She lay there, imagining, distracting herself from the fear that she might never get home to make these dreams come true.
Mia and Simon were sharing a snack of peanuts Mr. Shin’s mother had given them when, through the trees, they caught glimpses of people. At first there were just a few individuals, then some family groups. Soon a growing crowd.
“What’s going on?” Simon asked. Mia shrugged and shook her head. They lay on the ground, watching.
The park kept filling. Mia paged through the guidebook, looking for clues.
“What’s today?”
“I dunno, the ninth or tenth?”
“Our first day here was October first,” she began. They calculated together, counting the places they’d stayed — the shed, the hillside, the boxcar, three nights at the farm, one at Mr. Shin’s.
“The tenth,” Simon concluded.
“October tenth. ‘Korean Workers’ Party Foundation Day,’ ” Mia read. “That’s what this must be about.”
“And there are boats,” Simon said, pointing. Down the river, a line of people was forming at a dock, boarding a small ferry. “I wonder….”
“What?”
“Well, if we got close enough to the Chinese side, we could jump ship.”
“Simon, no way. We could drown, or get hypothermia! Or they’d just haul us back in. Or shoot us, right there in the water!”
“They probably wouldn’t shoot us. On the other hand, you’re right, we really can’t pull off a border crossing with all these people watching. But somehow — I can’t see how yet, but somehow — this may be the opportunity we’re waiting for. As long as nobody sees us hiding.”
The park was now full of people on holiday. Fathers and mothers held the hands of toddlers. Students in blue uniforms and white shirts with jaunty red scarves waved their red flags. Young couples walked together, the men in dark suits, the women in brilliantly colored han-bok.
The lines for the boats lengthened. Vendors sold snacks from carts. In the background, military-sounding music blared from tinny speakers. Soon, large numbers of people began assembling into lines by groups — soldiers, students, maybe factory workers. Some held banners. An official shouted orders over a megaphone. Spectators lined the riverbank.
“Looks like a parade.” Mia had seen lots of photographs of North Koreans marching. Any special occasion seemed to be an excuse for a parade.
The music crackled more loudly, a vigorous marching tune. Soldiers kicked their legs high with each step. Children marched in perfectly formed lines. Everyone chanted slogans in unison.
Mia gazed out through the screen of leaves, north across the river. West to the park beyond the parade. South toward the city.
Then her eye noticed movement in the trees and bushes above them. A cluster of soldiers was moving downhill.
“Simon! Soldiers! They’re moving in our direction!”
He was beside her in a moment. He groaned.
“I don’t know what they’re doing, but if we stay here, they’ll find us. We’re going to have to go out there, hope we can get lost in the crowd. Get to the other side of the park before they catch up with us.” He pulled the brim of his cap down, his hood up. They grabbed their packs and started down through the trees, toward the river, trying to stay out of sight of the soldiers.
“We’ll walk along the bank,” Simon whispered, “behind the crowd. They’re watching the parade; maybe we can get through without anyone noticing.”
They slipped out of the grove of trees into the open. Mia’s heart raced. Stand up straight. Don’t look back. We’re just a tourist and a guide, here to see the sights. Simon kept his head down. A few people glanced at him, but most of the bystanders were turned toward the parade.
Halfway across. On the far side of the park, Mia could see a good patch of brush. Cover. If only they could get there without being caught.
“Hello, Americans!” Their heads jerked involuntarily toward the sound.
Behind them, a military officer was approaching from the river walkway. He wore a uniform with red flaps on the shoulders and a brimmed cap. Several soldiers followed behind him. Mia and Simon froze. She clutched his arm. The man’s eyes were fixed on them, and the corners of his mouth were turned up in a smile.
“Simon and Mia Andrews, I believe. I am Colonel Pak. You have been causing us quite a bit of trouble.”
Mia felt the breath leave her body.
“It is no use trying to run,” the colonel called out. “I have soldiers everywhere. You would not get one block before you would be caught.” He continued strolling toward them, in no hurry.
