The Expediter

by David Hagberg

  Sue presented her passport, boarding pass, and baggage claim check to the uniformed immigration official, a pinch-faced little man with round steel-framed glasses and a scowl. He studied the documents and then looked up several times from the passport photo to intently study Sue’s face. Finally he checked something against a list, and handed her paperwork back.

  “See you on the bus,” Sue said over her shoulder and headed down the corridor.

  Kim laid her papers on the counter and fought the urge to hold her breath. Armed soldiers were stationed in the airport, so if something went wrong there would be no possibility for her to run. Without Soon she felt alone and vulnerable.

  The immigration agent took a long time comparing the information in Kim’s passport to a list on a clipboard. She had developed an urge to use the bathroom on the way out to the airport, and now the pressure was almost overwhelming.

  “Have you been to Chosun before?” the official asked using the North Korean word for the country.

  “No,” Kim stammered. “This is our . . . my first trip.”

  “Do you have relatives here that you tried to meet?”

  “I may have relatives here, but I don’t think so. I’m from Chinhae, in the south. We have been fishermen for many generations.”

  “I know where Chinhae is located,” the official shot back harshly.

  Mr. Tae was at her shoulder. “Is something out of order?” he asked pleasantly.

  “This foolish woman is attempting to give me a geography lesson, instead of answering a simple question.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kim said. “I didn’t come here to meet anyone.”

  The official wanted to argue, but he closed her passport and slapped it down on the counter. “Go home.”

  Kim gathered up her papers. “Thank you,” she told the official. She turned to Mr. Tae. “Thank you,” she said and hurried down the corridor.

  A brisk wind was blowing across the tarmac when Kim emerged from the door and walked across to the big yellow bus. The air stank of burned kerojet and something else she couldn’t identify.

  The same aging Tupolev jet that had brought them here from Beijing was sitting on the apron one hundred meters away, its forward hatch open and boarding stairs in place. Their luggage was already starting to come out of the terminal. A couple of Air Koryo crewmen were doing a walk-around inspection, while a fuel truck topped off the tanks. The jet looked as if it was unfit to taxi to the runway let alone take off. The paint scheme was peeling, mottled patches showed along the fuselage where sections of the aluminum skin had been replaced, and something that looked like oil had leaked on the ground directly beneath one of the engines.

  Kim resisted the urge to turn around and look back at the terminal, but she was certain that she could feel eyes on her back. Someone in the terminal was watching her from one of the windows, waiting for her to make a mistake, waiting for her to incriminate herself, waiting for her to suddenly make a mad dash for the bus.

  Soon and his roommate were seated together near the back of the bus seemingly engaged in deep conversation. Kim walked back and sat down next to Sue a few rows forward.

  “To tell the truth I’m more frightened of flying out of here in that thing than getting stuck here,” Sue said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Kim mused, and Sue laughed.

  When the bus was full they were held for a couple of minutes, until the refueling was done and the truck lumbered away, before they were taken across to the aircraft.

  Kim snuck a quick glance back at the terminal but no one was coming after them, and then she was following Sue up the boarding stairs and into the shabby jet.

  They were seated in one of the middle rows, and a few minutes later Soon appeared in the crowded aisle with his roommate Yi Hwang-jap, and she looked up, risking a shy smile as her husband passed. His eyes narrowed slightly, but the gesture spoke a thousand words; they were almost home free, all she had to do was hang on for a little longer and they would be together again in Seoul.

  “He’s cute,” Sue said, and Kim was startled.

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Is that why you couldn’t keep your eyes off him this entire trip?”

  Kim had no answer, and after another few minutes the hatch was closed, and as the jet’s engines came to life one of the attendants began explaining the emergency procedures.

  EIGHT

  Pak’s Lada was smoking badly by the time he and Sergeant Ri reached the airport and were stopped at the security checkpoint so that their credentials could be checked. The instant the young guards saw Colonel Pak’s red identity booklet they stiffened to attention and saluted. From this point the terminal blocked the taxiway.

