by Chris Ward
Then he went out to find somewhere to sleep.
He was sleeping when the car arrived, but the clean-sounding, well maintained engine easily woke him. He pushed aside the woman—he had traded his last spare clothes for her offer of sex simply because it had been so long—and climbed out of the dirty old bed. She rolled over, pulling the blanket up around her as he pulled on his dirty prison clothes and left.
A thin man in sunglasses was holding open the back door of a sedan. In the darkness the glare of the headlights was almost blinding as it lit up most of the town. Park said nothing as he climbed into the back. The car smelt musty and damp as if it had been stuck in a garage for some time. Park sat in silence as the driver climbed in, put his sunglasses down on the passenger seat, and tuned the radio to a state-approved station playing instrumental jazz music.
A clock on the dashboard told Park it was a little after three in the morning. As the driver steered them wordlessly through the town and out into open country where the only thing to see was the stretch of potholed highway in front of them, Park leaned back on the seat and closed his eyes.
He thought of many things, not least of all his years in the work camp, of the switch on his back and the constant aching of his muscles from the days upon days of drilling, breaking and carrying of the aggregate rock out of the quarry where he had been assigned. Such labour would have made him strong were it not for the meagre diet of corn and gruel which had left him with gaps where teeth had once been.
Dawn was breaking when they reached the larger border town, passing through a military checkpoint, the palms of the soldiers greased and their eyes averted by bank notes from Park’s private accounts. He wondered briefly if there was much left; there were likely those who’d never expected him to get out.
The car pulled up outside an unmarked two-storey building that looked little different from any other in the town. The driver got out and opened the door for Park, who headed straight inside without looking around. As he closed the door behind him, he heard the car driving off.
‘It’s been a long time.’
A man stepped out of the shadows, and at the sight of the old, weatherworn face, Park smiled his first real smile since leaving the work camp as he pulled the man into an embrace.
‘Mr. Dal, how pleased I am—’
The older man pulled away and smiled. ‘Later. Get cleaned up and changed. We don’t have much time.’ He pointed to another door. ‘There’s a shower room that way. I found you clothing, although I couldn’t be sure of your size.’
Park patted his waist. His ribs jutted out like the blunt ends of spears. His mind drifted back to the camp, and his voice turned wistful. ‘It’s true what they say about those places. All of it.’
‘No time to dwell on that now.’ Dal smiled. ‘Get yourself cleaned up.’
Park went into the shower room and scrubbed himself under the thin trickle of lukewarm water. Compared to a freezing hose it was luxury, but it was hardly the powerful jet of hot water he had once enjoyed at his plush residence just outside the capital. Would those days ever come again?
Dal was waiting when Park emerged dressed in a suit that would once have fit him, but was now loose around the shoulders and waist. Thankfully Dal had thought to provide him with a belt.
‘The car is waiting,’ Dal said. ‘We’re taking you to a small military base where a private plane will take you out of the country. We have bribed the necessary officials, but the purpose of the flight is a secret. Your name brings a price we can barely afford, Park.’
‘Once that would have been a good thing.’
Dal shrugged. ‘You’ve served your time, but not your sentence,’ he said. ‘There will be no lower ranking office for you like they promised. Only a knife in the back. You have to leave, and you have to never return.’
Park followed Dal to the door. ‘Thank you, my brother,’ he said, gripping the other man’s hand. ‘This won’t be forgotten. And if I never see you again—’
‘Such talk is the talk of the condemned,’ Dal said with a grin. ‘And you’re a free man. At least legally.’
‘It’s true. But I won’t forget.’
Dal gave him a gentle shove towards the waiting car. ‘Go,’ he said.
Two hours later the car pulled up outside a small twin-propeller airplane that looked as airworthy as a cattle truck. Park was escorted into a cramped cabin by the car’s driver. He then watched through a small window as the car sped away.
A few minutes later the plane taxied down a potholed runway and took off, shuddering as it left the ground. Park hung on to the seat in front, terrified that after so many years of waiting to escape the work camp, his plans could be extinguished by a rickety old plane that was probably fifty years old at best.
He never saw the pilot. When they landed half an hour later, he was quickly hustled off into a waiting hanger, handed a fistful of documentation by a man in a black suit who didn’t say a word, then steered towards another plane, this one bigger, less rusty, more airworthy, he hoped.
There were other passengers this time, a dozen or so, with their heads down, purposely avoiding his gaze. Other refugees, he suspected, the kind of people he had once been charged with hunting down.
As the plane rose up into the air, he felt the onset of the weariness he had been trying to hold at bay. This time it was impossible to resist. The plane was comfortable, the seats soft.
He woke up in Seoul.
They set him up in a suite of rooms in a five-star hotel near the city centre. He was hailed as a great exile, one of the highest ranking officials to escape. He asked for discretion because of his value, and was given it, although that didn’t stop government advisors wanting to interview him day and night about the internal workings of his previous job.
Of course, he could only tell them some of it. That he’d been the minister for industry, charged with improving the efficiency of factories across the nation. He couldn’t tell them he’d also been responsible for border control.
