by D. B. John
And from Mayangdo, where would they have taken Soo-min? But each time her eyes searched for other regions linked by road and rail to the northeast coast she became distracted by something else altogether.
The images that kept drawing her eye, almost against her will, like tidbits in a scandal magazine, attested to the lifestyle of Kim Jong-il. Children begged for grains in his streets, but the Guiding Star of the Twenty-First Century maintained seventeen palatial homes around the country. Paddocks adjoined private oval racetracks; she could see basketball courts, and infinity pools nestling among flowered terraces, gated and secluded from the masses. He had homes that were imperial summer palaces with roofs of jade-green tiles, homes surrounded by ornamental gardens with fountains, and hunting parks dense with camphor trees. One was a modern beach villa with a fleet of sports cars and motorbikes. At his main residence north of Pyongyang, protected by four surface-to-air missile launchers (arrowed by the squints), he enjoyed a swimming pool with water slides, a shooting range, and a river jetty where he moored a Princess yacht. Golf carts traversed his country estates. She zoomed in from two hundred kilometers and saw the tracks they made in the dew, the sprinklers on the lawns. A private train station housed his luxurious armored train. And at night, when the country lay beneath a squid-ink blackout from lack of power, each one of Kim’s palaces was staffed and lit, forming a constellation in the darkness, so better to fool the scrolling spysats as to his whereabouts.
But it was his villa near the beaches of Wonsan that set her imagination on fire. Enclosed within its grounds were greenhouses, cattle pastures, and wildflower ranges where chickens fed beside mountain streams. Persimmon trees bore flame-orange fruits. She saw the famous orchards, rumored to be fertilized with refined sugar so that the apples grew huge and sweet. She imagined those apples being served on platters at his epicurean feasts, where girls danced and stripped for the entertainment of his cronies, and, ever-vigilant, he watched for signs of thought crime in those faces flushed by drink.
The whole country was in Jenna’s sights. All its contours, structures, fields, and networks laid bare for her to see. Mountain and forest; prison and palace.
The emperor—the soldiers—the citizens—the slaves.
Where are you, Soo-min?
12
Airspace over New York City
Third Week of November, 2010
Three figures were floating toward him. General Kang and his two daughters. “He teach me Engrish,” Kang said, pointing at Cho, and his daughters’ laughter echoed off the marble walls. Kang’s chest was a morass of bullet holes and his body was putrescent. His big cheeks were detaching from his face, like halves of avocados. He sailed over Cho’s head. Cho was standing on an airport-style moving walkway that glided along an endless gallery. Books was beside him, holding his hand. In the far distance they saw a blue-white glow, like the light of a star, which was getting brighter as they approached, brighter and brighter until it filled the gallery with its rays. He gripped the boy’s small hand tightly with love, but his son was struggling to break free. “Appa,” he shouted. “We must leave.”
“If we’re too far away we’ll freeze,” Cho said to him.
“If we’re too close we’ll burn!”
Cho woke a start. A pressurized popping in his ears muffled the sounds. He rubbed his eyes, only half hearing the singsong Mandarin voice announcing the aircraft’s final descent to John F. Kennedy International Airport. In the rows in front of his the members of his legation had their faces pressed to the windows. He pushed up the blind and blinked groggily into the pink light. Drifts of cotton candy slipped over the wing, then a hydraulic whining sounded and the aircraft descended into a world of gray. The cabin shuddered as it encountered turbulence, then suddenly the clouds parted and he had a steep-angle view of suburban houses, like matchboxes with tiny cars moving between them. Cho looked at them in astonishment. He had never in his life imagined that he would enter the belly of the Yankee imperialist beast.
At the diplomatic arrivals lounge the legation was met by Ambassador Shin, North Korea’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and his aide, First Secretary Ma. After they’d bowed and exchanged socialist greetings they were escorted to the exit. Shin was a dour, stocky man with a straight slit for a mouth and gray hair combed straight back. His gruff and insolent manner made it clear at once that he was assuming command of the group. Cho disliked him instantly. First Secretary Ma was a thin, watchful man with curious wen on his left cheek, like a small black leech. Cho met his eyes, and noted warily that there was intelligence in them.