  “Has the jet to Beijing taken off yet?” Pak demanded.

  “I think it is leaving at any minute, sir,” one guard said, handing back the ID booklet, as the other raised the barrier.

  Pak slammed the car in gear, floored the accelerator, and they shot through the gate and raced toward the road around the terminal that would give them access to the airfield.

  “Radio the tower and order them to hold the plane,” Pak told his sergeant.

  “If we’re not in time we can always tell the crew to turn around,” Ri suggested.

  “If the assassins are actually aboard the plane, they wouldn’t hesitate to hijack it.”

  “Still time to order up a couple of fighters to shoot it down.”

  “And what happens if we kill more Chinese citizens?”

  “I see your point,” Ri said. He got on the radio, switching to the tower’s frequency, as they reached the south end of the terminal building and turned out onto the apron that led to the taxiways and runways. The big Tupolev was lumbering toward runway 07, its engines trailing thick plumes of black exhaust.

  “Sunan tower, this is Colonel Pak Hae, State Safety and Security Agency,” Ri said into the telephone handset. “Copy?”

  Pak headed directly across to the taxiway behind the jetliner.

  “That’s right, State Safety and Security Agency,” Ri was saying. “I want that jet stopped before it reaches the runway. I want its engines shut down, its hatch opened, and all passengers and crew held on board.”

  Pak couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but Ri suddenly shouted.

  “I don’t give a shit who’s aboard. This is a matter of state security, you idiot. Dear Leader has ordered us here.” Ri grinned. He loved throwing his colonel’s weight around.

  The jetliner was fifty meters away from turning onto the active runway when it slowed down and came to a ponderous halt. The engines immediately began to spool down. The truck with the boarding stairs came out from the terminal, as the aircraft’s forward hatch swung open.

  Pak drove under the starboard wing and swung directly in front of the airplane, blocking any possibility that the pilot could change his mind and try to reach the runway.

  He and Ri got out of the car and walked back to the hatch as the truck pulled up and slowly maneuvered the stairs into position. One of the flight attendants was standing at the open hatch, a frightened expression on her pretty round face.

  “Take out your pistol,” Pak told his sergeant as they started up the stairs. “If anyone makes a move shoot them.”

  “Anyone?” Ri asked, impressed. He pulled out his Russian-made 9 mm Stechkin autoloader.

  “Anyone,” Pak said.

  At the head of the stairs he showed his identification booklet to the attendant and then to the pilot and copilot.

  “How long will we be delayed here?” the pilot asked.

  “Until I say so,” Pak replied. He turned to the attendant. “I want the passenger manifest.”

  “Yes, sir,” the young woman said.

  The aircraft was almost completely full. The passengers were sitting up and watching Pak and especially Ri with his drawn pistol. No one looked happy, and a lot of them were obviously frightened. Only the handful of Chinese businessmen, none of whom had appa
rently heard about the shooting, seemed to be indifferent.

  The attendant handed Pak a clipboard with the names, nationalities, passport numbers, and seat assignments of the one hundred and twenty-five passengers. Twenty-two of them were South Koreans—thirteen men and nine women.

  Pak moved into the cabin, stopping at the third row. The two South Koreans seated in A and B were old men, one of them with a long white beard and traditional peasant’s hat. They’d most likely come to visit relatives.

  Seven rows back he passed two women, one of them Japanese. Her seatmate, a South Korean, looked petrified, as if she expected to be shot at any moment. Pak gave her a reassuring smile and moved aft.

  The next three South Korean males were a father and his two teenaged sons from Seoul, seated with a woman. Pak stared at the father for a hard moment, but he was too slightly built to be one of the shooters from the surveillance tape, and his sons were both too young and too small.

