Star of the North

by D. B. John

  Simms answered his phone after many rings. She heard a cough and the sound of a toilet flushing. “It’s very late, Marianne Lee. This better be good.”

  “It’s inside Camp 22.”

  “What is?”

  “A large, modern complex with state-of-the-art aircon units on the roof, stainless-steel cooling ducts, satellite dish, and an outbuilding that could house an independent generator. All surrounded by electrified double fences.”

  “I’m sure this can wait until tomorr—”

  “North Korea is spending its scarce resources building a high-tech facility in a secluded valley that lies deep inside a gigantic concentration camp. It’s located only twenty kilometers from the Tonghae Rocket Launch Site. I’m guessing it’s not an indoor heated fucking swimming pool. You better put every squint in the Agency on this tomorrow morning before I tell the CIA director it was right under your nose all along.”

  *

  How could she even think of shopping? The tranquil morning on O Street struck her with the shock of the surreal. Pastel cottages amid brick federal mansions. A college hockey team carrying sticks and equipment. High above, a silver airplane tracing a stream of vapor across the blue. Sleep had proved impossible. Even when she rubbed her eyes, the camp retained its imprint on them, like a photographic negative. It felt good to be home for the first time in a month, and reunited with Cat, who had been cared for by her neighbor, but something in her perception of home had shifted. The dust-covered living room was her previous life frozen in time. Her life before the Farm. The briefcase she’d carried to work every day at Georgetown looked as if it had been abandoned next to the piano by a stranger.

  Thanksgiving was this week. She forced herself to focus and figure out what she needed to buy. Apart from her mother she’d invited her dad’s brother Cedric and his family.

  “You’ve never cooked for us before,” Han had said on the phone. And then, in that complicit tone that made Jenna want to stick pencils into her own eyes, “Have you met someone?” One of Jenna’s reasons for hosting was to foil any plot her mother might have to ambush her with another suitor in Annandale.

  She pushed her cart along the dairy aisle thinking that she’d never felt so out of place. A weekday morning in the grocery store, surrounded by mothers wheeling carts with toddlers in tow, all bafflingly oblivious to the dangers of the world, the precarious security she worked to maintain. What had been normal and routine now seemed trivial and bizarre.

  When she got home Cat was hunger-marching up and down the piano keys.

  She was pushing the turkey into the refrigerator when her phone buzzed.

  Mother’s number withheld trick.

  “Omma, Thanksgiving is your only American meal of the year. I am not serving it Korean style.”

  “Uh, you’re on speakerphone, Miss Lee,” Simms said coldly. “The squints are with me in the conference room …” She felt her face redden. “We’re ninety percent sure your object of interest is a laboratory.”

  “What kind of lab?”

  “Probably chemical. It has a water supply from a mountain lake and tanks for storing gases. Could be narcotics. Hard drugs are one of their main exports …”

  “Why build a drugs lab there?” she turned to the window. The condensation was making diamonds of the afternoon light. “If they’re working on a weapon in secret, locating the lab inside a total control camp makes sense. Nothing about it would leak out.”

  “We’re putting more eyes on it, and we’ll inform Mike Chang …” After a pause in which she thought they were ending the call, one of the squints said, “Good work, Marianne Lee,” which was followed by a murmur of agreement from the others.

  It was a strange feeling, the morning after a night without sleep. The effect on her wasn’t always unpleasant. Sometimes her mind burned more brightly the next day, like a candlewick flaring as it neared its end, and made novel and unusual connections. She tied her hair back and chose music for running. Dvo ˇrák. Ninth Symphony, last movement.

  She ran along the old iron streetcar rails, toward the university campus, the chill air bringing clarity to her head. She turned up the volume of the symphony and quickened her pace, starting to warm up.

  North Korea builds a new, high-tech chemical laboratory inside a concentration camp. She ran a lap around the hockey field, then took a path up the hill toward the playing fields and the observatory.

  Laboratories conduct experiments. The camp provides secrecy. Or …

  She slowed to a halt. In the distance the Potomac River was myrtle green and choppy in the low November sun.