Four others were included in Cho’s group: two junior diplomats who were a little younger than Cho, both princeling sons of Central Committee members. They would each share a twin hotel room and be accompanied everywhere by the other two members, officers from the Party’s political security bureau—colorless, suspicious men who said little. Neither Cho nor any of them had visited the West before.
Rain fell in orange sparks beneath the sodium floodlights. Their driver, a surly Korean waiting with a black Toyota minivan, slid open the door and Cho saw miniature versions of the Father-Son portraits mounted on the dashboard and angled so they faced the passengers. The driver loaded their luggage into the trunk, and while the others were climbing in, Ambassador Shin said, “You have a package for me, I believe?” The man had lit a cigarette the moment he was out of the terminal building.
“It’s inside the diplomatic pouch,” Cho said, and watched Shin exhale a mixture of nerves, relief, and smoke.
They fastened seat belts and the journey toward the city commenced. Refreshed after his sleep on the plane, Cho looked eagerly at the ranks of yellow cabs and transit buses, feeling the adrenalin pumping in his chest, his eyes drinking in every detail. So many vehicles of different models and colors.
Just think where you are …
Ambassador Shin turned in his seat and began addressing them about the details of the itinerary, and on how they should comport themselves in front of the Yankees, who would almost certainly try to corral them into some compromising and unpleasant social event, which was to be avoided at all costs. He had the darting eyes of a suspicious, ill-tempered man. The group listened respectfully, but their gaze was repeatedly being drawn to the windows. Within minutes they were on open freeway. The black clouds along the horizon to the west were lifting, and when the great towers of New York City rose into view, their tips shining reddish gold in the dying rays of light, they appeared to Cho as an enchanted city. This is pure magic, he thought. It was a world he had never seen, even in his imagination. Some of the spires were stately and ancient, as if they’d stood for a century or more. He’d pictured a city of futuristic mirrored glass, like Shanghai. He thought of how he’d describe this sight for his wife and Books.
The lanes of traffic became a broad, slow-moving river of steel. Soon the minivan had crossed the East River and had joined the ant-like crawl of taillights. This is Manhattan. Sidewalks heaved and flowed with office workers pouring en masse down subway station entrances. On the next block a crowd was streaming out of a theater, their chatter and laughter making vapor in the raw air. The show’s name coruscated with thousands of tiny white lights. Ambassador Shin continued to talk, as if to distract them from the emotional shock they were experiencing. The minivan was inching forward into the midtown grid behind a white stretch limousine. Steam vented from holes in the road. Shin was talking about the Yankees’ media coverage of the rocket launch, but Cho was not even pretending to listen. His window misted up. He pressed the button to lower the glass and saw a man taking cash from a machine in a wall, and workers in Day-Glo vests. A digital display of numbers and fractions of numbers ran across the side of a tower. He breathed in. Food odors mingled in the air—fried pork and onions. A deep bass boomed and throbbed from a car that passed alongside, and three black faces in baseball caps passed with scarcely a glance at Cho. He looked up, and saw a soaring billboard of an underwear model.
After Pyongyang, where streets were dark and deserted at night, the impact of these sights was all the more shocking. In his country, foreign visitors were taken straight from the airport to lay flowers at the Great Leader’s feet on Mansu Hill. But here, where were the statues? Where were the monuments? The Yankees were allowing New York City to represent itself.
The minivan became boxed into a mass of traffic at a crosswalk just as the lights turned red. Pedestrians flowed around the vehicle in both directions. Cho’s eyes jumped from one face to the next, fascinated. No one wore a military uniform. The blacks and Asians weren’t wearing flunkies’ livery. He felt an intense desire to talk to one of them. He could speak their language! But almost in the same instant he knew that he wouldn’t. He would not be alone with anyone, not for a minute. He would present a face of cold revolutionary virtue at all times. He would never make a friend here.
The lights turned green and the minivan proceeded at a crawl. A man wearing a hat with earflaps sat on the sidewalk holding out a polystyrene cup, and Cho remembered that he’d been expecting to see drug dealers, prostitutes, and lines of workless on every street.