  He looked up in time to catch the eye of a man four rows back, who immediately turned away. He was identified on the manifest as Kwan Sang-hung, from Seoul, well built for a Korean, typical for a Southerner. His seatmate was Yi Hwang-jap, also from Seoul, a much smaller man, with narrow shoulders and a round face.

  They were the shooters; Pak was almost 100 percent certain of it.

  “Keep on your toes,” he told Ri, and he walked aft to the pair, who both turned and looked up at him.

  The smaller man seemed to be extremely nervous, but the other one was calm. He was a professional.

  “Let me see your passports,” Pak said.

  “Is there a problem?” Yi asked, handing his over. “Everything was in order in the terminal.”

  Soon handed over his passport, and so far as Pak could tell it was legitimate, or else a damned good forgery. The few visa stamps were for Japan. Yi’s passport looked real as well, but it contained no visa stamps.

  “What was the purpose of your trip, Mr.Yi?” Pak asked.

  “I’ve always wanted to see the North—Chosun. I’m a history teacher. I can tell my students about my trip.”

  “What else did you do while you were here?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Pak turned to the other man. “Your story is the same, Mr. Kwan?”

  “I’m not a teacher, but I was curious about what it was like up here.”

  “Were you satisfied?”

  Soon shrugged. “I like the South better.”

  “I imagine you do,” Pak said. He stepped back. “On your feet, both of you.”

  “What?” Yi stammered.

  “Your papers are not in order. You’re coming with us. On your feet.”

  No one in the aircraft made a sound, and for a long moment Pak was sure that the schoolteacher was going to cry out for help, but then Soon unfastened his seat belt.

  “Better do as they say,” he told his seatmate. “We’ll catch the next flight home.”

  Yi wanted to do something, anything but stand up and leave the aircraft. He looked like a cornered animal ready to bolt or fight back, but there was nowhere for him to go, nothing for him to do, and he finally realized it.

  He unfastened his seat belt and got awkwardly to his feet. “What about my luggage?”

  “Don’t worry about your luggage,” Pak said. He let the man step out into the aisle, and quickly patted him down. Then he turned him around and secured his wrists with a plastic restraint.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “For now,” Pak said. He handed the man forward to Ri, and turned back to Soon who’d already spread his arms.

  “What are the charges?”

  “No charges yet,” Pak said. He patted the man down for weapons, but there were none.

  Soon turned around and held his wrists behind his back to be secured.

  “This has happened to you before,” Pak said.

  “I was a cop in the Army.”

  “You should not have come here, Mr. Kwan,” Pak said.

  “Evidently not.”

  NINE

  As soon as the prisoners were settled in the backseat of the Lada, Ri covering them at gunpoint, baggage handlers came out to the jetliner, opened the cargo bay hatch, and began unloading the luggage until they found the suitcases matching the numbers on Kwan’s and Yi’s claim checks. Pak had them load the bags into the trunk, then got behind the wheel and headed away.

  “Nice car,” Soon said.

  Pak glanced at his image in the rearview mirror.

  “Shut your mouth,” Ri warned.

  “No, let him talk,” Pak said. He drove toward the south end of the terminal building. “I’d like to hear his views on how much better things are in the South.”

  “There’s no comparison with this shit hole, but you people are so cut off up here you’d never understand,” Soon said. He glanced over his shoulder as a start truck trundled out to the jetliner to power up the engines.

  “Why are we under arrest?” Yi asked fearfully. “I’ve done nothing.”

  “You were identified across the street from the Chinese Embassy early this morning,” Pak said.

  Yi was thunderstruck. “That’s not possible, sir. I was in my hotel all night.” He looked at Soon. “Mr. Kwan will verify it.”

  “I doubt it, because he was there with you.”

  “No,” Yi protested. “Tell him that we never left the hotel.”

  “We never left the hotel,” Soon said. “Anyway, don’t you people have guards posted at the bridges?”