Simon was tearing off his backpack, opening a side pocket.
“Stop there!” he shouted. He raised his arm, a black rectangle in his hand. For a crazy instant, Mia thought he was holding a gun. Then she realized — the phone.
The colonel and soldiers halted, their gaze on Simon’s hand.
“Don’t come any closer! We have pictures on this phone — of the labor camps!” He was waving his hand. “I’ll throw it into the crowd — anyone could get it!”
Mia’s insides clutched at Simon’s bravado. Scared for him, scared for both of them. He was only postponing the inevitable. They couldn’t possibly get away.
“When I throw it, turn and run like hell,” Simon said under his breath. His arm went back, the pitcher winding up. The colonel saw the movement and started toward them, signaling to the soldiers. Simon’s arm came forward and the missile flew from his hand in a long arc, over the heads of the colonel and the soldiers, out over the water.
Mia put her hand to her mouth. The phone would land in the river.
The colonel barked an order. Mia felt Simon move beside her and followed. One step backward, then another. Watching as the colonel and his men turned to trace the path of the phone. A few soldiers started down the bank as it descended.
“Run!”
Mia whirled and plunged after Simon through the onlookers, into the sea of marchers.
She wove and dodged in and out of the parade lines, trying to stay close to her brother. Terror coursed through her body like molten lead. At any moment she expected to feel a soldier’s heavy hand grasping her arm or shoulder. Astonished faces flashed by as they hurtled past. But no one reached out to grab them or block their path.
Simon’s charge took them diagonally through the marchers, away from the river, toward the sidewalk on the far side of the boulevard. Mia glimpsed an intersection ahead, then a cross street running up through the park. Empty of traffic and people. Nowhere to hide. No place safe for them now.
Simon had pulled ahead of her. She couldn’t keep up. Her heart thudded. Breath seared her throat. She propelled herself forward, desperate.
Simon had broken out of the parade and was heading for the trees, picking up speed on the open ground. He turned, looking for Mia. She fluttered her hand, too spent to even lift an arm. He registered her location, then scanned the parade. She willed herself to keep moving.
Then, finally, she was through the crowd, onto the street, the way clear before her. She tried to move her legs faster, tried to catch up with Simon, but he was hopelessly far ahead. She had no more strength.
Two cars came then, black sedans moving fast. Simon whirled around toward the whine of the engines. Then he took off sprinting. He was leaving her. Mia’s panic surged.
The black cars roared toward her and stopped in a cloud of dust. The doors swung open. Before she could take another step, three men in dark suits had surrounded her. They had her by the arms, lifting her toward the open door of one of the cars. She had no energy to resist.
“Simon!” she screamed.
Across the lawn, Simon froze, looking back. The men holding her, the drivers beside their doors, all halted for a moment. They watched Simon. He watched them. Part of her wanted to wail, Simon! Help! The other part wanted to yell, Run!
Simon’s shoulders slumped, then straightened. His head came up. Then he began to jog back towa
rd the cars. Mia’s heart swelled with love and grief. It was over. They were caught.
But he had come back for her.
The men put Simon and Mia in the back of one of the cars, just like they had with Dad. Two of them climbed into the front. The doors slammed shut. They sped off, following the first car. From behind the passenger’s seat, Mia watched all this from a distance, as if it were a movie. Her chest hurt, her lungs felt squeezed, still demanding air. She turned to Simon and locked eyes with him. His jaw was clenched, his eyes steely. There was nothing to say.
Mia let herself go limp against the seat. She tried to catch her breath, to slow the pounding of her heart. The cars raced along deserted streets through Sinuiju. Within minutes, they were on the highway. Going south.
It hit her then. The hopeless waste of all of it. The planning, the hiding, the hardships. The phone was gone. With it, the terrible evidence of the prison camps. Of course Simon had had to get rid of the phone. They couldn’t be caught with those photographs. He was only protecting them — and Dad. But no one outside would ever know the fate of those people. She and Simon could tell their story, but who would listen to two teenagers with no proof?