  The experiments require human prisoners.

  15

  United Nations Secretariat Building

  East 42nd Street and 1st Avenue

  New York City

  Monday, November 22, 2010

  “Ready to face the enemy?”

  Ambassador Shin, sitting next to Cho on the back seat, gave his shoulder a small squeeze, to show confidence in him, Cho supposed. Or to warn him not to screw up. Since the embarrassment outside the diner, Shin had assumed an air of amused familiarity with him, which Cho found intensely irritating.

  Yong-ho must have known those hundred-dollar bills were counterfeits. The realization that he’d given them as a gift without mentioning this had shocked Cho. It had made him think of Yong-ho differently, as if he had suddenly become someone entirely separate from the brother he loved. But he reminded himself: spreading those counterfeits was one of the very countermeasures against Yankee power that they were all working to bring about. Cho tried to see it as a patriotic act, and not to judge his brother for it.

  The Americans had sent a black Lincoln Navigator and two State Department diplomatic security escorts on motorbikes to collect him from the Roosevelt Hotel. He supposed this was a gesture to honor him, but the sight of the motorcade waiting outside the portico in public view, with the motorbikes’ rotating blue lights attracting a small crowd of onlookers, had given him a bowel-loosening feeling of dread.

  Cho’s knee shook. He didn’t speak a word to the two junior diplomats in the seats in front of him. More than anything he was worried his English would let him down.

  The day was gray and overcast, with a light drizzle falling. The motorcade turned onto 1st Avenue and he saw the outline of the United Nations tower fade upward into low clouds, like an unfinished sketch. Flags lining the concourse hung limp. The limousine was greeted at the main entrance by First Secretary Ma, who escorted them across the vast lobby to the elevators. On the eighteenth floor they turned a corridor and were shown straight into a conference room. Four Americans stood up from their seats along one side of a polished wooden table arranged with glasses, bottled water, notepads, and a display of fresh flowers.

  Chris O’Brien, the American UN envoy, was taller than anyone in the room. He ambled toward them with a genial smile, hand outstretched, as if they were new members of an athletic club. “Colonel, great to see you here,” he said giving Cho’s hand a hearty pump. His head was puce and pink and sand colored, his shoulders too broad for an intellectual.

  Just as a jackal cannot become a lamb …

  “The Dear Leader Kim Jong-il extends his cordial wishes for the success of our talks,” Cho said without smiling.

  They took their seats. The window framed a blank world of swirling clouds, an empty dimension. O’Brien opened the proceedings with a rambling speech stating the United States’s position. He had a poor speaking voice, Cho thought. Strangulated and nasal. None of his words contained any surprises, except that O’Brien spoke as if these were thoughts and opinions he shared with his colleagues, rather than the words of an authorized text. The usual arrogance cloaked in reason and affability. Last month’s rocket launch a cause for deep concern … Violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions … Human rights abuses … The same lack of respect for Korea’s sovereign desire to live the socialism of its own style. The presumption that it had no right to arm itself agains
t the enemies on its doorstep. Cho observed O’Brien’s colleagues as he spoke. The speech was so tedious they barely seemed to be listening, and Cho recognized in their aspects an imperial complacency, a mock seriousness. One of them was dabbing at a coffee stain on his tie. Whatever nerves Cho had felt when he’d entered the room evaporated like the cloud outside the window, now burning off in the morning sun. He thought of the street poster that was all over Pyongyang this week—of an enormous Korean fist smashing down on the US Capitol Building.

  He’d had enough of O’Brien’s voice. He stood up, and rested his fists on the table. O’Brien looked up from his notes. His speech petered out in his nasal cavity. The Americans stared at him.

  “Do you think our country is indifferent to its own dignity?” Cho said calmly.

  “No, sir, we are merely—”

  “Are you telling us we can’t live by our own rules?”