  “Actually you two were quite ingenious,” Pak said. He pulled up at the security checkpoint and rolled down his window. But the guard glanced at the prisoners in the backseat and Ri’s drawn pistol, and immediately motioned for the barrier to be opened.

  “I swear on my honor that we didn’t leave the hotel,” Yi pleaded as Pak drove through the gate and headed back into the city. “We never had access to an automobile.”

  “Of course not,” Pak agreed. “It’s why you killed those two cops, stole their uniforms and weapons and swam across the river. What are their mothers to be told? That they died defending the motherland?”

  “Murder?” Yi squeaked.

  “For those two deaths alone, you’ll face a firing squad. But the other, General Ho, why did you assassinate him? What did you hope to gain?”

  Yi had lost his voice.

  “Of course you’re not on your own,” Pak said reasonably. “Your planning was too good, and certainly your passports are first-class. Not amateur. But your knowledge of the general’s schedule was nothing short of brilliant. Who sent you to do this thing? Was it the NIS?”

  Neither man answered. Pak turned onto the main highway and they drove in silence for ten minutes until in the distance behind them they heard the roar of the jetliner taking off. Soon turned and looked out the rear window.

  “You almost made it,” Pak said. “Except that we found the bodies of those two cops faster than you thought we would. Just chance, I’m told, that they turned up so fast a couple of kilometers downriver from the hotel.”

  “Now you want our confessions,” Soon said.

  Something about the man’s attitude was slightly bothersome to Pak. He was too calm, too self-assured. Yi was understandable, but not Kwan.

  “We’ll have them sooner or later, won’t we,” Ri said. “The easy way or the hard way.” He glanced at Pak. “Funny how these sorts usually take the hard way. Do you suppose it’s because they’re stupid, Colonel? Or brave?”

  “Okay, you win,” Soon said. “We did it. But we didn’t swim, would have got our clothes all wet and messy. We smuggled a hang glider and flew to the other side. You should teach your people to look up every now and then.”

  “Hang glider?” Yi whispered.

  “He’s right. It wasn’t a hang glider. It was a rowboat. You’ll probably find it floating somewhere downriver.”

  “That’s a lie,” Yi protested weakly. “I was asleep in my bed the entire night. I didn’t even wake up unt
il Mr. Tae telephoned us that it was time to come down for breakfast.”

  “Okay, we used a mini-sub.”

  “Those cops you killed were good boys,” Ri warned. “Let me shoot this one now, Colonel.”

  Pak was missing something important here, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “Who hired you to do this?”

  Soon looked out the window. The divided highway they were on was almost completely devoid of traffic, but people on foot were walking into the city in the median. In the distance the empty shell of the Ryugyong Hotel rose like a massive black pyramid from the city’s center. It had been designed in the eighties to be the world’s largest luxury hotel, but bad engineering and lack of money had permanently stalled the project.

  Almost no traffic moved downtown, though there were a fair amount of people on foot, and less than a half hour after they’d left the airport, Pak drove through the gate into the agency’s compound and around back to his parking space.

  The morning was pretty—sunny, mild, only a light breeze. A lot of people would be in the parks today, the lucky ones among them there to eat their lunches. For most North Koreans lack of food was the major issue in their lives. On the surface Pyongyang was a modern, beautiful city. But people here were slowly starving to death, while less than two hundred kilometers to the south people in Seoul were getting fat like Americans.

  “I think we’ll find the truth once you’re inside,” Pak told his prisoners.

  He and Ri got out of the car and opened the rear doors.

  Soon got out and sniffed the fresh air as if he knew he’d never smell it again, but Yi got out, shoved Ri aside, and bolted for the front entry.

  “Stop!” Ri shouted, but the little man kept running.

  Pak was on the opposite side of the car from his sergeant. “Don’t shoot!”

  Ri fired once, the bullet hitting Yi high in the middle of his back, and he was flung forward onto the pavement, his head bouncing once and then he lay perfectly still.