They had failed. They were caught. They would be held. They might be tried. Dad might spend the rest of his life in a North Korean prison.
All of it had been for nothing.
The misery and terror and defeat filled her. Tears ran down her cheeks. She didn’t bother to wipe them away.
The cars sped along the empty highway. In the front seat, the two men talked in low tones. Through the tinted windows, the countryside flew by. In minutes they were covering distance it had taken Mia and Simon days to travel.
A green sign announced an upcoming exit. Mia was too exhausted to try to make out the han-gul. The car slowed and pulled onto the shoulder. It came to a stop behind the other car. The driver and passenger from their car got out. The doors clicked shut behind them.
Mia and Simon exchanged glances, his forehead drawn into a puzzled frown. She looked ahead between the seats. Outside, five men stood talking, occasionally gesturing down the road.
Then the men headed back to the cars. The locks clicked again, the doors opened. The driver and passenger slid back in. Their car started up and pulled out onto the highway, into the left lane. The other car pulled up on the right side beside them, then pulled away, bearing right down the exit ramp. They were splitting up.
Mia dropped her head back against the seat. She had no energy to even hold it up. She stared out the window. Brown fields, barren hills. She listlessly noted the road sign for Tongrim as they entered the outskirts of the city. This was the same route that Mr. Shin had driven them on his motorbike, just that morning at daybreak.
Ten minutes or so later, they passed through Sonchon, which they had walked through two whole nights ago. The car purred through the nearly empty streets. Everyone must be off for the holiday. The car continued south on the deserted road beyond the city.
“Roadblock.”
Simon whispered so low Mia barely heard him. She looked up. Far ahead, a knot of black cars and Army jeeps blocked the road.
The two men talked in short phrases, the tone of their voices urgent. Their car slowed as it approached, then it came to a stop, right in the middle of the empty highway lane, still quite a distance from the line of vehicles. The driver sat for a moment, looking at the roadblock. Mia noticed a thick raised scar across the back of his right hand. After a moment, he spoke to the man in the passenger seat. Then he turned and directed a look at Mia, diagonally behind him. Holding her eyes, he twisted the key in the lock with his scarred hand, back and forth.
Mystified, Mia turned to look at Simon. What was going on?
Once again, the two men got out of the car. The driver called a question to the soldiers standing at the roadblock. They signaled to the men to drive the car forward. But instead of returning to the car, the driver and his companion began to walk down the road toward the soldiers, fifty or so feet away.
Mia and Simon were sitting forward now, alert, peering out from behind the front seats.
The men were strolling, taking their time, calling out to the soldiers. One pulled a package of cigarettes out of his jacket.
“I don’t think,” Mia said slowly, “that the soldiers know we’re in the car.”
“And it looks as if our guys don’t want them to know either. Stay out of sight.” The men had reached the roadblock now. They were approaching the soldiers, offering them cigarettes.
“What the hell is going on?” Simon said. They exchanged a look, then turned back to peer down the road. Mia noticed something.
“Simon!”
He started. “What?!”
Mia pointed, barely able to speak. “The key! The car key!”
The key was in the ignition.
“The driver was giving us a signal!” Mia said. “Do they want us to escape?”
At the roadblock, their guys stood with the soldiers, smoking. They had positioned themselves facing the car, so that the soldiers faced south, away from Mia and Simon.
“It could be a trap,” Simon said.
“Yeah …”
“But it’s not like they’re going to shoot us — they can’t afford an international incident like that.”
Their eyes widened as the idea bloomed between them.
“How could we be in any worse trouble than we already are?” Mia shrugged, then nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Then Simon was wedging himself through the gap between the seats, unwinding behind the wheel. Suddenly, the engine roared to life and they were hurtling forward into a steep U-turn, tires screeching, across the highway and into the northbound lanes. Mia was thrown across the backseat.
