose looked the other way, and I followed her gaze to twenty yards ahead, where another policeman rounded the corner holding a radio to his ear. We were trapped.
Next to us, the side door of a van rolled back and several pairs of hands wrenched us off our feet. Tyres squealed even before the door slammed and the van leapt from the kerb, ran a red light and took a sharp turn, throwing us around like clothes in a dryer. After five or six more corners the van pulled to an abrupt halt, banging us against the bulkhead. The side door opened again, and two figures leapt out and split up. Fifteen seconds later, we were on the move, the two men back with us in the rear compartment, each holding a registration plate. They weren’t so much as out of breath.