His imprisonment haunted him day and night, and he was consumed with thoughts of revenge. Gentle investigation had shown him that Rutherford Forbes of Forbes Industries, the esteemed multi-national that had failed to make the delivery he had personally ordered, was dead, the company broken up. He had known for a long time that Forbes was just a figurehead, and that the real engine room was somewhere deeper inside.
‘Professor Kurou,’ Park whispered, as he lay in bed, listening to the sounds of the vibrant city outside his window. ‘I remember you.’
6
The little girl with the bad memories
The girl waited across the street from the bakery, tucked into the shadows beneath the awning of a closed bookshop, only the tips of her shoes getting struck by the rain that was beating down in a dark grey curtain.
Barcelona could be cruel at this time of the year. She had preferred the drier air of Santiago, even the stifling heat of Cairo. London, where they had stayed one spring, she had hated, while Riga and its two hundred days of rainfall per year had been a nonstarter. It was something about all the green the rain brought; she hated green. The only time she enjoyed the sight of a tree was when it was on fire.
With its buildings a collection of towering antiques of grey intricacy, Barcelona was pleasant enough. Even the much vaulted Park Güell was mostly gravel and paving stones, and the sight of the trees on Avenida Diagonal wilting beneath the onslaught of six lanes of car fumes brought tears of happiness to her eyes.
The lights in the bakery switched off. The girl cocked her head, listening for the sound of the key turning in the lock. It was impossible to hear over the pattering of the rain, but then a shadow emerged from a side door, turned back for a few seconds, and then walked off into the alleys behind the shop.
Checking up and down the street, the girl darted out into the rain, ducking into a doorway just down from the bakery. Behind her, she saw other shadows beginning to shift and move in the same direction. Hurrying out f
rom her cover, she ducked into the alley, looking for the basket where the man had dropped the bag.
Other hands were reaching for it as she pulled it upwards, some old crone as well as another youngster, a boy little older than her. She slammed an elbow into the old woman’s face and the crone fell back wailing, then she pulled something round and warm out of the bag and threw it away from her. The boy turned, looking for it, and the girl tucked the bag and the rest of its contents under her arm and ran.
She didn’t pause until she was a few streets away, tucked away under a culvert that bridged a small drainage channel. She pulled open the bag and stuck her hand inside, feeling around.
She had thrown the biggest of the loaves to the boy, but there were a couple of bread rolls left and even half an apple pie. Of course, they were hardening, a couple of hours short of being stale, but that was the taste she knew. They would do nicely.
As always, she chose the best of them to eat now, ripping it into pieces and stuffing it down her throat as if it was her first meal for days. She had learned from experience that if she gave her master the choice she would end up with the scraps—the crumbs for the birds, as he always put it.
She ducked her hands under the water sloshing out of the culvert and took a long swallow. It was rainwater straight off the hills of Montjuïc, and she didn’t like to think about what might be in it, but it tasted clean and when cupped in her hands it looked clear. She needed it to help chew down the stale bread, and while she could easily steal drinks from one of the street vendors or even go up to the public fountains in Placa de Catalunya the words of her master always echoed in her ears.
You are nothing. When you are nothing you must live among nothing and subsist on nothing. Only when you become at ease with yourself can you become something.
She suspected it was bullshit, but the tingling in her hands reminded her not to disobey.
‘Hey.’
She looked up to see the scraggly little boy she had pushed away from the leftovers the bakery owner had tossed out. How had he managed to follow her? No one in the city could run like she could. It was how she was always first, how she always got away with the best of the loot.
‘That was mine. I got there first.’
She realised he was speaking in Spanish, not her first language, which was … which was … her mind failed to name it. She did know some Spanish, though; her master had made sure of it.
‘Get away from me.’
‘Just give me one, please.’
‘No. These are for … my father.’
The boy squatted down, peering over the edge of the culvert, his face like the orb of a grey moon, streaked and smeared by the rain cutting through the grime on his cheeks. He must have known this place, she realised. Perhaps he hid out here too.
‘Is your father sick? I know someone who can help.’
The girl rolled her eyes. ‘Really? And you want me to come out so you can steal my bread and throw me in the river?’ She flicked a finger at him. ‘No chance.’
He frowned for a moment, and she realised she had slipped into English, another of the languages she was partially fluent in. She needed to work on her Spanish cusses.
‘I have a friend. He studied.’
‘What did he study?’ she asked, reverting to Spanish, thinking out the sentences in her mind before she spoke.
‘Everything.’
‘Go away.’
The boy looked aggrieved, and for a moment he stood up, looking back over his shoulder as if considering his next move. Then he turned back to her. ‘My name’s Jorge,’ he said. ‘Can I come down on the ledge with you? I’m soaking.’
She wanted to say no, but there was something in his eyes that disabled her natural defences. It was something her master would probably lecture her about, but she felt no threat from this boy.
‘I guess you’re just going to stand there and stare at me until I say yes,’ she said. ‘Do what you want. I promise not to push you in.’
‘Thanks.’
He climbed over the railing alongside the drain, and jumped across the small gap to the dry ledge underneath the small bridge. The girl shifted a few inches away from him, then felt guilty about it and handed him a crust of bread.