At the Roosevelt Hotel an enormous stars-and-stripes flag fluttered from a pole above the golden portico. The minivan pulled over and the party got out in a trance. Cho saw the same hundred-yard stare in each of the faces in his group. As though drunk, he could not take in the grand surroundings of the lobby. First Secretary Ma was checking them in at the reception desk, and while Ambassador Shin continued talking—the slit of his mouth making a patter of dull, flat sounds—Cho became aware of the well-dressed, well-fed people milling around, of Caucasian faces casting glances at his strange group as though they were envoys from an alien civilization. He looked at his party, seeing them now through outsiders’ eyes, and felt suddenly ashamed of them, of the two political officer goons in their shiny Vinylon suits and state-issue rubber shoes, and the lapel pins they all wore of the Great Leader’s smiling face.
Ambassador Shin suggested they take an hour to freshen up in their rooms before dinner. The political officers went up first, to remove the TV remotes and the Gideon Bibles from the bedside tables, and Cho and the two junior diplomats followed. In the elevator Cho said to them, “While we’re in this hotel … you may remove your lapel pins.” The two diplomats gave no response and looked down. “We should not have to endure the Yankees’ stares,” he added, with the sinking feeling that he’d said something irreparable.
His room was spacious and had a comfortable double bed. It was adjoined by a marble-walled bathroom, stocked with thick white towels, which appeared to be for his exclusive use. He walked to the window. The sky was an orange broth that obscured the stars. Far below, on Madison Avenue, a fire truck flashed ruby and sapphire, its wail rising and falling, an echoing curve down a lit canyon.
Two knocks sounded behind him.
He opened the door to see First Secretary Ma standing with a teenage black boy wearing a drum-like cap. The boy was pulling a brass bellman cart loaded to the top with luggage. In his daze Cho had forgotten all about luggage. His heart skipped a gear.
The diplomatic pouch!
He spotted his own suitcase, and the boy retrieved it from the pile, but the pouch was nowhere in sight. Trying to keep the panic out of his voice, he said he was certain there was one more item, and with the help of First Secretary Ma the boy unloaded the entire cart until they saw it, a gray, sealed, duffel-like bag, crushed at the very bottom of the heap. First Secretary Ma scowled at Cho. Cho thanked the boy in English. As he had been told that tipping was a degrading capitalist custom, he presented him with a pocket-sized English edition of Anecdotes of Kim Il Sung’s Life, of which he’d brought a dozen copies.
He closed the door and slumped his back against it. How could he have been so stupid? He dropped the pouch on the bed and undid the seal. He would take the package to Ambassador Shin immediately. But as he took it out of the pouch his stomach clenched again. A tear down its side exposed the bubble-wrap padding beneath the manila. He ran his finger along the gash. It hadn’t been cut. It had split under the crush of that damned luggage. He switched on the bedside lamp and felt gently inside the tear. His finger touched cellophane. He felt … a bricklike object … several of them … wrapped in cellophane …
The door opened and Cho jumped, knocking the lamp on its side so that its bulb lit Ambassador Shin from below and cast his shadow large upon the wall. Cho must have left the latch off the door.
“The package, please, Colonel.” He held out his hand.
For one instant the two regarded each other with naked hostility.
“I’d like to ask you what’s inside it,” Cho said.
“Admin, funds …” Shin said vaguely. The voice was calm, but the eyes were warning him. He took the package from Cho’s hands.
“We are driving to a traditional Korean restaurant,” Ambassador Shin announced, once they had all reassembled in the lobby. “The staff and owner are … sympathetic,” he added confidingly to Cho, as though they were being taken to a safe house in a war zone. “We can talk there.”
The minivan made a left off 45th Street and was immediately caught in another snarl-up of traffic. Within minutes the vehicle was at a standstill in a line of red taillights and exhaust fumes, like a solidifying lava flow. A cab driver sounded his horn, which set off a hundred other horns. Ambassador Shin began whispering to First Secretary Ma.