  O’Brien opened his hands, that gesture of reasonableness again, an objection forming on his lips. It was not Cho’s turn to speak, but he was brushing aside the framework. A revolutionary had no use for protocol. In a clear, controlled voice he stated his position with force. He reminded them of the blood reckoning his country still had with the United States. He wagged his finger to prophesy the sea of fire that would engulf its puppet forces in Seoul if their meddling in his country’s affairs did not stop.

  O’Brien’s brow was furrowed in understanding. At the end of Cho’s remarks he gave an uncertain smile and smoothed his sandy hair with the tips of his fingers. “Let’s take a short break,” he said. As the Americans left the room Cho saw two of them exchange a glance of perplexed amusement, as if he they’d listened to a drunk give a speech at a wedding.

  The American with the coffee-stained tie remained seated at the table. He had a long nose and thick, side-parted blond hair. “With the greatest respect, Colonel Cho …” He was speaking in Korean with a pronounced American rhythm to his speech, which for some atavistic reason Cho found deeply sinister. “We know what’s going on here, and we’re tired of it. You launch a rocket. You drop menacing hints. You ratchet up tensions to crisis point. You’ll wait till you see news headlines like ‘North Korea on brink of war!’ Then all of a sudden you offer to talk. The world breathes a big sigh of relief, and showers you with aid and concessions. Blackmail’s worked for you until now. Not this time. Not any more.” He got up, adding in English, “Ain’t gonna happen.”

  At the end of the day, Cho asked directions to the men’s restroom. He entered and checked he was alone before splashing water on his face and looking at his reflection in the mirror. He regarded the cold set of his mouth, the blankness in his eyes. Sometimes he did not recognize himself, or feel sure which was the real him. He felt the knots of tension in his back and neck and the familiar ball of dread in his stomach. The Americans had conceded nothing. Now he would have to report his lack of progress to Pyongyang.

  When he entered North Korea’s UN office on the fourteenth floor, Ambassador Shin, First Secretary Ma, and the two junior diplomats were sitting around the speakerphone on the desk. One of the diplomats was talking excitedly into the speaker, extolling the highlights of Cho’s speech and the surprise on the Yankees’ faces. The approving grunts of the First Deputy Minister himself could be heard on the other end. Cho stepped forward and snatched up the phone to hear the man’s voice in private. He breathed in. There was no glossing this.

  “Comrade First Deputy Minister, the Yankees aren’t going for it.”

  “Relax, Cho Sang-ho. From what I’ve just heard you’re doing fine …” Behind the hiss and crackle on the line, Cho heard him suck in on a cigarette. “There’s still one more day to go. Tomorrow could make all the difference …” Someone muttered a word in the background. Others were listening in. “You’ll know what to do.”

  Cho replaced the handset with a sense of foreboding. The First Deputy Minister hadn’t questioned him about the proceedings. Hadn’t given orders for the tactics for tomorrow’s session. He’d behaved as if these crucial talks, for which the Ministry had spent months preparing, were of no consequence at all. That odd emphasis on tomorrow. Suddenly Cho’s instinct for subterfuge stirred sharply to life.

  He returned to the hotel feeling drained and on edge. He’d been placed in an impossible situation, he knew. He’d come to New York to accept tribute and reparations from an enemy that should have been cowed by the power and range of the rocket, but the Americans seemed unafraid. An incriminating, heretical thought crossed his mind—that a subtler, friendlier approach, with compromises offered, would have been more fruitful, and done much to engender a positive attitude in the Americans toward his country. But with that thought came the perception of a darker truth—that nothing in the Americans’ attitude was meant to change. The Dear Leader had written,

  The Yankees are the eternal enemies of our masses.

  We cannot live under the same sky as them.

  He sat on the bed and undid his tie, pulling it upward for a moment, imagining it was a noose. He badly wanted to speak to someone human, to his wife, to Books, who had such a sweet nature that Cho believed him incapable of a mean thought. At school he helped raise rabbits to provide fur for soldiers’ hats, and listened with wonder to legends from the boyhood of Kim Il-sung.