‘Thanks,’ he said again.
‘You don’t know many words, do you?’
He shrugged. ‘At least I have a name. Do you?’
She sighed. ‘Nozomi.’
‘It’s pretty.’
She shrugged. ‘It means “wish”, in my native language.’
‘Which is what?’
‘I … I … it doesn’t matter.’
It did, it really did. But right now she didn’t want to talk about it. She accepted the way things were, and her master treated her well.
As long as she behaved.
‘What do you wish about, Nozomi?’
She wasn’t in the mood for childish games. ‘For the rain to stop, and for you to go away so I can eat my bread in peace.’
He didn’t take the hint. ‘Where do you live? I sometimes sleep in a squat in Verdaguer. You can come if you like. It’s got no running water but there’s electricity and it’s warm and dry.’ He shrugged. ‘Except in one room where there’s a big hole in the roof, but no one uses that room.’
‘I live in La Sagrada Familia,’ she said. It was a sarcastic joke, but it wasn’t a mile from the truth. Her master wanted to live in La Sagrada Familia, it was just a case of logistics.
‘Look, if you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine,’ Jorge said.
‘I don’t!’ Nozomi shouted, jumping up. She knocked his hand, and the uneaten half of his bread fell into the rushing water below. Even as he started to cry out, she jumped across the river, hurdled the barrier and ran off into the streets.
This time she didn’t give him a chance to find her. She ran until her lungs ached, darting through the murky streets, narrowly avoiding knocking into a couple of hardy tourists and once sprinting out in front of a car, only for it to slam on its brakes and honk at her in anger.
When she finally came to a stop, she looked up at the tall buildings around her and realised she’d come back to where her master had holed up, almost as if a device inside her had influenced her decisions, slowly reeling her in.
El Teatro Nuevo Rialto was an abandoned theatre in the Sant Marti district of Barcelona. Unused for some thirty years, it was scheduled for demolition but had won a temporary reprieve thanks to a historical society lobbying the local government. So her master had said. While the legal wrangles were underway, it made a perfect short-term base.
Six months, her master said, just until the New Year. That was all the time he needed, then they would be moving on.
She entered through a hole in the wall near to the rear of the building, one that had been covered over by wooden boards. Her master had fashioned it into a hatch, the opening mechanism invisible to the naked eye. Nozomi’s fingers pressed into what appeared to be a knot in the wood and a click sounded from inside, then the door swung open. She climbed through and the door swung automatically shut again behind her.
Sensor lights her master had installed in the ceiling flicked on as she walked through the dark corridors, flicking off again behind her. She found it creepy the way they followed her progress. Her master claimed they were programmed to respond only to people of the coded height and build, namely Nozomi and himself, so that anyone following her would have to do so in complete darkness.
‘Don’t grow too fast,’ he often quipped, although she was yet to be followed so the truth of his claim was unconfirmed.
Finally she reached a door, and as her hand fell on the handle, all the lights flicked off. This was what he referred to as his big anticipation moment, in the way that a theatre fell dark a few seconds before the curtains drew back. That it was only Nozomi and himself that used this entrance seemed irrelevant.
She sighed as she turned the handle, and the door opened onto a Santa’s workshop straight o
ut of a suicidal nightmare.
Machines that probably cost more than the building itself clacked and hummed beneath a rainbow starlight of flickering lights. The machines were set up across the length of the great hall where seats had once faced the actors on the dusty old stage at the back, seemingly haphazardly placed, but working to some unique line of production that only her master understood. Some of them were whirring and groaning, pistons rising and falling like metal arms punching into the conveyors below, while others were silent boxes of tarnished steel, unreflective, unrevealing, the exact nature of their design and use known only to her master. She could see experimental subjects fixed into braces beneath some, while others sat dark and empty, as if waiting for the next batch of misery to come along.
She looked around for her master, who was usually in amongst the machines, tinkering and adjusting. Rather surprisingly, she found him at his desk, a bank of computer monitors surrounding him on three sides.
He was sitting with his feet up on one of the keyboards and a glossy magazine open on his lap.
When he turned to look up at her, she shivered. His face never got easier on the eye, even after five years of seeing it almost every day. With a hooked, bony protrusion like a bird’s beak in place of a nose that overhung the tiny mouth almost hidden beneath, and the downy feathers covering his cheeks beneath the beady eyes which looked out from below a mop of unruly hair, he was nothing short of a monstrosity. When forced to look upon his face it was easy not to notice that his hands and feet were hooked and clawed like bird’s talons.
‘Well, it’s nice to see you again, little princess,’ he said, cocking his head and sneering at her out of half a mouth. ‘I trust you’ve eaten? If not, best run along. The cook’s on vacation.’
He threw back his head and began to laugh. Nozomi glared at him, refusing to let him intimidate her.
‘Shut up. Of course I’ve eaten. I brought you a bread roll.’
She threw the last stale lump of bread at his head, but one clawed hand snaked up and plucked it out of the air with the ease of a baseball catcher taking a warm up pitch.