The business with the package had unsettled Cho. He did not trust Shin, and now, trapped by the minivan in a cacophony of car horns, jet lagged and disorientated, he felt a mounting frustration at being in Shin’s hands. Eventually he said, “Couldn’t we get out and walk?”
Ambassador Shin hesitated. “We must remain in the vehicle until we reach the scheduled destination.”
They sat for another half hour in silence, watching a huge skyscraper topped with a mast that changed color. Red, white, blue. Cho leaned forward. “We can’t sit here all night, comrades. I respectfully suggest we leave the car with the driver and eat there …”
Over the tops of the vehicles they could see a restaurant with an exterior plated entirely in stainless steel. A sign that said OPEN 24 HOURS flashed in ruby neon. Behind a long window overlooking the street, tables were arranged in individual booths, like the dining car of a train. The interior cast an inviting glow. Waitresses in pressed pink uniforms went to and fro carrying enormous trays of food.
“The Korean restaurant has been prepared for you …” Ambassador Shin said.
“Well, nothing’s moving here,” Cho said.
The group glanced from one to the other. One of the junior diplomats shrugged to the other, who seemed open to the idea, but Shin, First Secretary Ma, and the two political officers remained silent, calculating the consequences.
Cho opened his door.
“Wait!” Shin said, his voice tight with alarm. “You’re forgetting where you are, Colonel.”
Cho looked at the customers in the booths of the restaurant. Four adolescents, two boys and two girls who looked like high school students, sipped Coca-Colas through straws. A small boy’s face was cartoonishly agog when a bowl of multicolored ice-cream scoops was placed in front of him. Small children everywhere have the same reactions, he thought. A tired-looking man in a security guard’s uniform dined alone with a beer and joked with his waitress. None seemed like the Yankee types so easily identified in the movies—villains thin as beanpoles with hook noses and blond hair.
“We have nothing to fear,” Cho said. “Unless you’re saying our great Party’s ideology can’t protect us against gluttonous children and bland food …”
The interior had a black-and-white checkered floor and a long counter of polished chrome where waitresses shouted the orders. The kitchen was behind a pair of flapping doors with porthole windows. Behind the counter was a display of crystal glasses and bottles and above that an image of a frothing milkshake formed of yellow and pink neon lights. Cakes an
d sweet pies covered in glazed fruit were displayed on rotating shelves inside a glass case.
A waitress showed them to a booth and handed them laminated menus. “Where you guys from?” she said, wiping the table. The name on her tag was PAM.
“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Ambassador Shin said in a monotone.
“Okay!” She gave them a brilliant smile, and walked off.
Once they were seated, another waitress passed by carrying two large trays of hot plates and delivered them to the family sitting in the next booth. Complex aromas of melted cheeses and grilled beef followed her.
Perhaps fearing a weakening of his revolutionary resolve, one of the political officers lodged a tentative protest. Despite being large and dull in appearance, Cho knew he was venomously orthodox.
“Colonel, I’m not sure the food here is appropriate. As our Great—”
“Your objection is noted, Political Officer Yi.” Cho was hungry and in no mood for a quotation, but a mischievous thought popped into his head. “Didn’t you recognize the meals on that tray? Comrade Kim Jong-il himself invented the ‘double-bun-with-meat’—as the solution to feeding our university students. A report in the Minju Choson showed him giving on-the-spot guidance to the factory workers who made the patties. The Yankees are capable of the vilest deceit. You must admit, there’s a strong possibility they stole the idea from us.”
Political Officer Yi crimped his lips, making a mental note.
Cho and Ambassador Shin did their best to approximate the menu into Korean for the others, and in doing so discovered that double-bun-with-meat was offered with a bewildering choice of sauces and cheeses, and with a chicken or spicy bean option instead of beef. The more Cho read aloud the more the party around him nodded their approval, increasingly convinced that the dish had originated in the mind of the Genius of Geniuses himself. In homage to him, they each chose a different variety of it, with fries and salad, and opted for a Budweiser beer, as their own Taedonggang beer, which they’d understood was appreciated in many countries as one of the world’s finest beers, was not on the menu.