  He put the chain on the door and felt around the edges of the television for the “on” button. Surely it could be operated without the remote. He found the volume and turned it down low. A fat, brick-colored man with an image of the White House behind him was jabbing a finger at the camera and shouting about “hidden socialism.” Cho changed channel. An excited voice introduced the Chevrolet Silverado, available at zero percent finance over forty-eight months, applicants subject to credit checking. He changed again. Multicolored fluffy creatures resembling no animals Cho recognized were singing a song about the importance of brushing your teeth. He turned it off and lay on the bed for a while, still clothed, his hands laced behind his head, listening to the sounds of the city. Soon he was drifting off to sleep on a wing of depression.

  Some hours later he awoke in a sweat, disorientated in the unfamiliar room. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep. An alien urban glow filtered through a crack in the curtains and the contours of the room began to materialize around him.

  The hammering sounded again.

  Cho leapt off the bed and opened the door. One of the junior diplomats was outside in a state of agitation. He rushed past Cho into the room and went straight to the television set, talking excitedly. Confused by sleep, Cho couldn’t follow what he was saying. The screen showed footage of houses on fire and a gas station exploding, with BREAKING NEWS at the top. The gas station’s signs were in Korean. People were screaming, panicking. A woman was trying to run holding two infants in her arms. Lights pulsed on a military fire engine. His country was attacking Yeonpyeong, a South Korean island in the Yellow Sea, with artillery fire and MiG fighter jets. South Korean marines and civilians were being killed.

  Suddenly Cho was wide awake and reaching for the telephone.

  16

  Hyesan Train Station

  Ryanggang Province, North Korea

  Mrs. Moon couldn’t hear herself think. The loudspeaker was broadcasting at maximum volume. A Party orator’s voice crackled with outrage, a massed rally chanted. Every few minutes the broadcast was interrupted by a bulletin from the Front, wherever that was.

  In a way the noise was a welcome distraction. If her mind rested for a moment on thoughts of Curly and Sun-i, picturing where they were being held, what was being done to them now, she felt such gut-coiling anxiety it was all she could do to stop herself from fainting. She’d had no sleep, and had been the first to arrive at the market this morning. She’d told each of the women the news one by one. An atmosphere of fear, mixed with something like bereavement, hung over all of them.

  She’d slipped out of Curly’s house by the kitchen door just as the Bowibu were kicking their way in to search the place. Fin
ding herself in a small vegetable patch she’d squeezed through a gap in the chicken wire and had hidden in a pigsty in a neighbor’s backyard. There she stayed for hours, crouched in the frozen filth, listening to the men ransack Curly’s house, pulling down the ceiling, tearing up the floor. They were organized, methodical, even though they must have found what they were looking for straight away: the four pocket Bibles were lying on the mat. By the time they’d gone, a bank of clouds was rubbing out the stars one by one. She was in utter darkness and had to feel her way out of the neighbor’s yard. She’d long missed her truck ride back to the village. So she crept back into Curly’s house, pulled open the back door, and sat among the devastated floorboards until morning. Rest proved impossible.

  For the twentieth time she told herself to calm down. She tried to compose her face into its habitual mask of optimism. Panic was suspicious. In fact there was no point panicking at all until she had information, and once she had that, there might be a solution. No, there was always a solution.

  Without Curly and Sun-i to serve food, Kyu had stepped in, but the customers did not like being served by one of the kotchebi, and scowled down their noses at him without thanking him.

  She kept peering along the platform, keeping a lookout for Sergeant Jang. He would be the first one she’d ask for help.

  Unable to sit still, she realized her mind was still in shock, which may be why the vision materializing before her eyes didn’t especially surprise her.

  Walking toward her between the aisle of mats and stalls was the spirit of a young girl. Mrs. Moon did a double blink.

  She was about twelve years old, moving slowly and stumbling slightly, as though she were blind. Her face was smirched with dirt and deathly pale, her eyes glassy and half-covered by a curtain of matted hair. The clothes she wore were torn and hung from her in ragged strips—and she was barefoot. That was the detail that unhinged Mrs. Moon.