She twisted to peer out the back window. The line of men was frozen in place, staring after them, rapidly shrinking into the distance as they sped away.
“They’re not after us yet!” She grabbed her pack and clambered through to the front seat, fumbling to find the seat belt. She fished in her pack with her hand to get out the guidebook.
“Okay, we probably have a minute on them, if we’re lucky,” Simon yelled over the noise of the whining engine. “So we need to find another route, fast!”
Mia frantically flipped pages to the map. “The road split just before Sonchon, just a couple minutes ago!” She tried to focus on the page as the force of their speed plastered her to the back of the seat. “Yeah, here it is, a right turn, east to Chonma.”
Moments later they were speeding back through the empty main thoroughfare of the town, between tall gray buildings. Mia scanned the streets for the turn.
“The turn-off was a couple of miles north of the city, I think.” The countryside flew by. Her eyes bored into the map, frantically checking their location.
“Chuh — Chon — Chonma!” Simon sang out.
Suddenly, the car was turning, the driver’s side tires nearly lifting off the pavement, and Mia was grabbing the edge of the seat and the door handle and hanging on for her life.
The car rocked as it hit the straightaway, Simon gripping the wheel to keep from spinning out of control. Where had he learned to drive like this? Maybe hundreds of hours of Grand Theft Auto were good for something after all.
Soon they were through the settled area, out in the countryside, the road climbing into the surrounding hills, running alongside a broad stream with wide sandy banks. Mia craned her head to scan the road behind them.
“Nothing yet.”
Simon was gunning the gas, pushing the car to accelerate. Mia didn’t want to know how fast they were going. The sides of the roadway blurred into stripes of gray, gold, brown. She yanked her eyes forward and took a deep breath to push down her nausea.
The car raced past rice fields, past farmhouses with red tile roofs, past barren brown hills. They came to a valley snaking between tree-covered foothills when Simon shouted out, “Uh-oh, we got company!” He sounded almost cheerful.
Mia
sat up, turned. A military jeep was visible in the distance. A chill went up her back. Despite their speed, it was gaining.
Within minutes, the jeep had pulled up behind them, horn blaring.
“I’m going to pull over!”
“Simon, what?!”
“It’s the only way to get them off our tail! Trust me, it’ll be okay! Lock your door!”
Mia reached over to push the lock down. The turn signal clicked and the car began to slow, shuddering as it returned to normal speed. They gradually slid over to the shoulder and came to a stop, the engine still idling. The jeep did the same, fifty feet back. Mia’s heart pounded.
“Okay, guys, what are you waiting for?” Simon was watching his side mirror. Mia glanced over to her mirror. The jeep sat behind them, still. Then the doors opened. Two men in olive green uniforms emerged from the car. Mia wanted to cover her eyes with her hands, to disappear.
“C’mon, c’mon, that’s right.” Simon’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. The two men approached, one on either side of the car. Mia kept her eyes on the floor. She was shivering now, the fear coursing through her.
“And … good-bye!” Simon stomped his foot on the accelerator, flooring it. Mia was thrown back against the seat. The tires skidded on the pavement, shrieking, as the car shot forward.
“Yee-HA!” Simon was chortling now, sounding like the star of an action flick, his favorite kind of movie.
As exciting as that was, it didn’t take their pursuers long to catch up.
“They’re trying to pass us!” Mia yelled. The jeep was moving into the southbound lane, pulling even with them. The two vehicles raced side by side. She turned her head forward. There was something really frightening about looking into the soldiers’ faces.
“Where are we? What can you see on the map?” Simon yelled over the straining engine.
She held the map up in front of her so she wouldn’t have to glance down, trying to hold her hands steady. “It looks like … about twenty miles to Chonma from that exit we took. The last part before Chonma looks sort of twisty, like a backward S curve. At Chonma we run into a route that goes … um, northwest to the border, or southeast.”
In the Shadow of the Sun Page 21
